Posted on 08/16/2005 1:48:10 PM PDT by NYer
Having married in 1985 when both were medical students, Ann and Michael Moell had their life together planned out.
Once they established medical practices and had a big house with a sprawling back yard, they would begin to have children. Until then, Ann would take the birth-control pill.
Although both had grown up in large Catholic families in Ohio, neither was well versed or much interested in the Church’s teaching on birth regulation.
“While we were in medical school and residency, we didn’t think we had time for a child,” Ann says. “We had the American dream in mind, not just for ourselves but for the children we would have.”
Their plans began to unravel four years into the marriage, when Ann stopped taking the pill because of persistent headaches.
“Here we were, both studying medicine, and neither of us knew anything about the pill and its side effects,” she recalls. “It just isn’t a topic in medical school because the pill is assumed to be a good thing.”
They used periodic abstinence, condoms and other barrier methods but, within a year Ann became pregnant. They welcomed the child into their lives, yet continued to contracept.
After their third child arrived, Ann says, “That was it. We were still young, with three children and growing medical practices. We thought we had to do something foolproof that would keep us from having more children.”
They discussed the possibility of a vasectomy for Michael.
“We thought it would be the best thing for our family,” Michael explains.
Something happened, though, in the Moells’ pursuit of the American dream. Ann began to pray. The couple had begun attending Mass again with the birth and baptism of their first child, but they were “just doing the Catholic thing,” Michael says. “We didn’t know anything about contraception being sinful or that Jesus is present in the Eucharist. We were missing so much.”
“To actually ask God to give us an answer was something new,” Ann admits. “I was praying at Mass, ‘God, show us what to do about this issue.’ A month later, I was pregnant. It was God’s answer. It was so immediate, so direct, and I was elated. It changed our whole attitude about who was in charge of our lives and our marriage.”
They began using natural family planning, and have welcomed two more children into their lives.
But God was not finished with them yet. Ann was a family-practice physician who prescribed the pill. Michael was a pediatrician who was prescribing the pill for young girls. Someone gave them the videotape “Contraception: Why Not?” by Janet Smith. “It changed the whole direction of our practices,” Ann says. “We started looking into the side effects of the pill and I knew I had to stop prescribing.”
Now Dr. Ann Moell is a stay-at-home mother who volunteers as a prenatal-care physician at a pro-life pregnancy center in Dayton, Ohio. Michael left a pediatric partnership to open Holy Family Pediatrics, in the same building as the pregnancy center. About half his patients are pregnant teens referred by his wife. They recommend abstinence before marriage and NFP in marriage to their young patients. Many Catholic parents travel long distances to bring their children for routine care to Holy Family Pediatrics.
“This has been a huge spiritual journey as well as a growth and learning experience in proper health care,” says Ann.
“It was a huge financial leap and leap of faith, to give up the partnership and open my own medical practice,” Michael adds. “Four months after I opened the door, our fourth child was born. I was questioning God the whole way. But it’s worked out better than I could have dreamed.”
Conversion is a word Penny and John Harrison use often to describe their experience with birth control. They were married in 1983 in Penny’s Protestant church; a Catholic priest witnessed the ceremony for John, who was raised in a Catholic family.
They used various forms of contraception for the first 10 years of marriage and had two children “pre-conversion,” as John describes it.
A Catholic Marriage Encounter weekend opened Penny’s heart to the Church, and, when she decided to become a Catholic, all the assumptions of their lives were uprooted. While she was going through a parish RCIA program in their hometown of Kansas City, Mo., John began looking at his own faith and asking questions. He had no problems with the sacraments or the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but his vague knowledge of the Church’s teaching on contraception nagged at him.
When he and Penny asked a priest about the issue, “we got some confusing and unspecific answers,” John recalls. “We ultimately were told to ‘follow our conscience.’ Unfortunately, that’s the answer too many Catholic couples get today, and they’re not being told the full beauty of the truth.”
Penny entered the Church at the Easter Vigil in 1993 and shortly thereafter she and her husband went on a 10th-anniversary vacation without their two children.
“We were both very uncomfortable using contraception on that trip,” John said. “We came back and just stopped using contraception of any kind, and prayed and hoped for another child.”
Key to their decision was hearing a talk by Catholic evangelist Scott Hahn, a former Protestant minister, and reading Rome Sweet Home, in which Hahn and his wife, Kimberly, defend the Church’s teaching on contraception.
