Why do most people ignore the Church's teaching on contraception?

[LongingSoul]

She starts each orientation class with herself and me as contradictory examples of how not every woman will have desired results, and learning to accept that and find peace in living out God’s will for us is a big part of finding the beauty in life.

Has your sister studied your charts to be able to use you as a valid example? If so does she agree that you are a case where NFP is completely impossible? Are you charting while you are abstinent to be able to recognise some of the factors that may influence your temp. and negate accuracy or continuing with symptom awareness in order to get a good reading of your own body? It sounds like you’ve never had a good long period of pre or post pregnancy to develop an intuneness with your cycle. This prolonged period of abstinence could be the best blessing ever.

 

[PaulinVA]

I think you are going through a mini crisis of faith, Paul. You are looking back and seeing the threat of hell as the main impetus for your obedience but since Vatican II, seminaries haven’t taught this way of preaching. You couldn’t possibly have sustained your commitment to periodic abstinence as part of NFP without the grace of a deeper faith. Something has made you shift and its probably not to do with the Church which has always had its human aspects right from the beginning.

Thank you for your kind observation. Yes, my wife and I are having a crisis of faith. Not in God; that is solid. In His Church. My wife was on staff at the parish for about ten years, and that shook us greatly. You know the saying, “if you like eating at the restaurant, don’t work in the kitchen.”? That certainly applies here.

As for grace - yes, I do believe that God gives couples, and has given us, graces to stay together. I have felt that during the years we were grieving for our first son, while we were using NFP, while we were going through the normal things couples go through. I think that’s why couples in their fifties can find each other attractive - it’s the grace God gives them through the sacrament of marriage. For me, my disaffection isn’t about God or grace.

For instance, I know of a couple who’s faith was shaken by the coming out of a practicing gay child and that makes me really pleased that the Church is addressing our attitude to gay people again for some deeper insight for families like this.

No, nothing like that.

I just wanted to throw this observation in because I feel very strongly that the spirit of dissent which is an undercurrent of this thread, will not sustain faith for most people. On the issue of contraception, dissent is not allowed which to me says if people want to dissent it would be more Catholic of them to do it privately and deal directly with God.

My view on the whole contraception thing is that you are not too smart if you think that a barrier method or a hormonal method will totally thwart God’s biology 100% of the time. I don’t think He intervenes and creates babies outside of what the biology is programmed to do. Mine is a general frustration at the Church, not really centered on fertility or NFP.

 

[bitterhope]

Has your sister studied your charts to be able to use you as a valid example? If so does she agree that you are a case where NFP is completely impossible? Are you charting while you are abstinent to be able to recognise some of the factors that may influence your temp. and negate accuracy or continuing with symptom awareness in order to get a good reading of your own body? It sounds like you’ve never had a good long period of pre or post pregnancy to develop an intuneness with your cycle. This prolonged period of abstinence could be the best blessing ever.

Wow, that’s really not you’re place to say that. Live in my shoes, in my marriage, and through my life, and then tell me what the biggest blessing ever is for me. You have proven my point in this thread. Thank you very much for that.

Several NFP drs, midwives, and instructors have seen my charts over the years. My husband is deployed often so abstaining isn’t a new thing in my marriage. I started cycling at age 8, learning to chart at age 12 (my mom actually is an expert in female fertility ironically. Medical research. Worked in the lab. She worked on multiple studies from 1962-1984. Yep, she’s the mother of 16 as well), married at 18 so that’s a pretty long amount of time to develop intuneness. I am a faithful wife so him being gone overseas for 6-18 months at a time is being pretty abstinent. But of course an advocate is going to come here to say it must be user error and an inability to control sexual urges because NFP has glorious results for everybody else.

 

[Gliggle]

Related: Why don’t most people love their neighbors as themselves?

best answer!

 

[jmjZelie]

You had a great instructor. There really does need to be more of them. My sister is pretty much that way. She is infertile but teaches Creighton. Unfortunately she has never been able to conceive but that’s part of the witness she carries into her classes. It’s God’s will and she’s accepted that. She starts each orientation class with herself and me as contradictory examples of how not every woman will have desired results, and learning to accept that and find peace in living out God’s will for us is a big part of finding the beauty in life. That’s what is missing in this whole NFP thing. People forget that we aren’t just statistics on paper. We are living, breathing and feeling people that were uniquely created by God in His image–and He is as much a contradiction as my sister and I are. Learning to read His will for our lives and learning to accept that plan is heartbreaking and often scary enough on it’s own without having others make it harder.

