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Elizabeth
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I can't sit here very long to dig things up. A friend of mine really could use some help refuting this article. Any takers?
Among other things, the author asserts the following:
which says this:
Very often it is said that natural family planning is restricted to hard cases, that for its legitimate use a serious reason is required. But such a judgment is based upon no magisterial text that I am aware of; in fact, the chief texts do not say this at all. [2]
some other dubious points made:
"I should point out first of all, that our intention does not constitute the only criterion of morality"
and
"any use of Humanae Vitae to try to show that serious reasons are required for the licit use of NFP is simply based on an error."
and
"the Magisterium has never required serious or grave reasons for its use."
and
"if parents are stressed or constantly tired or overworked, they are not apt to be the best educators of their children. "
"not everyone is capable of heroic virtue."
"With the absence of extended families, with denatured food, [17] with often stressful commutes and even the evil (sometimes necessary) of both parents working outside the home, married life has difficulties that were largely unknown in earlier times. It seems as if God provided for the knowledge of female fertility at exactly the right time in the history of mankind, at the time when the increasing complexities of modern life would make such knowledge helpful and even in a sense necessary for modern families"
Apparently although we have the finest healthcare in the history of time, and wealth beyond what was enjoyed in any era, we have unacceptable circumstances for openess to life now.
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Elizabeth Foss is no longer a member of this forum. Discussions now reflect the current management & are not necessarily expressions of her book, *Real Learning*, her current work, or her philosophy. (posted by E. Foss, Jan 2011)
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JodieLyn
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I have read in reputable places that "grave reasons" or "serious reasons" isn't the best translation.. but that "just reasons" is closer.
You know.. most of this is clearified in the Art of Natural Family Planning..
I just read the article quickly, and it really does seem accurate but partial. I'm not seeing much on the call to generosity in planning our families for instance. And so it is giving a lopsided view.
for instance this quote
"Parents will remind themselves that it is certainly less serious to deny their children certain comforts or material advantages than to deprive them of the presence of brothers and sisters." - Pope John Paul II in his homily on Oct. 7, 1979
And others where generosity is called for are conspicuously absent.
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Maddie
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If we can't trust HPR, who can we trust? Who is on the side of openess to life today? I am so discouraged by this article, I have no help to offer, just frustration to vent.
Elizabeth wrote:
Apparently although we have the finest healthcare in the history of time, and wealth beyond what was enjoyed in any era, we have unacceptable circumstances for openess to life now.
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Exactly. Funny how you can have a TV, DVD player, microwave oven today and be considered to "poor". My grandparents had 10 children, were migrant workers and lived in a one bedroom house while they raised their children. Should they have not have had ANY according to this article? The author is about to take the slippery slope ride.
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JodieLyn
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You know I was just thinking he also has pretty well denigrated the hard work parents of large families put in to be some sort of inborn talent.. oh you can do 8 children as easily as 2. Yeah right.. it's hard work. And there is no substitute for doing the hard work. Just the willingness to do it.
But as I said above.. he's playing that game of telling a lie by using portions of the truth. Everything he quoted was the truth.. BUT he left out the whole other side.
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Willa
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Sara P quoted Humanae Vitae on this thread
Quote:
First, no 'grave reasons' are not defined anywhere in black and white. That is, there is no official list of what qualifies as a grave reason and what doesn't.
Humanae Vitae says:
With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time.
Responsible parenthood, as we use the term here, has one further essential aspect of paramount importance. It concerns the objective moral order which was established by God, and of which a right conscience is the true interpreter. In a word, the exercise of responsible parenthood requires that husband and wife, keeping a right order of priorities, recognize their own duties toward God, themselves, their families and human society.
From this it follows that they are not free to act as they choose in the service of transmitting life, as if it were wholly up to them to decide what is the right course to follow. On the contrary, they are bound to ensure that what they do corresponds to the will of God the Creator. The very nature of marriage and its use makes His will clear, while the constant teaching of the Church spells it out.
And that's about a specific as you will find in the official teachings of the Church. |
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I agree with Jodie Lyn.... I imagine the author is correct on factual points. He's discussing one side of the question, though, and mostly leaving out the other.
My Latin dictionary defines "serius" as "serious, grave, solemn" and not just "opposite to frivolous and lighthearted" as he said in the footnote to his article. FWTIW. Obviously serious means different things in different cases (as the pope says above -- psychological, physical, economic etc).
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Kim F
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I started a long post and lost it. I would be the friend and I thank Elizabeth for fwd'ing the conversation here. In the middle of trying to tackle my file cabinets we had this come up on a local list.Background - local diocesan paper had an nfp insert that focused rather heavily on the postponing aspect. A lady wrote in in praise of providential family planning. A teaching couple responded that 'trust in God is ideal' but that 'if we told people that they would reject us as crazy.
