Yes. When I lived in Houston I sidewalk counseled at Planned Parenthood every Saturday.You have me curious, 1ke…Saturday sidewalk counseling? Literally?
Yes. We did have, frequently. Both with abortion-minded women and with people going there for “other services.”
Or maybe some people deal with their guilty feelings by talking about it all the time in an effort to convince themselves and others that there’s nothing wrong with it. Or even that it’s positively good.
Or maybe some people deal with their guilty feelings by talking about it all the time in an effort to convince themselves and others that there’s nothing wrong with it. Or even that it’s positively good.
One of my co-workers told 3 of us about his vasectomy, then asked “So who else of you has had one?” The other two are a lapsed protestant and a militant atheist, but to their credit there was silence in reply. To which the first replied quite seriously “Ah, so I see that I’m the only one here who’s a sensitive caring husband!”
NFP shouldn’t be embraced, so to speak; it’s a permitted exception, only to be used for serious reasons (I have to fit in that dress for my sister’s wedding doesn’t qualify!).
Then why the dismal 3 to 5% of Catholics who utilize NFP when attempting to limit the chance of future pregnancy. Again, my question: Why has the Church so miserably failed to inculcate and cultivate the faithful to embrace NFP? …and why should we expect that the stats will significantly improve? If no secular organization would settle for such dismal rates of “success”, why should the Church?
Can you please elaborate?
NFP can also be used to achieve pregnancy.
Because people are sinners.
You seem unwilling to hear anyone whose answer is that they church has not failed. So, I guess you just want to talk to yourself.
The Church just keeps teaching the truth. We are only here for a short time, the Church is eternal. It took hundreds of years to root out Arianism, yet the Church patiently persevered in the face of a much more serious crisis.
And our other options would be???
It is actually the parents’ responsibility to pass on the faith, not the Church’s.
Don’t compare the Church to the secular world. It is God driven not statistics driven. Each one of its members is not forced but gently led by a shepherd. We freely love God or we don’t. We can freely learn what is expected of us or we don’t. The best we can do here is Biblical: “encourage one another.”
The Church, i.e., which includes the teaching Magisterium down to the guy/gal sitting in the pew each Sunday, has miserably failed to inculcate and cultivate the faithful to embrace NFP – the statistics are evidence enough. To defend and claim otherewise is simply circling the wagons in denial of the obvious reality. To persist in painting a picture of success otherwise, only adds to the problem of not building accountability for the voices and teachers of dissent and missing the wake up call to arms to reach those snared in the lie of contraception, which is a uniquely Catholic epidemic from a moral teaching perspective. In terms of spiritual warfare, this ground [the positives of NFP] has been over run and for the time being lost to the Enemy, and such a strategic breach has this been.
Then how come the largely tacit disregard for Church teaching in the area of NFP specifically, and sexual morality generally? Do you need to broaden your scope of who comprises the Church? Then maybe you, and similiar others, can begin to consider ways that the Church can be more relevent and accessible to reach the lost.
I have no doubts that this is true as this is the basis for our Catholic faith. However, my point was how much does the pendulum need to embrace the secular culture and ethos before before arcing back to the truth. I believe that more reality intropsection by the faithful can lend itself to more fervent turning toward the Holy Spirit and stegically developing more effective means of reaching the lost with the light of the gospel.
For beginners, creative age-appropriate education as to the positives and expected norm of NFP as the positive means when a couple is discerning responsbile parenthood.
Good point, leaner and meaner should always be preferred in deference to faithfulness to Church teaching in matters of faith and morals.
Another good point as the starting basis for gaining back the culture for Christ …parents cannot give what they first do not possess for themselves.
In teaching his disciples, Jesus really did put an emphasis on being shrewd in our dealings with the worldly culture:
I learned that the hard way, not having any information on me left me helpless during one encounter.Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.' But his master answered him, You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed, and gather where I have not winnowed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.’ Matthew 25:24-30The statistics report that roughly only @ 35% of Catholics (and often less in many areas) regularly attend weekly Mass. The challenge then becomes and is: How are we to reach the non-church attending Catholic with the saving gospel message that is Jesus Christ, of which widespread use of contraception is a salient symptom of the failure of the Church to reach the multitudes with the full gospel message?
Amen …God has not abandoned His faithful.
I was certainly among these folks. But I am already sledge-hammering this into my kids as is conservatively appropriate.