Denver, Colo., Oct 8, 2010 / 03:47 am
Acclaimed Catholic novelist Brian Gail, spoke Wednesday at the Archdiocese of Denver's John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization. Addressing the subject of “Fatherhood in a Fatherless World,” Gail examined the social concerns behind his planned trilogy of books, and urged audience members to make their lives and families beacons of light in times of moral and spiritual darkness.
Gail's talk focused on the destructive effects of the 1960s Sexual Revolution, in which preexisting conditions of social volatility – brought about in the first half of the 20th century by industrialization and war - erupted in unprecedented ways. Gail acknowledged that his generation of Baby Boomers, by taking on a contraceptive mentality toward sex, had “devalued the currency of fatherhood,” and left their descendents suspicious of God-given responsibilities.
The results of this “devaluation,” he said, were “ruinous to the body and to the soul,” causing a “cataclysmic identity crisis” for his generation and their descendents. But, Gail asserted, many Catholic bishops and priests failed to respond to this crisis, instead shrinking from presenting the fullness of Church teaching about human sexuality.
The consequences of contraception, and its unquestioning acceptance by many Catholics, figured heavily in Gail's first novel “Fatherless.”