I piped in saying likely they would but that Catholicism has always been considered crazy. That can't deter us from presenting the whole message that nfp is not to be default mode for Catholics. It is a plan B when the ideal is not possible for grave and serious reasons.
At first the other moderator shut it down completely. Then it was moved. Finally got that worked out but then the official teaching couple for the diocese sent that link suggesting that grave and serious reasons really weren't necessary. To me it is a distortion of historic Church teaching on the matter and does indeed give couples the idea that nfp can be default mode.
This is evidenced by one woman who said:
"Some of us choice to homeschool our children and some of us don't. Some of us use contraception, NFP or nothing to make a family. Some of us go to church every Sunday, everyday, just on holidays or never. We all make the choice right or wrong. But wrong for one family may be right for another and vise versa."
Sorry but to me this smacks of moral relativism. But it is typical of the replies that imply that nfp (for postponing)is perfectly acceptable standard operating procedure unless you have discerned a 'call' to be open. It was my understanding that the reverse was true.
I also resent the inference that our times are especially hard to function in. Yes, the pope was right in 1950 when many Catholics in Europe were recovering from war. I find it hard to swallow that many of Catholics through time ever enjoyed the privileges Westerners do today - medically, financially, and otherwise. Which explains my rant at the end of her post. Just seems to be taking what was a legitimate articulation and twisting it to apply it to situations it was never meant for as Msgr Burke says:
"Catholic couples, too, have been deeply affected by the family
planning mentality,
to the extent that a "planned" family is often presented as a norm
in pre-marriage
instruction. Most of our young people marrying today probably regard
natural family
planning as a normal part of marriage; many, for whom it was never
designed, are
experiencing its effects on their married life."
So anyway am at a loss, frustrated, and need to finish the bleepin' file cabinets ; )
Kim
Kim
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Kim F
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<<he also has pretty well denigrated the hard work parents of large families put in to be some sort of inborn talent..>>
Yes! How many of us have heard well, you must be very organized, patient, healthy,etc etc. In fact most of us who have large families are not all of the above. If we are any of those things it is BECAUSE of our children. Having large families created a need to exercise virtues we could well have avoided otherwise. How many of us started out our families thinking 'whooey, I bet I could have a truckload of kids I have such 'inborn talent'. Not.
I think of Zelie Martin and Gianna Molla and other saints who would likely be considered irresponsible and unenlightened by today's standards. By today's Catholic standards even.
Kim
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MicheleQ
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Maddie wrote:
| If we can't trust HPR, who can we trust? Who is on the side of openess to life today? I am so discouraged by this article, I have no help to offer, just frustration to vent. |
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I understand but this is exactly why we have to know these things for ourselves and be able to explain and correct if necessary. He is skewing some things and that needs correction.
Kim F wrote:
This is evidenced by one woman who said:
"Some of us choice to homeschool our children and some of us don't. Some of us use contraception, NFP or nothing to make a family. Some of us go to church every Sunday, everyday, just on holidays or never. We all make the choice right or wrong. But wrong for one family may be right for another and vise versa." |
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A Catholic wrote this? Moral relativism indeed - the woman is flat out wrong. Why aren't these people reading the CCC? Contraception is intrinsically evil and that's never OK - for anyone! (I know you know that Kim, I'm just ranting).
I just looked again at Covenanted Happiness and I think Msgr. Burke speaks so well to this issue when he writes;
"Open-to-life sexual relations are the normal expression of married affection, and alone fulfil the conjugal instinct. To encourage people, without serious reason, to abstain from such relations is to place an unnecessary and unjustified strain on the solidity of their married life. The conjugal instinct which draws people to marry is not a mere sexual instinct, nor is it satisfied just through the companionship and love of a spouse. It looks to the fruit of that love."
"In other words, people are naturally drawn to marriage by a deep desire for fatherhood or motherhood. It is not at all difficult, in pre-marriage instruction, to help them realize that having children is not opposed to self-realization but is rather one of the most basic natural expressions of the human desire to fulfil oneself. Are we not in danger today of downgrading the privilege and the personalist dimension of parenthood?"
"It seems to me that the way family planning has at times been presented to our Catholic people in the past decades has not always reflected the true married personalism of Vatican II. Many programs for family planning have taken practically no account of the "serious reasons" needed to justify it, and (at a deeper level) have seemed oblivious of the aspect of privation that it involves. Rather than being presented as an extraordinary recourse for couples in special difficulties, it has been presented as a norm and even - one gets the impression - as a formula for happiness and as some sort of ideal for Catholic married life."
"This results in the impoverishment of the true christian vision of marriage and of the fulfillment that marriage promises."
--------
Amen!
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Michele Quigley
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JodieLyn
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oh Kim, I needed this...
