Journey to the Truth (Natural Family Planning) [Open]

Catholic Exchange ^ | April 23, 2008 | Anna Pier Day (pen name)

[Salvation]

Journey to the Truth

May 23rd, 2008 by Anna Pier Day

I argued with the priest — the strong-willed one — who sat opposite me in the confessional. For every argument I presented, though, his response was the same: a calm, understanding, but firm, “There are no exceptions to the Church’s teaching against contraception.”

Truth be told, if the Church had been less wise and had made exceptions, our family situation might have qualified as one. A few months earlier, after the birth of our youngest son, I had suffered from an acute depression with accompanying suicidal thoughts and a brief psychotic episode that had landed me in two different mental hospitals. I had been torn away from my life as the stay-home mother of a toddler and a still-nursing infant for the two weeks of hospitalization my treatment required, and the whole experience had been devastating — not only for me, but also for my family and everyone who cared about us. As a result, my husband and I were very afraid of the possible ramifications of another bout of post-partum hormone fluctuations. And, having recently returned to the Church after a 20-year absence, I was finding her teaching against contraception very difficult to accept.

But there was something about the way this priest calmly stood his ground (even when I told him for the twenty-third time why my family should be exempt from this particular teaching) that made me believe he was giving me the Truth. So, after a few more weeks, my husband and I discussed natural family planning, and we (somewhat fearfully) agreed to try it.

Our priest helped us again by putting me in touch with a nearby couple who taught the Creighton method of NFP. Soon after I began NFP classes, my husband and I did away with the contraceptives we had been using. As soon as we did, an amazing thing happened. It was as if God lifted the scales from my eyes, and instantly, I understood. I suddenly saw the pain a “contraceptive mindset” must cause our Loving Father, who cares for us and would never let anything happen to us that was not for our good. I saw what a great privilege He gives us by letting us share with Him in creating His greatest miracle — a new baby’s life. And I saw contraception for what it is — something we do to thwart God’s loving plan for our families.

Since then, our family has experienced God’s love more fully. He has blessed us with our first daughter, who was conceived when our Creighton chart said conception was possible. Our daughter brings great joy and love to our family, and the happiness she brings us far outweighs the pain of the (relatively minor) symptoms I experienced during pregnancy and shortly after her birth. I shudder now to think that we might have missed out on the privilege of raising her — and a lifetime of joy with her — just because of the weakness of our faith that God would take care of us. And I pray every day for a world full of priests who will stand firm on Church teaching, just like the one who first told us the Truth.

God Our Father, please send us holy priests…all for the Sacred and Eucharistic Heart of Jesus…all for the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary…in union with Saint Joseph. Amen.

 

Anna Pier Day (who used a pen name for this article) lives with her husband and three children in North Central Florida. She has been a teacher and now enjoys being a full-time mother and an author. Her first picture book for children is tentatively scheduled for release in May 2009.

[Mad Dawg]

During a marriage retreat. I recommend those to the married freepers, it really helps the relationship to grow.

You mean the books PresbyRev mentioned? Thanks.

[Running On Empty]

“artificial birth control...bearing its consequence within itself”

So true. God may forgive, but nature won’t.

And so the consequences of pharmacuetical and surgical sterilization will make themselves know in due time and maybe at the most inconvenient time at that. And those consequences won’t be just physical—they will affect the whole person.

[PresbyRev]

I’m going to try to ease out of this thread - so I’ll leave it at this.

As to the unanswered question - I was simply curious to see if any Roman Catholics would affirm the notion that sex betwen two heterosexual, married people - whether genital intercourse with contraception, or oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, etc. - if those constituted grave sin or not. Just a question.

Legalistic - calling married intercourse or sexuality ‘sterile gymnastics’ if family planning is used to me, frankly, seems legalistic and just sort of sad. I can’t speak for other folks sex life, but mine is a bit more rich, meaningful, life-giving and blessed than ‘sterile gymnastics.’

But if one views sex between a married man and woman as legitimate and moral only if pregnancy is a realistic possibility as the result of orgasm, then it makes sense. To me, to many, that perspective is extrabiblical and legalistic. The use or non-use of contraception is a matter of personal conscience.

Birth control is more available in Europe and one doesn’t see the same level of unwanted and unintended pregnancies between unmarried folk - such as those you transported to ‘juvie.’ You label the babies they sired - god bless that procreation - bastards. Huh. Should we abort the bastards? Should they bear the label bastard through their lives. So - abortion is evil, but contraception is also evil. You’re going to wind up with babies then - why label them bastards?

Condoms are shunned in Africa, the AIDS rate is very high and the notion that having sex with (i.e. - raping) a virgin will cure it is current. Wouldn’t wider availability and more education as to the use and application of family planning and the biological facts of sex be a positive good?

