In the decades since the widespread availability of the birth control pill and the legalization of abortion, sexual immorality has gained a stranglehold on popular culture.
Local Catholics hope to change that.
Three groups have sprung up in the Diocese of Phoenix to help educate people of all ages about the Church’s teaching on human sexuality and foster the virtue of chastity.
Melanie Pritchard, a longtime pro-life activist and nationally known speaker, has formed a new organization called Foundation for Life and Love.
Having spoken to thousands of teens over the years about the value of chastity and the tragedy of abortion, Pritchard said FFLAL combines the efforts of several local groups to provide a more unified approach to a multi-dimensional problem.
“It’s a real holistic approach to building a culture of life,” Pritchard said. “These issues are all related, so it makes sense to combine resources and efforts.”
FFLAL has a speakers bureau that features local Catholics who are recognized authorities on topics such as modesty, marriage, Natural Family Planning, abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, end-of-life issues and the gift of sexuality. Pritchard plans to train still others to speak on these topics and is on the lookout for new recruits.
“One of my real goals for the fall is to create a guys’ chastity speaking team of young men who are willing to go out and talk to other young men about these issues,” Pritchard said.
Spiritual movement
Monica Breaux, who holds a Ph.D. in social work, has a similar vision to Pritchard, but is striking a different note. As a counselor and spiritual director who helps those struggling with sexual addiction, pornography or same-sex attraction, she has witnessed firsthand the heartache that inevitably follows sexual sin.
Breaux, along with Fr. John Bonavitacola, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish, and Sr. Colleen Braun, has formed a community dubbed Humanly Possible.
“The vision is chaste living as a spiritual work of mercy against the injustice of sexual immorality,” Breaux said. “People are so caught up in the culture of sexual immorality that they don’t even know when they are not living according to Church teaching.”
The organization is for laity, priests and religious who want to promote a proper and model a understanding of chastity and the Church’s teaching on human sexuality.
At a May 31 Mass at OLMC, 17 people stepped forward to publicly commit themselves to chaste living. The community is comprised of more than just OLMC parishioners: Sr. Margaret McHugh of Minnesota and a man from Colorado Springs flew in to participate in the ceremony.
“So many people think chastity is just for youth. They think it’s simply waiting for sex until marriage. They don’t understand that it is for everyone that everybody is called to this,” Breaux said. “We had people from every walk of life that understand the injustice of sexual immorality and the need for a spiritual work of mercy.
Breaux said one of the goals of the group is to encourage acceptance of sexual ethics and assist in the personal sanctification of the members.
New diocesan task force
Cindy Leonard, coordinator of Natural Family Planning for the Diocese of Phoenix, said she and a few other Catholic women have begun a chastity education task force that will harmonize nicely with the efforts of both FFLAL and Humanly Possible.
“We began with a small group of women who all kind of feel the same way -- that we’ve all been called to educate young people how to live and love the way God designed us, to teach them about the dignity of the human person,” Leonard said.
The task force will be a primarily educational effort aimed at diocesan youth.
“We want to catechize all the youth in our diocese, not just in Catholic schools but in religious education classes and in public schools,” Leonard said. “The goal is that people would be consistently catechized and offered this different vision of life and love than the one the popular culture is offering.”
Over the years Leonard has observed the same people involved in multiple education efforts involving marriage, natural family planning, abortion, chastity and modesty. Oftentimes, there is overlapping training and duplication of efforts. There are also noticeable gaps.
“We need to step back and see the over-arching vision,” Leonard said.
“If you’re born in our diocese, between birth and death, what are the touch points where the Church could be offering help to parents?”