“We date our deeper conversion to the heart of the Church primarily from the fervor we took from listening to Scott Hahn’s talks,” John says.
Since their conversion, the Harrisons have had three more children, including twins in 1999.
“I come from a Protestant background where it is considered irresponsible not to practice contraception, so I’ve come a long way,” Penny says. “The problem was that when I was preparing to enter the Church, we knew what Catholics were supposed to believe but we couldn’t find any Catholics who actually lived the teaching on contraception.”
As teachers with the Couple to Couple League, which promotes NFP, John and Penny are seeing “more and more couples open to the gift of life,” she says. “I tell them that, in the Nicene Creed, we call the Holy Spirit ‘Lord and Giver of Life.’ If we take that title seriously, we cannot shut the Holy Spirit out of our marriages.”
John says he tells couples who are not particularly religious that contraception is “disrespectful to your wife’s body. You expect a woman to take these hormones that make her body think she’s pregnant just so she can be available to you sexually all the time. And it goes the other way too. Your wife expects you to put on a special device. That’s not very respectful of the man, either.”
“Love means giving your whole self to your spouse,” adds Penny. “And that’s the great gift of NFP.”
This has been my experience precisely. For a long time I was bitter towards the Catholic establishment that taught that birth control was wrong while making their schools accessible only to those who used birth control. But eventually my struggles and difficulties in this area led me to Catholic Tradition, which has been a gift of inestimable blessings, worth any amount of suffering, even torture and death. I'm virtually certain that I never would have been led to discover Catholic Tradition if I hadn't been faced with the problems and contradictions of trying to raise a large family and trying to keep them Catholic.
I started at the beginning - I'm somewhat saddened to see so little mention of those of us who used NFP to try to achieve parenthood. Steve & I were REQUIRED to take NFP classes during pre-Cana, and after sitting through that class with the Marines from Quantico & their fiancees, I don't think I'll ever be embarrassed about anything again!
Awareness of your own fertility levels can't be a bad thing - how you use the knowledge might.
Dear Maximilian,
"I have witnessed Catholic mothers with what one might call an 'NFP mentality' being grieved and unhappy when they conceive their 9th child, instead of joyfully thanking God for one more gift of providence."
Really?? I've seen that with folks who wind up with four instead of three, or even, perhaps five, instead of four. Although, even there, most of the folks I've known who got to four had by then adopted the attitude, "Four? Eh. What's one more??"
But EVERYONE I KNOW who has gotten to eight is hopeful of more.
"I think the most daunting aspect for these mothers is facing their friends and family, most of whom are Catholic, whom they know are going to be disapproving and not happy and cheerful about their news."
That can be daunting, but the folks I know who think that way aren't employing NFP. I know one individual at my parish (unfortunately in a role of some authority and responsibility) who has not only endorsed contraception, but has said that there should never be more children in a family than adults. Very bitter, shriveled-up person. Oh, that might be a little judgmental. Oh, well. ;-)
Honestly, Max, I'm blessed to get to hang with a really great group. I coach the homeschool chess club. I love it when 20 or more kids descend on my house to play chess! These are happy, happy kids (nearly all Catholics - we have one or two large Protestant families in our circle of homeschoolers, but mostly, its Catholics), with exceedingly wonderful parents who have been quite intent on having large, Catholic families. Many of these women are former "management material" types (one of our closest friends was in management at IBM before having her first child), just about all have at least baccalaureate degrees, and many have masters degrees. These are women who were supposed to be "supermoms" who would "have it all."
Yet, these are women who have happily, joyfully abandoned their "careers" and themselves to their vocations as wives, mothers, and the first and principle teachers of their children. In their own minds, these women believe that they DO have it all (and, let's face it, they do)!!
sitetest
Morality is a function of the interior life so that the moral character of external acts are good or evil with respect to their connection to the interior, spiritual dimensions of one's life and intentions in committing them.
That's a fancy way of saying that couples who use the external guidelines of NFP (concerning biology of the body) for the sole purpose of preventing children may indeed be committing the same sin as those who use artificial methods. The desire, ability, and intention to have children is a necessity for a valid marriage - even if in point of fact no children are sired for whatever (legitimate) reason.
The correct teaching of the Church concerning NFP specifically has to include proper moral considerations of why and how it would be used. I have noticed that these considerations - which are supreme - oftentimes are neglected by people who talk about NFP.
