The following comes from an Oct. 23 story by Valerie Schmalz in Catholic San Francisco.
An organic, chemical and device-free method of family planning presented as part of Catholic Church teaching on marriage and family may well be one of the most effective ways of evangelizing the Gospel in our world today.
That was one of the surprising takeaways from a presentation on natural family planning to deacons, soon-to-be deacons and couples who do marriage preparation. The presentation Oct. 9 at St. Mary’s Cathedral met with enthusiasm from the about 100 attendees, who were urged to return to their parishes and incorporate NFP into marriage preparation and into Mass homilies.
“No other organization on the face of the earth has been dealing with marriage for as long and as extensively as the Catholic Church,” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said during introductory remarks to the presentation by California Association of Natural Family Planning president Dr. Lynn Keenan. “For 2,000 years we have been doing this; we have so many treasures of wisdom to share in so many different ways.”
Natural family planning is “a tool for building strong marriages and families, but it doesn’t have the billion-dollar advertising budget that other forms of ‘unnatural’ family planning have,” said Ed Hopfner, director of the archdiocesan Marriage and Family Life Office. “As our Holy Father says, quote ‘we must all take responsibility to evangelize,’” Hopfner said.
The church’s teaching on marriage, family and sexuality are based on the Gospel, guided by the Holy Spirit and are key to the new evangelization, Archbishop Cordileone said. The church’s teaching on responsible parenthood is “the best-kept secret,” he said, “because this is an area more than any other where the culture where we are living is so resistant, hostilely resistant.”
….The greatest advantage of using natural family planning, Dr. Keenan and Archbishop Cordileone said is that it works with the woman’s body, involves the husband, and fits with what Pope emeritus Benedict XVI called the human ecology in his encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” (“Charity in Truth”).
“Human ecology is the principle that all different aspects of life are interconnected,” Archbishop Cordileone said. “It’s not as if we have our bodies here, and our relationships over here, and our souls over here, our emotions here – it’s all interconnected.”
The archbishop said “everything about the woman is about conceiving a new life, supporting that life, nurturing that life, so our bodies, and the sexual complementarity of our bodies is geared for life. When young people understand this, the typical reaction is – ‘why didn’t anybody tell me this before? It would have saved me so much heartache.’”
“That’s how de-Christianized our world has become,” Archbishop Cordileone said. “People can’t even understand the basic facts of life, the facts of nature.”
Read the original story here.
Wonder what the archbishop thinks of teachers and staff from a Jesuit high school poo-pooing NFP because the pill is better? Never mind, it happened in another archdiocese.
And what did you do , as a good church-goer?
Years ago, I was furious, impatient with people when they did something wrong….now I ask myself: what did I do to stop that wrong doing… but to get to this change of attitude, it took me many years of suffering in my body ..it is really hard….
I’ll tell you…I complained to the president of the school and was “let go” from teaching.
Sorry Bob, my words were too harsh……but, I will pray that you get a new job.
Bob my prayers are with you….when you do what is right, your rewards from our Lord are far greater….The good Lord will provide and never stop doing the right thing…..God bless you!
NFP is being used and abused today as a contraception lite, or as Father Frank Pavone calls it “family avoidance” or as recently labeled as a organic form of birth control . Truly, Humane Vitae made it clear that NFP was only to be used in grave situations. Look how many divorces there were from the rhythm system and woman being used as objects of lust because of not being open to life in every act. Listen here to Dr Maria Fedoryka: speaking on the Theology of the Body as Foundation of Marriage and the Family …. with an emphasis on the role and importance of persons being created in and because of love…………… She speaks here that Saint John Paul II when he wrote the Theology of the Body explained that TRUE LOVE IN MARRIAGE…
NFP is first and foremost pointing to husband responsibility for procreating his children.
And that is because, by nature/anatomy, a man can procreate despite his wife’s will, while a woman can not stop/avoid the impregnation, based on her will.
This is why I think the man has the main responsibility for NFP implementation.
NFP is the mutual responsibility of both spouses. It does work very well when both are educated on recognizing signs and symptoms. The main problem as I see it is the sacrifice involved in abstinence. We live in a culture where taking a pill or multiple meds makes self-control unnecessary. There are meds for diabetes control-don’t worry about making changes in your diet or losing weight-just take the pills. High blood pressure? Take a pill. We do everything we can to avoid researching what foods keep us healthy and which ones bring on diseases; yet there is so much evidence that what we put into our bodies can cure or kill us in the long run. I also believe that all engaged and married folk need to be educated in the theology of the body. We now know WHY men and women must follow the 6th and 9th commandments. In my day you obeyed because you knew what was seriously sinful. BL. John Paul was such a gift to the Church and the world in giving an understanding of what the marital union means for male and female as nature and God intended. In some dioceses or parishes an engaged couple must take a course in NFP before they are allowed to be married. Archbishop Cordileone is to be commended. May other bishops follow his lead.
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The promotion of NFP is still somewhat of a sad commentary on our Catholic society (and society as a whole) when we have to address the ‘Catholic’ approved version of family planning. The directive in marriage is to be fruitful and multiply – in the flesh, cooperating with God in the transmitting of life via generously embracing one’s vocation. Trusting in His Providence and timing.
Can you imagine if the same were put forth in the spiritual realm with regard to priests and religious. That is, they had to take a class on how to supernaturally prevent the spiritual fruits of their vocation so as to limit or space out the number of conversions to the True Faith before being ordained and/or entering a cloister. (Perhaps they do and that is why we have the confusing mess of crisis today.)
Wonder who wrote this for the AB??
Go sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament and pray. Maybe then you will understand all the good AbC is doing.
Thank you Peggy for your comment. Please tell me what good the AB is doing. He has been in SF a year now and I do not recall him doing anything of note. In his 3 years in the Oakland Diocese he did very little of note but he did close Churches, did nothing to relieve the burden of the $190 million Cathedral & traveled quite a bit. Thank you.
Here we have two different point of view. One that understands what good he is doing and the other has not seen anything …..Do you both live in that diocese? Just wondering. Peggy I’m sure James has honest concerns perhaps he may also be in the dark about what is happening in that area. Or perhaps he has valid concerns too. We can all pray and pray for this Archbishop….but one thing I know for sure, is that he a very holy man. Very gentle and kind, that is my experience when I met him and my recollection of him as well when he was in San Diego. He participated in many pro-life event too. God bless him and both of you too.
God bless you Archbishop this is beautifully said. I dedicate to you these precious words from another Archbishop who has passed away, God bless his soul, Archbishop Fulton Sheen. He truly walked with Christ not only in what he said but through his holy life dedicated to Christ. I pray for you.
“If we wish to have the light, we must keep the sun; if we wish to keep our forests we must keep our trees; if we wish to keep our perfumes, we must keep our flowers- and if we wish to keep our rights, then we must keep our God.” — Fulton J. Sheen, 1941.
Archbishop Cordileone is holy, lets continue to pray for him. God bless him!
RIGHT ON ABC !!!!
Thank you, Archbishop Cordileone. Hopefully people will listen and many lives will be saved. Tricking the body into thinking it is pregnant each month and enlarging upper body tissue then causing it to shrink when there is no actual pregnancy, as the birth control pill does, is not a healthy thing to do and is one of the source of the epidemic of female cancers in younger women in this country.