I will assume that some visitors will find this post searching for information on Rick Warren. Well let me just address the title of this blog post right away. I don’t know if Rick Warren is right or wrong. You see, this post is less about Rick Warren and more about the struggle and clash stemming from new idea’s, view points and interpretations versus traditional Christianity.
I have never actually read any of Rick Warren’s books. I have thumbed through just one of his books, heard some interviews and read some anti-Rick Warren articles. For me personally, if some of the claims against him are accurate, I probably would have a problem with “some” of what he teaches. And here lies the conundrum. Is truth mixed with false-hood any less truthful? How much truth is needed to be of God? More importantly, Does God use those whose message is not fully accurate/biblical?
Last weekend I was in a Sabbath School class – Sunday School for adults – and a discussion started originally based on some new teaching that was gaining popularity and how it was the tool of the devil used to attack the truth. Now I have no idea or knowledge the merits of this new teaching that was being discussed. I did however suggest some caution when deciding the merits of new teaching. It seems to me that if something is new or different than what we are used to, we all too often attack it as being the work of the devil – not biblical. More importantly, we will write off the entire message or the messenger because of just part of the message. Is the part of the message that is true and less truthful than if the whole message were true? Does God only work with those who “get it”, or does God work with those who love him and strive to serve him even if they don’t completely “get it”?
Why is it Christians assume the devil only attacks by injecting false-hood into the church? Why wouldn’t the devil also try to steer the church away from truth or away from a better understanding? Seems to me the devil will not only try to lure us away from the truth but prevent us from moving towards a better understanding of truth as well. If he already has the church where he wants them, then he will work to keep us there. Hence the need to exercise caution and the need to actually evaluate that which is new or different.
So how does Rick Warren come into play? Well, there are those that feel Rick Warren is not teaching a biblical message. They will not accept any part of his message because they feel part of the message is not biblical, therefore Rick Warren is being used by the devil to lead many astray. Some people will even go so far as to say God is not using Rick Warren at all. To all of these people I would like to ask why? Why wouldn’t God use someone of another faith, another denomination to reach people? Does God only use those who have all the answers? And if no one has all the answers, then does that not mean God uses fallible humans, those who do not have all the answers? Does that not mean that God will use the Rick Warrens of the world to reach many with the message of God’s love and forgiveness?
Tonight I became a little bored with my surroundings and was thumbing through the bible when I stumbled on a text that I believe addresses this very issue.
38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40 For the one who is not against us is for us. – Mark 9:38 – 41 ESV
What I take this to mean is that truth is truth no matter who speaks it. That God will use people who may not have all the truth (imagine that) to reach those hungering for truth. I think for reasons we may not be able to fully understand, God uses mans imperfections to reach others right where they are in life. And for what ever reason God does not always try to fix our imperfections, or our incorrect beliefs right away. Maybe it’s because we as humans relate best to those with equal imperfections. After all, “…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” – Romans 3:23 ESV
I was reading the blog post “Hypocritical, Irresponsible and Seriously Profane” over at “Sacred & Profane“. Like my last post, Heidi was talking about the Hypocrisy of pro-choice people towards those who choose to have large families. One of the readers posted a comment that to some degree argues the “other side” of this argument. So I thought I would offer a few thoughts regarding the readers comment.
“But, if I’m remembering correctly, you want your choice, but you don’t necessarily want to allow others their choices in the cases of abortion… No one is trying to stop you from having more children, but there are certainly people trying to stop others from having (completely legal) abortions.”
First, I am not a pro-life person who supports killing doctors or blowing up buildings. I do believe abortions are wrong and even believe it was bad law constitutionally speaking, but I do not believe that justifies killing doctors or those seeking abortions. And, even though I believe Roe vs. Wade was bad law, it is still currently the law as the commenter points out.
As to the claim that “No one is trying to stop you from having more children” I would say that is false. Currently it may not be a major movement, but there is a movement and a desire by a growing group of people to limit other peoples family size. The current trend is based mostly around the environmental movement. I think after what we have seen our elected officials do over the last year we should all realize that the ability to regulate family size is not all that far fetched. The health care (Obama Care) law alone gives potential power and reason to the Federal Government as well as our fellow citizens to limit family size. Now that we all have to pay for everyone else’s health care, it will be much easier to complain about the family of 3, 5 or more. Never mind that we actually need much larger families to support the every growing demand for Government services and mounting debt. And lets not forget that President Obama has brought in advisers (czars) John Holdren – Science czar, and Cass Sunstein – regulator czar, both who have been documented as proponents of the population control movement. Mr. Holdren has gone as far as to promote population control through our food and water supply.