Beautiful post, bitterhope.

 

[UbiCaritas]

These posts cross a line of integrity. Not those encouraging NFP. I realise by your name that you are a convert and could be excused somewhat, but the good people taking the time to run and teach NFP are NOT liars.

If you were very overweight and your doctor says this regime of eating naturally will put years on your life and god willing allow you to play with your grandchildren in your old age. It will take pressure off your heart and improve your circulation to your vital organs… is he lying because you don’t find immediate and superficial happiness?

Everything he said is true even though restrictive diets and punishing exercise are painful and impossible for some. NFP is a lifestyle with goods of a more profound nature than immediate pleasure. Shovelling fast food down ones throat is undoubtedly easier and is probably the best choice for those who think only of their own immediate pleasure. “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you will die” types of philosophies. Catholics on the other hand strive for the joys of a spiritual nature.

Well, what do you call people who say that most couples only have to abstain for 5-7 days/cycle, when I’ve never met anyone IRL or online who had to abstain for less than 11-12–and that’s on the low side? I’m lucky in that NFP works well for me, my cycles are very regular, and we only have to abstain for that 11-12 days/cycle, which is great, but I know far, far more people for whom that’s not true.

Did you know that until recently, you couldn’t become an instructor for the CCL unless you had ecologically breastfed your children–something that’s impossible for a mom who works out of the home, and which is just about impossible for anyone who has more than one child, and which, in any case, is sometimes based on sheer biological ability (see the 10% or so alone of women who are incapable of producing enough milk because of insufficient glandular tissue) rather than any sort of personal decision? That’s a serious cultural problem right there. (There was a rather long process by which the higher-ups could approve an “exception” for you to become a CCL instructor without having EBF, but it was rare and extremely invasive.)

What would you call people who attack those for whom NFP genuinely doesn’t work for one reason or another? Look at bitterhope’s posts, or Kelfa’s. In the one case, she was told she must be cheating on her husband (nice, I don’t think) and in the other, she was openly and repeatedly attacked by the Kippleys *on this forum * for saying that even though she followed all the (near-impossible) rules for ecological breastfeeding, her cycle came back within weeks. Do note that those rules include:

Cosleeping–not safe for a lot of couples;

Never using anything except mom as a pacifier–mom needs a shower and baby’s squalling? Dad sticks his pinky in the kid’s mouth to settle her for a minute or two? Ha! Gotcha! You didn’t follow the method! What sort of selfish mom needs to shower, anyway?

Taking at least one nap with baby every day–ah, yes, letting toddlers run free is always such a grand idea…but remember, you mustn’t get baby on a schedule so that she’s napping at the same time as the toddler, either!

But if you use, say, a monitor to test your urine rather than not let Daddy help with childcare or let toddlers rampage through the house while you take your mandatory but totally unscheduled nap, or if your body didn’t get the memo to produce enough milk, you aren’t really in touch with your body–or, to quote Sheila Kippley, you aren’t using God’s Plan For Your Motherhood.

That’s what people are reacting negatively to when they talk about the problems with NFP marketing–that it’s overhyped and overstated on the one hand, and then those who have genuine problems with a given method are told that they’re bad/sinful/lazy/liars/etc. In an unsurprising twist, that drives people away pretty quickly. Ditto shaming people for doing things that just aren’t sinful in the first place: see using backup hormone testing, or realizing that taking two-hour naps with a three year old running loose in the house is a Bad Idea, or saying, in some admittedly pretty radical cases, that it’s sinful not to breastfeed regardless of the reason.

Now, I will say one thing in favor of the CCL: I think some people in it are recognizing that there are definite cultural problems there, and they’re honestly trying to fix it. I was contacted a while ago by someone who works there who basically said “we know we have these problems; what would you and other Catholic couples like to see changed?”. She seemed quite open to understanding the issues with marketing (lying about average abstinence, for example) and the shaming that tends to go on when a method really doesn’t work for some, as well as the method wars. Kudos there, though I suspect their efforts in that regard will probably take decades to become effective because of the longstanding issues with that organization.

 

[LongingSoul]

Wow, that’s really not you’re place to say that. Live in my shoes, in my marriage, and through my life, and then tell me what the biggest blessing ever is for me. You have proven my point in this thread. Thank you very much for that.