Correlation is not causation. You suggest contraception abets divorce or illegitimacy. Perhaps it is cars, the ability to travel outside the bounds of community; the anonymity of cities and suburbia? The avoidance of realistic sexuality education among many Christians? The longer time between the onset of puberty and the average age of marriage? It is a complicated and complex issue. Blaming the availability of birth control seems a very superficial answer.

Finally, the NFP “all contraception is sin folks” don’t mind throwing labels and judgments around but you balk at the perception that it is legalistic to condemn other Christians who in good conscience utilize contraception in family planning? Sorry.

That said - Have a blessed sabbath day and Memorial Day, I bow out. It is an intramural debate among sistren and brethren. We’re all in it together against Islam, etc, etc, etc. Blessings.

[narses]

“Birth control is more available in Europe and one doesn’t see the same level of unwanted and unintended pregnancies between unmarried folk -...”

And they are demographically suicidal. They are aborting, contracepting and sodomizing themselves out of a future. And you hold that up as a good thing?

[lastchance]

It is the contraception mentality that has lead to abortion. When a child is viewed as a failure of artificial birth control it sure is a hell of a lot easier to consider aborting that child.

Here are some of the results of separating the procreative and unitive acts of sex in marriage.

Acceptance of homosexual behavior.

Acceptance of abortion

It is also very important to remember that for Christians marriage is Trinitarian. A marriage that is deliberately made sterile loses that aspect of self giving love which results in a new life.

NFP is permitted and it must be remembered the couple must be open to life at all times.

[dsc]

“No, it’s the nonsensical drivel taught by Rome.”

You don’t seem to have the first foggiest notion what the Catholic Church teaches, although it does seem that someone somewhere has filled you with hatred and disinformation.

Hmmm, I wonder who’s likely to be (COUGHSATAN) behind that.

[dsc]

“Again I ask why is it Ok for male on female oral climax but female on male oral climax is wrong.”

Kindly cite a Catholic source for that assertion.

“The sperm MUST be ejaculated in the vagina.”

Can’t see the forest for the trees, or the trees for the forest.

The act must be open to life. That is the criterion.

“How else can you explain the blatant hypocrisy unless your church does not deem the sperm worthy of respect but must give those little guys special attention, huh?”

There’s no hypocrisy to explain. The respect is for God and the gift of human sexuality. It is childish beyond words to try and reduce that to a focus on the mechanism of conception.

[lastchance]

I know you do not view Calvin as infallible. But I think a PresbyRev would respect his views on matters of morals and faith.

"Besides, he [Onan; C.P.] not only defrauded his brother of the right due him, but also preferred his semen to putrify on the ground, rather than to beget a son in his brother's name. V. 10 The Jews quite immodestly gabble concerning this thing. It will suffice for me briefly to have touched upon this as much as modestly as speaking permits. The voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between man and woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of the race and to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring. The impiety is especially condemned, now by the Spirit through Moses' mouth, that Onan, as it were, by a violent abortion, no less cruelly than filthily cast upon the ground the offspring of his brother, torn from the maternal womb. Besides, in this way he tried, as far as he was able, to wipe out a part of the human race. If any woman ejects a foetus from her womb by drugs, it is reckoned a crime incapable of expiation and deservedly Onan incurred upon himself the same kind of punishment, infecting the earth by his semen, in order that Tamar might not conceive a future human being as an inhabitant of the earth." (Calvin's Commentary on Genesis 38:8-10, translated from the Latin)"

[mockingbyrd]

Best of luck with your slacking. I say this even after my disaterous trip to Costco, that involved my six month old actually eating the coupons I needed, still not quite sure how he got them and devoured them so quickly. Two emergency trips to the bathroom, because NOOOOO, of course you don’t have to go when your sister does, just five minutes afterwards. And returning home to a phone call from said Costco asking if I wanted to return to claim my wallet.

So best of luck with your slacking.....and the years following :)

[cyborg]

OMG...sounds like quite the shopping adventure. I told my husband that God has had a sense of humor for me this year and so I’ll get a boy like him! Have a great weekend.

[TradicalRC]

Once sex became solely recreational and birth control was embraced, there was little room to argue against the homosexual movement.

[Mad Dawg]

If your parting shots are going to be questions or judgments phrased as questions, then it seems to me you owe my response a reading. I call the kids in question bastards because it is a term of art, possibly archaic, used to describe precisely the marital status of the parents of the child in question -- for example, William the Bastard who conquered England. Bastardy is no deserved shame to the child in question, but it is often a handicap or a disadvantage. The shame properly belongs to the parents. Bastardy, that is the getting of kids without marrying the mother, used to be considered criminal and shameful. Now for some it is something to boast about.