Now, regarding not allowing others to choose abortion I would simply like to highlight the breakdown of choice between the two points of view. If abortion was outlawed, women would still have choice. But, if the choice to have children or the quantity of children is regulated then there is no choice but simply the law. So, even if you take abortion away there is still far more choice then if society or Government starts regulating women’s fertility.
Lately I have been acknowledging (to myself) the high level of hypocrisy from the left. “They” want the right to criticize others, but how dare you criticize or question them. “They” want freedom of speech, but how dare you think you are entitled to the same freedoms. “They” want America to leave other countries alone, to not force our way of life on them, to not get involved, but “THEY” want to force their views of population control, and abortion on these other countries. Odd isn’t it? Sounds like typical leftist hypocrisy to me. Ya, Ya I know, it’s not just liberal Democrats that are hypocritical. But still, I do believe it tends to be liberal politicians who display more dangerous societal hypocrisy. Cheating on your spouse while running a “family values” campaign is hypocritical, but not damaging to society to the extent of attacking peoples freedoms, undermining other peoples and other countries family values, etc. We should all be free to choose, so long as we do not choose life. After all, who in their right mind would choose life over abortion? Choose many kids over one, two or even none at all?
Anyhow, here is another video from the Population Research Institute highlighting the attempt to force other countries to legalize and promote on demand abortions.
Found at overpopulationisamyth.com.
Found at overpopulationisamyth.com
OK, I admit that I probably have never viewed my relationship with Jesus as a privilege. I also don’t think I have ever viewed serving Jesus as a privilege either. I am not exactly sure how I have viewed it although if I was being honest I would probably say that there has been at least a little feeling of obligation or a chore. I know it sounds bad, but I am not always thrilled about what I should be doing or what I should be saying. And certainly not viewing Christianity as a privilege has not helped stifle the feeling that Christianity is a chore at times or just something that exists.
What “if” I viewed my relationship with Jesus as a privilege? What “if” I viewed serving Jesus as a privilege, something to be excited about because I “get” to serve him?
These were the thoughts and questions I had after reading Rebecca’s post titled “Priveleged” over at “the first hundred“. I am not going to give too much away, so you should go read her post. But I have been thinking about how I view my relationship and interaction with Jesus. I also started contemplating what the impact would be if we viewed our interactions with others as a “privilege.” I wonder how much stronger our relationships with those around us and connected to us would be?
I just finished the book “Holy Sex!” by Gregory K. Popcak, PH.D and in light of the “Contraception: Why Not?” series of posts, I thought i would share an excerpt from the book that I enjoyed. It caused me to think back to the post “Contraception: Why Not? (Part 19)” where Professor Janet E. Smith asks where we get our immortal soul from if there is no immortal soul in either the sperm or the egg? Of course the answer is from God, He creates the immortal soul in every being. I just really enjoyed how the following excerpt was expanding on that point:
“God loves loving. Love is what God does best, but a lover isn’t much good without a beloved. This is why God seems to be endlessly fascinated with creating new things. It gives him more to love.
G. K. Chesterton once observed that God delights in creation because he loves it so much and loves creating more to love. In his book Orthodoxy, Chesterton writes,
It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes the daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain.
Perhaps this is one of the things Jesus meant when he told us that unless we became like little children we could not enter the kingdom of heaven (Luke 18:15-17). Children never get tired of creating and of repeating a good thing. Neither does God. It is only we sinful, jaded adults who see a field of flowers and think “parking garage” or see a baby and think “second mortgage.” By contrast, if a small child – or God – sees the same field of flowers or the same baby, they both think, “Yeah! Do it again!”
Who do you think is living more authentically?
Even though God is completely sufficient on his own, God loves creating, and God especially loves to create people. As the Church tells us, the human being is “the only creature on earth whom God willed for its own sake” (Gaudium et Spes). Why? Because we are the only creatures he gets to spend an eternity loving. We are the only earthly beings built to last, so to speak. One can only guess that for God it is a joy beyond words to create creatures whom he can love eternally. This same God, who generously longs to share all of his joy with us, gives husbands and wives a taste of the particular joy that is creating and loving the creation by inviting us to bring his children into the world.”