Several NFP drs, midwives, and instructors have seen my charts over the years. My husband is deployed often so abstaining isn’t a new thing in my marriage. I started cycling at age 8, learning to chart at age 12 (my mom actually is an expert in female fertility ironically. Medical research. Worked in the lab. She worked on multiple studies from 1962-1984. Yep, she’s the mother of 16 as well), married at 18 so that’s a pretty long amount of time to develop intuneness. I am a faithful wife so him being gone overseas for 6-18 months at a time is being pretty abstinent. But of course an advocate is going to come here to say it must be user error and an inability to control sexual urges because NFP has glorious results for everybody else.

But has your sister the NFP instructor seen your charts to be able to use you as an example of how NFP is impossible for some people, requiring either continual childbearing or permanent (until menopause) abstinence? If that is promoted as a fact in NFP teaching I can tell you many of the young these days wouldn’t even give NFP a first chance. When people first turn up to medical treatment they aren’t told they might die anyway. That’s an area for other trained professionals. Then people become terminal they aren’t put in general wards to keep telling people this is one option that may happen to you. They are taken to the palliative care units where their treatment is of a completely different nature.

There is something not right about trying to turn everyone against a certain treatment because it doesn’t work for you.

 

[LongingSoul]

Well, what do you call people who say that most couples only have to abstain for 5-7 days/cycle, when I’ve never met anyone IRL or online who had to abstain for less than 11-12–and that’s on the low side? I’m lucky in that NFP works well for me, my cycles are very regular, and we only have to abstain for that 11-12 days/cycle, which is great, but I know far, far more people for whom that’s not true.

Did you know that until recently, you couldn’t become an instructor for the CCL unless you had ecologically breastfed your children–something that’s impossible for a mom who works out of the home, and which is just about impossible for anyone who has more than one child, and which, in any case, is sometimes based on sheer biological ability (see the 10% or so alone of women who are incapable of producing enough milk because of insufficient glandular tissue) rather than any sort of personal decision? That’s a serious cultural problem right there. (There was a rather long process by which the higher-ups could approve an “exception” for you to become a CCL instructor without having EBF, but it was rare and extremely invasive.)

What would you call people who attack those for whom NFP genuinely doesn’t work for one reason or another? Look at bitterhope’s posts, or Kelfa’s. In the one case, she was told she must be cheating on her husband (nice, I don’t think) and in the other, she was openly and repeatedly attacked by the Kippleys *on this forum * for saying that even though she followed all the (near-impossible) rules for ecological breastfeeding, her cycle came back within weeks. Do note that those rules include:

Cosleeping–not safe for a lot of couples;

Never using anything except mom as a pacifier–mom needs a shower and baby’s squalling? Dad sticks his pinky in the kid’s mouth to settle her for a minute or two? Ha! Gotcha! You didn’t follow the method! What sort of selfish mom needs to shower, anyway?

Taking at least one nap with baby every day–ah, yes, letting toddlers run free is always such a grand idea…but remember, you mustn’t get baby on a schedule so that she’s napping at the same time as the toddler, either!

But if you use, say, a monitor to test your urine rather than not let Daddy help with childcare or let toddlers rampage through the house while you take your mandatory but totally unscheduled nap, or if your body didn’t get the memo to produce enough milk, you aren’t really in touch with your body–or, to quote Sheila Kippley, you aren’t using God’s Plan For Your Motherhood.

That’s what people are reacting negatively to when they talk about the problems with NFP marketing–that it’s overhyped and overstated on the one hand, and then those who have genuine problems with a given method are told that they’re bad/sinful/lazy/liars/etc. In an unsurprising twist, that drives people away pretty quickly. Ditto shaming people for doing things that just aren’t sinful in the first place: see using backup hormone testing, or realizing that taking two-hour naps with a three year old running loose in the house is a Bad Idea, or saying, in some admittedly pretty radical cases, that it’s sinful not to breastfeed regardless of the reason.

Now, I will say one thing in favor of the CCL: I think some people in it are recognizing that there are definite cultural problems there, and they’re honestly trying to fix it. I was contacted a while ago by someone who works there who basically said “we know we have these problems; what would you and other Catholic couples like to see changed?”. She seemed quite open to understanding the issues with marketing (lying about average abstinence, for example) and the shaming that tends to go on when a method really doesn’t work for some, as well as the method wars. Kudos there, though I suspect their efforts in that regard will probably take decades to become effective because of the longstanding issues with that organization.

