Month: May 2015

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Catholic Motherhood Is Vital

Motherhood is beautiful. Almost everyone loves a picture of mother and baby.

Motherhood is also vital, and Catholic motherhood is vital for the survival of the Church in any given area. “Three to survive and five to thrive.” Those seven words summarize the importance of Catholic motherhood for the well-being of the Church. The two-child family is less than basic replacement and allows little room for dedicated young men and women to serve as celibate priests and sisters. The right kind of NFP course will transit this simple truth.

The birth control issue is at the heart of a 55-year decline of the Church. Thus it will have to be at the heart of its renewal. Again, the remedy is not complex. When pastors teach Humanae Vitae and have each of their engaged couples attend the right kind of NFP course, that policy will be a significant step forward. It will certainly help to keep our churches used by Catholic believers a hundred years from now.

I am not so naïve to think that every couple exposed to the best possible NFP course will convert to full Catholic practice, but I think that 25% acceptance is not totally unrealistic. That might not sound like much, but it’s probably ten times better than the current situation in which 95 to 98 percent of newlyweds start their marriage with contraception, many simply continuing to live as they had been before the wedding.

A recent example gives hope. A priest insisted that this engaged couple take the Home Study course offered by Natural Family Planning International (www.nfpandmore.org). The woman stopped taking the Pill about 10 weeks before they started the course. The course asks for an evaluation on a scale of 1 to 10 from those who complete it. Here’s what the woman wrote:

“10!!!  We participated in NFP due to church requirements, but I am so glad we did. I really believe in NFP and following God’s plan by knowing our bodies and becoming more life giving. Thank you so much for all your help. We are very happy to use NFP!!. (San Angelo TX April 2015)”

Here’s another remark on the home study course, received just a day before I wrote this. She gave us only a 7 out of 10, but her comment was interesting. “Although at first I was very put off by this process, through it I think it has strengthened my relationship with my fiancé and has given me a better understanding of the importance and role that sex has in a marriage.” Sounds to me as if she is growing, for which we are grateful.

Contracepting couples will discover, sooner or later, that contraceptive on-demand sex is not heaven on earth, and I am hopeful that at least half will convert to chaste NFP within ten years of marriage. In almost every NFP course, they will learn about the abortifacient and breast cancer risks of hormonal birth control. If they use barrier methods, they will discover why there was such a huge switch from the barriers to the Pill—the contracepting couples didn’t like the barriers. Some couples may resort to mutual masturbation and/ or oral sodomy. These things are difficult to talk about from the pulpit, so that’s why I insist that they should be taught as seriously immoral in the right kind of NFP course.

Some contracepting couples will “get it” about chaste NFP when they internalize the teaching that in God’s plan for love, marriage and sexuality, the marriage act ought to be renewal of the faith, love, and for-better-and-for-worse commitment of their marriage covenant.   It is not at all hard to see that the contraceptive sexual union says an emphatic NO to the imaginary “worse” of possible pregnancy and is thus a contradiction of their marriage covenant.

Some couples may not really “get it” about God’s plan for love, marriage and sexuality until they experience the natural spacing of babies with ecological breastfeeding. Bishops should insist that that the Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding be taught in every sort of NFP course.

Let us be very basic. The Sexual Revolution is all about the personal and societal acceptance of sexual immorality. The Church by its own constitution is empowered and commanded by the Lord to preach and teach the divine truth about human love, and it needs to do so at every level—papal teachings, diocesan policies, and parish implementation of Humanae Vitae.

That would be a significant change. When diocesan leadership starts to make any given diocese a true Humanae Vitae diocese and requires the right kind of pre-marriage instruction including the right kind of NFP instruction, there is reason for hope that fifty and a hundred years from now our Catholic churches will still be places of Catholic worship.

May God continue to bless every mother who reads this and all mothers throughout the world.

John F. Kippley, May 9, 2015

 

 

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Rebuilding the Church

This series of blogs started because a picture of a former Catholic Church in the Netherlands now turned into a skate park continues to haunt me. It is a reflection of the neglect of the Church, specifically in Europe but also throughout the West, to proclaim the teaching of Humanae Vitae with confidence and conviction.

The intellectual debate about Humanae Vitae was completed very quickly. It was clear very soon that the rejection of the teaching of Humanae Vitae entailed the rejection of the natural moral law. Dissenters still calling themselves Catholic spelled out the logic of birth control, including even the acceptance of bestiality. Other dissenters spelled out their new principles for moral decision making. I pointed out in a liberal theological journal that Fr. Charles Curran’s principles cannot say no even to spouse-swapping. At least by the end of the 1970s, it was clear that the logic of birth control cannot say no to any imaginable sexual behavior between consenting persons of legal age. That is moral absurdity, and that should have been the end of the so-called “debate” about the merits of Humanae Vitae and Catholic teaching against all unnatural forms of birth control.

Instead, a majority of Catholics as well as other Christians became part of the contraceptive-based Sexual Revolution. Through contraception, sterilization and abortion, the Western once-Christian world stopped having enough babies to replace themselves. The Church and the world are in crisis and in need of a solution.

The solution is both simple and stupendous.

Simple: The Church needs to preach and teach God’s truths about love, marriage, sexuality, and the call to be generous in having children and raising them in the ways of the Lord. The Church has these truths, and everyone in the world needs them. The leaders of the Church need to preach and teach these saving doctrines with the confidence that they really are true and the conviction that they come from God and are for the benefit of every man, woman and child. Then they will also experience the joy that comes from seeing more Catholic couples internalize and live these truths.

Stupendous: The Church needs to inspire its members to say no to themselves and yes to serving God and others. The symbol of Christianity is the Cross. The teaching of Jesus about love, marriage and sexuality involves carrying the daily cross. Somehow, pastors of souls need to reawaken in themselves and their laity a true and personal love for the Lord Jesus. As his disciples, we will understand that the sacrifice of chaste living is just a normal part of walking with the Lord Jesus. Every day young men and women sign up to give their lives, if necessary, for the life of their country. What we need is that every day all men and women sign up again and again to live their lives on the narrow path of Christian discipleship, an adventure that we know involves the daily cross of saying no to ourselves and then the joy of saying yes to the Lord Jesus.

Next Sunday, May 10th, is Mother’s Day.  John F. Kippley, May 2, 2015