The reasons for low Sunday Mass attendance - ( 29% )

1.- The effect that the clergy sex abuse scandals have had on the faith of our people. The lack of justice in adjudicating the cases. The protection of offending clergy and the lack of concern for the victims as well as the innocent priests and laity who were in the parishes where these crimes took place. Justice has still not been achieved because those who covered up the offences have not been dealt with.

2.-The Catholic people have been subjected to faulty catechetics both in CCD for their children and in R.C.I.A. for those seeking to adopt the Faith. In the fictitous "Spirit of Vatican II" the Magisterium of the Church has been neglected with her teachings subverted in the area of sexual moral values. In my Diocese Humanae Vitae, ( Of human life ) has been didmissed out of hand with priests and pastors telling their people to follow their conscience with out warning that the conscience must be formed on the truth. I don't think there is any doubt that Humanae Vitae is part of the ordinary magisterium of the Church and as such must be followed.

3.-The Pew report recently said that one out ten Americans is a former Catholic. That is thirty million people. They couldn't find the true faith in the Churches in which they were worshiping. Young people are simply living together as an experiment. Statistics show that 50% of marriages, Catholics included, end in divorce and among those living together before marriage it is 70%. Promiscuity produces unwanted pregnancies and a wide variety of sexually transmitted dideases. The number of these diseases is about 100 and many of them can never be cured and are brought into the marriage bed.

5.-Contraception is at the bottom of most of our problems because it invalidates the oath taken by the spouses which includes the promise to be faithful and to be open to children. The Church says trhat "every act of sexual intimacy between a husband and wife must be open to new life". The thing we overlook is that in the sacrament of matrimony Christ is its heart and will pour forth the needed sanctifying grace to strengthen the marriage and the spouses in the face of any seeming difficulty.

6.-Abortion is not the answer to a seeming problem but takes the life of an innocent human being. Our minds have become numbed to this realty which is brought about by offending against the sixth commanment. The Catholic Church must regain her courage and stand up for the faith of our fathers for the sake of the generations now living. She must teach the truth no matter how unpopular it may seem to be.

7.-The last point is that of homosexuality. The Church loves every human being but homosexual activity is a disorder and is gravely sinful. Those living the gay or lesbian life are doing themselves and the culture a diservice. The rationale for gay marriage is that if heterosexuals who are married and are living sterile lives are excepted so should they be accepted who live sterile lives. This is what contraception has brought forth.