REASONS CLERGY GIVE FOR THEIR SILENCE AT THE PULPIT
ON NFP - Part 6 |
“If all the
priests preached on the issue of NFP, teachers would not be
able to handle the volume of people wanting to learn about
it. It would be a disaster!” – a clergyman in
California
What a
felicitous disaster this would be! Too many people wanting
a good thing would lead to more couples volunteering to
become trained teachers of NFP.
I think it is
true that, if more priests preached on God’s plan for
spousal love, then more couples would be encouraged to live
by that plan. And there would be a greater demand for NFP
classes. More classes could easily be accommodated. Most
teachers of NFP across the nation complain of not having
enough clients. They went through the trouble and expense
of getting themselves trained to be competent teachers, only
to find that very few priests promote NFP, and make
referrals to them.
The teaching of
the values and methodology of NFP is the task of the laity.
But then the laity are 99.9% of the Church. They are a
sleeping lion, just waiting to be summoned to active duty.
This is part of the apostolate of the laity.
On the other hand, we should not exaggerate the ability of a
priest to change his parish overnight from having 85% plus
of its couples either contracepting, or sterilized, to
become totally in accord with God’s plan for marriage and
spousal love. There has been massive contraception since
the arrival of the Pill in the 1960’s, with little
resistance offered from most pulpits over that time. The
culture, the media, the pharmaceuticals and the medical
profession all promote this profitable product
relentlessly. Many Catholics think that self-control and
chastity are obsolete virtues.
The extensive damage done to couples by contraception and
sterilization is becoming more obvious every year. The
utopian dream that the Pill would bring about strong
marriages and happy, healthy families is now impossible to
uphold.
The 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae in 2008 is
a perfect time to resume teaching what the Catholic Church
has taught for 20 centuries. As God designed the spousal
act, it can only be expressed authentically when there is a
total openness to both love and to new life.
I think that this is a very safe bet to make: if any priest
is overwhelmed with requests for NFP classes as a result of
his preaching on these values, and cannot find enough
teachers, then NFP Outreach will help him have all the
teachers he needs within six months.
2) “The
people are drowning in pornography. We have to tackle this
before we get to contraception and sterilization.” --
Military chaplain in California
Pornography is a huge problem today, including Catholics.
But pornography is just one of a cluster of problems
surrounding marriage and family life. All these problems
have one thing in common: they are all violations of God’s
plan for human sexuality. The natural approach to all these
problems is to clearly proclaim God’s plan for us as bodied
persons, who are either male or female, fertile and sexual.
This is the reason Pope John Paul II wrote the Theology of
the Body.
Everyone wants
to have a strong and loving marriage. Everyone wants to
have a happy, healthy family. When these two essential
components of their lives are impaired or missing, then
people are hurting deeply.
People need to hear God’s great plan for marriage, spousal
love and family. They need to know just how beautiful, and
attractive, that plan is. Couples need to know how they can
achieve such marriages and families with the combination of
God’s grace and their own efforts. They need to know that
there is no problem that they cannot face down, if they are
drawing upon the grace of their sacrament and cooperating
with it.
Pornography is a violation of human dignity. It injures
both the guilty party and his or her spouse. Contraception
is a violation of a couple’s act of spousal love. At the
precise moment, which calls for total self-giving and
self-surrender, a contracepting person instead expresses
self-grasping and self-assertion. Once a spouse understands
what self-sacrificial love is, then he or she can understand
what violates this love and therefore what must be
resolutely rejected and brought under control.
The violation of
the act of spousal love strikes at the core of a marriage.
A 50% divorce rate today, due largely to contraception with
all the reservations and conditions it brings to the
relationship, is becoming too obvious to ignore. It is
increasingly more difficult to persist in massive denial
about these realities.
Therefore,
padre, I encourage you to clearly address the moral evil of
pornography. But the solution to this is closely related to
the solution for all the other violations of the marital
relationship, where contraception and sterilization are
predominant. Go to the root of the problem.
Fr. Matthew Habiger OSB
www.nfpoutreach.org
mhabiger@kansasmonks.org
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