Fr. Todd Bulletin Article 10/25/26

Dear Sacred Heart and St. Mary on the Lake,

Each October the Diocese has us celebrate Safe Haven Sunday - a weekend meant to encourage us in making our homes real safe havens. We are all generally good at knowing who is welcomed into our homes and we have security in place so those who shouldn’t be in our homes can’t get there. This weekend reminds to be so intentional with the things that enter our homes, lives, and hearts through the internet. If we don’t have some controls in place then it's like we have no front door at all on our homes. Anyone, and anything, can waltz right in.

A particular area of concern is always the pornography industry. It seeks to make money and it is very good at it. All at the expense of people’s lives - both those involved in its production and those who take it in. The negative effects of this are so wide ranging it's impossible to capture them all. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has this excellent document: Create in me a clean heart: A pastoral response to pornography. https://www.usccb.org/pureheart

Helping people heal from this is a very, very common part of pastoral ministry. It is always a blessing to be able to help and encourage those who so often feel very discouraged, if not hopeless. It is also a blessing to be able to help prevent what can be years of suffering by getting good boundaries in place ahead of time. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

First, if this is something that's a struggle, take hope in the Lord’s mercy and that healing is always possible! We have the great Sacrament of Reconciliation and many, many excellent resources to help you come to a place of wholeness and freedom.

Secondly, be bold! Don’t mess around with poison. St. Augustine once prayed - make me chaste but not yet. He was not yet in a place where he could surrender and take real steps that would change his life. He would say that his healing took longer than it needed. So be bold. If there is something that can and should be done - then do it!

Part of all this is that we are pretty well-trained consumers. I can’t survive without (name the particular device, streaming service, app, etc). We actually can survive which will be good for our souls and our pocketbooks. If there are no boundaries or controls set in place then it is the time to get some. If a particular device, app, or streaming service is an area of sin/temptation then simply cancel and/or delete it. If it is too easy to get it back after deleting it then set controls in place such that you can’t install new apps without someone else first putting in an access code. I have been adding controls to my smartphone that have been great to limit the time I spend on it. They have really been a blessing.

The question families face is if/when their kids need a phone. (I survived all of high school without one by the way). Please wrestle with this! Dumb phones exist. Smart phones with great parental controls and oversight exist. Like many good things parent’s do that are not appreciated at the time, you may not be thanked now. That’s okay. Doing this right makes our homes and lives Safe Havens.

God Bless, Fr. Todd