Why has the Church so miserably failed to inculcate and cultivate the faithful to embrace NFP?

[1ke]

100 posts in and you still don’t get it.

You aren’t even asking the right question. It’s not about embracing NFP at all.

The objective of Church teaching has never been about “embracing NFP.” The Church’s teaching on marriage is about embracing the purpose of marriage: procreation and education of children. Therefore, the objective of the Church is to assist people in rejecting contraception, not in embracing NFP.

The secular current culture rejects this God-ordained purpose for marriage. The culture strongly pulls Catholics to embrace its ethos of self-indulgences and self-fulfillment through contraception-- not the Catholic ethos of self-sacrifice. Additionally, government policies discourage large families and in many ways are punitive to large families.

The Church teaches the Truth of God’s plan for us and our purpose for existing. Meanwhile, the world dangles a lie before Man. It’s a spiritual battle that goes back to the Garden of Eden-- the Original Sin of our first parents… to be like God deciding what is good and what is evil.

In every Age this battle wages on. Thirty years is a mere drop in the bucket-- this large-scale rejection of Church teaching regarding contraception is on the wane already. The up-and-coming generation is more pro-life, more anti-contraception than we have seen in a generation. The old guard of dissent is getting gray and leaving behind few who are interested in taking up the banner. While my parents generation is full of contraceptors, not a single one of my friends contracept.

Again, I state, the Church has not failed at all.

 

[setter]

100 posts in and you still don’t get it.

You aren’t even asking the right question. It’s not about embracing NFP at all.

The objective of Church teaching has never been about “embracing NFP.” The Church’s teaching on marriage is about embracing the purpose of marriage: procreation and education of children. Therefore, the objective of the Church is to assist people in rejecting contraception, not in embracing NFP.

You are saying the exact same thing in my thread heading but only stated in the negative. It is all about embracing NFP as the method of regulation of birth. I am not sure why you insist on being right.

Again, I state, the Church has not failed at all.

I disagree as would any person who rationally and objectively considered the dismal stats – a no brainer IMHO. By continuing to defend failure, you effectively thwart any need for needed introspection, accountability and reformulating what is needed to be more relevent and effective in reaching the lost with the saving message of the gospel.

 

[1ke]

You are saying the exact same thing in my thread heading but only stated in the negative. It is all about embracing NFP as the method of regulation of birth. I am not sure why you insist on being right.

It’s not about regulating births at all. That’s not the purpose of marriage. Contraception is a symptom, not the problem.

I disagree as would any person who rationally and objectively considered the dismal stats – a no brainer IMHO.

Stats are not the point of the Church’s mission.

By continuing to defend failure, you effectively thwart any need for needed introspection, accountability and reformulating what is needed to be more relevent and effective in reaching the lost with the saving message of the gospel.

NFP is not the saving message of the Gospel. That is my point.

 

[setter]

I was certainly among these folks. But I am already sledge-hammering this into my kids as is conservatively appropriate.

Some good resources with a favorable protestant take on the Catholic teaching:

catholic.com/radio/event.php?calendar=1&category=0&event=4415&date=2006-12-29

touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=20-04-020-f

Thanks for the links. I found this hopeful:

“ It is clear that there is a major rethinking going on among Evangelicals on this issue, especially among young people,” R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently told the Chicago Tribune. “There is a real push back against the contraceptive culture now.”

In his last years, Francis Schaeffer seemed to be moving toward the historic Christian view of contraception. Since 1980, several resolutions adopted by the Southern Baptists at their annual meeting have criticized contraception. By the close of the twentieth century, the Family Research Council featured special reports on “The Empty Promise of Contraception” and “The Bipartisan Blunder of Title X,” the latter referring to the domestic contraception program in the United States.

Conservative Calvinist publishers are producing books not only against contraception but promoting Natural Family Planning. A movement of Missouri Synod Lutherans is working to overturn their church’s current teaching and return it to Luther’s, and observers report a new interest in the traditional teaching among conservative movements in the mainline churches.

There have been other signs of Protestant rethinking on this question, including individual pastors and their wives who have opened their lives to bringing a full quiver of children into the world.

Perhaps it will be our protestant brothers and sisters that will lead the way back to living God’s design and purpose for marriage.

 

[setter]

It’s not about regulating births at all. That’s not the purpose of marriage. Contraception is a symptom, not the problem.

What is NFP a symptom of?

Stats are not the point of the Church’s mission.

Stats help to measure and define the emphasis and effectiveness of the Church’s mission to win souls over to Christ.

NFP is not the saving message of the Gospel. That is my point.

The narrow scope of your “point” has been noted …NFP faithfully used is a part of living witness that couples give to the saving message of the gospel.

 

[1ke]

Perhaps it will be our protestant brothers and sisters that will lead the way back to living God’s design and purpose for marriage.

What a ridiculous statement. The Catholic Church has been THE only Church to stand firm on this teaching and preach it from the rooftops.

Those who are “rethinking” the issue are doing so based on *Catholic *teaching.

 

[1ke]

What is NFP a symptom of?

What it is becoming-- what you are trying to make it-- is a one-to-one substitute for contraception.

That does not solve the problem, for improper use of NFP is as equally sinful as contraception.

The root of the problem is a culture that rejects life and rejects self-sacrifice. The root of the problem is an improper understanding of the purpose of marriage.

Stats help to measure and define the emphasis and effectiveness of the Church’s mission to win souls over to Christ.

Stats are meaningless.

If 100% of Catholics used NFP-- and used it improperly-- we would not have moved one step in the right direction at all.

The narrow scope of your “point” has been noted …

NFP is not the solution to the problem.

NFP faithfully used is a part of living witness that couples give to the saving message of the gospel.

It can be.

 

[setter]

What a ridiculous statement. The Catholic Church has been THE only Church to stand firm on this teaching and preach it from the rooftops.

Those who are “rethinking” the issue are doing so based on *Catholic *teaching.

I am always cautious of those who see our protestant brothers and sisters in the the Lord as sub-par, quasi Christians who only have something to offer us after they convert to Catholicism.

 

[setter]

What it is becoming-- what you are trying to make it-- is a one-to-one substitute for contraception.

Quite the contrary, you are the one attempting to narrow the focus and frame the discussion to fit your argument.

That does not solve the problem, for improper use of NFP is as equally sinful as contraception.

Note throughout this thread my explicit or implied “NFP faithfully used” …NFP is a symptom of the solution and what is working right.

The root of the problem is a culture that rejects life and rejects self-sacrifice. The root of the problem is an improper understanding of the purpose of marriage.

Of course.

Stats are meaningless.

You have to make this brazen assertion to maintain the frame of your argument.

If 100% of Catholics used NFP-- and used it improperly-- we would not have moved one step in the right direction at all.

I thought that you just stated that stats are meaningless …

NFP is not the solution to the problem.

NFP is a symptom of the solution to the problem.

It can be.

It can be??? …what other other witness is more compelling?

 

[Julian_Peters]

Thank you to all who have participated. This thread is now closed.