I don’t know CCL. It must be American, but I know that there are always extremist elements of every area of life who promote themselves as the highest authority. The ones that I encountered during the childrearing years were the Breast feeding mothers and homeschooling mothers. Those are satellite philosophies meant for those so inclined but you’ll find them promoting their product as though it should be the norm. Can you imagine if everyone homeschooled or breastfed for 3 years? How could society work if they were the norm? CCL might have that sort of extremism but by the same token I don’t think they should be demonised or exterminated by the court of public opinion. There’s room for every point of view. That’s the beauty of living in the free world.

I looked up the USCCB site and it’s actually bloody fantastic as far as NFP resources.

usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/natural-family-planning/find-an-nfp-class.cfm

If I was in the US I’d go to that site and make a choice. If I’d tried one lot and it seemed like an extremist group… I’d try another lot or method. If I exhausted every modern offering on the market without any success and was not in a position to keep reproducing, I’d commit to celibacy and get Catholic counselling or spiritual direction to help me turn my suffering to prayer with grace.

 

[UbiCaritas]

I don’t know CCL. It must be American, but I know that there are always extremist elements of every area of life who promote themselves as the highest authority. The ones that I encountered during the childrearing years were the Breast feeding mothers and homeschooling mothers. Those are satellite philosophies meant for those so inclined but you’ll find them promoting their product as though it should be the norm. Can you imagine if everyone homeschooled or breastfed for 3 years? How could society work if they were the norm? CCL might have that sort of extremism but by the same token I don’t think they should be demonised or exterminated by the court of public opinion. There’s room for every point of view. That’s the beauty of living in the free world.

I looked up the USCCB site and it’s actually bloody fantastic as far as NFP resources.

usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/natural-family-planning/find-an-nfp-class.cfm

If I was in the US I’d go to that site and make a choice. If I’d tried one lot and it seemed like an extremist group… I’d try another lot or method. If I exhausted every modern offering on the market without any success and was not in a position to keep reproducing, I’d commit to celibacy and get Catholic counselling or spiritual direction to help me turn my suffering to prayer with grace.

The CCL is the default and by far largest NFP group in the US. They run the majority of diocesan NFP programs. Given that they are the biggest face of NFP in the US, I hardly think that it’s reasonable to call them extremist: they are mainstream NFP for Americans. They’re welcome to their points of view, certainly, but to teach that only stay at home mothers are fulfilling God’s will, that every woman’s body functions identically and perfectly, and that if a mother can’t fulfill an unreasonable and unachievable set of standards (see: napping with baby while a toddler runs loose) she’s just not holy enough is wrong, and spiritually abusive.

Anecdotally, the Creighton/Napro groups (second largest group in the US) are just about as bad. The only official way to get new charts is to pay an instructor for them, and the only way to do that is to pay $50+/hour for a consultation on top of the chart prices, which seem to be set by the instructors. Bear in mind that the charts themselves are simply photocopied black-and-white charts, but instructors will often charge $20 for a single piece of photocopied paper. If you think that’s silly and simply copy one of your own before using it, you’re told that that’s “achieving behavior.” Apparently, using your personal copy machine rather than an instructor’s makes your chart far more likely to result in pregnancy. That’s leaving aside the fact that their default answer for problems in charting is “see one of our doctors”–who only accept one or two insurance plans, are sometimes not even covered by those, and frequently require many, many visits at many hundreds of dollars apiece.

I know much less about the Billings method and don’t know anyone in real life who can comment on it, so I’ll not comment on it. I personally have used STM (the method promoted by CCL) and now use Marquette (a combination of hormone testing and mucus observation), and while I’m also happy with Marquette because it fits my body and personality best, I like the blunt honesty I’ve gotten when talking to the method’s developers. I like not being lied to. I like having a medical provider say “yes, abstinence is hard, you can anticipate it lasting approximately this long, stay strong, you can do it because it’s worth it” rather than gaslighting me.

One last consideration: the orders of religious that are growing rapidly now are ones which have a harder standard of life than others. Much like the Marines, they’re honest with their “recruits,” and much like the Marines, they end up forming strong (spiritual) warriors because they’re tough but honest. Their postulants are told up front that their lifestyles will involve fasting, abstinence, long hours of prayer, interrupted sleep, and in the case of the active orders, service to others. They aren’t told “no one here likes meat anyway,” “we all enjoy only sleeping four hours at a time, if you don’t, it means you’re a bad person,” or “there’s nothing quite so fun as changing dressings on an end-stage cancer patient’s sores.” They are told “it’s hard, but it’s totally worth it in the end.” And they’re right.

