August 29th   A report was to be given to the PPC at the end of the programme for the month.  The PPC chairman started by saying. “How many of you feel criticised by your own family or group when you come up with a new idea or your own way of seeing things?   Every group of people, whether big or small, needs unity and a degree of conformity but we also need to recognise and value our right to be unique and different, or autonomous as some like to say.” Martin added, “I can live with that but interdependent is also a good word. All that is not an easy issue to deal with but an important one as we have found  this month. I hope that our project has been helpful and fruitful for you all.” 

 Jesus said to them, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country. Luke 4:16-30.  Pope Francis:  Individual conscience needs to be better incorporated into the Church’s praxis in certain situations which do not objectively embody our understanding of marriage.   Every effort should be made to the development of an enlightened conscience. Yet conscience can do more than recognise that a given situation does not correspond objectively to the overall demands of the Gospel.  It can also recognise with sincerity and honesty what for now is the most generous response that can be given to God and come to see with a certain moral security that it is what God himself is asking amid the concrete complexity of one’s limits.   AL303   The upright consciences of spouses who have been generous in transmitting life may lead them, for sufficiently serious reasons, to limit either the number of their children, yet precisely for the sake of this dignity of conscience the Church strongly rejects the forced State intervention in favour of contraception , sterilisation and even abortion.  AL42