[Please note. This is a sequel to the thread called "Where can I find." Please read that thread and continue here.]


John, I have done some of that homework. I read the Natural groups site. It said what you said they would say. But I have a reason to doubt it. I know a Catholic couple, devoted to the church and wishing to plan their family. They were more Catholic than planning, such was their devotion. Her peroid was really illregular. They have 5 kids, whom they love which love is not the point. The point is that they were knowagable (sought the best and latest natural methods), sensible, and failed in what they wanted.

The Naturals also noted (correctly) that breast feeding will provide a peroid of infertility. This does not help pace the arrival of the first child. And the site of a 3 year old breast feeding did make me wonder.

This argument, their fate, got to me emotinally. It was, for me, a strong showing that the natural method is a too weak thing. It is fortunate that they did not fall into the problems of large familys: little money for the kids needs, the father was good at a good job.

John said: And you can learn about the history of contraceptives and sterilization -- perhaps being surprised to know that all Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) condemned their use as grave sin until 1930

Please supply me with any links to such protestant condemnation. I know that you can't link to old sources, do they have any modern echos?

Please give me reasons why such things between consenting adults in the context of marriage is wrong. Please do not just say X said so.

John said Did Jesus found the Church, and does the Holy Spirit prevent her from misguiding me? If so, I must be wrong, and I will abandon my errors and confess my sins." All I can do is assure you and assure you again that the Church is indeed right.

Please continue to try to persuade. Assurance is good, but persauding is what the sisters failed to do. ...

-- Sean Cleary (sean_cleary@bigfoot.com), August 25, 2000.



Jmj

Hi again, Sean. Here we go with Point/Counterpoint again. [If you have not yet read my long Saturday message to you near the bottom of the "Overpopulation" thread, please read that first.]

I have read your comment about the Couple to Couple League (NFP) site that I recommended to you, and I was sad to see you say that you "have a reason to doubt it." You said that you "know a Catholic couple, devoted to the church and wishing to plan their family. They were more Catholic than planning, such was their devotion. Her peroid was really irregular. They have 5 kids, whom they love -which love is not the point. The point is that they were knowagable (sought the best and latest natural methods), sensible, and failed in what they wanted. ... This argument, their fate, got to me emotinally. It was, for me, a strong showing that the natural method is a too weak thing. It is fortunate that they did not fall into the problems of large familys: little money for the kids needs, the father was good at a good job."

Sean, while I am moved by your concern for this couple, I find your reasoning and your judgment to be "the pits." Sorry to be so blunt, but I am really appalled. I don't understand how you can go through the CCL site, read about the extensive NFP research that has been done, the many years of experience, the personal testimonies, etc. -- and then pit, against all that, a single piece of unusual anecdotal evidence. I don't see how you could have jumped to a negative conclusion about NFP some years ago, simply based the story of two friends. This is not a fair and respectable way to make a judgment.

For every "rule" (such as the finding that NFP practicers have very few unexpected pregnancies), there are rare exceptions (such as your friends). Why did you not recognize this fact? I wish I could say that I don't know the answer to my rhetorical question, but I have a feeling that I do know. Using the story of your friends (and drawing broad conclusions from it) may be a "defense mechanism." I fear that you feel a need to justify, to yourself and to me, your own unwillingness to use NFP and your turning to contraceptives, which (in your heart of hearts) you knew were wrong to use. The defense mechanism may also be a way of helping you deal with the fact that you were not open to having more than two children, though your friends were so open. I admit that this is speculation on my part, but all the pieces seem to come together logically, forming a rather sad picture.

Actually, Sean, I am not really ready to acknowledge, as a fact, a certain assumption that you made -- namely, that your friends were "knowagable (sought the best and latest natural methods)." If they did not use the Sympto-Thermal Method of NFP or if they did not seek help from the Couple to Couple League, which has great forms of assistance for women with irregular cycles, then they were not as well-equipped and as they could have been.