Quote:
| 'whooey, I bet I could have a truckload of kids I have such 'inborn talent'. Not |
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First real good laugh I've had all day.. and I needed one.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
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Bridget
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I've been trying to research the author of the article in H&PR, Thomas Storck. He definitely runs with the big boys of Catholic intellectual thought. He seems solid on most moral issues.
I think this is just a lopsided piece. In other writings he stresses the importance of supporting those who are generous and open to large families.
It's worth further discussion about why some people, possibly even this author, don't get it.
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MicheleQ
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Kim F wrote:
| Yes! How many of us have heard well, you must be very organized, patient, healthy,etc etc. In fact most of us who have large families are not all of the above. If we are any of those things it is BECAUSE of our children. Having large families created a need to exercise virtues we could well have avoided otherwise. How many of us started out our families thinking 'whooey, I bet I could have a truckload of kids I have such 'inborn talent'. Not. |
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Yes yes yes! Oh I get so tired of this. I know people mean well but it's not the compliment they think it is. These children are my path to salvation and have forced me to cultivate certain habits and virtues that I KNOW I would not have had the impetus to otherwise cultivate. Never mind the fact that I still have so far to go!
God bless,
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JodieLyn
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A very interesting question Bridget
Quote:
| It's worth further discussion about why some people, possibly even this author, don't get it |
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In some ways I think it's the culture we're in.. the emphasis is so strong on *family planning* even NFP is "natural family planning".. and you grow up steeped in the idea that to plan you decide when to get pregnant and how many children to have etc. Even those who are not using even NFP for spacing, just letting babies come when it happens.. you'll hear their kids talk about wanting 10 children or whatever. Somehow there is this idea that we need to decide on numbers.
I do know that it was only after using NFP for a time that I grasped the idea that using it wasn't the default. That you needed a reason to use it and the rest of the time you didn't do anything.. that the default should be to let conception happen when/if it happened.
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G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
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Nina Murphy
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Ironically, the words Elizabeth quoted from the article are the same arguments used by people to explain to us why God does not have a problem with us using artificial contraception, or more specifically: defending myself through sterilization.
It is not even so much, I have found, the question anymore about if it is permissible to use NFP in this or that circumstance, but the opposite: it is NOT permissible NOT to. Was there a time in history when people simply accepted that the conception of children was always a possibility associated with marriage, even in the most dire of circumstances, and that it was really not something ultimately controllable by anyone other than the Creator (if fulfilling the marital vows faithfully)?
My difficulty has come from experiencing good, orthodox Catholic counselors/advisors/doctors expecting the implementation of NFP as a given...that there is NO choice in our circumstance. "God has made it clear. Cant' you see God is trying to tell you something?" We are told: we MUST get up to speed with it and learn to start having self-control (and to me: to start saying NO and teaching my husband some self-control) if there is going to be a light at the end of the tunnel.
Sometimes I long for a time before NFP was "invented" as a scientific method (you all know what I mean  ) and I was considered just a normal woman who God had happened to give quite a bit to...and well, "He must have a reason, and maybe she isn't holding up so well, but she should count her blessings", la la la la la ha ha ha. "That's just life.....sometimes it's hard...but oh, those beautiful chidlren!"....and "they'll all get their rest someday" and "since she just has to bear it anyway...what can WE do to assist and make it more bearable?" etc, etc, etc. There was more sympathy given. Less blame to the woman for being stupid and going and "allowing" conception again. Perhaps more charity and support shown? Instead I have met with: Of COURSE you can't handle things/God doesn't expect you to....you have chosen poorly...you are insane...this is what you get.
Imagine living in times when we didnt' think we had to make the choice, but that it was God's choice, how much simpler things may have been mentally and socially on certain levels. Where was the blame given if stressed by life? Maybe more on God. But then it would be an opportunity for soul-searching and fine tuning what is really believed about God, our dependence upon Him, and the spirtiual life. Maybe it sounds like a cop-out, I dont' know, and I apologize if it does....but it would be nice to not have to analyze it all, to not be under the scrutiny of what is the motivation behind not implementing it, "what is the problem, the weakness, the addiction to children..." but rather to be one of many women (the majority, not the exception) who accept it, even if fatalistically but hopefully not, as their "lot in life". Please follow my philosophizing. Of course the ideal is to love His Will and not sigh through it. I have a loooong way to go, but I do try in little baby steps to hopefully grow in docility and trust to see "His plan" in all of it.
We are living in times where this line of thought has become mainstream, among Catholics, in the Church. Spacing and limiting and controlling family size is assumed with the normal practicing Catholic or Christian. I get incredulous looks when people see our family, stop and say, "Well, YOU must be religious!" and we say, "yes we are: we are Catholic". They don't understand: "But I know tons of Catholics and that's not what they practice/believe." We no longer hear the "you must be Mormon or Catholic" which should make Catholics proud. People do not associate large families with Catholicism anymore.
