Whatever Made Me Think I Had Choices?

I recently found on my bookshelf a Catholic Update from 1983 titled “Fifteen Years After Humanae Vitae: Birth Control and the Conscientious Catholic.”  This four-page, monthly paper is published by St. Anthony Messenger Press, not exactly a bastion of liberalism.   And, yet, it concludes by asking couples to make up their own minds on the topic, to follow their consciences.     

Kenneth Overberg, SJ, begins the article by conjecturing that many will say it’s unnecessary, the polar positions being that Humanae Vitae is the final word which  must be followed no matter what and that it’s nonsense.  The aim of this Update is to help those in the middle deal conscientiously with the matter.

This Update would have come into my home about the time my husband and I were attending NFP workshops.  At that time my bookshelf contained a copy of Humane Vitae, a weighty book with a bright yellow dustcover, but I don’t think I ever got around to reading much of it.  This Update, however, looks well read.  

The author writes first about papal teachings in general.  Even infallible statements, such as Humanae Vitae, should be respected as guides to Christian living.   In Humanae Vitae Pope Paul praises human dignity, the meaningfulness of sexuality and the responsibility entailed in parenthood.  What stirred controversy, however, is the complete prohibition of contraception as an "intrinsic evil."  The unitive and procreative aspects of sex must not be separated.  Every act of sexual intercourse must be open to conception.  NFP is acceptable because it takes passive advantage of a woman’s natural cycle of fertility without involving a positive act against conception.

Pope John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio reaffirms Humanae Vitae’s stance against artificial birth control, which prevents the complete self-giving of husband and wife.  NFP, on the other hand, encourages dialogue, respect, shared responsibility and self-control.

National conferences of bishops demonstrated a range of reactions to the papal teachings of Paul and John Paul regarding birth control.  Both the German and the Scandinavian bishops stressed placing one’s conscience above following an encyclical that does not convince.  They added that no such dissenter should be considered a “bad Catholic.” The Canadian bishops issued a statement in which they stressed “a spirit of openness to the teaching of the Church” but also the assurance that “whoever honestly chooses the course which seems right to him does so in good conscience.”  After the Canadian bishops presented Pope Paul VI with a copy of their statement, they heard back from their apostolic delegate that the Pope was “quite satisfied with their interpretation.”  In Human Life in Our Day, on the other hand, the American bishops reiterated Paul’s language, calling contraception an “objective evil.” 

US theologians did not necessarily agree with the US bishops.  Richard McCormick, SJ, criticized Humanae Vitae for making biology and natural processes the basis for morality when the criterion should be the whole person, not one aspect only.  Many contemporary theologians agreed with McCormick.  To them, the papal documents looked outmoded.

The Update goes on to explain the workings of conscience.  The author calls conscience the self asking, “What ought I to do?” and “What ought I to be?”  The first dimension of conscience is general moral awareness—knowing right from wrong.  The second is the search for specific moral values—the search for truth.  The third is concrete judgment—faced with conflicting moral values and in the light of the search for truth, making a choice. 

It seems to me that the mature, conscious consideration and decision making that this article advocates would turn us all into "Cafeteria Catholics."  Given the rich and varied fare of the Catholic spread, in the end we must make choices.  Not to do so would render us either starving or stuffed and sick. 

When we were teenagers, the brother a year older than I said, "Barbara, you're a born follower."  He may have been right.  With any novel idea, there seems to be a lag before I catch up with bolder, more original thinkers.  When, after ten years of NFP, I switched to the diaphragm it was not in the spirit of revolt.  The seeds had been sown by the views I’d been exposed to in my reading and in the zeitgeist—not just outside the Church but inside as well.

After three natural childbirths and three breastfed babies, the natural and holistic method of NFP had fit right in.  And yet, although I deplore the high rate of C-sections, I would have wanted to have one if the life of me or my baby depended on it.  I would have bottle fed a baby if he failed to thrive on my milk.  I would have accepted painkillers if natural techniques failed.  And so when during menopause NFP became so very chancy I turned to a surer, artificial method.

Feeling Trapped in NFP

I've found a couple of other blogs by Catholic mothers of young children.  Like Conversion Diary, these blogs are written by Moms who practice only NFP to space children or avoid conception altogether.  Most of the posts and comments on the topic of NFP are upbeat.  In one comment, however, a young woman complains bitterly.  She writes that she was raised by parents who practiced NFP and that her mother was a fanatic on the subject.  The young woman herself has stayed the course but fears it's ruining her marriage.  She thinks that her Protestant friends who use artificial contraception have happier marriages.  NFP permits sex at the time of the month when she's least interested in it and prohibits it when she's most interested.  She's ready to quit but can't get up the nerve.

A Tale of Three Sisters

Once upon a time a long time ago there were three sisters close in age who married young.  Over the next dozen years, each had a half dozen or so children.  Each sister loved her children and loved being a mother but eventually wanted the babies to stop coming.  Each talked things over with her husband.  Two went on to consult their doctors and compassionate priests.  These two went on the Pill, had no more pregnancies and lived happily ever after.

