Posted on 08/16/2005 1:48:10 PM PDT by NYer
Having married in 1985 when both were medical students, Ann and Michael Moell had their life together planned out.
Once they established medical practices and had a big house with a sprawling back yard, they would begin to have children. Until then, Ann would take the birth-control pill.
Although both had grown up in large Catholic families in Ohio, neither was well versed or much interested in the Church’s teaching on birth regulation.
“While we were in medical school and residency, we didn’t think we had time for a child,” Ann says. “We had the American dream in mind, not just for ourselves but for the children we would have.”
Their plans began to unravel four years into the marriage, when Ann stopped taking the pill because of persistent headaches.
“Here we were, both studying medicine, and neither of us knew anything about the pill and its side effects,” she recalls. “It just isn’t a topic in medical school because the pill is assumed to be a good thing.”
They used periodic abstinence, condoms and other barrier methods but, within a year Ann became pregnant. They welcomed the child into their lives, yet continued to contracept.
After their third child arrived, Ann says, “That was it. We were still young, with three children and growing medical practices. We thought we had to do something foolproof that would keep us from having more children.”
They discussed the possibility of a vasectomy for Michael.
“We thought it would be the best thing for our family,” Michael explains.
Something happened, though, in the Moells’ pursuit of the American dream. Ann began to pray. The couple had begun attending Mass again with the birth and baptism of their first child, but they were “just doing the Catholic thing,” Michael says. “We didn’t know anything about contraception being sinful or that Jesus is present in the Eucharist. We were missing so much.”
“To actually ask God to give us an answer was something new,” Ann admits. “I was praying at Mass, ‘God, show us what to do about this issue.’ A month later, I was pregnant. It was God’s answer. It was so immediate, so direct, and I was elated. It changed our whole attitude about who was in charge of our lives and our marriage.”
They began using natural family planning, and have welcomed two more children into their lives.
But God was not finished with them yet. Ann was a family-practice physician who prescribed the pill. Michael was a pediatrician who was prescribing the pill for young girls. Someone gave them the videotape “Contraception: Why Not?” by Janet Smith. “It changed the whole direction of our practices,” Ann says. “We started looking into the side effects of the pill and I knew I had to stop prescribing.”
Now Dr. Ann Moell is a stay-at-home mother who volunteers as a prenatal-care physician at a pro-life pregnancy center in Dayton, Ohio. Michael left a pediatric partnership to open Holy Family Pediatrics, in the same building as the pregnancy center. About half his patients are pregnant teens referred by his wife. They recommend abstinence before marriage and NFP in marriage to their young patients. Many Catholic parents travel long distances to bring their children for routine care to Holy Family Pediatrics.
“This has been a huge spiritual journey as well as a growth and learning experience in proper health care,” says Ann.
“It was a huge financial leap and leap of faith, to give up the partnership and open my own medical practice,” Michael adds. “Four months after I opened the door, our fourth child was born. I was questioning God the whole way. But it’s worked out better than I could have dreamed.”
Conversion is a word Penny and John Harrison use often to describe their experience with birth control. They were married in 1983 in Penny’s Protestant church; a Catholic priest witnessed the ceremony for John, who was raised in a Catholic family.
They used various forms of contraception for the first 10 years of marriage and had two children “pre-conversion,” as John describes it.
A Catholic Marriage Encounter weekend opened Penny’s heart to the Church, and, when she decided to become a Catholic, all the assumptions of their lives were uprooted. While she was going through a parish RCIA program in their hometown of Kansas City, Mo., John began looking at his own faith and asking questions. He had no problems with the sacraments or the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but his vague knowledge of the Church’s teaching on contraception nagged at him.
When he and Penny asked a priest about the issue, “we got some confusing and unspecific answers,” John recalls. “We ultimately were told to ‘follow our conscience.’ Unfortunately, that’s the answer too many Catholic couples get today, and they’re not being told the full beauty of the truth.”
Penny entered the Church at the Easter Vigil in 1993 and shortly thereafter she and her husband went on a 10th-anniversary vacation without their two children.
“We were both very uncomfortable using contraception on that trip,” John said. “We came back and just stopped using contraception of any kind, and prayed and hoped for another child.”
Key to their decision was hearing a talk by Catholic evangelist Scott Hahn, a former Protestant minister, and reading Rome Sweet Home, in which Hahn and his wife, Kimberly, defend the Church’s teaching on contraception.
“We date our deeper conversion to the heart of the Church primarily from the fervor we took from listening to Scott Hahn’s talks,” John says.