Maybe we should consider that the message our families send when out in the world is "they must be religious" without even saying a word. Yes, we are the sign of contradiction and "fools" to the world, but the world is also intrigued and taking notice---even if in disgust. I get tired of having to "witness" everywhere I go, but it is also my pride and joy to know my children will speak for me at the gates, no matter how devastatingly hard it has been, and that I was NOT "capable of heroic virtue" but God knows that.
Sorry if I rambled
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~~Nina
mother of 9 on earth,
and 2 yet-to-be-met
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Nina Murphy
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You know, I had a thought while going downstairs to get my bedtime snack that my tone may have sounded bitter, and I wanted to apologize----I'm tired.
The first paragraph Michelle quoted from Msgr. Burke perfectly "explains" us, this particular B.and N. couple, this particular Murphy family. It sums it up. I need to face that his is not the commonly held view and not feel self-piteous for constantly having to defend it. But of course, I realize so well, that there ARE serious reasons couples are called by God to faithfully practice periodic continence and that they do not have a similar experience, nor are they called to our particular life.
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Kim F
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Nina don't apologize. You didn't sound bitter you sounded nostalgic, pining for a time when the beauty of conception was accepted and supported. Where women could expect to be encouraged and helped in tangible ways. Unfortunately you are right. With the expectation of family planning (b/c in the secular world and nfp in the Catholic) people who struggle are no longer shown empathy and practical help. Rather, outsiders can soothe their consciences by saying hey, they had a choice, they should have discerned better.
It leaves Catholic women with the twofold problem of both enduring difficulty and defending it. It ISNT fair in many ways. But yes it is the cross for this particular era and we must bear it gracefully. Nothing wrong with expressing sadness over that though imo. In fact there really must be some safe place where we can express our frustrations without a plethora of caveats and disclaimers. We hopefully can assume that here people understand that are not extremists and that we are aware of the good and proper Church endorsed use of nfp. We also acknowledge its limitations. There is nothing heretical about that.
The local threads attacked the lady for being judgmental. She truly wasn't. It is assumed if you dont embrace nfp that you judge those who do. If you dare express a dissenting opinion, heaven help you if you neglect to include your assurances that you don't mean to judge, you acknowledge all good uses of nfp (there are many!) and so on.
I would hope we can assume the best possible motives here.
Kim
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JodieLyn
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oh yes Nina.. btdt, if you have one, two.. maybe even three children, you're "allowed" to have a bad day once in a while.. but if you have more than that.. and you have a bad day (nothing that anyone else doesn't get sometimes) the only answer is "well, it's your own fault for having so many kids" 
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StephanieA
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Oh, gee! I read the article and the endnotes.
Seriously if the guy REALLY believes #16 in the endnote -that nursing is form of NFP - then he needs some education.
Yes, nursing can and does space children (more for some, less for others), but it is NOT in any way a form of NFP. For pity sakes, you mean I have been using NFP all along and didn't even know it because I have nursed all my children? Oh, give me a break!
This silly statement is enough in my mind to discount his entire article even if he seems to back up his arguments and who he is in the Catholic intellectual world.
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NINA!
I completely understand exactly what you are feeling and experiencing! Every day is a very lonely crisis of faith for many of us. Not only is there zero understanding or support (heaven forbid any encouragement!) we are often treated just as you say by "well-meaning" catholics.
No need to offer an apology for speaking the truth of your situation. And it isn't just true for you.
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Bridget
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StephanieA wrote:
Seriously if the guy REALLY believes #16 in the endnote -that nursing is form of NFP - then he needs some education.
Yes, nursing can and does space children (more for some, less for others), but it is NOT in any way a form of NFP. For pity sakes, you mean I have been using NFP all along and didn't even know it because I have nursed all my children? Oh, give me a break!
Blessings,
Stephanie |
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My OB uses Natural Spacing as the clinical term for this.
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StephanieA
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<<<My OB uses Natural Spacing as the clinical term for this. [/QUOTE]>>>>
Yes, it IS natural spacing. God did design the suppression of ovulation for a reason....in most cases a chance to exclusively nuture this child. But it is not NFP - natural family PLANNING. I may be spacing my children when I nurse, but I am not planning them or charting, etc.
Spacing and planning are very different terms. And if the author meant spacing children...OK. But this was not the tone of his article. He sees NFP as a way to not having any children also, not just spacing them. And NFP includes more than just spacing children although couples may be using NFP for this purpose. The couples in my dh's family don't use NFP to space after they had had their 2 or 3 children. They use it to quit having kids. They also wouldn't only consider NFP a way to space kids.
Blessings,
Stephanie
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4Real Forums : Mothering and Family Life
Topic: Grave and Serious Reason?