This is my way of saying that I - and more importantly, the Church - agree with your concerns. Look up the Magisterium's relevant documents concerning NFP (including the writings of Pope John Paul the Great!) to assure yourself of these comments.
I think your concerns and troubles concerning NFP are right on target!
This reminds me of another problematic aspect of NFP -- it deliberately acts to destroy the qualities of modesty and delicacy. Not long ago a famous NFP promoter was recommending that teenage brothers and sisters chart together.
Awareness of your own fertility levels can't be a bad thing - how you use the knowledge might.
Remember that Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge is not always a good thing, and it nearly always brings temptation with it.
It is so important to have support around you! Being the only large Catholic family in the state is just too much pressure for nearly anyone to handle. As you point out, Catholic families need to be able to socialize with other Catholic families who support the same principles. It's too hard to go it alone.
Dear Maximilian,
"Not long ago a famous NFP promoter was recommending that teenage brothers and sisters chart together."
Now, that isn't exactly the case, as I recall, and you're failing to provide any context, as well.
The gentleman in question went out of his way to state that he did NOT endorse the idea, but rather that he knew of a family where this had been done, and that he could not say that it was an inherently bad thing. Nonetheless, he specifically and explicitly refused to endorse the practice.
I know because I personally e-mailed the gentleman and had a correspondence about it with him.
However, even that's only half the story.
The other half is that every single poster here at FreeRepublic, without exception, including every Catholic who thinks NFP is a good thing, thought that even SUGGESTING this might not be inherently evil was plain old wacko.
EVERYONE found the suggestion abhorrent.
This is a poor example to show that NFP acts to destroy the qualities of modesty and delicacy.
sitetest
I'm reasonably certain that in fact it was the case. Here are some quotes from an older FR thread:
I agree with Maximilian. In the threads commenting on Mr. Popcak's tepid endorsement of the bizarre practices mentioned, there was really very little "radtrad" stuff, very little real trashing of NFP. The "satires" and "parodies" published by Mr. Popcak's defenders have grossly exaggerated these remarks, and have entirely ignored the valid criticisms of Mr. Popcak's endorsement.The above comments were posted by sitetest.In fact, through their poorly-written and quite unfunny "parodies" and "satires", as well as their straightforward posts, Mr. Popcak and his defenders have endeavored to give the impression that there are no real, rational, reasonable criticisms of the bizarre practice at issue. They have tried to minimize opposition to this immoral and imprudent practice to the "ick" factor.
The threads concerning Mr. Popcak's lukewarm endorsement of teenaged boys charting their moms and sisters were mostly reasonsed, calm, and rational, and mostly did not include wholesale, hysterical denunciations of NFP. Yet these "parodies" and "satires" exaggerate greatly the bad posts, and refuse to acknowledge the good posts which predominated in these threads.
Further, of what I've seen, Mr. Popcak and his defenders have refused to even acknowledge that opposition to this bizarre idea is not just rooted in emotional response, but is reasoned and rational.
I didn't mind Mr. Popcak's negative reaction to the posters who were trashing him. I don't mind criticism by others of folks who have acted uncharitably. But first, those who have defended Mr. Popcak have made it seem like only the "radtrads" (gee, I hate that term) oppose Mr. Popcak's recommendation. That is untrue. Just about everyone who commented at FR on this issue has commented negatively about Mr. Popcak's recommendation, from the most rad of the trads to even evil neoCatholic Novus Ordoites like sinkspur and me.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/971562/posts?page=42#42
I noticed this only because I stumbled across this old thread today when I was searching for something else in Google.
This is a poor example to show that NFP acts to destroy the qualities of modesty and delicacy.
Perhaps it's true that it was a poor example, and admittedly it was chosen to be extreme. But NFP of its nature, without requiring brother/sister charting, encourages a loss of modesty and delicacy. What you described as the "ick factor" applies to a lot more than just Popcak's bizarre suggestions.
Thanks for the ping. I am not (Roman) Catholic, and as you probably know, the Orthodox Church position on contraception is somewhat different.
I'm glad to hear someone speak up about women's enjoyment of sex. I have never in any way considered myself a feminist, but when I read some posts, or think about some religiously based sexual regulations (including burkas!), I cannot help but believe they stem in some way from a fear of female sexuality.
God gave us our sexuality and it concerns me to see it viewed as dirty, dangerous or a distraction from higher morality. Of course, I refer to sex in marriage!
And about lust--if it's for your spouse I think it's great!