The third sister had no more pregnancies either.  She did not consult a doctor or a priest on the matter because her husband was one hundred percent against artificial birth control.  Over the next few years, onlookers noticed a rift widening between the couple that did not lessen even as the husband became ill and died a premature death.  It took the grieving widow several years to come to terms with the suffering she and her husband had undergone as a result of their inability to find common ground, and during that time she stayed away from church.  Eventually, she regained her naturally buoyant spirit, returned to the sacraments and went on to live happily ever after.

 

Unanticipated Stair-Step Offspring in a Planned-Family World

Jennifer Fulwiler, the blogger responsible for Conversion Diary, describes herself as a convert from atheism to Catholicism.  Her first pregnancy led her and her husband to Catholicism, and complications following the birth led them to the practice of Natural Family Planning.  As part of that fraction for whom NFP fails to prevent pregnancy, she had four children in  five years.  And before her first, she didn’t consider herself all that fond of children!  Jennifer is a marvelous writer, and, despite the upheaval of her expectations, obviously a marvelous mother.  Obviously, too, she has ordered her life in such a way that she has time to devote to blogging, to other writing and to reading and responding to her fans.  

A day or two after discovering Jennifer's blog, I came across a guest column by her in my diocesan newspaper and found that now, besides expecting her sixth child, she is also participating in a documentary/reality TV special called Minor Revisions.   Her story reminds me of other mothers of unanticipated stair-step children who found in motherhood their true vocation--while continuing to pursue avocations.  I’m thinking of a good friend from years ago who got pregnant with each of her first four children using one or another form of artificial contraception.  My friend, too, was a marvelous mother and after a fifth little "caboose" took up graduate studies and went on to get a PhD. 

Protestant Couple Ditches Birth Control on Road to Rome

According to the Natural Family Planning website, about one out of one hundred Catholic couples of childbearing age practice NFP.  That suggests to me that at every Mass with a good-sized congregation there are two or three couples who practice NFP.  If you are one of them, I'd love it if you'd share your story in this blog.  Meanwhile, I'm resorting to the printed word.  In Rome Sweet Home, the story of their gradual conversion to Catholicism, Scott and Kimberly Hahn recount their decision to foreswear artificial birth control--first to use NFP and ultimately to submit to God's will by letting nature take its course.  (I'd love to hear from any of you who've done likewise.)

Kimberly and Scott Hahn met at a Christian college and married following graduation in 1979.  In pre-marital counseling, the young couple was asked what birth control they would use.  Planning a family and spacing children was seen by their mentors and their peers as "reasonable and responsible."  Kimberley didn’t know any married friends who didn’t practice birth control.

Scott began a three-year Master of Divinity program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary; the next year Kimberley enrolled in a two-year Master of Arts in Theology program in the same seminary.  Staunch Evangelicals, they describe themselves as anti-Catholic at this point in their faith journeys.  In a course on Christian ethics, Kimberly’s involvement in the pro-life movement led her to join a small group studying contraception.  When one of the members dismissed the Catholic viewpoint as unworthy of consideration because for one thing the Pope wasn’t married and secondly the Catholic Church merely wanted to build up its numbers, Kimberly said she thought there must be more to it than that and decided to make the Catholic position her focus. 

She studied Humanae Vitae and other documents of the Catholic Church.  She reread Scripture passages in light of her reading and meditated on them.  She read anything else in the field that pertained and was especially struck by Birth Control and the Marriage Covenant (later retitled Sex and the Marriage Covenant) by John Kippley, who wrote from the Roman Catholic point of view.  Kippley writes that children are the primary purpose of marriage and that to squelch that end is to profane the marriage act.  He compares contraception to the feasting and vomiting practiced by ancient Romans and declares it contrary to natural law and to the marriage covenant.

Covenant had special meaning for the Hahns as Scott was making covenant theology the focus of his study.  Just as the love among the persons of the Trinity results in new life, so in the marriage act new life results, the child embodying covenant oneness.  If the marriage act is sacred, contraception is profane.

In the Bible, Kimberly found, children are always described as a blessing.  She found no biblical blessings for family planning or the spacing of children.  Fertility was to be "prized and celebrated."  Before 1930, no Christian sect countenanced birth control under any circumstances.  Luther, Calvin and the other Protestant reformers remained in accord with Rome on their condemnation of contraception.  Kimberly began to wonder whether her understanding of contraception had been shaped more by popular opinion and the media than by the Word of God.  She and Scott had trusted so much of their lives to God.  Were they holding back in this one area?  Could God be trusted with the right timing?  Furthermore, as they looked around at the other young couples among their classmates, they saw that the planning of children did not appear to be necessarily under human control. 

One day a member of her study group commented that Kimberly seemed convinced of the wrongness of contraception and asked whether she and Scott still practiced it.  She replied with the fable of the hen and the pig who feel so grateful to Farmer Brown that they decide to prepare him a feast.  The hen proposes a ham and egg breakfast but the pig demurs.  “For you,” he says, “that would be a donation.  But for me it would be a total commitment.”

Not long after that, the Hahns made the total commitment by throwing out their contraceptives.  For a few months they practiced Natural Family Planning, which they saw as a kind of fasting.  Then they concluded that they did not have the serious circumstances NFP was meant for and decided to leave themselves entirely open to God’s will.  When Kimberly became pregnant before their graduations, they downgraded their plans for Scott to pursue a PhD and instead he accepted a post as a minister.  They eventually had five children; Kimberly had three miscarriages as well.