I think we’d all be well-served if NFP instructors and marketing, and most especially priests and deacons in their preaching, took that approach to the vocation of marriage, too–that it’s often hard, but it’s also worth it, and that anything worth doing is going to be hard sometimes, whether that’s periodic, extensive, or total abstinence, the inevitable marital disagreements that come up, parenting lots of small kids or teenagers, and so on.

 

[pensmama87]

Having seen the NFP debates online for the past few years, I’m really glad I learned about it from a secular source.

And as I often do, I wholeheartedly recommend Simcha Fisher’s *The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning. *

 

[kptrs]

The CCL is the default and by far largest NFP group in the US. They run the majority of diocesan NFP programs. Given that they are the biggest face of NFP in the US, I hardly think that it’s reasonable to call them extremist: they are mainstream NFP for Americans. They’re welcome to their points of view, certainly, but to teach that only stay at home mothers are fulfilling God’s will, that every woman’s body functions identically and perfectly, and that if a mother can’t fulfill an unreasonable and unachievable set of standards (see: napping with baby while a toddler runs loose) she’s just not holy enough is wrong, and spiritually abusive.

Anecdotally, the Creighton/Napro groups (second largest group in the US) are just about as bad. The only official way to get new charts is to pay an instructor for them, and the only way to do that is to pay $50+/hour for a consultation on top of the chart prices, which seem to be set by the instructors. Bear in mind that the charts themselves are simply photocopied black-and-white charts, but instructors will often charge $20 for a single piece of photocopied paper. If you think that’s silly and simply copy one of your own before using it, you’re told that that’s “achieving behavior.” Apparently, using your personal copy machine rather than an instructor’s makes your chart far more likely to result in pregnancy. That’s leaving aside the fact that their default answer for problems in charting is “see one of our doctors”–who only accept one or two insurance plans, are sometimes not even covered by those, and frequently require many, many visits at many hundreds of dollars apiece.

I know much less about the Billings method and don’t know anyone in real life who can comment on it, so I’ll not comment on it. I personally have used STM (the method promoted by CCL) and now use Marquette (a combination of hormone testing and mucus observation), and while I’m also happy with Marquette because it fits my body and personality best, I like the blunt honesty I’ve gotten when talking to the method’s developers. I like not being lied to. I like having a medical provider say “yes, abstinence is hard, you can anticipate it lasting approximately this long, stay strong, you can do it because it’s worth it” rather than gaslighting me.

One last consideration: the orders of religious that are growing rapidly now are ones which have a harder standard of life than others. Much like the Marines, they’re honest with their “recruits,” and much like the Marines, they end up forming strong (spiritual) warriors because they’re tough but honest. Their postulants are told up front that their lifestyles will involve fasting, abstinence, long hours of prayer, interrupted sleep, and in the case of the active orders, service to others. They aren’t told “no one here likes meat anyway,” “we all enjoy only sleeping four hours at a time, if you don’t, it means you’re a bad person,” or “there’s nothing quite so fun as changing dressings on an end-stage cancer patient’s sores.” They are told “it’s hard, but it’s totally worth it in the end.” And they’re right.

I think we’d all be well-served if NFP instructors and marketing, and most especially priests and deacons in their preaching, took that approach to the vocation of marriage, too–that it’s often hard, but it’s also worth it, and that anything worth doing is going to be hard sometimes, whether that’s periodic, extensive, or total abstinence, the inevitable marital disagreements that come up, parenting lots of small kids or teenagers, and so on.

YES!!! :clapping:

 

[bitterhope]

But has your sister the NFP instructor seen your charts to be able to use you as an example of how NFP is impossible for some people, requiring either continual childbearing or permanent (until menopause) abstinence? If that is promoted as a fact in NFP teaching I can tell you many of the young these days wouldn’t even give NFP a first chance. When people first turn up to medical treatment they aren’t told they might die anyway. That’s an area for other trained professionals. Then people become terminal they aren’t put in general wards to keep telling people this is one option that may happen to you. They are taken to the palliative care units where their treatment is of a completely different nature.

There is something not right about trying to turn everyone against a certain treatment because it doesn’t work for you.