Since their conversion, the Harrisons have had three more children, including twins in 1999.
“I come from a Protestant background where it is considered irresponsible not to practice contraception, so I’ve come a long way,” Penny says. “The problem was that when I was preparing to enter the Church, we knew what Catholics were supposed to believe but we couldn’t find any Catholics who actually lived the teaching on contraception.”
As teachers with the Couple to Couple League, which promotes NFP, John and Penny are seeing “more and more couples open to the gift of life,” she says. “I tell them that, in the Nicene Creed, we call the Holy Spirit ‘Lord and Giver of Life.’ If we take that title seriously, we cannot shut the Holy Spirit out of our marriages.”
John says he tells couples who are not particularly religious that contraception is “disrespectful to your wife’s body. You expect a woman to take these hormones that make her body think she’s pregnant just so she can be available to you sexually all the time. And it goes the other way too. Your wife expects you to put on a special device. That’s not very respectful of the man, either.”
“Love means giving your whole self to your spouse,” adds Penny. “And that’s the great gift of NFP.”
Dear Salvation,
Thanks, although I read it first from Brian.
sitetest
Jesus said, "What God has joined together, let not man put asunder." In context, of course, He was talking about divorce. However, the idea is equally applicable to contraception. God "joined together" sex and conception. For man to separate them, either by having sex while intentionally preventing conception, or by conceiving children outside the natural process, is a violation of God's design for humanity.
In contrast, the use of NFP to avoid pregnancy does not separate sex and conception. It simply avoids both, for a particular time. However, it's important to remember that the Church says that abstinence may be used to avoid conception only for "grave reasons" or "serious motives." Obviously, this is a very subjective question, but it's one that every couple is required to consider with real generosity. None of us can judge what is "serious" for another couple, but we can be sure that God is calling all of toward a conscientous openness to life, and not merely an objective acceptance of conception "if we have a surprise."
It could be that your "Couple A" has a serious medical reason for avoiding pregnancy. Or perhaps they have a disastrous marriage, but decide not to divorce due to their belief in the sanctity of their vows, in spite of the outcome. It is possible that their motives for avoiding pregnancy are within what the Church would consider "serious reasons." (Have you read "Humanae Vitae"? That would help a lot!)
Your Couple B is practicing sin, irrespective of the outcome. The seriousness of their sin depends on their level of knowledge and the nature of the relationship; as you know, mortal sin requires "Grave matter," which this is, but also "Full knowledge," and "Full consent of the will." From a personal standpoint (pardon my psychological baggage) I would not let a man use me as a toilet year after year, without being open to having children. He could have affairs, he could file for divorce, he could climb Mount Everest, but I simply wouldn't stand for it.
Both couples perverted their marriages differently. Couple A is deliberately childless. This is against the Church's teaching even if they used NFP. The Church only allows NFP for the purposes of pregancy prevention if prudent consideration exists to avoid a pregnancy at that particular time. For example, it is OK to prevent a pregnancy when probability of a birth defect is high, or there are grave health risks due to the age of the couple, or the couple truly cannot afford the child. It is also OK to delay a pregnancy for health or economic reason. It is not OK to prevent a pregnancy for frivolous reasons such as lack of affection for children or desire to maintain two careers, regardless of the method.
Couple B resisted the purpose of their marriage by denying themselves the gifts of unitive and procreative intercourse. Despite God's steering them in the right direction with the unintended pregnancies, they refuse to hear His command, They insult their children by referring to them as mistakes (whether or not they use the word themselves, their life objectively treats children as mistakes of contraception). The happy outcome of four children does not accrue to their merit because they resisted God's procreative work in them.
You might also want to invest $2 or so in Marilyn's "Managing Morning Sickness" brochure, just in case!
Before I go on I want to you undestand I am NOT trying to pick a fight. I'm just a person struggling mightily with this teaching. Allright then......
"In contrast, the use of NFP to avoid pregnancy does not separate sex and conception. It simply avoids both, for a particular time."
That is untrue! NFP allows couples to engage on a very calculating method....the pleasure of love-making WITHOUT the probability of conception. Yes, I know there is a time where there is a cease and desist. But there is also a time where the pleasure of love-making is engaged WITHOUT the chance of conception. And it is here that I struggle mightily with the Catholic teaching. There are couples who engage in sex while practicing birth-control and become pregnant and go on to have their children accordingly. NFP'ers brag about the effectiveness of their method. Think about that for a moment.....NFP practitioners brag about the effectiveness of their method over and above the "other" forbidden methods. They are essentially bragging about the ability to NOT BRING LIFE INTO THE WORLD!