You said that your friends "failed in what they wanted." Again, I disagree with you. If they were a "Catholic couple, devoted to the Church" (as you described them), then "what they wanted" was God's will, even if it was not always in keeping with their own will. Faithful Catholics who use NFP think along those lines, while people who contracept usually don't even recognize the existence of God's will in the area of family size. For them, it's only their own will that counts. I think that you may be projecting your own perspective onto your friends when you say that they "failed in what they wanted." The fact that they love their children tells me that they did not "fail" -- and they know that they did not. The fact that they were financially well able to care for their five children is a sign (which I hope they recognized, though you did not) that God's will was that they have the five children, rather than remain barren or have fewer than five. For that particular family, the "responsible procreation" that God wanted was five children. For another family, it might be zero or one or ten. A couple must do their best to discern their proper family size, but in the end they must leave things up to God, in case he has an "adjustment" to their discernment in mind.

Sean, you quoted my reference to the blanket Christian condemnation of contraception/sterilization prior to 1930 and asked me to "supply [you] with ... links to such protestant condemnation."

I am a bit surprised (and pleasantly so) by your request. It seems to imply that, if you can be shown Protestant condemnation of contraception, you would change your whole thinking about this, admit that you should not have used contraception, become Catholic again, etc.. All right, let us start.

The first Christian permission to use contraception -- allegedly without sinning -- was given by vote of the Anglican Communion's Lambeth Conference in 1930. I have read that the Lambeth Conferences (held periodically) had rejected the same thing in 1908 and 1920. The 1930 permission was granted for cases of serious need to married couples only -- as though a religious body could vote to make an intrinsically evil act (i.e., a mortal sin) into no sin at all. This opened the door, eventually, for all other Protestant denominations to follow suit. Then came blanket permissions for married couples. Then came permissions for sterilization. Then came permissions for non-married couples, in various denominations, to use contraception. Then came the overturning of certain anti-contraceptive-sale laws in the various states, laws that had been passed by predominantly Protestant legislatures. Then came tolerance, in various denominations, for abortion. Then came tolerance of homosexual acts, in certain denominations that saw the moral similarity between the infertility of contraceptive/sterilized acts and the infertility of sodomy. Through all this regrettable collapse of 70 years, the Catholic Church continued to shine like a beacon of truth, because the gates of hell could not prevail against her.

Now to document what I have just stated above and to provide you with Protestant, Catholic, and secular [Washington Post!] statements against the Lambeth error, you should read the material at the top of this linked site.

Sean, you continued: "I know that you can't link to old [Protestant anti-contraception] sources, do they have any modern echos?" Well, as you have seen (if you visited the above-linked site), I was able to show you early 20th-century Protestant sources, and now I will tell you about older Protestant ones -- and recent ones!

A lay member of the Protestant "Reformed" denomination, Charles Provan, published a book entitled "The Bible and Birth Control" in 1989. (I have a copy. The book is still in print, available from both Catholic and non-Catholic religious sources.) Mr. Provan is just one of a growing number of Protestants (including some Lutherans and Presbyterians) -- a number growing especially since the late 1970s -- who are going back to original Protestant beliefs on this subject. In some cases, I have heard, entire small denominations are now anti-contraception/anti-sterilization. In some cases, Protestant pastors and laity have become Catholic after realizing that the Church always upheld the truth, while Protestantism abandoned it.

In his book, Provan gives and analyzes a variety of scriptural verses that support the anti-contraceptive teaching. He also provides a long list of anti-contraception theologians of various denominations and various eras, from the 1500s through the 1900s. He also provides the following quiz on the back cover: 1. What Church Synod issued a Bible commentary which stated that contraception was the same as abortion? 2. What theologian declared in the 1500's that birth control was the murder of future persons? 3. What priest in the 1700's declared that taking "preventative measures" was unnatural and would destroy the souls of those who practiced it? 4. Who declared that birth control was sodomy? 5. What church group ruled in the 1600's that a church official found guilty of birth control was no longer allowed to hold his position? 6. What well-known theologian said, "We do not believe in what is termed 'birth control' "? The answers are: 1. The [Dutch Reformed Church's] Synod of Dort [1618] 2. John Calvin [founder, Reformed, Switzerland] 3. John Wesley [founder, Methodism, England] 4. Martin Luther [founder, Lutheranism, Germany] 5. The Pilgrims [England] 6. Arthur W. Pink [1886 - 1952, Calvinist, U.S.]

