Thursday, September 5, 2013

The Scandal of NFP: Vortex

A recent Mic’d Up show focused on NFP, which, as you regular readers know, is a subjectabout which I’ve written enough posts to fill a book...see it in the sidebar there (second book down)?

MV gives a brief recap of the issue in this Vortex; I have also embedded the segment from the show here as well. I called in at about the 29 minute mark with a couple of comments.

Both in the Mic’d Up segment and in the Vortex, MV mentioned the fact that the use of NFP requires “serious reasons”. In the Vortex he says:

If you go to the US Bishop’s website, [NFP] is actually celebrated as a good in itself. Not a single word is mentioned with regard to the fact that NFP is actually a dispensation from what has been taught for centuries by the Church.

There is no mention at all of the blessing that large families are and that THIS is the default if a couple engages in the marital embrace.

Now let’s be VERY EXTRA CLEAR here. No one is saying that there are not serious reasons for HAVING to limit the number of children a couple will have. But the reasons must be SERIOUS, GRAVE.

Birth control does not have
admirable roots!
At this point, a number of NFP promoters are likely to jump in with comments to the effect that “serious” or “grave” is a bad translation, that the proper word is “just”, and so on. If you are tempted to put something like that in the combox, please refrain. I’m addressing it right here.

The point I wanted to make when I called in to the show was this: for the sake of argument, let’s accept any reason that the couple wishes to use as a valid reason for their limiting of births.  The real crux of the matter is that the use of NFP constitutes birth control. There can be no doubt, no argument that NFP is birth control. One may argue that it is not “contraception”, but it is clearly an attempt to control the number of births, and therefore it is “birth control”.

The bottom line is that the Church has never taught that birth control is desirable. It may be permissible – in the form of periodic continence, or even total abstinence – but it is not desirable. It is permitted; it is not to be promoted. As MV says in the Vortex (my emphases):
  
So when NFP is employed by a couple, it is usually for a very sad set of circumstances in their lives. Mental illness, great physical impairment and crushing financial issues are not good things to have to experience.

But in many cases, this is not how NFP is “sold” in the Church these days. It has much more of a feeling of “hey, look, we Catholics can have sex and avoid pregnancy just like the contraceptive culture, but we don’t use ARTIFICAL methods, so we are square with God.”

That is a turning on its head of the understanding of what marriage is all about. It is, at least partially, a caving in to the cultural understanding that children are a burden, something to be avoided if possible. Children are a blessing.

I pray for a re-emergence of the Church teaching of the blessing of a large family!


Here are the Vortex and the Mic’d Up segment; the script for the Vortex is below them.






Script for the Vortex episode:

For quite a few years now, decades actually, Natural Family Planning has been touted in the Church as the answer to the only anti-life culture of contraception.

If you go to the US Bishop’s website, it’s actually celebrated as a good in itself. Not a single word is mentioned with regard to the fact that NFP is actually a dispensation from what has been taught for centuries by the Church.

There is no mention at all of the blessing that large families are and that THIS is the default if a couple engages in the marital embrace.

Now let’s be VERY EXTRA CLEAR here. No one is saying that there are not serious reasons for HAVING to limit the number of children a couple will have.

But the reasons must be SERIOUS, GRAVE. The default is to engage in the marital act and accept whatever, if any children God blesses the couple with. THIS IS THE CATHOLIC UNDERSTANDING and always has been.

The Default – the usual manner – is that a couple is fertile and should participate freely with God in the bringing forth of new life.

The Default is NOT to look for an exception to the rule.

Issues like serious psychological or physical health reasons or HEAVY overwhelming financial burdens (for however short a time they may last) MAY be considerations for postponing conception.

And yes, SOME couples do face these sorts of issues, but again, these are the exceptions.

So when NFP is employed by a couple, it is usually for a very sad set of circumstances in their lives. Mental illness, great physical impairment and crushing financial issues are not good things to have to experience.

But in many cases, this is not how NFP is “sold” in the Church these days. It has much more of a feeling of “hey, look, we Catholics can have sex and avoid pregnancy just like the contraceptive culture, but we don’t use ARTIFICAL methods, so we are square with God.”

That is a turning on its head of the understanding of what marriage is all about. It is, at least partially, a caving in to the cultural understanding that children are a burden, something to be avoided if possible. Children are a blessing.

NFP is marketed by many in the Church, not the least of which is the Bishop’s conference as a kind of “contraception-lite”. This is wrong.

The first commandment given to the first couple was to be fruitful and multiply – not, “make sure you are well prepared and have all your finances, and home, and cars and bank accounts and college savings accounts in order – then help Me create new life.”

We’d like to recommend to you a further discussion we had on this on a recent episode of our weekly show, Mic’d Up.

