Hi, Anna.
I was working, and it suddenly occurred to me what “jealous” referred to.
Before I respond, if I state the opposite, will you use the opposite as a weapon for ignoring me, too, because you’re really playing the game of “Gotcha coming and going”?
In fact, my Jewish wife and I have been using NFP with enormous success for 22 years. God has very, very much blessed us, in the intimacy department, despite my wife’s irregularity.
There’s no way I’d ever go over to the Pill or other contraceptive method.
Additionally, there is a not-much-discussed phenomenon in Western culture connected with the Pill.
I used to be a divorce lawyer. Divorce lawyers have to know many intimate details about their client’s marriage, to protect the client in court against the devastating impact of embarrassing revelations when the enraged hate-filled mate is testifying. Did the client fool around? Is the reason why the client fooled around because sex was limited because one or the other refused to use ABC? Did the client use ABC too much, and so conceive no children at all, and that is the reason for the divorce? That sort of question.
So, in the course of preparing for trial, I came to know whether my client’s marriage was characterized by use of ABC in virtually every single case.
A few years into my divorce practice, it dawned on me that virtually every single divorcing couple used one or another form of ABC.
I wondered, “Do consciences troubled by ABC cause divorce?”
Somewhere out there in Cyber Land there is a graph which compares (a) the divorce rate to (b) the rate of use of ABC.
(a) follows (b) right up the chart.
All of a sudden it dawned on me that ABC is Cause #1 of the Great Divorce Epidemic in Western Society.
Consciences, darkened by the sin of using ABC, scream in protest, partners to the marriage scream at each other in response to their own internal guilt, communication breaks down, and divorce is the result.
Of the remaining in-tact marriages, mass confusion and anger and lack of communication fill the marriage in response to the same darkening of conscience, though the marriage survives.
Suddenly it dawned on me that the greatest irony in Western culture is that contraception was supposed to maximize access to risk-free sex, and generate sexual Heaven on Earth and so “strengthen” marriage…
…but it did precisely, exactly the opposite.
As a result, I, Catholic BibleReader, and his Jewish wife, who use NFP in their marriage, now joke that we probably have a richer, more fulfilling sexual relationship than every other ABC user in our neighborhood, the majority of whose marriages have collapsed in fighting, separation and divorce.
We wouldn’t trade-in our NFP practices for ABC use for anything in the world.
So, believe me, there’s no “jealousy.”
But, what I said about the Bible is the truth. The Bible does damn unrepentant users of pharmakeia to Hell.