I have discussed my charts with my sister. She is a nurse practitioner (midwife). No one suggests turning people away, just truthfulness. Creighton, the method she teaches, boasts a 96%+ by some statistics success rate in achieving pregnancy. It claims to have a higher success rate than IVF. It does not help everyone get pregnant. It can’t possibly help my sister. No one cries foul for it not working to make babies and people assume from the beginning that it is in God’s hands and His will alone if a baby comes. No one assumes user error or falsifying charts or any wrong doing on the part of a couple who doesn’t conceive. It just is what it is. Why the double standard? Why is it that when a couple is working towards a baby they are reminded that it may or may not work, but if a couple is seeking to avoid a baby, that info (that it may or may not work) should be hidden?

Matter of fact, I have recommended several couples over the years to various NFP instructors in whichever diocese we happen to live in at the time and I helped a former neighbor learn to chart her cycle myself. I even gave my fertility monitor away for free to a friend at a former parish I attended. If anything turns people away from the practice of NFP it is continuous the lies, degrading comments, belittling remarks, etc being told by many of the advocates out there. When there is no support or understanding or even compassion, people are turned off and distrust everything about it. Funny how more ladies trust me, with my multiple “failures” about NFP than they do the instructor who claims it’s beautiful, life improving, marriage building, glorious fun times. Truth and support builds trust. False advertising and downright deception crumbles trust.

 

[LongingSoul]

The CCL is the default and by far largest NFP group in the US. They run the majority of diocesan NFP programs. Given that they are the biggest face of NFP in the US, I hardly think that it’s reasonable to call them extremist: they are mainstream NFP for Americans. They’re welcome to their points of view, certainly, but to teach that only stay at home mothers are fulfilling God’s will, that every woman’s body functions identically and perfectly, and that if a mother can’t fulfill an unreasonable and unachievable set of standards (see: napping with baby while a toddler runs loose) she’s just not holy enough is wrong, and spiritually abusive.

Extremist means extreme views on a subject rather than not mainstream. From what you say of their program it certainly is extremist. If the program has an ideological basis rather than strictly Catholic basis, and is hostile about their way being the best or only way… then they are extremist.

Anecdotally, the Creighton/Napro groups (second largest group in the US) are just about as bad. The only official way to get new charts is to pay an instructor for them, and the only way to do that is to pay $50+/hour for a consultation on top of the chart prices, which seem to be set by the instructors. Bear in mind that the charts themselves are simply photocopied black-and-white charts, but instructors will often charge $20 for a single piece of photocopied paper. If you think that’s silly and simply copy one of your own before using it, you’re told that that’s “achieving behavior.” Apparently, using your personal copy machine rather than an instructor’s makes your chart far more likely to result in pregnancy. That’s leaving aside the fact that their default answer for problems in charting is “see one of our doctors”–who only accept one or two insurance plans, are sometimes not even covered by those, and frequently require many, many visits at many hundreds of dollars apiece.

No company can impose copyright restrictions on copying something strictly for personal use. If they excerpt psychological pressure over clients… drop them like a hot potato.

I know much less about the Billings method and don’t know anyone in real life who can comment on it, so I’ll not comment on it. I personally have used STM (the method promoted by CCL) and now use Marquette (a combination of hormone testing and mucus observation), and while I’m also happy with Marquette because it fits my body and personality best, I like the blunt honesty I’ve gotten when talking to the method’s developers. I like not being lied to. I like having a medical provider say “yes, abstinence is hard, you can anticipate it lasting approximately this long, stay strong, you can do it because it’s worth it” rather than gaslighting me.

Bingo. Problem solved! Shopped around. Found your thing.

One last consideration: the orders of religious that are growing rapidly now are ones which have a harder standard of life than others. Much like the Marines, they’re honest with their “recruits,” and much like the Marines, they end up forming strong (spiritual) warriors because they’re tough but honest. Their postulants are told up front that their lifestyles will involve fasting, abstinence, long hours of prayer, interrupted sleep, and in the case of the active orders, service to others. They aren’t told “no one here likes meat anyway,” “we all enjoy only sleeping four hours at a time, if you don’t, it means you’re a bad person,” or “there’s nothing quite so fun as changing dressings on an end-stage cancer patient’s sores.” They are told “it’s hard, but it’s totally worth it in the end.” And they’re right.

