Greetings! This is the
first monthly mailing of The Future
Depends on Love marriage initiative directly from the Massachusetts
Catholic Conference (MCC) office to your parish!
We hope that
you will find these resources useful.
Please enter this email address into your address book to avoid future
emails being sent to a spam folder.
This email
contains links to the resources on marriage for use in bulletins in the upcoming weeks. The
Future Depends on Love is an initiative of the four bishops of Massachusetts through the Massachusetts Catholic
Conference, which is the public-policy voice of the Catholic Church in Massachusetts.
Resource
Seminars presenting "Parish Resources for Marriage" ring binders are being held
throughout the state and your parish will be getting a hard copy of these
resources soon. We all recognize the
need for the faithful of Massachusetts
to be better educated and catechized on the nature of lifelong, life-giving
marriage, and we encourage you to utilize these resources. Your assistance in this work of service is
greatly appreciated!
Two bulletin inserts (in PDF format) are
downloadable  through links given below; possible use dates are also given. In addition, it is suggested that you run a weekly The
Future Depends on Love box in your bulletin ("bulletin brief") with a
brief quote from a Church document. Those quotes are given below, and you can also access JPGs of these
"bulletin briefs" through the links in this email. Homiletic
aids are also included for each weekly theme, also linked from this email.
All these documents are available online
at www.MassCatholicMarriage.org. Click on "Parish Resources."
Please see the
other announcements below concerning all the exciting events going on with The Future Depends on Love!
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For the Upcoming
Weeks:
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Suggested
weekly themes and bulletin items for
the upcoming month are the following:
Week #1 (August 24):
God's desire for our
happiness; moral laws lead to happiness.
The Future Depends on Love (FDOL) box in the bulletin: Week 1 JPG
"In the
Christian view, chastity by no means signifies rejection of human sexuality or
lack of esteem for it: rather it signifies a spiritual energy capable of
defending love from the perils of selfishness and aggressiveness, and able to
advance it towards its full realization." Pope John Paul II, Familiaris
Consortio, #33
Bulletin
announcement: The Future Depends on Love marriage initiative of the bishops of Massachusetts will hold two
speaker-training workshops! The first
is on September 10 from 7-9:30 pm at the Chancery library, 49 Elm Street, Worcester. The second is on September 26 from 7 to 9:30
pm at the Archdiocese of Boston Pastoral Center, 66 Brooks Drive, Braintree. Visit www.MassCatholicMarriage.org for an
application. The training will equip you
to accurately and persuasively present the Church's teaching on marriage. |
| Week #2 (August 31)
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Week #2 (August 31): True freedom is the freedom to do the good.
FDOL
box in the bulletin: Week 2 JPG: "The human being is made for love and
cannot live without love. When it is manifested as the total gift of two persons in their
complementarities, love cannot be reduced to emotions or feelings, much less to
mere sexual expression. The truth of conjugal love and sexuality exist
where there is a full and total gift of persons, with the characteristics of unity and fidelity" Compendium
of the Social Doctrine of the Church, #223
Bulletin
announcement: The Future Depends on Love marriage initiative of the bishops of Massachusetts will hold two
speaker-training workshops! The first
is on September 10 from 7-9:30 pm at the Chancery library, 49 Elm Street, Worcester.
The second is on September 26 from 7 to 9:30
pm at the Archdiocese of Boston Pastoral Center, 66 Brooks Drive, Braintree. Visit www.MassCatholicMarriage.org for an
application. The training will equip you
to accurately and persuasively present the Church's teaching on marriage.
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| Week #3 (September 7)
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 Week #3 (September 7): True freedom is love that is guided by truth.
FDOL
box in the bulletin: Week 3 JPG "Christian
faith and ethics are not meant to stifle love, but to make it healthier, stronger, and moretruly free." Pope Benedict XVI, Fifth World Meeting of
Families, Valencia, Spain, 7/8/2006
Suggested bulletin insert: "Marriage: God's Loving Plan for Sex"
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| Week #4 (September 14)
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Week #4 (September 14-Triumph
of the Holy Cross): We
are made for self-gift. Marriage,
priesthood, and religious life are all about self-gift.
FDOL
box in the bulletin: Week 4 JPG "Just as the Incarnation of the
Son of God reveals its true meaning in the Cross, so genuine human love is
self-giving and cannot exist if it seeks to detach itself from the Cross." Pope Benedict XVI, 6/6/2005
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| Week #5 (September 21)
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Week #5 (September 21): God's
moral law leads to our happiness and well-being. FDOL
box in the bulletin: Week 5 JPG "The Lord Jesus opened up
vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the
union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God's sons in truth and
charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed
for itself, cannot
fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself."  Second
Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, #24 "What the Church Teaches, Social Science Confirms" Weekly homiletic aids corresponding to these themes can be linked here.
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| Week #6 (September 28)
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Week #6 (September 28): God and the Church want to heal us of our sins.
FDOL
box in the bulletin: Week 6 JPG
"The
characteristic traits of marriage
are: totality, by which the spouses give themselves to each other
mutually in
every aspect of their person, physical and spiritual; unity which makes
them "one flesh" (Gen 2:24); indissolubility
and fidelity which the definitive mutual giving of self requires; the
fruitfulness to which this naturally opens itself." Compendium of the
Social Doctrine of the Church, #217
Weekly homiletic aids corresponding to these themes can be linked here.
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Sincerely,
The Future Depends on Love
Massachusetts Catholic Conference
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Parish News
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Get low cost--or even free--copies of a terrific resource for your parishioners! Reserve your copies of Dr. Janet Smith's CD, "Contraception: Why Not." Download the order form hereand get it to the Massachusetts Catholic Conference office by September 30. (The form will not obligate you to buy anything.)" A
Parish Assessment form is available and will also be distributed near the
end of the initiative around January 2009.
It can be downloaded at here. |
Upcoming Events
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Resource Seminar for clergy and
laity on August
11, 7-9 pm, at St. Stephen's Parish Hall, 355
Grafton St., Worcester. See here for more details. People coming
from other dioceses may also attend.
More seminars will be scheduled throughout the fall. Don't miss out on this great
opportunity to learn about resources that will strengthen marriage in
your parish!
Speaker-Training Workshops on September 10, 7-9:30 pm, at Worcester's Chancery library and on September 26,
7-9:30 pm, at the Archdiocese of Boston's Pastoral Center. See the application here. Please post the application and consider
recommending the event to parishioners whom you think might be excited by
the opportunity. Clergy are also
welcome.
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