Also available, at least from libraries, are these books by Protestants: Robert F. Capon's "Bed and Board: Plain Talk About Marriage" -- An Episcopal priest, husband, and father talks about marriage, explaining the religious arguments against accepting contraception. Larry and Nordis Christianson's "The Christian Couple" -- This Protestant pastor and his wife explain how they stopped using contraception and started using NFP. Their extensive work in marriage counseling led them to realize that contraception is a blight on marriage. Dr. Siegfried Ernst's "Man: the Greatest of Miracles" -- A Lutheran physician and theologian explains his convictions that Humanae Vitae is right.

Sean, you may wish to contact the following organization, if you want to hear it "from the (Protestant) horse's mouth," rather than from me: Protestants Against Birth Control [PABC] P.O. Box 07240 Milwaukee, WI 53207

Sean, you continued: "Please give me reasons why such things between consenting adults in the context of marriage is wrong. Please do not just say 'X said so.'"

Your restriction on me is not acceptable. Perhaps you have not stopped to think about the fact that all of us, including you, hold (even sometimes tenaciously) to very much of what we believe simply because "X said so," not because we have seen, or experienced, or thought through, everything ourselves! We trust some of the sources of our information so implicitly that we don't need to check up on them. [If we did not trust, we would join the school of atheists known as "empiricists" -- who believe that all knowledge originates in experience and none in faith.] There can be no more trustworthy, reliable source of information and directives regarding faith and morality -- including what consenting adults may or may not do -- than the very "pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15), the Catholic Church founded by Jesus. The Church does not simply tell Catholics to reject contraception and sterilization as sinful without giving reasons to reject them. I tried (three weeks ago, at the top of this thread) to put you in touch with various Church documents (at the EWTN on-line library) that provide and explain the reasons. Did you find those documents to be unconvincing -- or confusing -- or did you not not read them? If "unconvincing," then I'm sorry that I too may be unconvincing to you. If you did not read them, please do, because they are vastly better than anything I am capable of telling you. But if you don't want to read official documents because they are confusing, that's fine. We'll try to help. Here, for example, is an excerpt from an article by a married Catholic layman, George Sim Johnston, who says more eloquently some things that I myself have tried to tell you (especially on the "Overpopulation" thread). I should say that Mr. Johnston's presentation is not exhaustive, as still more could be said in explanation/defense of the Church's teaching:

"These two important truths - that the essence of sex is mutual self-giving, and that we should never use another person as an object - are the foundation of the Church's objections to contraception. There is also the matter of babies. God's first command to humanity was to be fruitful and multiply. For those made uncomfortable by divine injunctions, the most elementary biology textbook will explain that sex is for making babies. And since sex is such a deep part our identity, it may be that when you sterilize the baby-making potential of sex, you are doing damage to yourself that is as much ontological (a word, needless to say, we don't spring on our couples) as physical or psychological."

"Now we're ready for the hard part ... Why does the Church forbid contraception? Artificial contraception is wrong because it violates the 'gift of self' which ought to be at the center of every act of physical love. When you take the pill or use a foam, diaphragm, condom or whatever, you are, in effect, saying to your spouse, 'In this, the most intimate act of our marriage, I am going to give myself to you, but only up to a point.' Or, conversely, you are saying, 'I want you in this act to make a total gift to me of yourself, except that part of you which so deeply defines you as a sexual being, your fertility.' The body has its own deep language, and when we add chemicals or latex to the act of love, when we deliberately destroy its potential for making new life, we falsify the nuptial meaning of its actions. We hold back the full 'gift of self' which during the wife's fertile period must include an openness to new life. A couple who use artificial birth control are not only falsifying the meaning of sex, they are also doing something immature: trying to extract gratification from an act while getting rid of its natural consequences. ... It could be argued that in this respect alone the couple is using one another as objects."


