The Coadjutor and Contraception
Perhaps he’s just an outspoken Coadjutor.
I like the press I’m hearing on the coadjutor Bishop John Nienstedt. I chuckle at the term, “hard-liner” as if he is going to come in like Savonarola or something. I’ve heard some trads have misgivings about him - why? I have no idea and I really don’t want to know at this point. Some people would only be happy with Christ returning and cleansing the temple as he did in the Gospel. Point is, the Holy Father appointed a coadjutor and we ought to be pleased and thank God for his loving providence. (While not forgetting to thank him for Archbishop Flynn as well.)
I liked the fact that one of the things Bishop Nienstedt said at a recent news conference touched upon the topic of this nation’s “Contraceptive mentality”.
“At the news conference, Nienstedt lamented “the contraceptive mentality in this country” that has made Catholic families smaller, saying it has made parents more reluctant to encourage their sons to become priests and imperiled some Catholic schools. “If we want to keep the schools alive, we have to tell Catholics to have more babies,” he said.” Mpls Star Tribune
Most priests and bishops are comfortable with condemning abortion, fewer are likely to condemn contraception, when in effect, contraception continues to remain the principal culprit behind our societal moral collapse. Humanae Vitae, Paul VI’s prophetic encyclical spelled it all out for us.
One reason priests are unwilling to speak out against contraception is because a good share of Catholics continue to contracept, or have done so and see nothing wrong with the practice. For one thing these couples who disregard Church teaching happen to be some of the more affluent families in many a suburban parish community. (It can be a ka-ching thing.) Whether in the suburbs or the inner city, contracepting couples have been pretty much well educated that it is nobodys business but their own, and at best, it’s a decision between their conscience and their personal God.
Mothers and daughters - contraception is generational.
Meeting young men and women in the workplace and marketplace, waving their Catholic college degrees, you just know many of them have been educated with this pro-contraceptive mentality from their days in Catholic high school. Their baby-boomer moms (some of whom I know) probably took the pill, while now wondering if there is a link between the pill and breast and uterine cancer. Although their daughters may defend the use by insisting the new birth control methods are so much safer now. (Being an abortafacient, they probably are on one level, they simply kill the embryo, without harm to the woman - at least as far as we can tell at this point.)
Catholic grandmas, convinced they raised their kids right, are proud to see their grand-daughters educated by Catholic colleges, now married, working in a career. Unfortunately, grandma often has no idea her beautiful, Catholic grand-daughter will only succumb to a planned pregnancy when and if she decides to. And if grandma does figure it out - well, it’s none of her business.
Although, other Catholics sometimes make it their business. I’ve heard co-workers discuss who is contracepting and who is not in a Catholic company. If they find out that a couple is not having children due to fertility problems, they let everyone know this as well - so as not to allow for the scandal of someone else suggesting the couple is contracepting. It’s weird for me to hear that stuff, because I really don’t think it is anyones business. Sometimes people who are so worried about scandal end up becoming the source of the scandal.
Yet what is our business?
Our business is to get our schools, Catholic schools in particular to continually and consistently teach what the Church teaches regarding contraception. That it is intrinsically evil. Every good cafeteria Catholic knows this, or should know it, even if he or she was more or less taught that one’s conscience is above the teaching of the Church and that their choices are between God and themselves.
It is also our business to encorage priests to speak against the practice from the pulpit, and in the Sunday bulletins. When a community does not hear contraception condemned for what it is from the pulpits (which offers a chance for priests to correct the bad education Catholic colleges have been doing) then the error perpetuates itself through the generations. Thus, moms and daughters become ‘co-contraceptors’.
Abortion is hardly spoken about from the pulpits, and when it is, it’s usually around election time. With the new morning after pills, abortion and contraception have merged, as it were. They can finally be recognized as one and the same thing now. Hence, I find it timely that the Coadjutor, Bishop Nienstedt should mention anew the contraceptive mentality in this country, reviving an interest in the abuse of contraceptives in family planning.
Perhaps he may even have something of interest to say about the widespread practice of NFP by Catholics. NFP stands for Natural Family Planning - which, it seems to me, is still a form of birth regulation, albeit acceptable in the Catholic Church. I’m not saying it is bad to use NFP, because it is encouraged by the Church, and although I know little about it, it just sounds like another form of birth control to me.
The contraceptive mentality.
Many people want big houses, big cars, boats, cabins, all the electrical gadgets and conveniences money can buy, with two kids and a dog. They can’t have more kids because everything is so expensive; the kid’s education, their amusements, their car, their vacations, their hair and clothes - so you just can’t afford more kids.
When their kids get married, these usually don’t want kids of their own until they are ready for them - because they want to have fun, perpetuate the honeymoon, and acquire all the luxuries they left behind at home first, and then maybe they’ll have 1.2 kids - that is, if their careers permit.
Personal satisfaction, luxury and success has become far more important than a family. It’s the return, the reward for all of that costly Catholic education.
The contraception mentality is so deeply embedded in the culture, even good Catholics will look askance at a family of 13 and say things like, “How can they afford to support so many kids?” ”No wonder they home-school.” Or, “All that woman is is a baby factory.” And, “That husband certainly must have a high sex drive.”
Yep, even devout Catholics will say that stuff.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
I have never heard a homily about contraception. Not once. I think it is a real shame. Given the percentage of Catholics who are contracepting, it seems like it would be a good topic to cover. I don’t know if I agree that priests shy away from the topic for fear of losing wealthy parishoners, although I suppose its possible. I think its far more likely that the priests are uneducated about the topic themselves.
I can assure you that it is not just another form of birth control.
