NFP Awareness Week: Responsible Tomatoes and Providential Roses

I originally posted this on July 25, 2012.

There’s a rose bush in our back yard that’s been there since before we moved in here. It’s off in the corner, far from the nearest water faucet, and so it doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. Nevertheless, it blooms. Every year, I’m amazed at the fruitfulness of this plant. This year, it seems to be particularly prolific.

But then, it’s a rose bush. A rose bush is meant to produce flowers. That’s its natural end. Right? We shouldn’t really be too surprised that a rose bush yields a bunch of roses!

On the other hand, this year I bought three tomato plants, which I have planted in a sunny spot, and watered; and I have even fed them with “Miracle-gro”. They’re green and bushy, looking quite healthy, and they blossomed a while back, so I’ve been waiting for the little tomatoes to appear.

But…after waiting and waiting and waiting, I can only find three actual tomatoes! What’s up with that? I am much more surprised that my tomato plants are barren than that my rose bush has blossomed. The natural end of a tomato plant is to produce tomatoes, is it not?

After some thought, I have discerned that my tomato plants are being responsible. This summer is supposed to be hotter than other summers, and there just might not be enough water for them. If they have to divert their resources to bushels of little tomatoes, they’ll be strapped. They don’t know when I’ll water them again, and they don’t know if there are enough nutrients in that soil I’ve provided. They are wise to limit their progeny.

The rose bush, though, is just being so…providentialist! It knows it might not get watered for days on end! It’s painfully aware of the neglect it’s suffered over the years, I’m sure! And yet…and yet…it is producing a multitude of “offspring”. Has it never heard of being responsible? Has it no concern for how it will provide nourishment for all those new buds?

If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? (Matthew 6:30)

Click on the NFP tab at the top of the page for a list of other NFP posts on this blog.

NFP Awareness Week: "Use NFP: It Doesn't Work!"

Probably one of the funniest, most honest, and most refreshing articles on NFP ever written was authored by Harry Crocker III in 2009 – you can read the whole thing here, and I highly recommend that you do so. Mr. Crocker suggests that NFP promoters need a new slogan, and he suggests this one:

Use NFP: It Doesn’t Work!

Read the article to see what he is talking about, but allow me to share a few tidbits of truth here, excerpted from Mr. Crocker’s piece. He mentions, for instance, the proper attitude toward marriage and child-rearing:

Rather than bite one's nails to the quick at the prospect of baby number ten – which, if one marries in one's early 20s and practices NFP, is a definite possibility – we should encourage the attitude of the more the merrier, which is a far more attractive case to make than all the goo-goo language about how NFP helps couples "communicate" and about the joy of charting temperatures and discharges and plotting one's conjugal acts as a captain might chart a course for his ship.

And, indeed, he presents what probably a lot of men (and perhaps a few women as well!) think about the prospect of “better communication” and “intimate conversation” that is allegedly common amongst NFP couples:

Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, the charts can be thrown away (what's so "natural" about them?). And to hell with improving "communication" as a dogmatic defense of NFP. For men, the whole point of marriage is to avoid communicating; all that dating conversation stuff can finally be foregone. Married communication, as successful husbands know, is best limited to grunts and hand signals – one upraised finger meaning, "I need a beer"; two upraised fingers meaning, "You need to change the brat's diapers"; three upraised fingers meaning, "Honey, why don't you mow the lawn while I watch football?," and so on. No words are more doom-laden than a wife's sitting down and saying, "Let's talk." Communication is, of course, the first step toward divorce.

I particularly enjoyed his ideas for premarital counseling:

So rather than focusing on NFP, premarital preparation should go like this: 

Father O'Counselor: "Now I want you two to understand that the primary and fundamental purpose of marriage is not companionship, not romantic love, not moonlit strolls on the beach, or any other balderdash but the begetting and raising of children – lots of 'em, and starting soon. The optimum number is enough so that you can lose a few at the grocery store and not notice. That's giving without counting the cost, and at that point, you won't care anyway. As a priest, my sacrifice for the good of the Church is celibacy. As a married couple, yours is to propagate children – who will incidentally annually propagate fierce storms of influenza in your house. If you haven't already studied up on communicable diseases and basic first aid for children jumping off sofas, I'd do it now. But you will find children and their challenges to be the great tutor of not only the medical but the moral virtues."

