Denver Newsroom, Jul 24, 2020 / 04:51 pm (CNA).- As someone who teaches couples about Natural Family Planning (NFP), Jeanice Vinduska most often fields questions of doubt from couples who are used to artificial means of contraception, such as birth control pills and IUDs.
It can be difficult to convince some people that a natural means of planning and spacing children is effective and worthwhile, especially in a culture where artificial contraception is widely accepted and used, Vinduska told CNA.
But Vinduska also fields questions from Catholics and Christians who are dubious of NFP because they are concerned it could be contraceptive too.
“I had a woman in my parish who said…’Well, this is just natural contraception,’” Vinduska recalled. Vinduska works as the co-director of the FertilityCare Center of Omaha, with the St. Paul VI Institute, which specializes in teaching women and couples the Creighton method of NFP.
The Creighton method is a method of NFP that tracks cervical mucus as a symptom of fertility in women. It can be used by couples to achieve or avoid pregnancy, and it can also help diagnose conditions like endometriosis.
But methods of NFP differ from artificial means of contraception in that they do not do anything to disrupt the sexual act, Vinduska said. “Contraception basically prevents fertilization. It prevents human life,” she said. “Oral contraception can even act as an abortifacient.”
NFP, on the other hand, allows married couples to track their fertile and infertile days and to decide when to be sexually intimate and when to abstain from sex, based on what is best for their family at that time, Vinduska said.
And unlike contraception, NFP is approved by the Catholic Church as a means of planning and spacing children in accordance with God’s plan.
The ‘quiverfull’ movement
Some Christians are part of the “quiverfull” movement, which gets its name from Psalm 127: 3-5: “Certainly sons are a gift from the LORD, the fruit of the womb, a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man who has filled his quiver with them.”
Christians with a “quiverfull” mentality towards family planning believe that they should have as many children as God will give them, and refuse the use of contraception or Natural Family Planning. They also do not attempt to resolve any physical defects that cause infertility, which they also see as God’s will.
But the “quiverfull” mentality has never been a part of the teaching of the Catholic Church, Vinduska said.
“That’s never been a teaching. It’s more about being open to life and finding a responsible way of family planning, of fertility regulation.”
Dr. Janet Smith is a Catholic theologian and author of “Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later” and “Self-Gift: Essays on Humanae Vitae and the Thought of John Paul II.” She has frequently written and spoken about Humanae Vitae, including in her signature talk, entitled “Contraception: Why Not”.
Smith said the Catholic Church instead teaches that God has given humans reason and freedom to choose to have children freely, or to abstain when they are fertile.
“God gives us the possibility of pursuing many goods; he forbids us from doing evil, but permits us to choose freely between goods,” Smith told CNA.
“Some couples are blessed with many resources both material and spiritual that enables them to have many children, but others need to limit their family size because of various difficulties in their lives. Certainly couples should be generous in their child-bearing, but the Church teaches that for serious or just reasons spouses may limit their family size,” she said.
NFP differs from contraception by allowing the couples to fully participate in the marital embrace without removing the possibility of conceiving, Smith noted. The Church supports NFP because it does nothing to change the meaning of the marital act.
“Contraception undercuts that meaning since it removes the commitment-making power of procreation.”
Church teaching also differs from the quiverfull mentality in that couples experiencing fertility are also free to attempt to remedy physical defects so that they may have children, Smith said.
“[I]f couples have correctable physical defects that prevent them from conceiving, it is fully in accord with God’s will that they attempt to have those defects repaired,” she said.
Humanae Vitae
Pope Paul VI, for which the institute in Omaha is named, wrote one of the most oft-referenced encyclicals on the subject of marriage, sexuality and family planning in his encyclical letter, Humanae Vitae.
In it, Pope Paul VI first states that “the transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. It has always been a source of great joy to them, even though it sometimes entails many difficulties and hardships.”
In section 10 of the letter, the pope states: “Married love, therefore, requires of husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in the matter of responsible parenthood, which today, rightly enough, is much insisted upon, but which at the same time should be rightly understood.”
Rightly understood, responsible parenthood is exercised “[w]ith regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions…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.”
What serious reasons are serious enough?
Pope Paul VI wrote that while Catholic couples are free to exercise their reason and freedom in planning their families, they also must involve God in their decisions.
“[T]hey 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,” he wrote. “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.”
Smith said that there are a variety of serious reasons for which couples may decide to avoid having children for a time or an indefinite period, depending on the circumstances.