-Holy Sex! By Gregory K. Popcak, PH.D. pages 149 & 150
Although we cannot create a new and unique person on our own, I do find it truly amazing that God brings us along in the creation processes. What an opportunity to experience God’s creative power through the mystery of life. To live this experience has got to be a gift designed to reconnect us to our creator.
This is the final post of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.
Q. How did the Church arrive at the conclusion that NFP is a viable family planning practice as opposed to completely putting one’s trust in God?
A. Putting trust in God does not mean not planning. God gave us our reason. And He gave us our reason to plan. I honestly don’t know anybody who at the end of every month empties out their bank account and gives it to the poor. No one insists that “God will provide. Trust in God. I’m just going to give away every penny every month.” We pretty much know that God doesn’t ask us to do that. Save some, give some away. He gave us our reason to plan. We don’t just eat whatever we want and expect God to keep us at our best weight. No one counsels: “Just eat whatever you want and trust in God. You won’t get diabetes.” Isn’t it rather that God wants us to use our reason to live moderately? We have to govern all of our appetites, and sometimes even the appetite for children needs to be governed. In marriage it’s not always a good idea to have another child at this time. Hopefully, eventually, the parents will be able to have more children.
Humanae Vitae says that some couples make the prudent and generous decision to have a large family. But note that it speaks of a prudent decision. The spouses should be confident they can meet the demands of a large family. Some people are such good parents and so stable that it is a prudent decision on their part to “just let the babies come.” I’ve got many friends who have very large families of 8, 9, 10, 11 children. Most of them are very stable people. I don’t know where they came from. Maybe having children makes people stable. I don’t know, there’s something about them that’s really special. Some of them might say everyone ought to do what they would do. But I don’t think that is necessary true. Some people can have six children and go to daily mass and get a medical degree and run the local Right to Life group and go on missions to foreign lands and run in marathons. They have an energy level that defies belief and that not everyone has. Not all of us have the same gifts; not all are called to do the same things. We need to accept who we are and live in accord with the gifts God has given us.
On the other hand, it is easy for some of us to look for the easy life. A lot of us need to learn stretch ourselves in most every respect. Most of us need to give away more money than we do. Most of us have to volunteer more time than we do. And probably a lot of people should consider having a somewhat larger family than they are initially comfortable with. But I see nothing in Church teaching that says that we’re supposed to let the babies come unless you make a decision that you can handle that.
Q. Isn’t having sex only when one can’t get pregnant, using NFP, not giving oneself completely in the act of marriage?
A. Again, it is possible to use NFP selfishly. Some couples simply don’t want to have more children because they don’t want to take on the additional responsibility. That’s selfish. And those people are not giving of themselves completely.
But we also need to be clear that sometimes it is an act of self-giving not to have sex. Often having sex is the selfish act. People who don’t have sex before marriage, for instance, are giving of themselves very completely. It’s those who are having sex that are being selfish. They want a pleasure without commitment. I find that people who are chaste before marriage find NFP quite natural to use; they abstained before marriage precisely because they loved each other and it was not appropriate to give themselves to each other sexually. Their not having sex was a loving and self giving act. The same thing can be in marriage. One or the other spouse is tired. One spouse would like to have sex, the other wouldn’t. “Not tonight, dear.” There is considerable disappointment on the other end. But if the disappointed spouse doesn’t pressure for sex, that is an act of self giving. That person doesn’t put any pressure on you because it’s not good. It’s not good right now. That person walking out of the room is giving completely of himself or herself because it’s not good to engage in this act at this time. So, I’m going to say yes, you can be giving of yourself completely by not having sex.
Q. How does cohabitation cause an increase in divorce rate?
A. Cohabitation is not a good preparation for many reasons. Consider how it begins. In our culture, those who begin serious relationships have often not made a very careful choice of a partner; they have not considered whether they want to have children with this person or to marry this person. Many couples start having sex fairly early in an intense relationship; if not early on, then eventually. They wonder why they are paying rent at two places. So they move in together. Pretty soon after they move in together they stop having the kinds of conversations they should have to build a relationship. When you move in with someone, it’s very awkward to move out. Important conversations are avoided because they might lead to fights and fights might lead to a separation. Moving out means that somebody has to find a new apartment. It’s embarrassing and costly. So all of these conversations that couples should have, they don’t have. They don’t have them until after marriage and then they discover that they have huge incompatibilities about really important matters.