Potential Husband: "You mean, I'm screwed?"

Father O'Counselor: "In a manner of speaking, yes."

Potential Husband: "Is it too late to enroll in the seminary?" 

We can thus improve Catholic marriages and alleviate the priest shortage at the same time.

Go, read the article, and have a good chuckle. And hope that someday we can return to the sane and sensible approach to marriage that Mr. Crocker describes.

NFP Awareness Week: The Disordered Logic of NFP

From an anonymous contributor:

Even if we agree to accept any reason as valid justification for use of NFP, we are left with a very knotty problem that haunts all NFP discussions: “How does one justify the conscious, intentional, and planned indulgence in sexual activities that purposely and purposefully seeks to frustrate the natural perfection of the sexual act?”

In the days before we had all the choices that science gives us today, this was an almost unthinkable problem. We didn't know that one could precisely plan to sow in the fall and winter, when no crops were likely. We always knew enough about seasonal cycles that, if we wanted to grow crops, we had to sow in spring and summer. That's the nature of farming. You do all the work of farming in order to grow crops to harvest in the fall.

But how is it a good thing to sow seeds – intentionally, purposely, purposefully – during a woman's monthly equivalent to fall and winter? Before we had these “modern” choices, married couples just followed common sense and did what married couples have always done: they engaged in the marital embrace when they felt like it. Sometimes it was during the monthly “fall” and “winter”, other times (actually a much narrower time) during “spring” and “summer”. Such couples devoted themselves to the raising of children schooled (hopefully) in the ways of God, helped each work out their salvation in fear and trembling and dependence upon God, and wound up having large families.

It is unimaginable that we could ask couples from the past, “How many children do you plan to have?” Yet today, almost every newly married couple is asked that question. It's just assumed, by our culture, that it is “responsible” to have only the number of children you want and believe you can afford to raise properly. Our Catholic ancestors didn't have such choices, and in that respect they were closer to consecrated religious: just as with farmers, life itself invited them to trust in God more than themselves. If circumstances were dire, they were intelligent enough and disciplined enough to abstain from the marital embrace.

If we focus on the sexual act all by itself, independent of where and how it occurs, it is fairly obvious that it has one, single purpose: procreation. If we focus on the sexual act all by itself within marriage, it can be said to have the additional purpose of “mutual comfort of the spouses and remedy for concupiscence” (which has morphed into the “unitive end” in current jargon). The sexual act actually demands, all by itself, the context of marriage for perfection so, even outside of marriage, the sexual act intends both procreation (which is always possible, regardless of circumstances) and “union” in its anticipation of the context of marriage. Once again we see the “both/and” proposition, and it isn't even necessary to consult Catholic teaching to conclude this. A sexual act which concludes in procreation but which doesn't respect the actual or anticipated spousal union is disordered. So is a sexual act which consciously, intentionally, purposely and purposefully seeks to avoid procreation.

Logically, then, the intention to enter the marital embrace, while at the same time intending to avoid its perfection, is disordered – because any sexual act which rejects either procreation or union is disordered. Conversely, any sexual act which accepts and honors both procreation and union is governed by right reason. Following this thread, let us recall that our ability to order our acts by right reason is corrupted by concupiscence, and that sex is particularly vulnerable to concupiscence – even in marriage. When a couple desires to engage in the marital act, but also takes steps to avoid procreation – they are succumbing to concupiscence. If we look honestly at NFP, then, we see a remedy for concupiscence, rather than a virtuous “self-giving”. Husband and wife wish to have the physical and emotional enjoyment afforded by the marital embrace, but they want to avoid the proper end of that act – parenthood. The practice of NFP, then, can often result in the marital act being disordered, and the more the couple charts and thinks about and plans when to engage in the marital embrace, the more disordered their lives become, because “sex” has become the focal point of their daily thoughts.