It could be that your "Couple A" has a serious medical reason for avoiding pregnancy. Or perhaps they have a disastrous marriage, but decide not to divorce due to their belief in the sanctity of their vows, in spite of the outcome. It is possible that their motives for avoiding pregnancy are within what the Church would consider "serious reasons." (Have you read "Humanae Vitae"? That would help a lot!)"
What if that couple just wanted to be in line with the Catholic teaching....Nothing more!
"For example, it is OK to prevent a pregnancy when probability of a birth defect is high, or there are grave health risks due to the age of the couple, or the couple truly cannot afford the child."
So then.......the difference is INTENT and NOT the method by which the intent is applied. If that's the case......a couple nearing the age of infertility is not in grave danger if they had a vasectomy, right?
So does this mean that to be a good Catholic ya gotta have a dozen or so kids wether or not you can afford to care for them properly?
So? The Church does not forbid enjoyng sex within marriage when the chance of pregnancy is ordinarily nil. The Church does not forbid from exercising prudent judgement and even praise such effective judgement. What it does forbid is
(1) any gesture of disrespect or exclusion of God, especially in matter where God plays a pivotal role;
(2) any violation of the commandment to be fruitful over the course of marital life, -- that is, it forbids deliberate childnessness.
It is not in line with Catholic teaching to avoid conception without a serious reason. Have you read the Catechism? Have you read "Human Vitae"? It is not "Catholic teaching" to use natural methods to avoid conception universally.
If they wanted to be "in line with Catholic teaching" straight up, they would view the primary end of their marriage as the procreation and education of children, and would therefore have as many children as naturally resulted during the marriage. The use of NFP to avoid pregnancy is AN EXCEPTION to the generalization that children are an unmerited gift from God, for which we should long, which we should accept without reservation.
Dear Prolifeconservative,
Between NFP and artificial means, it doesn't have to do with intention, but rather it has to do with the inherent nature of the METHOD.
That's why the analogy of the dieter versus the bulimic.
It's tough to fault the dieter for trying to shed a few pounds by eating a little less.
Nonetheless, that we accept the worthiness of dieting does not mean we must accept the worthiness of bulimia.
As for folks who use NFP to NEVER have children, well, we'd call a dieter who diets to extreme excess an anorexic, which is also a disordered state. The INTENTION is also important, and for the anorexic, the intention has gone beyond what is healthy.
Intention is important, but using means that are not intrinsically evil is equally important.
sitetest
I could split the hairs again in your post to me. I am not going there anymore. I will just remain utterly confused on this one teaching of the Catholic Church.
As I said in my opening post, I think the spiritual difference between NFPer's and those practicing artificial birth control are very, very minute. The bottom line for me, they both are INTENT on preventing a pregnancy/bringing life into the world at a particular time in their lives. The method by which they accomplish this is, at least to me, simply splitting hairs.
The difference is both intent and the method. The use of NFP to avoid pregancy is invalid if the intent is invalid, namely if the intent is, for example, to have two uninterrupted careers.
The use of contraception is invalid method even when the intent, as with an older couple, is valid.
Vasectomy, on top of everything else, is self-mutilation, which is an additional sin.
This moral teaching about intent and method should not surprise anyone, as we are familiar with it in other areas of life. For example, we don't steal money (improper method of getting rich) even though the intent might be proper, to pay for the college. Nor do we display wealth in order to impress the neighbor (improper intent) even though the method of making that money, engaging in honest commerce, is proper.
If you think that's true, then you've never tried to figure the conception date of a child, and ended up saying "Dang it - there's no way ... but here it is anyway!" There is *always* a possibility of conception if a couple is (a) not infertile for some medical reason, and (b) not deliberately preventing conception through barriers, chemicals, etc.
View my profile page, and note my Sally (the guileless blonde, holding flowers, sitting with her grandfather.) There is *always* a possibility of conception.
Well, God didn't give us pacemakers as part of our anatomy, is that also sinful and a perversion of the God-given heartbeat? For that matter, he also didn't give us stomach feeding tubes, so is it sinful to insert one into a person's belly?
The difference is roughly, between coming to church to pray and coming to church, turning your back to the altar, plugging in earphones and listening to Smashing Pumpkins. The intent in both cases is to be in church...
A heart attack is a bad thing. Starvation is a bad thing. Avoiding those outcomes (by any moral means) is good. A child is a good thing. Avoiding that outcome, even by morally-acceptable means, requires a strong reason.
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