We’ve edited down to the relevant portion of the show a very thought provoking discussion with a couple of our guests and that is available by just clicking on the link.

Again, no one here is trashing the authentic need for spacing of children in authentically challenging circumstances.

What we are trashing is the almost knee jerk reaction – the attitude, which sounds and feels very much like the culture at large that couples need to be taught how to have sex and avoid children AS A MATTER OF ROUTINE.

This is so routine that practically everyone in the culture who hears about NFP very quickly arrives at the label – Catholic Birth Control.


Please click on the link and watch the episode. [or watch the embedded version above]

13 comments:

  1. Fantastic and I am so thankful for your input. You are a voice calling in the wilderness. I have put your article on my blog and Michael. Great stuff and if you ever have an extra copy of your book, send one my way.

    God bless your great blog.

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  2. *Deep sigh* "Scandal?" Seriously?

    "What we are trashing is the almost knee jerk reaction – the attitude, which sounds and feels very much like the culture at large that couples need to be taught how to have sex and avoid children AS A MATTER OF ROUTINE."

    In other words, what Bl. Pope John Paul, with the weight of the teaching magisterium behind him said: "a BROADER, MORE DECISIVE and more systematic effort to make the natural methods of regulating fertility known, respected and applied."

    Mrs. Mike

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  3. Where is NFP being 'sold' the way you explain above? Did you take a poll? Take a course? How did you arrive at this position or get to the point of wanting to write your book? Sincere questions- not an attack. Thx for any assistance. KC

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  4. Mrs. Mike, I would say that if you want to just cite that one sentence from JPII, that I would say the statement is in error. And I AM allowed to say that as a believing Catholic who is faithful to the magisterium. For one thing, JPII’s statement does not mesh very well with centuries of prior teaching.
    Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubiis: “Such wholesome instruction and religious training in regard to Christian marriage will be quite different from that exaggerated physiological education by means of which, in these times of ours, some reformers of married life make pretense of helping those joined in wedlock, laying much stress on these physiological matters, in which is learned rather the art of sinning in a subtle way than the virtue of living chastely.” (par. 108)
    The two popes would seem to have some disagreement here.

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    1. Dr. Boyd, as I have said before, the science of fertility was JUST beginning to be distilled about the same year the encyclical was written, so the popes prior to that time did not address the pertinent moral issue as they hadn't exactly faced it prior to that.

      It sometimes can take a long time for the Church to speak to any particular topic. One example: the idea of the week-end first came about in the first part of the twentieth century. Well it wasn't until the 1980s that the pope addressed it, when he said not to let the observance of the Lord's Day get lost.

      So I think that argument is a bit weak. Since that time Pius XII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XI have said NOTHING to indicate that the "lawful controlling of births" (ahem) is opposed to the natural law. Rather, they have said much to point to the fact that it is fully in accord with the natural law, and divine positive law, (the legitimate practice that is.) And they have the full weight of tradition behind them, so we can trust that they are excellent judges of human nature!

      Mrs. Mike

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  5. KC,the USCCB website's NFP page certainly gives that impression, and I think that's the main thing MV was referring to there. As for how I came to this position and came to the point of wanting to write the book...well, get the book - it explains that part in the preface and the introduction!

    You can also click on the NFP tab at the top of this page and look at the posts that went into the book, although I don't think the preface and intro are listed there, as those are just posts on this blog. The book contains some "extra" material.

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  6. This is a response to Mrs. Mike's second comment in the "black box" above. I suggest everyone avoid using that "reply" option because the reply gets lost in the black box.

    Mrs. Mike, I don’t think that your argument about the “science of fertility” coming to age makes much difference here. The moral principle is the same. Periodic abstinence is to be used for serious reasons; the same goes for NFP, no matter how much more the “science of fertility” has been developed.

    I repeat again the quote from Castii Connubii where Pope Pius XI speaks rather disapprovingly of “ that exaggerated physiological education by means of which, in these times of ours, some reformers of married life make pretense of helping those joined in wedlock, laying much stress on these physiological matters, in which is learned rather the art of sinning in a subtle way than the virtue of living chastely.” (par. 108) I don’t think Pope Pius XI would be persuaded by your “science of fertility” argument.

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  7. Mrs. Mike,

    Where in the teachings of the Church does it say that the conscious, intentional restriction of the marital embrace to infertile periods, purposely frustrating the natural perfection of the act, is a virtue? That's right, nowhere. What the Church DOES say, as Dr. Boyd explains above in her posting, is that such actions are PERMITTED as DISPENSATIONS from the the normal and natural obligations of marriage.