“For example, if a family is financially strapped and can’t pay the bills, it would make sense to postpone having a child; if the wife has serious health conditions that a pregnancy would exacerbate or if she has duties that are so consuming (such as caring for an elderly parent or challenging child) another child may be an excessive burden,” Smith said.
Vinduska said she has worked with couples to avoid pregnancies for certain periods of time for such reasons. For example, she said, one woman was on a strong medication for a disease that made her bones brittle that would have caused serious defects if she were to become pregnant; other women with cancer have needed to avoid pregnancy while going through treatment.
The woman was successfully able to avoid a pregnancy while on the medication using the Creighton method, Vinduska said.
“We want to make sure that they are using a natural system and following their moral beliefs,” she said. “And they don’t have to be Catholic to do this. We teach NFP for everybody.”
Smith said that NFP could even be used for lesser reasons. During a 2018 talk at for a symposium at Benedictine College, Smith noted that couples can morally abstain from having sex for all kinds of non-fertility related reasons: someone has a headache, the couple wants to catch a sports game, or finish a movie, or they are staying somewhere with thin walls, and so on.
In those instances, Smith said, it is perfectly moral to abstain from sex.
“So I have a simple question for you. Why would it be wrong not to have sex because it’s not a good idea to have a child at that time?” she said.
The Church does not mandate any particular amount that couples must be sexually intimate, she said.
However, she told CNA, couples should “keep praying that God will let them know if they are being selfish,” although she added, “that selfishness is usually incompatible with long term use of NFP since only the virtuous and unselfish can use NFP over a long period of time.”
The benefits of NFP for marriage
Both Vinduska and Smith said that using a method of Natural Family Planning can be very beneficial for couples.
Vinduska said one of the biggest benefits of using NFP in a marriage is that it improves “communication, especially communicating where they’re at with their fertility and infertility. If the couple is charting together, it’s not such a surprise for either one of them where they’re at in their cycle.”
Something else that benefits couples using NFP is using the periods of abstinence to reconnect in ways other than sexuality, Vinduska said. She said she encourages couples she works with to use these times to develop common hobbies and interests, which serve to strengthen their relationship in other ways.
“Once you’re married, you kind of slip a little bit in doing the things like you did when you were dating,” she said. “But you shouldn’t have to always spend a lot of money. If you both like the outdoors, find a time to set aside to go hiking, go to a park. Maybe they can garden together, take up a new activity that gives them that sense of doing something together.”
The low divorce rates among NFP using couples speak for themselves, Smith added.
“The fact that couples using NFP almost never divorce…is a very revealing fact. NFP is a lot more than abstaining during the time a woman is fertile; it is a method that requires a lot of communication and shared values,” she said.
“It fosters the virtues of patience and ability to sacrifice. Women in couples who use NFP believe their husbands are exceptional (and husbands love that) and know their husbands love them for more than their sexual availability – a feeling that delightfully leads to them wanting to be more available (and their husbands love that).”
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And so here we are.
Our devoutly Democratic Catholic president has effectively made it illegal to affirm the Catholic faith.
And half of Catholics will, no doubt, respond by continuing to vote for Democrats.
I mean, come on. With Catholics like this, who needs atheists.
Only half?
The irony is that one of the more noted atheists, Richard Dawkins, recently said he was a cultural Christian and wanted to live in a place dominated by Christianity (as opposed to Islam).
The other half Republican? Do the hypothetical votes cancel each other out and amount to nothing in the end? If we were all to stay out of politics and expend out time and energy on spreading the light in this dark world, perhaps it would be a better place. Won’t happen though! 😂
Your placement of the word “devoutly” before “Democratic” says it all!
I think that too many Democratic Catholics, especially older Catholics, are still voting for Pres. John F. Kennedy, who was a fairly good man and a fairly good President. But there are also too many Democratic Catholics who honestly and naively believe that the Democratic Party helps “the little men”–the poor, the working people, the minorities, the immigrants, and the women and children, while the Republicans are all rich fat cats who use “the little men” to enrich their own pockets. How sad, and I hope that local Catholic parishes will be unafraid to provide educational opportunities for people, especially younger people who might be more open to learning truth, to learn about political REALITY in our country at this time in history! People don’t read books much nowadays, so I hope that Trent Horn’s book will have a strong online presence so that it will actually get read.