I saw a segment of Oprah one day featuring couples who had lived together for a year and a half and decided to get married. They spent a whole year planning their wedding, some huge extravaganza. When the wedding came, they just rolled out of bed in the morning, went off to the wedding, and experienced no real change in their relationship except that the wedding was over. These couples reported that as they were driving away from the wedding, they looked at each other and said, “What’s next?” Their life had just been planning a wedding together, not a life together.
And then what happens? Two or three years after they get married one or the other says, “I think maybe we should start planning our family now.” And the other one says, “What? What do you mean now? Why now?” The response: “I’m not getting any younger. I only had one brother. And I thought I’d like to have my kids have brothers and sisters. I’d like to have three or four kids.” The spouse replies, “Three or four, where’d you ever get that idea? We’ve got college loans to pay off. Where did you get that idea?” The couple had no conversation about how many children they wanted to have previous to marriage. Or they might disagree about the practice of religion. One spouse decides to return to going to church on Sunday. That other asks, “Church, where’d that come from? You don’t go to church. Why go to church?” The spouse replies, “Well once we start our family, that’s how I’d like to raise the kids, in church.” “What? You don’t expect me to go, do you? What is happening? Are you becoming some kind of a fanatic?” Marriages break up over these sorts of things.
When I speak to college students I tell them that within the first few weeks if not days of dating someone they need to make it clear that they are not going to have sex before marriage, they want to have children and they will be practicing their faith. If the person they are dating doesn’t agree, find someone new. Don’t fall in love with someone and then find out that that person does not share your values. In our culture, people have sex, live together and then get to know each other. That is backwards; you should get to know someone, fall in love with the person, and then get married and have sex. Sexual intercourse should be moving the relationship to a new level, a relationship that already has a firm and solid foundation.
One problem is that too few people in our culture know what their values are. They don’t know how many children they want to have. They don’t know whether they believe in God and want to go to church. Years later they figure it out and they look at this person and think, “What I am doing with this person?? We don’t have the same values and same aims in life.”
This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.
Slide: Coronation of Mary
Married couples are meant to represent the marriage of Christ and his Church. Christ is the bridegroom, the Church is the bride. Couples are meant to symbolize for the rest of us the devotion, the love, the commitment, the unconditional laying down of your life for your bride, which Christ, the bridegroom did for Mary and for the Church, his bride. It’s an incredible thing. It’s an incredible responsibility and one not accomplished by the 50 to 60 percent of the marriages in our culture that end in divorce. When I meet couples who have been married for 15 years or longer, I want to thank them. They’ve done something good for all of us. For their children, for each other, and for all if us. Divorce is hard on everyone; it is hard for the couple, for their children, and for the rest of us to see all that goes on. When we think of what it takes to have a marriage last, we realize it is very difficult. The spouses need to learn to forgive and to ask forgiveness. They need to learn to put up with disappointment both in their spouses and in themselves. It’s hard to when we are a disappointment to ourselves. I think that happens a lot in marriage. We want to be better than we are and we are not. And our faults cause a lot of trouble for other people. People who have been married for 15 years or longer have done a lot of the hard work it takes to get along in this world. I believe the rewards are great for such dedication; that the satisfaction they experience is incredibly deep. I hope that they are incredibly in love with each other and it just gets better all the time. My parents have been married, as I said, for 60 years. I think they are happier and more in love now than they’ve ever been. They are reaping the rewards of a life that was well lived. Let’s stop there and get some questions in.
Q. How would you address the misuse of NFP to control family size for selfish reasons?
A. Some people say that couples using NFP can use it just as selfishly as couples who are contracepting. I think that’s possible, but I’m going to actually argue that natural family planning is the solution to the problem.
Let me explain. Let’s consider two couples who both want to control their family size. Both have been married several years. Let’s say that they may have 3 children under 5, and want to wait awhile before they have another child. They are tired and need some time to work on household organization, etc. One couple decides to use contraception and the other couple decides to use natural family planning. Are they doing the same thing? While both couples have the same goal, they are using different means to achieve their goals.