If you are interested in learning more about it, check out Christopher West’s “Good News About Sex and Marriage” or some of Father Richard Hogan’s work. There is also the Couple to Couple League’s website http://www.ccli.org, and http://www.omsoul.com. There are better resources out there, I’m sure, but those are the ones that come to mind.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
April 26th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Yep, what Adoro said! Superb post.
I like what I’m hearing about our Coadjutor Archbishop too. However, being of a naturally suspicious nature and having a healthy dose of fear of disappointment, I’m keeping my goals low. I’m waiting for him to surprise me. Me of little faith, I know.
You and I both know some who would find criticism even with Christ cleansing the temple. He’s not wearing the right color, it’s not a fiddleback chausable, hey, that’s not Latin..blah, blah, blah.
His Excellency will be under enormous pressure from all sides. He is in my prayers.
April 26th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Great post. I have heard a homily on contraception once and the priest only condemned abortifacient contraception.
I have heard a prayer for the end to the evils of contraception in the prayers of the faithful once.
April 27th, 2007 at 6:27 am
You and/or your readers might be interested in our website below, and you might find helpful the home-page sidebar item titled “Understanding Humanae Vitae.”
Our website may be unique because it offers a free, downloadable NFP How-to manual. In it you will find our teaching that NFP is definitely not intended be just “Catholic birth control.”
Peace.
John F Kippley
Author, “Sex and the Marriage Covenant” (Ignatius, 2005)
Co-author, “Natural Family Planning: The Question-Answer Book,” a free, downloadable e-book available at —
http://www.NFPandmore.org.
April 27th, 2007 at 8:40 am
John, Thank you for the link - it is very helpful to me and will be for others as well.
I appreciate all of you clearing up my misconception that NFP is Catholic birth control.
April 27th, 2007 at 9:46 am
But the number of children issue is distinct from the issue of NFP versus contraception.
Both John Paul and Paul VI came from small families and yet the anabaptist Hutterites have an average of 10 children per family (but none go to University). NFP is now so accurate that a couple following it can have little worry over not having control over child number whereas the older rythmn people had no feeling of control and were among those who lettered the Birth Control Commission through their Family Life Movement for a change in Rome’s position. So family size is a distinct issue from contraceptive mentality.
And celibates or the not yet married may find fault with living in the suburbs but in the US, that is the safest place to live if you don’t want your children being attacked by poor fatherless children in the cities. Have a large family and live in the cities of the US and your children are going to be shaken down repeatedly…I know…I grew up in the city.
Strangely several of the Fathers (Augustine (despite being against birth control) and Chrysostom) thought that large families were a Jewish thing leading Chrysostom to argue that marriage was primarily for avoiding fornication. Augustine thought that the command to multiply was for the Jews only since they were to build up to a larger size and they were to provide the Messiah within a defensible community I suppose. This may be because they felt that the end times were not all that far away based on certain passages in the epistles that seem to indicate that “the time is short”. Later though in Europe large families became valued by governments in relation to wars and in the beginning of the 20th century one sees the same thing with Italy having an Association of Large Families to which Pius XI spoke if I have my Pius’s correct.
If due to college costs and due to saving in 401’s (now that pensions are disappearing), both NFP families and other families have less children…. then vocations will become a function of those who choose it despite no parental encouragement and that has advantages of its own. It means that such people will be self starters rather than the type of person who needs their parents to move them in one direction or another. And the Church may need to rethink Her financial practices. If an only child becomes a nun or priest, their order in that specific case should assure them that they will contribute to the parents care should those parents fall into destitution in old age. So the Church may have to sacrifice Herself in the cases of only children becoming religious.
Here are relevant Augustine quotes:
The Good of Marriage (the Jews needed to propagate): ” Whence we gather, that, in the first times of the human race, chiefly for the propagation of the People of God, through whom the Prince and Saviour of all people should both be prophesied of, and be born, it was the duty of the Saints to use this good of marriage, not as to be sought for its own sake, but necessary for the sake of something else: but now, whereas, in order to enter upon holy and pure fellowship, there is on all sides from out all nations an overflowing fullness of spiritual kindred, even they who wish to contract marriage only for the sake of children, are to be admonished, that they use rather the larger good of continence.”
MArriage and Concupiscence Chapter 15: “No longer is God’s people to be propagated by carnal generation; but, henceforth, it is to be gathered out by spiritual regeneration.”
Frankly it was an odd view for a man who saw the asking for the debt itself as venial sin if children were not explicitly willed (no longer the position of the moern Popes) but he did this because he did not connect love to sex but saw in sex either childbirth or lust: “Chapter 16 [XIV.]—A Certain Degree of Intemperance is to Be Tolerated in the Case of Married Persons; The Use of Matrimony for the Mere Pleasure of Lust is Not Without Sin, But Because of the Nuptial Relation the Sin is Venial.” Marriage and Concupiscence.
April 29th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
I am a priest and I agree wholeheartedly with the post and the comments. I personally have a problem finding opportunities for preaching on some controversial topics. The sermon should comment on the biblical passages of the liturgy. It should not be a segway to talk about whatever the preacher wants. I find few texts that lead me to talk about stem cell research or contraception. Plus, theses topics require an explication of theological anthropology and even metaphysics before they can be understood. I would want to avoid giving the stupid voluntaristic explanation: “the Church says it is wrong so it is wrong”. To explain why it is wrong would take more than the normal 10 minute homily. It is a serious problem we preacher face.
May 1st, 2007 at 8:24 pm
I have heard a number of different priests from our parish, both the regular priests and our guest residents, speak quite effectively on contraception. It is a challenge, particularly because the presence of young children precludes the frank and direct approach, but it can be done. They also regularly address the issue of Internet porn, very discreetly so that the kids have no clue what is up, but every adult knows exactly what Father is talking about.