The first time I became consciously aware of the words Democrat and Republican was during the Kennedy-Nixon race in 1960. (I was seven at the time.) Born and raised in a blue-collar city in eastern Massachusetts, I assumed that the whole world was made up of Democrats. One evening I said to my father, “We’re Democrats, right?” — “That’s right,” he answered. — “Well, who are the Republicans?” I demanded to know. Without hesitation, he said, “Rich people.” I realized the irony only years later. Between Nixon and Kennedy, who grew up with wealth, limousines, summers abroad, fancy boarding schools? Who, in short, was one of the “rich people”? Hint: It wasn’t Nixon.
JFK was a pervert and a serial womanizer. The press covered for him. He was not a good man.
Things change Mrs.Sharon. Back in the day everyone where we live were Democrats. Rich or poor alike. Now many working class people vote GOP.It keeps evolving.
Who are the most dangerous people presently who can over turn this nonsense? They’re ARCHEOLOGISTS! Since by looking at skeletal remains can easily state who was a woman and who was a man!!! Biden is a pathetic wreck of a catholic whose continual showing of “St” beau’s rosary beads has become a rite, that we could all do without!
I’ve thought pretty much the same thing. Despite contemporary rhetoric to the contrary, gender is not assigned at birth; sex is recognized at birth, after having been indelibly established in the womb. If one is male (or female) in the womb, one will be male (or female) until the moment of death, and if archaeologists dig up that person’s bones in the future, they will still be recognized as having been those of a male (or female).
Also, how many “biological female” athletes are bucking to compete in men’s games? I wonder why not. 🤔
There are a few women who have been admitted to men’s football teams as place kickers or holders. And both women and men skate together on synchronized skating teams (12 skaters on the ice performing a program that includes many of the figure skating elements such as lifts, spins, and jumps, along with team elements such as wheels, intersections, lines, circles, blocks. And Kaitlin Clark recently broke the record for baskets (basketball) long held by Pete Marovich. As a woman, I think most women have too much common sense to try to compete with men in professional sports. And now that workplace sports teams (baseball, volleyball, broomball, etc.) appear to be part of the Baby Boomer generation, I don’t know that we’ll see women competing with men very often.
Archeologists are now being cautioned not to identify human remains as male or female despite skeletal and DNA evidence–because they don’t know how the dead “identified.”
Won’t this new executive order also outlaw same-sex schools at any level?
I predict that in three to five years “dudes” will be winning nearly all women’s events, and that should put an end to this nonsense. It is unfortunate that until that happens a lot of dedicated women athletes will be missing out.
It’s schizophrenic. The reader likely knew immediately what that refers to. That someone can live in two different worlds, as does Biden, worlds opposed to each other, seemingly unaware, convinced there’s no contradiction. But the fact is it’s, I believe, more of a moral disease than clinical that afflicts many, particularly clergy. However, clergy disguise their immoral disease, and are aware of the malice, Biden flaunts it.
What President Biden’s immoral conceptualization of Christianity really says is that he believes what is evil is good, and that good is evil. How so? Well, isn’t that the moral theology that teaches there are evil behaviors, although there are also circumstances in our concrete reality that diminish the evil? A mitigation that corresponds between degree of difficulty and conscience, although contrary to this form of ethics, is the availability of grace, the gift won for us by Christ on the battlefield of the cross.
However, Title IX gender identity discrimination is an entirely new species of moral degenerative disease. Different from mitigation and undue burden. No need for grace here because what the Biden Administration now affirms, is the justice protected freedom to profess whatever gender description for themselves people wish regardless of their biological identity. This is an entirely new freedom based morality that overrules any personal conviction or religious belief. Joe Biden had said previously that he disbelieves what the Catholic Church officially teaches on this and other vital issues. And of course most know the rapport between the Vatican, a number of hierarchy, and Biden, strongly suggests that this is what the Church holds to be true. Should there be wonder why so many are leaving, when the Easter Vigil Mass this year had 17 attendees at a local parish when just a short couple of years past it was in the hundreds?
Local parish where?
My parish baptized/confirmed more than 17 people at Easter Vigil. The overall statistics seem to indicate a significant increase in people entering the Church.
I rather suspect it depends mainly on whether the parish in question believes what the Church has traditionally taught, or at least is struggling in that direction and against the prevailing current. There’s no point in going to Church if the prevailing culture is correct, so the person must be somewhat counter-cultural to even bother showing up, and the parish must be counter-cultural to attract those people.