The Church teaches that you not only have to have a good goal, and controlling your family size can be a good goal, you have to have a good means to that goal. I think contraception, again, violates a woman’s health. It’s a barrier between the spouses. It’s a rejection of God, etc. Natural family planning couples are living in accord with God’s plan. Very importantly – they are having to deny themselves, and it is a very good thing to be able to deny yourself in pursuit of other goods. Let’s consider two individuals who both need to lose weight, one engages in bulimia – in eating and throwing up, because that person wants the pleasure of food without the consequence. Another individual diets. That denies him or herself cake, ice cream, etc, because he or she is seeking a good, which is weight loss. Through that self-denial, that dieter is probably going to rise in self-esteem, feel better about him or herself, have more self-control, probably enjoy food more than the bulimic person.
The couple who is using natural family planning is like the dieter, the contracepting couple are like a bulimic person. The NFP couple appreciates the goodness of sex but refrains from fertile sex until they are prepared to have another child. The contracepting couple treats fertility as a great annoyance if not a bad thing and they are determined to have sexual pleasure without the consequences. They are engaging in an act and as they engage in it are trying to undo the consequences of it.
The couple using NFP treat the fertile period of the woman’s cycle somewhat like sacred ground. They revere it and will not enter that sacred space until they are prepared to accept the gift of a child. If it is not a good idea for them to have a child at some time, they won’t engage in an action that amounts to inviting God to send them a child and at the same time rejecting that invitation. NFP means that a couple is going to have sex during the infertile times and not during the fertile times. Remember, there is no obligation to have sex during the fertile times. If there is no obligation to have sex, those who are not having sex during the fertile times are not doing something wrong by not having sex during those times. Remember that it is perfectly all right to have sex during the infertile days. So a couple is doing nothing wrong in having sex during the infertile days. We all know that couples don’t have sex for a lot of reasons, headaches, sporting events they want to watch on TV, visitors in the house. Now if it’s okay not to have sex because you had a headache, or you want to watch a sporting event, or you have visitors in the house, it’s okay not to have sex because it’s not a good idea to have a child. That’s a good reason.
Couples who teach natural family planning say a lot of people coming to them have no more openness to life than those who are contraceptive. They just are sick and tired of the bad physical side effects. But in using natural family planning they start to have more respect for their fertility. They start to have more respect for each other. They start to appreciate fertility as a gift. And some of them will have more children and some of them won’t. But they have a whole different appreciation of their fertility. That suggests that NFP is a cure for using natural family planning selfishly. Abstention is difficult. When people want to have sex, they want to have sex. If they don’t have a good reason for not having sex, it is difficult for them to abstain. As they discuss their reasons for abstaining, they often discover whether they are being selfish or unselfish in their decision not to have a child. So NFP has in internal mechanism for helping spouses realize their selfishness if in fact they are being selfish.
This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.
Slide: Effectiveness of Natural Family Planning
Natural family planning is every bit as effective as any form of contraception. Dr. R. E. J. Ryder published an article in the British Medical Journal in 1993 in which he reviewed studies done by world health organizations on natural family planning and concluded that pregnancy rates of couples using NFP have depended on the motivation of couples. He concluded:
Increasingly studies show that rates equivalent to those with other contraceptive methods are readily achieved in the developed and developing world. Indeed a study of 19,843 poor women in India had a pregnancy rate approaching zero. Natural planning family is cheap, efficient, without side effects and may be particularly acceptable to and efficacious among of people in areas of poverty.
Of the women studied, one third were Christian, one third were Muslim, and one third were Hindu. Most of them were illiterate. Do you know who was teaching them? Mother Teresa’s nuns. Mother Teresa had all of her nuns learn how to teach natural family planning.
NFP costs nothing and is perfectly healthy. A fraction of the money, a fraction of the billions of dollars recommended by the UN for contraceptives could be used to teach women NFP and there would be billions left for health care, antibiotics, hygiene, making the water supply safe, etc.
Slide: Benefits of NFP
One benefit of natural family planning is that there are no bad physical side effects. One of the reasons that NFP marriages last longer is that women using NFP are not as irritable, prone to depression and gaining weight and to having a reduced sex life as are women on contraceptives. The non contracepting woman is a healthier woman; she feels better. She is not taking drugs that mess with her system.