    What is PERMITTED as a DISPENSATION is meant to be in response to what is EXCEPTIONAL, not ROUTINE! No one, not me or Dr. Boyd, is arguing that NFP, as such, is sinful. We are both protesting the loss of perspective so characteristic of NFP presentations and, inevitably (given how it is presented), practiced. Every NFP web site I have visited "sells" NFP as "over 99% effective in postponing pregnancy" ( e.g.,http://www.ccli.org/nfp/) The USCCB web site makes no mention of NFP as anything other than the approved method of Catholic birth control (without actually calling it that).

    Dr. Boyd, and others, are protesting the DISTORTION of Church teaching almost everywhere, including by the American hierarchy. How can something "exceptional" and a "dispensation" create, as two priests are trying to do, "The NFP Centered Parish"? There are "dispensations" for missing Mass on Sunday. Can you imagine a movement that tried to organize "The Missing Mass on Sunday Parish"?

    No one is saying that NFP is not permitted, that there are no circumstances when it is justified. What at least *I* am saying is that what is permitted as an exception should not be taught as if those exceptions are the norm. What SHOULD be taught, as the NORM, is that Catholic parents should EXPECT to have large families. THAT IS the traditional Catholic understanding and vision of marriage. When "bad things happen," there are legitimate dispensations from the norm.

    In what Catholic universe can it be right that a couple should get married and practice NFP for the first several years of their marriage until they finish school, pay off college debts, buy their first house etc.? In a Catholic universe, no couple should be allowed to get married until they are prepared to start a family. If they are not prepared to start a family, then they are getting married ... why? What should sex have to do with their relationship if, from the beginning, they are not prepared to accept the natural perfection of the sexual act? Is THAT what JPII has in mind in what you quote?

    You consistently argue against a straw man, not against anything Dr. Boyd has actually said. If you actually read Dr. Boyd's book, you would see the genesis of her thoughts, how she responds to various Church documents used in defense of NFP, etc. To not know the genesis of her concern is to miss the entire point of everything she has to say, like that mindless article in Crisis Magazine which doesn't understand the problems that people have with NFP practice and teaching. If you read WHY people say what they say, then you have a chance to understand WHAT they say. Read the book!

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  8. I knew this was going to be like touching the "third rail" by Michael Voris. God bless, him, though, he didn't back down. Thank you too, Dr. Boyd for publicizing this.

    I'm sure this is a shocking concept to many Catholics. I can't believe how poorly catechised we are, but ignorance is not bliss.

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  9. I'm glad to have read this; I've read many of your bits on NFP that seemed excessively ANTI NFP whereas this seems more of a reasonable position. I actually don't think I know anyone who views NFP in the way you are warning about.

    I think mostly we disagree on that I think due to modern medicine allowing many many women like me who would have died in childbirth in other times to instead live and continue having children, plus a culture that isn't set up to easily provide for a family with a single breadwinner mean many more families do have extremely serious reasons to abstain, unfortunately, even if for only short periods.
    Things like the prevalence of c-sections also play into it; almost a third of women have c-sections, which, in most cases, limited both the frequency and total number of children a woman can safely have, therefore requiring much more NFP use than is natural.
    I can think of lots of other examples, but anyway I'm glad you wrote this because it really makes me think perhaps the faithful-to-the-magisterium pro and anti NFP crowds may actually have very very similar views and are simply talking past each other. This gives me hope we can work on our rhetoric and realize once again we are all on the same team, so to speak. :)

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  10. Thank you for this, One doesn't need to believe either in NFP or TOB to be a good faithful Catholic

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    1. Yes, they may agree with the historic Catholic view : "The Church rejects any proposal of toleration of all unnatural practices like birth control and birth prevention (NFP). That this practice violates the sacred purpose of matrimony is beyond doubt."

      Of such false teaching the Greek orthodox bishops, even while being in schism, wrote and spoke this profound truth:

      "The laxity of the confessor on the question of birth control, opposing his personal opinions to the official and true doctrine of the Orthodox Church and endorsing such a practice creates great and criminal scandals for which the responsibility of such a priest is tremendous. To him the words of the Lord are directed: 'They are blind leaders of the blind; and if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch'." The official teaching of the Eastern Orthodox Churches is that married people have only two choices morally permissible for them; either to abstain by mutual agreement from marital relations, or to accept such children as God sends."

      - Joint Encyclical Letter issued on October 14, 1937, by Archbishop Chrysostom of Athens, together with fifty-five other Bishops.

      Contraceptive birth control is to be condemned, and also any lax teaching on the subject by individual priests, bishops or Popes.

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  11. There are very few it seems who are aware or willing to understand the Churches teaching on this. Yesterday I read through a post on the Catholic answers fourm (I rarely go there anymore)in which it was argued that because NFP involved work it was therefore immpossible to use it selfishly.

    Seems that the decline in logical thinking is worse than I thought.

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