Where? Anywhere small town USA. Why does a parish in the same vicinity flourish? Is it the priest who lives a devout life, a single parishioner offering his prayers and suffering? Perhaps the parish with a Legion of Mary that visits medical centers, nursing homes, jails, the shutins, the sick has that spark of faith. That the sun shines here and not over the hill is beyond our control. Not so where grace flows down.
“That someone can live in two different worlds, as does Biden, worlds opposed to each other, seemingly unaware, convinced there’s no contradiction.”
Ah, it is so easy! “I am a Catholic and Jesus said we should love our neighbor and so, out of my love for him I call him “she” and grant him access to all females-only places”. Being challenged “but this is not a woman” such a Catholic will answer “mercy is above justice” and so it goes. Being challenged “But the women do not want a man in the female changing room, they are afraid” the answer is “how intolerant of them – they have nothing to be afraid of, they must work on themselves”. Etc.
It is all about the heresy of being “nice”. Such politicians are “nice” to biological men. Is it an authentic empathy with transsexuals? – Absolutely not, it is all about “nice” self-image. Why am I so sure? – Because a person cannot have selective empathy and compassion. If he feels empathy with biological males who want to get access to the female-only places he must also feel the same empathy with vulnerable women who do not want those males to be there. But he does not. And why is that? – Because:
1) he does not have empathy for anyone, he is deficient
2) because if he refuses to allow males into female toilets he is not “nice” to women, he is just normal – why if he allows, he is very nice.
Here we are, it is all about being nice. Such “Catholics” swapped “good” with “nice” and reinterpret the Scriptures and Tradition accordingly – according to themselves.
I also argue that men who make the laws which endanger women are not really men, psychologically. They are devoid of a normal instinct any normal man has, of protecting women and girls. So those men (and women) who create such laws basically announce “we are neither male nor female but something else” – and here if they are Catholics they may say “Yes! Isn’t the apostle Paul said it?”
Yes. Men have lost their sense of manhood in fear of retribution. Appeasing deviants is ideological favoritism. To be odd or queer once disdained as a cowardly betrayal of one’s manhood is now vaunted as heroic. Liberty, now freedom to revise life itself, now an idol of worship, jealously protected by federal law. Enemies of truth such as George Soros invests millions to corrupt the Justice system with the aim of collapsing our once traditional Common Law culture. Lucifer has done an incredible job of feminizing modern man. Man’s elective weakness is a rebellion against God.
Prof Eduardo J Echeverria notes that Pope Francis, in his autobiography, ‘Life: My Story Through History’ advocates for legal support of same-sex civil unions of homosexuals “who [Francis says] experience the gift of love”. Echeverria asks, “In what sense, if any, is homosexual love a gift?” .
So, is it the story of feminizing men in the West? In my homeland (Russia) we have it because of multiple wars. After the war 1942-45 we had a deficiency of men – of the fathers and those whom women can marry. Even worse, the widowed mothers would often treat their sons as “my precious”. A generation spoiled by single mothers, men rose who seriously expected women to serve them just like their mothers did. They honestly believed that their value is in the fact they are men (what kind of men did not matter).
It is a very broad generalization of course but misogyny created by mothers is definitely a trend. And such misogyny, sucked with mother’s milk is the worst.
By the way, I have observed among younger Roman Catholic priests in the West a disproportionate number of those who clearly show the symptoms of being “a mother’s golden boy”. Like many Russian men, they are brought up by mothers – not that they had physically absent fathers but emotionally absent, disconnected from their wives or suppressed by them.
You make good sense on the issue Anna. Fortunately with will and fortitude a mother’s darling can still make himself a man.
It looks like there are 2 reasonable options: 1. Successfully challenge the law in federal court, and break it until the case(s) is won. 2. Start setting up a parallel education system that does not use federal funding.
Going along to get along is not a reasonable option.
The democrats can make up fantasy rules on any perv thing they want but it will not wash. More and more the little girls themselves are saying no when asked to compete against a boy at a competition. There is no reason for these girls to risk injury or compete on an uneven playing field to satisfy some crazy notion of sexuality which is transparently false. Its clear the kids have more brains than the adults on this issue.
The Government was allowed to create a religion when it established “gender identity” as a protected characteristic that isn’t shared by all people. There can only be protections for immutable traits like race and biological gender/sex, which are shared by everyone, not the unverifiable, unnatural and imagined idea of sex and gender. This makes “Gender Identity” a government sponsored religion which is why it conflicts with Christianity.