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Catholic Natural Family Planning
Perspectives a Catholic Mom Column by Sara Fox Peterson Archived Catholic Natural Family Planning Columns from Sara Fox Peterson
Sara can be contacted by email at sfp@thosepetersons.com - please indicate "NFP" in the subject line of your email. |
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Heroic Virtue Recently the Discovery Health Channel aired a program about the Duggar family - all 16 of them. Being hopelessly ‘unplugged’ and without cable TV, I did not see the program, but I did visit the Duggars’ website an also read an article Michelle Duggar wrote for Parents Magazine in which she writes, “We are Evangelical Christians and decided to let God dictate the size of our family. To us, each child is a joy, a gift from the Lord.” Which, in this age of contraception, sterilization, abortion and 1.2 children per couple, is a very refreshing attitude to see articulated in a national magazine like Parents. It’s also an attitude which seems to confuse and unsettle some of us. What does it mean to ‘let God to dictate the size’ of one’s family? God does not actually need us in order to create new human beings. Adam was created from mud and Eve from Adam’s rib. God invites us to participate in the creation of new human persons through the sacrament of marriage and the sign of that sacrament; the marital embrace (i.e. sexual intercourse) and this is a tremendous blessing and privilege, but like any privilege, it comes with an attendant responsibility; the responsibility to raise well the children who result. So there is a balance that must be struck between enthusiastically accepting God’s invitation to join in the creation of new, immortal human persons and the grave responsibility to care for and guide those persons so that they will be equipped to spend eternity with the God who made them. The Church explains this balance this way: “Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God. Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of human and Christian responsibility. A particular aspect of this responsibility concerns the regulation of procreation. For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children. It is their duty to make certain that their desire is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2367-2368) “When . . . by means of recourse to periods of infertility [i.e. NFP], the couple respect the inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative meanings of human sexuality, they are acting as ‘ministers’ of God's plan and they ‘benefit from’ their sexuality according to the original dynamism of ‘total’ self-giving, without manipulation or alteration.”(Familiaris Consortio 90) Couples who find themselves with the marital strength, physical and psychological health, and material resources to raise many children are both greatly blessed by these circumstances and genuinely inspiring when they choose to use those blessings to raise large families rather than taking the easier, more socially acceptable route of having only a few children. Enjoying the marital embrace whenever husband and wife desire and welcoming however many children result, whenever they arrive, is indeed one way of allowing God to dictate the size of one’s family and cooperating with His will. But it is not the only way. There is a good reason we are fascinated by stories about families of 9 or 12 or 15 or more. Very large families offer us a powerfully counter-cultural visual image (all those beautiful kids!) and quite often these families are wonderful examples of heroic Christian generosity – examples that are sorely needed in this cowardly, materialistic, self-centered age. But there are others who practice heroic virtue in family planning quietly, almost invisibly and their example is no less important. There are more than 3.5 million couples in China who reject surgical sterilization or the use of an IUD and instead, with great faith and care, use NFP to comply with China’s barbaric one-child policy1. There are tens of thousands more in India, living in poverty that most of us in the first world cannot even imagine, who again reject contraception and practice NFP (taught to many of them by a holy, little Albanian nun by the name of Theresa and her sisters2) in order to plan their families. Closer to home there are those who heroically persist in obedience to the Church’s teachings despite discouragement and ridicule and even cruelty from their spouses, family members, friends or the medical community; who refuse contraception and sterilization and instead trust in their own powers of self-control and God’s providential care even though there are serious health-related concerns about another pregnancy because of age or multiple C-sections or weight or blood pressure or a host of other issues; who lovingly and trustingly welcome a ‘surprise’ baby conceived at a time when they were hoping not to; even those who long for another child, but do not conceive either because of infertility or because of a spouse’s objection, but do not resort to immoral means to conceive and humbly unite their desire and their disappointment to Christ’s suffering. Although you would never know it from a photograph, nor in most cases even from an interview, these individuals and families are no less faith-filled and no less heroic than those who fill an entire pew or leave no empty seats in a 15 passenger van. We are all, every single one of us called to heroic virtue – to sainthood – and the size and shape of every family is supposed to be dictated by God. We need to remind ourselves of this frequently, especially during the times in our lives when we are feeling comfortable or at ease, and regularly revisit the question, “Lord, what is Your will for our family?’ Then and only then can we be faithful ‘interpreters’ of God’s dictation and ‘ministers’ of His plan – whether that means raising one child or 20.
copyright 2005 Sara Fox Peterson
For additional "cyber-support" you are also most welcome to join in the
discussions in the Catholic Mom Community's NFP Forum -
http://p205.ezboard.com/fcatholicmomcommunityfrm63
Sara Fox Peterson is a
stay-at-home mom and certified teacher of the
Billings Ovulation Method of Natural Family Planning. She holds a BS in
biology and an MS in human physiology, both from Georgetown University, and
lives in Maryland with her husband and two sons. |
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