Legalism is unreasoningly obeying laws that do not apply to you, like the early Christians who obeyed the practice of circumcision. Where do you see that in NFP if properly used?
We also don't use the pill, but there are other ways of spacing children, or preventing once one gets older
And you accomplish that without eliminating God's partnership in your unitive and procreative activities?
Nothing in NFP speaks against enjoyment of sex by either spouse.
I only glanced at the original thread, so I can't really comment with assurance. But is this quote from Mr. Popcak accurate, in context? "You will have to decide whether having boys record their sister's or mother's temperatures is an option for your family, but as long as the person whose chart it is (the mother or sister) is not terribly opposed to the idea (you really have to respect her opinion on this), I feel favorably toward the idea because it decreases the chances that your young teens will eroticize their sexuality."Personally, the idea seems to me to be... demented. Like a cruel, sick joke on all involved.
I'm just having a hard time wrapping my rather limited little intolerant mind around this.
If it is in context, it's really difficult for me to imagine a reasoned defense for Mr. Popcak.
Frankly, I am so appalled by the comment, by the idea, that it makes me think to entirely discount anything and everything the gentleman has ever said or written. I thought perhaps that I was overreacting, so I asked my wife, who is, of course, a saint on earth, what she thought.
She disagreed strongly with my reaction, which was "ICK".
She emphatically states that the appropriate reaction is "EEEEWWWWW!! EEEEWWWWW!! EEEEWWWW!!"
I stand corrected.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/968177/posts?page=15#15
"You mean I, a man, can't have relations with my wife for a whole 10 days a month? Does God really intend to punish men that way? I don't think so."
Fact: If you want to not have a baby, NFP reminds you every month that you're giving up something objectively good. Both man and woman have to sacrifice, have to endure a little suffering, have to ... to use the technical term: mortify themselves.
We also don't use the pill, but there are other ways of spacing children, or preventing once one gets older and believes that the quiver is full. :)
All of which are contrary to the natural law, in my opinion, my wife's opinion, that of my religious leaders, and of virtually every Christian leader prior to 1930.
Dear Maximilian,
First, I didn't say that the gentleman and his defenders didn't react irrationally in public to the criticism heaped upon them here at FR, although thank you for making one of my points, that the criticism here at FR was so deafening that the gentleman in question felt the need to activate his army of defenders against we evil FReepers. I don't remember that even a single long-time member of FR's Catholic group said other than, "Yech." Whether they were "trads," "NFPers," "neoCaths," or "providentialists." As I recall, condemnation was universal.
As well, in offering his defense, he and his defenders tried to paint us all as "radtrads" (which still tickles my funny bone to this day).
The gentleman and his defenders did defend zealously their failure to condemn this bizarre practice (and the gentleman did, indeed, absolutely refuse to condemn it), and their defense of their failure was really over the top.
However, I think I may have written that post before I corresponded with the gentleman. I'll review the thread when I have a chance (I'm about to do some grilling for dinner).
In my correspondence with the gentleman, he made very clear that although he was unwilling to condemn the bizarre practice, and was even willing to offer a theoretical defense of it, he was unwilling to endorse or recommend it, in practice, to anyone.
"But NFP of its nature, without requiring brother/sister charting, encourages a loss of modesty and delicacy."
It can. I don't see that it must.
"What you described as the 'ick factor' applies to a lot more than just Popcak's bizarre suggestions."
I agree, but I don't see it as intrinsic to the practice of NFP.
sitetest
I really find it hard to believe that you, your wife, and "virtually every Christian leader prior to 1930" oppose breastfeeding. I didn't realize that breastfeeding was so controversial. For family planning that is truly "natural," throw out the charts and the thermometers and try Sheila Kippley's approach:
"And I don't abide by this practice, though I have studied it. I have my hands full with the 3 boys I have..."
Amen! Me too. The boys were a handful!
"You cannot use NFP to avoid pregnancy for any reason other than a "grave" one. Illness, financial strain, etc..."
I think that cuts to the core of conscience. I had multiple miscarriages, bad deliveries, old-style vertical C-sections for all deliveries and weak incisions. By the time my last was conceived, gratefully, I might add later on, but shocking because I was still healing from the last C-section, my doctor was very worried and said, "NO more."
There comes a time when you have to use reason, too. I'll answer in the afterlife I know, but then again, my body has not held up well so I can't imagine how much more depleted I would have been with continuing pregnancies.
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