The "Birth Control Movie" Project

A commenter on my post “Marriage, Procreation, and NFP” included a link to an interesting website for a project called “The Birth Control Movie”. A video that’s been recently released and is available for purchase at the website is called “Birth Control: How Did We Get Here?”  A blurb on the site says:

This project was born from a desire to communicate the truth about birth control and family planning from the Word of God to other believers. By devouring the scriptures and gathering insights from experts all around the US, our movies will communicate the Biblical position on Birth Control and its impact on the Church, Marriage, and Family.

Clearly, this is a Protestant initiative – you can see that from the absence of reference to  Catholic Church  teaching, the emphasis on Scripture, and the Protestant names in the credits. Since Protestants jumped on the birth control bandwagon decades ago, I’m happy to see signs of a return to an understanding of the moral evil of contraception in Protestant circles.

Interestingly enough, even though this is a Protestant production, the first speaker on the trailer says

For the Church fathers, the founders of Christianity, the first and most important purpose of marriage and sexuality was to produce children.

The second speaker adds:

Every single branch of the church, for 1900 years, affirmed that children are a blessing, and that we have no business seeking to say “no” to God’s blessings.

I find this interesting on several counts.

First, it is always interesting to me that at least some Protestants cite the Church fathers when they talk about Church doctrine. And they are talking about the same Church fathers who are referenced by Catholics! So they recognize some authority stemming from the early days of the Church – the one true Church. The Catholic Church.

From Large Families on Purpose blog

Second, this is a “birth control” movie… not an “artificial contraception” movie. NFP promoters like to keep a clear demarcation between birth control and contraception, but in the minds of most people, I think, they amount to just about the same thing. Yes, yes, yes, I am quite aware of all the ways NFP is NOT the same as artificial contraception. But the bottom line is this: they are both about controlling the number of children born, and they are both about saying “no” to God.

Third, perhaps this will be a route to conversion to the one true faith for some people. As I recall, it was the route that Scott Hahn and his wife Kimberly took; my recollection of their conversion story is that Kimberly Hahn was doing some research on the contraception issue, and came to the conclusion that the Catholic Church was right. Eventually, they decided that if the Catholic Church was right on that issue, perhaps She was right on other issues as well.

Maybe the HSS mandate, meant at least in part to oppose and squelch the Catholic Church, will turn out to be a boon. Certainly, it has brought the birth control issue into sharper focus.

And that’s something quite necessary, given the increasing awareness that “population control” is backfiring on society.