Posted on 03/22/2012 9:50:45 AM PDT by marshmallow
Through homilies, prayers and pamphlets, priests deliver message about beauty of Church’s teaching
The Catholic Church’s teaching that contraception is a grave sin is based on love, said Father Roger Landry, associate pastor at St. Anthony of Padua Parish in New Bedford, Mass.
It follows from the idea that sexual intercourse in marriage should be an act in which a husband and wife offer themselves totally to one another, with no reservations, and with the possibility of the fruit of their love becoming manifest in a child, and it is indeed good news.
Too bad that many of the couples whom Father Landry has counseled as they prepared for marriage had never even heard that contraception is sinful, let alone why.
Jumping into discussion
So, Father Landry spreads the word from the pulpit, including the Church’s teaching on contraception in his homilies at least a couple of times a year.
He did it again Feb. 12, in response to the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers who provide health insurance include coverage of contraceptive drugs, devices and sterilization at no added cost. According to a Feb. 18 profile in The New York Times, the homily was met with applause.
While a priest preaching about the sinfulness of contraception is apparently unusual enough to qualify as news in one of the nation’s leading newspapers, Father Landry isn’t the only one taking on the topic.
Father Jonathan Raia, associate pastor at St. William Catholic Church in Round Rock, Texas, used the government mandate as a springboard for discussing Church teaching on contraception in his homilies the weekend of Feb. 4-5.
(Excerpt) Read more at osv.com ...
hear, hear.
hear, hear.
If sexual interaction occurs,God may potentially bless the world with a child, then you raise the child. If done in a petri dish, then a child too is born - and you will have to answer why you did so against His natural intent as well as raising the child.
Rape (rare), love, “accident” - if God gives the child to you, it is a child for the world, a child that He wants. You are not owner of the child, just responsible for raising and loving the child to someday enter heaven - so long as you live.
You go to heaven or hell based on your effort (not your result). If you must give the child up for adoption, that will be considered in the end as a selfless or a selfish reason, a blend perhaps, based on the Truth.
It’s rather straightforward.
Aren’t Catholic clergy called “priests”?
Protestant pastors don’t preach against contraception — although many should consider practicing contraception more than they do. Too many preachers have too many kids and not enough money to support their families. As a P.K. growing up in poverty with many siblings, I’m haunted by Dad complaining about “too many mouths to feed”, and “what’re we gonna do about all these kids?”, and other similar disgusting comments. Hey, Dad, how about keeping your pants on?
You’re created, believe it or not, to give glory to God. Your marriage is to have two join and help one another better give glory to God and get to heaven, though ultimately that is your own responsibility.
When you use birth control, you play God, deciding (you think) when life will be permitted and when it wont. Your job is to love your wife, not pretend you’re Him. You may decide not to have relations or when to have relations, but the resulting creation of love incarnate, life, is God’s realm. Love in the image of God, a life, may be seen as good or bad to man, but is only seen as good to God.
The child will give society an opportunity to experience love - either in enjoying the child, caring for the child (if disabled), even in locking up the child in prison. We show God our capacity for love - or lack thereof - and will be judged by that.
And that's related to the idea --- pervasive in our society --- that women were not made right. That it's not OK to be a sexually normal female, fully functional and complete in every detail. And that a woman has to have the core of her sexuality disabled --- chemically neutered, or surgically "fixed" --- in order to function adequately in society and, of course, in bed.
Women's full-strength sexuality has two tremendous, world-creating and civilization-shaping powers: procreation and durable bonding. They are deeply interrelated (procreation entails bonding, bonding entails procreation); by them the whole human future is generated.
A respectful human attitude is, "That's deep. That's very deep. I'll protect it."
A contraceptive attitude is, "That's nothing. I'll cut it off."
Must Know Facts About the Pill
The effectiveness of birth control pills depends entirely on how they are used. While the stated effectiveness is 96-99% in reality this rate is much lower, around 87%. Poor user habits are the reason for the discrepancy. Taking the Pill at different times of day, missing days or skipping pills all decrease the effectiveness.
From http://www.livestrong.com/article/210679-effectiveness-of-natural-family-planning-methods/
Calendar-Based Methods
With calendar-based methods, women count the days of their monthly cycles to estimate the most likely times for their infertile and fertile phases. As of 2010, the standard days method has largely replaced the oldest calendar-based "rhythm method."
Many women with regular monthly cycles between 26 and 32 days can practice the standard days method. Compared to the rhythm method, it has simpler rules, is easier to follow and thus is far less prone to user error, especially if practiced with a color-coded visual aid, such as CycleBeads. The effectiveness rate for correct and consistent use is over 95 percent and for actual practice 88 percent, compared to 91 percent versus 75 percent, respectively, for calendar rhythm.
The Calandar Method of natural family planning is what is taught by the Catholic Church and is every bit as effective at preventing unwanted pregnancy as the pill, and has none of the side effects that the pill has on womens health.
So, if the couple do not want to have children because of money issues, the good news is that there is an effective method to prevent pregnancy that costs NOTHING.
The opposite of “unconditional love” is “Planned Parenthood.”
I have a quick question. Why use a misspelled word called diktat when it should be called dictate? Thanks for the response.
Coming from a large, Catholic family that dealt with serious financial issues in the past...I have to say we made it through just fine.
Our children are naturally spaced just by breastfeeding (hey, that’s free too!! The wonder of it!!!). My husband and I do not use any contraception and I still had an absence of fertility for 13 months (imagine that) and did not get pregnant until 19 months postpartum.
I think that’s why God gave us breastmilk to begin with. And Pope John Paul II always insisted mothers nurse their children until at least the age of 2.
Lactational Amenorrhea Method
The lactational amenorrhea method, or LAM, is based on the ability of breastfeeding to suppress ovulation, the monthly release of an egg cell from a woman's ovary. Women can prevent pregnancies with LAM if their periods have not yet returned, and if their babies are less than six months old and exclusively or almost exclusively breastfed. With correct and consistent use, LAM is over 99 percent effective versus 98 percent effective in actual use.
"The wonder of it!!!"
As our parish priest said: "God don't make junk."
That is an excellent statement! Not that I'd never seen anything like it before, but since it struck me today, obviously I needed a reminder ;-).
That is false. The calendar method was around 50 years ago or so. Currently taught methods of Natural Family Planning include the Billings Ovulation Method, the Creighton Method, and the Sympto-Thermal Method. All of these involve the daily observation of one or several signs of fertility, and the teaching of all of them cautions couples who have serious reasons to avoid conceiving NOT to rely on cycle length as a sign, EVER.
If a website that's not simply presenting a historical curiousity is discussing Calendar Rhythm, I suspect a deliberate intention to conceal the effective methods of fertility awareness from potential readers.
http://www.ccli.org/
It’s a foreign word (German), not a misspelled word, and it has a historical connection with socialist and authoritarian government.
...
A contraceptive attitude is, "That's nothing. I'll cut it off."
Or, "That scares me to death! Get it away from me!"
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