Secondly, using NFP requires mutual sacrifice. That is key. It takes two people to have sex. It takes two people to abstain. Not one or the other of the couple is bearing the contraceptive burden. In couples where natural family planning is used, wives generally think their husbands are exceptional men. She thinks, “I married myself an exceptional man. He doesn’t ask me or expect me to take all of these drugs into my body that are bad for me. He enjoys my company even when I’m not sexually available. He can control his sexual desires. He’s probably not masturbating and using pornography. I’ve got myself an exceptionally fine man.”
And when a man is married to a woman who thinks he’s exceptionally fine, he tends to think he’s exceptionally fine. It does good things for his self-esteem. We women can be very critical. When a wife thinks her husband is an incredibly wonderful man, that makes for an incredibly wonderful relationship. He respects his wife; she respects him.
NFP enhances communication between spouses and strengthens marriages. For some time I wondered how NFP enhances communication. I figured it out one day and some people now accuse me of hiding in their closets and listening to their conversations. I understand that about once a month, somewhere during that 7 to 10 day period of abstaining, a couple want to have sex, especially since she’s fertile and males and females are more attracted to each other when the female is fertile. So they have a conversation that usually begins with the question: “Why did we decide it wasn’t a good idea to have a child right now?” That’s a very important question because if the answer is that having a baby would be acceptable, the couple can go ahead and do what they want to do.
Now if a couple has a good reason for not having a baby right now, that can go a long way to dampening the sexual desire. Spouses have some pretty revealing conversations about the reasons. The wife might say, “If we have another child right now, I’ll kill you.” That could lead her husband to remember that there is a sporting event on TV that he very much wants to watch.
Or she might say, “You said that you would do the dishes. You said that you would give the kids baths. You said that I would have time for shopping on Saturday. When was the last time that you did the dishes or gave the kids a bath or gave me any time on Saturdays?” And he may respond, “I forgot; I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. All right, I’m on duty.” Or she might say, “I have been tired with three kids under 5 but the baby is out of diapers now. If we had another one I could handle it.”
Or the husband might say to the wife, “The reason we’re not having more babies right now is because I just can’t imagine how I’m going to support the kids that I’ve already got. I am worried about paying for braces, tuition, and having to buy a bigger van. The way you spend money!! Your friend Jane wants a fence, you need a fence. Your friend Jane gets a new kitchen, you need a new kitchen. What’s a man supposed to do? And she might reply, “I really had no idea that you felt that way. I don’t need that kitchen. I don’t need a fence.” Or he might say, “I was worried about finances, but I have been getting raises along the way. My dad raised 4 or 5 children on next to nothing. If he could do it, I can do it. So, yes we can go ahead. If there’s another baby around here, we can handle it.”
That conversation takes place about once a month for couples who are using natural family planning. It makes them assess where they are in respect to these key questions: Why are we having children and why are we not having children? Who’s carrying their weight around here? Who is not? That’s the kind of conversation that marriage counselors want every couple to have, touching base with each other. Natural family planning couples have that conversation.
Most people who use natural family planning have contracepted at one time. They know the difference between a contracepted relationship and an NFP one. Nearly all of them testify that their NFP relationship is definitely better than their contraceptive relationship was. When they were contracepting they rarely had conversations about having or not having babies. They decided they were not having a baby for another 3 or 4 or 5 years. They just get all involved in their own world and don’t talk about the mutual world they should inhabit.
NFP strengthens a couple’s relationship with God. Catholics who come to accept the Church’s teaching on contraception generally have a whole new respect for their church. It’s an incredible Church that has this teaching. The Church clearly isn’t trying to win a popularity contest. It teaches against contraception because this is God’s truth, not man’s truth. These are God’s laws, not man’s laws. Some of God’s laws are very peculiar to us. But when we live by them, when we love our enemies, for instance, we’re usually a lot better off than when we hate them. And it’s counterintuitive to think you ought to love your enemies. But if we live by that then we’ve got a better world. We thought contraception was going to be great, but maybe it’s not. My view is that if people stop using contraception, we will reduce the problems in society. Poverty will go down. Crime will go down. People will generally be happier and better off.