I'd suggest that "label" is a word like "legalistic" which conveys little meaning but does convey an evaluation or judgment. I think "legalistic" pertains to rules the speaker doesn't like and "label" to designations the speaker doesn't like. So the words do not advance the argument so much as re-posit the point of view of their speaker.

Raising the issue of abortion in the case of illegitimacy is, I think, clouding the issue, as is the AIDS problem in a country where Christian notions of chastity seem not to be considered. It's wrong to rob banks. It's wrong to engage in sexual intercourse without being hitched. I suppose in a way IF one is going to rob banks, using rubber bullets or other non-lethal ways to do it is better than using a machine gun. But it's still wrong.

Similarly when someone argues that unmarried women have a right to contraception when they have sex, I don't have an answer to that, because I'm still back at "when they have sex" and "unmarried". I don't counsel bank-robbers on safe ways to rob banks. I advise them to quit robbing banks altogether.

I don't know about "Sterile gymnastics" except that the word "Sterile" would seem to be uncontroversial in this context. Wasn't sterility the point?

I was simply curious to see if any Roman Catholics would affirm the notion that sex between two heterosexual, married people - whether genital intercourse with contraception,
or oral sex,
anal sex,
masturbation, etc. -
if those constituted grave sin or not. Just a question.

Just a question, huh?

I think they are all illicit, if they lead to ejaculation outside the vagina. The standard would be getting the sperm somewhere in the same county as any ova that might be floating around. As to gravity, I don't know.

It seems to me we need to separate out orgasm and ejaculation, and to talk more about possibility and intention. As I said earlier there's a difference between something being unlikely and the intention to make is exceedingly unlikely or impossible.

I have at least one pretty good friend who is a bastard. I guess some aspects of the cartoon version of Puritanism are still with us, only it might be more Victorianism. But I'm not going to acknowledge attempts to put me on the defensive for calling a spade a spade. The kid's parents weren't married. That father didn't see the relationship between siring kiddies and commitment and responsibility. In one case of which I know, the mother didn't see that having a loving father around was something that a loving mother would try to provide for her child. She wanted to have sex. Having a kid wouldn't be so bad, she thought. Plenty of others in her etended family had gotten kids without getting wed. I think that is at the very best thoughtless, a kind of negligence and imprudence. At the worst I think it viciously selfish.

I know Juvenile and Domestic Relations court can give one a slanted view, but, wow, did I see a lot of Daddies who seemed neither willing nor able to contribute to the welfare of the kids whose daddies they were. I guess we are going to have to hope for some good data on how many Europeans entered into marriage before having children and before the wide-spread adoption of ABC compared to how many ditto but AFTER the ditto. And likewise for divorce. My guess is divorce and unmarried parenthood are on the increase. But I'm open to data, since I'm just guessing about Europe.

It just seems silly the kind of moral approaches people take to this question. To say that there might be a sin, even a grave sin, involved in intercourse undertaken with a concomitant intention to make conception impossible does not imply that there is no good in the intercourse at all. Stolen food still nourishes.

If we're "unbiblical", I'd suggest that a careful reading of the OT gives ample evidence of people saying, "God won't mind if we do this or that," and in a couple of generations, Looky there! Assyrians as far as the eye can see! Whooda thunk it? I'd imagine that there were plenty of people eager to call Elijah archaic and legalistic?

But we've seen what's happened since Lambeth 1930 and Griswold v. Connecticut. Roe v. Wade, that's what happened. NOT what was promised, but rather the opposite.

Given a choice between being legalistic and not being able to see what's in front of my eyes, I'll go with legalistic. It's just like womens ' ordination in the Episcopal Church. WHen the issue is raised a bunch of fuddy-duddies say, "Next thing you know, they;'re going to want to ordain homosexuals." And the proponents of women's ordination, of which I was one, say, "Don't be ridiculous! That's SUCH a straw man! There's no connection between the two issues at all. What a crock!"

And within a couple of decades what do you get? Bishop J.S. Spong and Bishop Vicky Gene!

So here are two cases where the legalistic fuddy-duddies said, YOu do that and bad stuff is going to happen." They get sneered at and laughed at and called legalistic. And when the bad stuff DOES happen, who remembers what the widely scorned and suppressed fuddy-duddies said?

I do.

but you balk at the perception that it is legalistic to condemn other Christians who in good conscience utilize contraception in family planning? Sorry.

Nope. I have no problem with disagreement as such. I just balk at the word "legalistic".

Corpus Christi for us. A BIG day, which will be observed with the obligatory nap. Scuse typos. Eyelids heavy ....

[FourtySeven]

A very interesting article and discussion, thanks.