I can’t speak for those new military style orders as I don’t know of any. If they are based on fundamentalist ideology, they are not in the spirit of Vatican II which looked to avoid the practices that encouraged cultish like blind obedience and to promote the daily experience of Christ and heaven through the life lived. The emergence of modern theoretical flagellants and martyrs suffering for a distant Heaven, was a psychological and spiritual nightmare and the Church recognised that. It is an example of a spiritual practice that suited another time but not this one. Pope St JPII further unfolded our concept of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory as ‘states’ rather than ‘places’ thereby bringing our experience of them closer to every day life where our morals and beliefs can be applied daily to everything we do in a more present way.

To try and promote NFP as a great suffering done for the reward at the end of your life, isn’t going to work. The flagellants and martyrs dragging themselves through the streets are not going to mean anything to modern people who are already conditioned by Vatican II to look for Christ and heaven in the everyday. Those who are open to the Church are taught to turn their suffering into prayer and action with a meaning and attitude that reflects a daily touch of heaven. Pope StJPII said that NFP and periodic abstinence promote maturity in relationships between spouses and the capacity to experience spiritual consolations through the chastity and continence required by Catholic teaching. That is not promoting unicorns and rainbows. It’s promoting consolations of a true heavenly nature which sometimes but not always involve continued suffering.

… cont…

 

[LongingSoul]

I think we’d all be well-served if NFP instructors and marketing, and most especially priests and deacons in their preaching, took that approach to the vocation of marriage, too–that it’s often hard, but it’s also worth it, and that anything worth doing is going to be hard sometimes, whether that’s periodic, extensive, or total abstinence, the inevitable marital disagreements that come up, parenting lots of small kids or teenagers, and so on.

I don’t agree. It’s not the place of NFP instructors to be spiritual advisors but that doesn’t mean they should put sackcloth and dour faces to teach a thing that is a spiritual good.

 

[bitterhope]

I don’t agree. It’s not the place of NFP instructors to be spiritual advisors but that doesn’t mean they should put sackcloth and dour faces to teach a thing that is a spiritual good.

How is telling the truth and giving the whole picture reserved for spiritual directors alone?

 

[LongingSoul]

How is telling the truth and giving the whole picture reserved for spiritual directors alone?

Because ‘telling the truth’ can mean different things to different people depending on their basic attitude and beliefs.

Extolling the benefits of NFP can seem like rainbows and unicorns to one person and like encouragement to strive for spiritual growth to another person.

For example, my previous spiritual director is a religious sister who counsels people in the palliative care unit. There is a vast difference in how people receive information depending on their attitude and beliefs. The fact is that terminal illness can be lived as a real spiritual blessing with consolations not previously conceived of by a person. Some people in this phase can genuinely say that the illness was a great blessing. Others don’t want to even give that notion the time of day. Death is death, suffering is suffering there’s no good in this life with this thing and that’s the only ‘truth’ they’ll accept. All this talk of joy in illness is unicorns and rainbows.

While a palliative care specialist can provide all the information and options available… it takes a spiritual director or counsellor to maybe turn an attitude around to see the good that there is in this situation.

 

[UbiCaritas]

How is telling the truth and giving the whole picture reserved for spiritual directors alone?

Exactly. I’m not advocating for a sackcloth-and-ashes approach, or for a sunshine-and-daisies one, either. I’m advocating for a balanced approach.

If I sold you a house and told you that it was in a good school district (true), that the roof was only a couple of years old (true), and that the drainage in that area was good (true) but neglected to mention that it was also infested with termites and would therefore require treatment and maintenance for related issues, that would be pretty unethical of me.

If I were a doctor and told a patient “I want you to start Cancer-Be-Gone to deal with your breast cancer. In patients like you, it has a 90% success rating and has minimal permanent side effects,” but don’t also say, “that having been said, it will probably cause terrible short-term side effects that will mean you’ll need to be hospitalized for at least a week after each dose,” then that would also be considered pretty unethical.

By the same token, telling a couple “NFP helps a lot of couples avoid and achieve pregnancy as desired. Using it means you needn’t take hormonal birth control or risk barrier failure. It is also the only Church-approved method for spacing pregnancies that allows for the couple to still have sex. It may well help you learn more about your body, and may help the two of you communicate better about childbearing and increasing the size of your family. However, it can be difficult for a married couple to abstain for weeks at a time, which isn’t uncommon, and like any method of birth control, it does have a failure rate.” is neither a pessimistic or optimistic view of NFP and married life: it’s an honest one.