But the Church, right now, apparently condones – and at times seems to actually encourage – this intentionally sterile sexual activity. How can this be? Why would the Church encourage something that is, at bottom, disordered sexuality? Remember: what makes this activity disordered is the conscious, intentional, purposeful plan and attendant actions to defeat the purpose of the sexual act (now that we have the choices we do, one of those choices is to choose to have sex that is disordered; before we had these choices, we just had sex!). It seems likely that the Church is responding to the culture and, to use the words of Our Lord, we have hardened our hearts. Jesus said that Moses allowed divorce because of the hardness of peoples' hearts, “but it was not always so from the beginning.” The same notion seems to apply here: the Church is allowing something due to the hardness of our hearts, the deplorable state of our hypersexualized culture. NFP is a permitted remedy given the hardness of our hearts, “but it was not always so from the beginning.” We shouldn't be promoting anything that is a remedy for “hardness of heart” except the Truth.

There you have it – your NFP Awareness lesson for the week: Be aware that the logic of NFP is disordered.

NFP Awareness Week Should Have a Different Tone

I'm posting this week because I'm annoyed.

Every year, the USCCB-promoted “NFP Awareness Week” sneaks up on me, and it always annoys me. When will they sponsor a week that promotes large families?

It wouldn’t annoy me if the “awareness” involved teaching couples that they don’t need to use NFP at all; that it is only permitted when the couple has a “grave reason” for doing so; and that if the reason is really serious, maybe complete abstinence for a while is the safer route.

That is not the picture painted by the USCCB and most NFP-promoters, however.

This year, the USCCB’s theme for the week is summed up in this banner and poster from their website:

National NFP Awareness Week - JULY 19 - JULY 25, 2015

2015 theme:
All Natural!
Natural Family Planning
Good for the body. Great for the soul!

"Celebrate and reverence God's vision of human sexuality."
Discover Natural Family Planning

 

I object! What's natural about abstaining from the conjugal act precisely at the time of the woman's cycle when she is most open to that act, and when she is most attractive to her husband?! What's natural is to engage in the conjugal embrace at those times; and doing so results in...babies! THAT is God's plan!

The USCCB promotion makes NFP sound like God’s gift to couples! And that is absolutely NOT what it is. NFP is primarily a concession to our concupiscence. NFP is permitted because couples are not always able to practice abstinence for a long period of time - even if serious reasons make it necessary - because of the weakness we suffer in the face of our passions. “Periodic continence” is permitted so that couples won’t resort to artificial contraception.

But NFP is not a virtue, and it is not a gift. It is not “great for the soul”, and it is not a part of “God’s vision of human sexuality.”

For an explanation of my stance on this issue, feel free to read any of the articles listed under the “NFP” tab at the top of this page.

For a more complete and integrated version of my view of the problem of NFP, consider reading my book, Natural Family Planning: Trojan Horse in the Catholic Bedroom?

Here’s an excerpt from the book; this is additional material to that which is available on this blog. This is my introduction to the chapter (and blog post) called “NFP is Not Required”:

It seems to be generally presumed that NFP is used by only 2-3% of Catholic couples. I’m not sure where this figure comes from, but even the NFP promoters don’t quibble about it too much; I’ve seen some suggest that the figure is too low, but they don’t propose that it’s any higher than 5%.

For some time, there has been a movement afoot in the US to increase the use of NFP among married Catholic couples. The Couple-to-Couple League has promoted it for decades, and there are blogs and networks and various and sundry groups seeking to popularize NFP. Currently, the USCCB’s website sports a whole section on NFP that paints it in glowing terms, and doesn’t give more than lip service (if that) to the notion of “serious reasons”. The USCCB has suggested that every diocese should have an NFP office, and that NFP classes should be required for couples who want to get married in the Church. Many dioceses and parishes currently do so. 

