St. Valentine’s Day Part II

02-16-2025Letter from the PastorFr. Don Kline, V.F.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“To love at all is to be vulnerable,” wrote CS Lewis. This is why real love can be amazing and not so easy at first! The temptation is to think that it is better to never love. The tragedy is that life is never fully lived in the capacity with which God created us to live. The temptation is to think that you are playing it safe by refusing to love. But the alternative to the risk of love is boarding on a hell-like existence completely self-absorbed.

CS Lewis’s striking passage on love continues: “Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

Our Lord says in Sacred Scripture repeatedly to not be afraid! We need love which means that as we love, we must make ourselves vulnerable and willing to be hurt. We must never forget that we are made in the image of Love itself! God delights in you as His beloved son or daughter. He made every cell in your body and you are His beautiful creation. In the story of creation found in Genesis, we read: “And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… So God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply…”

Words matter. Redefining words has become a bit of a pastime for some people who prefer to confuse rather than educate. We have all experienced the consequences of words being intentionally redefined to support an agenda. Contraception is one of those words that has been convoluted to such a degree that people have come to believe that it is part of health care and should be covered by insurance. You may recall the story that made national news when the Little Sisters of the Poor were required to pay for contraception as part of the mandatory health care plan.

In August 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a federal mandate that required employers to provide services like the week-after pill in their health insurance plans, free of cost. The mandate did not exempt religious non-profits with religious objections, like the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order of nuns that run homes for the elderly poor across the country.

The Little Sisters of the Poor asked many times for protection from the mandate, but the federal government refused to grant them reasonable protection from the rule. The Sisters were forced to pay devastating fines if they did not comply with the mandate. The Little Sisters opposed this unconstitutional mandate, arguing that the government could easily achieve its policy goal without forcing them to violate their deeply held religious beliefs.

After years of litigation, the Little Sisters won their case at the U.S. Supreme Court and on November 7, 2018, the federal government issued a final rule creating a protection for religious ministries like the Little Sisters while offering alternative means for women to obtain free contraception.

To be continued…

God Bless,

Fr. Don Klin