I don’t personally see NFP as a great suffering for the majority of couples who use it. It is for a minority, though: I know one couple who mustn’t get pregnant again or the wife will almost certainly die, but for whom none of the methods work consistently. I might get a bit antsy at the end of 11-12 days, but it doesn’t affect us particularly negatively. They, on the other hand, often have to go months at a time without being together, and yes, that is a heavy cross, albeit one they carry with grace. Telling them that they’re stupid, incompetent, immoral, or selfish for wanting to be together more than once every four months isn’t helpful. Telling them “I’m sorry, that is hard, here are concrete tools that might help you” is.

My reference to the military isn’t one to blind obedience. Do note that the military expects obedience, but *not *blind obedience, as demonstrated at Nuremberg. No Marine is going to tell you “join the Marines; there isn’t much PT, the pay is awesome, and the paid time off can’t be beat!” They will say “you’ll be tested and driven and made into the best person and soldier we can make you, and in exchange, you’ll be among the very best.” God doesn’t promise us an easy time here. Suffering for the sake of suffering is pointless, but we will suffer some here if we’re doing God’s will.

The orders I refer to are hardly anti-Vatican-II. Rosary Hill Home, for example, has been around since the 19th century, and has been ministering to end-stage cancer patients since then. You’ll find their nuns joyful in their very difficult vocation. More recently-founded orders here have similarly peaceful and happy members. (I don’t know if the UK has anything similar.) I’d include dioceses in those numbers, too. Look at the dioceses whose seminaries are bursting at the seams, and then look at the ones who have few or no seminarians. The former group has a lot of things in common: an involved bishop, strong formation, honest-but-encouraging direction, and so on. Seminarians in a good program aren’t told “you’ll never wish you got married and had a family; you’ll never experience temptation; you’ll never be tired/discouraged/depressed.” Again, they’re told “it’s hard, and yes, you have to give up these things, but if it’s God’s will, you’ll find joy in this vocation, and it has many consolations.” Those called to the married state should get similarly solid formation.

 

[UbiCaritas]

Because ‘telling the truth’ can mean different things to different people depending on their basic attitude and beliefs.

Extolling the benefits of NFP can seem like rainbows and unicorns to one person and like encouragement to strive for spiritual growth to another person.

For example, my previous spiritual director is a religious sister who counsels people in the palliative care unit. There is a vast difference in how people receive information depending on their attitude and beliefs. The fact is that terminal illness can be lived as a real spiritual blessing with consolations not previously conceived of by a person. Some people in this phase can genuinely say that the illness was a great blessing. Others don’t want to even give that notion the time of day. Death is death, suffering is suffering there’s no good in this life with this thing and that’s the only ‘truth’ they’ll accept. All this talk of joy in illness is unicorns and rainbows.

While a palliative care specialist can provide all the information and options available… it takes a spiritual director or counsellor to maybe turn an attitude around to see the good that there is in this situation.

But again, why not take a middle ground?

A terminally ill person, for example, might quite reasonably at once experience the consolations of suffering and anticipate the joys to come while also being sad to leave his children, or sad that his children won’t have an earthly father physically present anymore.

 

[jlc2k2]

Having seen the NFP debates online for the past few years, I’m really glad I learned about it from a secular source.

And as I often do, I wholeheartedly recommend Simcha Fisher’s *The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning. *

I completely agree. The couple that mentored is through marriage prep pointed us in the direction of TCOYF. I had many years of that under my belt before getting (name removed by moderator)ut from anywhere else. And I’m also a big Simcha fan. I geeked out a bit when she joined a FB group I’m in. I still haven’t gotten brave enough to say anything directly to her.

 

[LongingSoul]

But again, why not take a middle ground?

A terminally ill person, for example, might quite reasonably at once experience the consolations of suffering and anticipate the joys to come while also being sad to leave his children, or sad that his children won’t have an earthly father physically present anymore.

But that’s the point. Consolations rarely come without some sadness. They aren’t the product of an absence of sadness. That is a different kind of good feeling. That’s not what I am advocating for. I would never call a practitioner a ‘liar’ for acknowledging the obvious sadness involved for such a father. I’m in bat against those calling practitioners LIARS in big capitals for extolling the beauties of the lifestyle. I’m always very much middle ground in the majority of these strangely controversial issues.