Why is this? There is no Church doctrine or teaching to support the idea that every couple should be schooled in the intricacies of NFP! There is no Church teaching that requires the faithful to limit their family size! In fact, the only time such an idea has been even hinted at has been in the last 50 years – ever since Vatican II and Gaudium et Spes¸ with its notion of “responsible parenthood” and the idea that times have changed, and the Church has to change with them. Prior to that, we were more likely to see generous parenthood praised: large families were seen as a blessing, and as the source of vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

But currently, it’s easy to find voices that are clamoring for NFP to be required, and it seems to be the idea of “responsible” parenthood that lies beneath this requirement. Couples are encouraged to consider whether they can “afford” another child, whether their financial, emotional, and psychological resources will bear up under the strain of more children.

But the fact remains: the Church does not require the use of NFP in marriage, and in fact asks that such use be limited. NFP should be used only for “serious” reasons. It’s not required.

Special Announcement: "Preferential Option for the Family" Booklet

Special Announcement!

Recently, three prelates authored a 60-page booklet entitled Preferential Option for the Family, designed to catechize the faithful regarding Church teaching on marriage and the family. Archbishop Aldo de Cillo Pagotto of Paraíba, Brazil, Bishop Robert Vasa of Santa Rosa, CA, and Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary of Astana, Kazakhstan, present 100 questions and answers about the Synod on the Family, providing a welcome defense of Church teaching on marriage and family. 

[The above is the first paragraph of my article at Church Militant; read the rest here. Also, I am writing semi-regularly for CM, and you can see a list of my previous articles here.]

This little booklet is well worth reading. It probably won’t please those who harbor a desire for a change in Church teaching regarding the reception of Holy Communion by the divorced-and-remarried, but it provides a wonderful resource for the defense of the doctrine by faithful Catholics. It also gives some insights into and evaluations of the processes involved in the staging of the Synod on the Family.

These prelates pull no punches! They will prepare you for any “surprises” that might erupt in the Synod this fall, so that you may respond knowledgeably and confidently to any threats to Church doctrine.

Today (Monday, July 13, 2015), Church Militant has aired a Vortex touting this book. Here it is! Go to the Church Militant website to see the transcript.

Church Militant has probably already run out of the copies they are handing out for free, but complimentary copies of the booklet can be obtained by emailing supplicafiliale@gmail.com

A New Children's Book from Russ Voris

Here's another special announcement:


Michael Voris's father, Russ Voris, has written a very sweet children's book! It's illustrated by a young teenager. This episode of the Vortex gives the background and info on ordering. 

I'm very emotionally invested in this little book, as I helped with the editing and formatting and getting it all set up on CreateSpace for sale.

Please click on the link and watch the video! And if you have young children in your life, order them a copy!

The Vortex—Rainbow Fairies


Here are two photos of the interior:

:

New Church Militant Website!

Another random update...

Have you seen the new Church Militant website? It's no longer ChurchMilitant.TV, but ChurchMilitant.com! It's really a class act, and packed with news and information. Don't forget to sign up for a premium account ($10 per month).

Go now! Check it out: ChurchMilitant.com.  You'll find the Vortex, of course, as well as news headlines, and lots more. When you view the Vortex, you now see the script printed out right below the video, so you can read along, or read alone if you prefer.

On the latest "Mic'd Up", Voris and crew gave an overview of the website - you can watch it here. 

And...I am pleased to announce that I am listed as one of the "Contributing Writers"! I consider this quite an honor. I have an article there now, entitled "God Loves Sex" (not - read the article!). I hope to have other articles there in the future.

Also, there's currently an update on Fr. Matthew Despard, about whom I've written before - he's the Scottish priest who blew the whistle on the homosexual priest scandal there in his e-book Priesthood in Crisis. (The Kindle book was removed from Amazon in the UK, but is still available in the US.)