Posted on 12/10/2001 7:49:06 PM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
With the symptothermal methods, this is guaranteed. The CCL has hundreds of thousands of chart histories from the last several decades, and if the findings of this new study were an issue, I would know about it from the CCL already. These findings affect NOTHING regarding the practice of the symptothermal methods of NFP. What affects it is couple motivation. So-called NFP failures are 99% NFP foibles, i.e., the couple knew darn well they were taking chances, but to save face they blame it in the method, not their practice of it. I know this from firsthand experience with couples using NFP. When directly questioned, they ALL admit it was NEVER a failure of the method.
Fascinating indeed, but the least credible claim in the entire article. I need a lot more evidence than this Reuters report to begin to give it credence.
I remember our instructors mentioning it during our NFP class. Hmmm ...
I would like to see a study in which 100 fertile couples start January 1st using NFP. Then count how many are pregnant by December 31st. I would bet the percentage would be quite high. And thank God for that! The one thing that I actually like about NFP is that it doesn't work, thus allowing more babies to be born into the world.
That would be an interesting study. It's been very good for me and my wife and we've been practicing NFP for well over a year. We do so for the first two reasons Brian posted above. For those that practice it just to not have kids, I second your "thank God for that" comment that the percentage would be high. God has a knack for getting His way, doesn't He? ;o)
See my post 21.
God has His reasons for programming the human physiology so that NFP DOES work, just as this British Medical Journal article proves.
I've seen those reasons in what is, in Mother Teresa's opinion, the "poorest place on earth," the slums of Port Au Prince, Haiti. When the child you conceive is guaranteed to die of disease or starvation, 1) you have a grave reason for recourse to NFP, and 2) a just God would make sure His children had an effective alternative for these grave periods when He also clearly teaches that recourse to artificial methods are intrinsically evil. I've seen a baby dying before my eyes from dehydration from dysentery. I never want to see it again. And I bristle at those who insist a Just God would not provide a reliable natural and knowable means of delaying or spacing pregnancy so that each conceived child has a better chance to live.
So God was not just until the sympto-thermal method appeared on the scene? His justice was lacking until it was completed by this missing piece of the puzzle? And the billions of humans who lived before the Knaus and Ogino were born, they suffered under God's injustice? Perhaps Onan also should complain against God's injustice, he wouldn't have needed to spill his seed if only Tamar had owned a basal body thermometer?
You get credit at least for an entirely new view of theodicy.
Love it. You win this week's Chesterton Award for Catholic Irony and Understatement.
I'm very glad my parents were less "successful" and we managed to get a few more wonderful and brilliant siblings, without whom things would have been far less enjoyable. It gave a chance for the older children to learn how to administer diapers, bottles, and baby formula as well.
Actually, the sympto-thermal method would likely catch this. It would reduce "safe" days for sexual activity to a pretty small amount though. Something like 2-3 days per month, not necessarily in a row.
However, as a former practicioner of NFP, I'm more in agreement with your previous statement that, "I put the word 'success' in quotes because I do not consider it a success when a couple avoids having children."
NFP is too often used as a Catholicized enabler of the contraceptive mindset. Probably safest for all but those in dire need to avoid.
On the contrary, I think my experience with both third world medical missionary work and first world NFP instruction has illuminated for me just how wrong some extreme traditionalists are when they make blanket condemnations of NFP use. Such an attitude was illustrated by an editorial on www.seattlecatholic.com several months ago, to which I responded with a letter to ed. The subsequence letters to ed there responding to my points illustrated these blanket condemnations of NFP use among extreme traditionalists, and further galvanized my opposition to their wrongheaded condemnation of NFP use, something the Roman Catholic Church declared morally licit for grave circumstances.
There's an old saying, "Don't try to be more Catholic than the Pope." I always found that saying to be annoying, but on this subject it is appropriate.
If you grasped population demographics and agriculture based economics versus current economics and demographics, you would also grasp why the Holy Spirit guided the Church to this knowledge at this time in history. I know there is no such thing as overpopulation. But I also know there are real concrete circumstances when NFP use is morally licit, and rare circumstances where NFP use verges on a necessity (Catholics in China who will have their baby forcefully aborted.)
NFP is not immoral if used in grave circumstances. I have seen these grave circumstances first hand, both at home and abroad. That is why I bristle at those who condemn NFP use and NFP users, when such are NOT condemned by the Church, if grave circumstances for recourse to NFP exist.
This would mean the Pill is ineffective as well as except as a post-conception abortion tool.
I'm guessing this new information on ovulation and hormones will not be added to any high school sex ed textbooks. Might frighten the poor teens too much.
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