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.

Rules

My parents, both born in 1908, were faithful Catholics.  They were not immigrants to America or the children of immigrants.  They were well read and well informed.  They didn’t go in for special devotions and novenas.  Neither had ever attended a Catholic school.  Aside from weekly Mass, we didn’t pray together as a family, not even grace before meals.  My father said once he didn’t believe in offering up a prayer that every cake in the oven not fall.  They were, nevertheless, dyed-in-the-wool Catholics, by which I mean their religion was not superficially stenciled onto them but central to who they were. They were mindful of the rules of good living and of the rules of the Church.  We didn’t eat meat on Friday; we attended Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation; my parents observed the fasts imposed on those between the ages of 14 and 59 during Lent and (bygone) Ember Days.

And I'm almost certain the only birth control method acceptable to their consciences was abstinence.  I don't remember hearing from the altar the warnings Odette describes in an earlier post.  Maybe they were reserved for the confessional.  Or for the missions.  I remember the mission fathers as fat and jolly souls.  That’s the impression their introductory Sunday sermons made.  An aunt of mine, a convert to Catholicism, told me after I was grown up that one evening towards the end of each mission, the married women were ushered to the church basement for a talk designed especially for them.  I gather this was a fire and brimstone approach to the church’s teaching on birth control.  My gentle and deeply compassionate aunt found these sessions excruciating--and recalled them with a flash of anger.

My mother, too, harbored some anger towards the Church that she loved.  Fifty years ago, home from freshman year in college, I said to her that I didn't think the Church had always been fair to women and was surprised that she agreed.  One evening twenty years ago, I pressed upon her my copy of the new Catechism.  She handed it back the next day.  I think that she saw it as a new set of rules and that at eighty-plus she'd had enough.

An 87 Year Old Looks Back

I knew the Church said it was a sin to practice birth control, but I never felt that way.  I was married in 1952 at age 27.  My firstborn came a year later.  After that we practiced rhythm, and my husband was fine with it.  Our second child was born two years later and our third three years after that.  Then my husband and I were both ready to practice a surer method.  I never thought birth control was wrong.  I know there are three conditions necessary for a sin to be serious.  One is full consent of the will.  I knew in my heart I couldn’t give full consent. 

 

In confession, when I first started on the Pill, the priest said he couldn’t give me absolution unless I promised not to use the Pill again.  I told him I couldn’t make that promise.  I left the confessional and haven’t been to private confession since.  What do I have to confess?  I gossiped about someone?  I entertained an unkind thought?  I go to the communal penance services in our parish.  I love the communal services.  I kept going to communion and I continued my involvement in parish activities.  For some years now, I’ve been a lector.  I’ve never felt guilty about my decision.

I went on to have a fourth child, using the Pill in between.  I always knew I wanted more children.  I just didn’t want to have them all at once.  My children are spaced two, three and four years apart.  If I had my life to live over, I’d have had six children.  I’m crazy about babies.  I was content at the time but my four have turned out so well—their spouses, too—that I wish I had two more.