Sean, you used, as a justification of contraception and sterilization, the argument that all "things between consenting adults in the context of marriage" must be morally acceptable. This argument is very similar in language to the ACLU's arguments to justify all kinds of objectionable behavior in society. This argument is a false one, rejected by civilized human society until very recently. Why? When consenting adults, within marriage, do something that is intrinsically evil, it harms them at least psychologically and spiritually. That harm, in turn, takes the whole thing out of the "private bedroom" realm, for it becomes damaging to the whole human race when individuals are damaged. As the old song says, "No man is an island. No man stands alone. Each man's joy is joy to me. Each man's grief is my own." Consenting married adults may choose to verbally abuse each other -- an intrinsically evil act that damages them and society. They may choose to allow a third party to share their bed -- evil and damaging. They may mutually agree to cease working and live off welfare -- unjust and damaging. They may mutually agree to share banned drugs. [This reminds me that society still has enough sense at least to prohibit a few bad things done by "consenting adults," such as conspiracies to commit crimes.] A smarter person than I am can probably come up with a very long list of such examples that prove that the "consenting-adults-in-privacy-can-do-no-wrong" philosophy holds no water.

Sean, you quoted me as saying (actually "quoting" what your thoughts ought to be): "'Did Jesus found the Church, and does the Holy Spirit prevent her from misguiding me? If so, I must be wrong, and I will abandon my errors and confess my sins.' All I can do is assure you and assure you again that the Church is indeed right." And you stated, "Please continue to try to persuade. Assurance is good, but persauding is what the sisters failed to do."

If this is a sign that you want to be, and are open to being, persuaded, that's good news. It was not the duty of the sisters to persuade, but to teach. It was your duty to humbly accept and thereby to learn. In fact, I would wager a pretty penny that you did accept and learn -- but only later, under bad influences, rejected what you had learned (as I did). It is just not normal for small children in Catholic schools to require being persuaded of Catholic teaching by nuns. Both you and I then took the easy way out and did not go in search of reasons for our beliefs when we were tempted to reject them. The problem now is that, even when we present reasons to you, you are not persuaded. This helps us to realize that, in matters of religion, it almost NEVER happens that one person can simply talk another person into abandoning his beliefs or prejudices. Please don't expect me to "persuade" you to do anything. I don't expect to do it. The human mind is almost always too resistant to accept serious change in a hurry and to admit that it has been "vanquished" by a victorious debater. If you have a good heart, an open mind, and a prayerful attitude, the Holy Spirit will help you work out your conversion/reversion -- perhaps a long time from now [though I wish it were tomorrow {8^D)].

God bless you.
John


-- J. F. Gecik (jgecik@desc.dla.mil), August 27, 2000.



Hi, John. Well said!

-- Chris Butler (cbutler@butlerlinks.com), August 28, 2000.

-- Sean Cleary (Sean_cleary@juno.com), August 31, 2000

Answers

...

-- Cosmo Topper (cosmo@topper.com), August 31, 2000.

Good news just out from the Couple to Couple League, which was founded in 1971 and keeps persevering.

Between mid-1999 and mid-2000, "CCL's volunteers ... in the United States ... taught natural family planning to 4,707 new couples. This is an increase of 10% from the previous year. Another 1,710 couples taught themselves how to do NFP through the CCL Home Study Course, and that's an increase of 30% from the previous year.

During the same 12-month period, "CCL certified 77 new Teaching Couples, and that's an increase of 133% from the 33 who were certified in the preceding" year.

Little by little, God is helping people to better understand the marvels he has created. Let us rejoice!

Kerry

-- Kerry (kmelvin@worldnet.att.net), September 11, 2000.