Why Artificial Contraception Is Wrong

I'm a cradle Catholic. My parents were founding parishioners of my hometown parish. I went to a Catholic grade school and a Catholic high school. I was active in youth ministry as a teen and even spent some time in the seminary in college discerning a call to the priesthood. I have always thought I was a good Catholic. I went to church on Sundays. I received the Sacrament of Reconciliation....occasionally. I agreed with the teachings of the Church, well at least most of them.

The one teaching of the Church that I disagreed with most was it's stance on artificial contraception. My rationale was that I didn't understand how natural family planning (NFP) was any different than artificial contraception. Both, in my opinion, were ways to prevent conception. Both showed a lack of trust in God and a lack of openness to life. How could one form of "contraception", although natural, be better than the other? If the Church allowed NFP, then it should allow artificial contraception. Or, if the Church wanted to stand firm on ensuring that Catholics be truly open to life and trust in God, then it should not allow either form of "contraception." In my opinion, the Church was flawed in its logic. I was right and the Church was wrong. I was also influenced by the culture of our times. I grew up in a culture where sex was glorified and artificial contraception was readily available and even encouraged. Even my parents joked about the family in our parish that had 6 children and used the "rhythm method." That was the logic I took into my marriage. My wife hadn't put much thought into the Church's teaching on artificial contraception either. She grew up with the same cultural influences as me. Our culture taught us that sex was a right and fear of pregnancy interfered with that right. We were taught that "fertility [was] an infection which must be attacked and controlled." (Abp. Chaput) So we decided to use artificial contraception to "plan" our family the way we wanted to.

Oh, how I was so wrong! As my wife and I started having children, our faith started to become more important to us. We went to Mass more consistently. We started praying and getting involved in the spiritual activities of our parish. Our faith was growing and we were enter into a deeper relationship with Christ and each other. As this continued, we began to wonder whether or not we were "cafeteria Catholics", you know those Catholics who pick and choose which teachings they agreed with and ignored the rest. The more we talked about it and prayed about it, the more we realized that if we wanted to be good, strong Catholics we needed to follow all of the teachings of the Church, including artificial contraception. So, at some point after our second child was born, we decided to stop using artificial contraception and enroll in an NFP class offered by one of the local parishes. However, we didn't make it to that first NFP class because God blessed us with a pregnancy before the class started.

My wife and I are now blessed with five wonderful children. I also have a better understanding of how I was so wrong. Love, and sex, is an act of giving. It is telling the other I give myself completely and totally to you. There are four parts to our wedding vows, to the love a husband and wife profess to each other:

1. A husband and wife freely commit to each other. No one or no desire is controlling them or manipulating them. When you use artificial contraception, sex becomes more about fulfilling your sexual desires than about your love for the other person. If fulfilling your sexual desires becomes the focus then you run the risk of becoming slaves to those desires.
2. Married love is total. It is love with no strings attached and that holds nothing back. In total love, you make a gift of yourself to another--it is complete and total self-donation. If you use artificial contraception, you are saying to your spouse, I don't give you my fertility. Your love for the other is not total, not complete.
3. A husband and wife are called to be fruitful. Their love is meant to be life giving. It is open to procreation in the physical realm and is life giving in the spiritual and emotional realm as well. Using artificial contraception means that you are not open to pro-creation. While it can be said that married couples who use NFP aren't open to procreation as well, there is a distinct difference. God does not want us to have children that we cannot support, whether it be emotionally or financially. That is why God created women with a natural cycle with periods of fertility and infertility. God wants us to be open to life and his will and provides for us a way to naturally plan our lives according to His design. This, for me is the hardest aspect. NFP can be hard to do. A woman's cycle is fairly consistent but there are times when it is hard to determine the signs of fertility. We need to understand this and do the best we can while at the same time trust that God is at work in our lives.
4. The final aspect of our wedding vows states that love needs to be faithful. It needs to be committed. We need to keep our promises to each other. There are two way which artificial contraception can prohibit a marriage from being faithful. The first one is, using artificial contraceptives means that we are not being faithful to the promise we made to each other and God when we married. We were called to being open to life, and contraception says we are not open. We have broken our promise. Also, as I said earlier, using artificial contraceptives could lead us to feel that sex is about fulfilling our sexual desires, and not about our love for each other. And if we are not feeling "fulfilled" sexually by our spouse, we could be tempted to pursue that fulfillment elsewhere.

Without each of these four parts, love is not complete. It is not whole. Marriage is hard. Life is hard. We are all called to be willing to make sacrifices as Christians. None of the sacrifices we are being called to make are as hard as the sacrifice Christ made for us on the cross. If we are willing to make sacrifices for our spouses, particularly when it comes to our own selfish sexual desires, then we will ultimately strengthen our marriages. We will also strengthen our trust in God. As the Switchfoot song says, "Sex is easier than love." But love is more fulfilling.

I also wrote specifically about Humanae vitae here.

Can You Help Me?

We are all in relationships of one sort or another. Whether that relationship is with a best friend, a spouse, a co-worker, a classmate, a teacher, or a boss, we are all in relationships.

Imagine, if you will, for a moment that I am your best friend. Now imagine that every time we talk, all I do is ask you for something. I ask you to buy me lunch. I ask to borrow a pen. I ask you to help me on a project that I'm working on. I ask to borrow your cell phone. I ask you for  money. How would you feel if every time we talked all I did was ask you for something, if all I did was ask you to help me? How long would that relationship last? My guess is that that relationship wouldn't last more than a couple of weeks.

This is how we often approach prayer. All we do is ask God for help. All we do is ask Him to give us something or to do something for us. Yes, God is there to answer our prayers and to help us with our struggles. But this approach to prayer misses the point. God wants more from us than just a laundry list of thing we want Him to do for us. He wants us to enter into a relationship with Him.

Think for a moment about your best friend, about the person you have the closest relationship with. What makes that person your best friend? What makes that relationship so close? I know that the relationship with my best friend, my wife, is so close because we communicate. That communication goes beyond "Can you pass the salt?" when at the dinner table. That communication is deeper than asking my wife if I have clean underwear or if there is gas in the mini-van. We share everything with each other. We voice our hurts, our joys, our triumphs, our struggles. We bare our souls to each other.

This is what our relationship with God is meant to be. This is what prayer is all about. God desires us to share our souls with Him, to voice our pain, our struggles. He wants to laugh with us in the joyful moments in our lives. He wants to cry with us in our pain. He wants to be our best friend. Next time you pray, don't ask God, "Can you help me?" Instead, share with Him as you would your best friend. And then ask Him, "What can I do for You? How can I help You?" I guarantee your prayer will be more fruitful if you do. Your laundry list of requests will be completed without even voicing them to Him.

I'm Proud....

Pride is a very sneaky sin. It oftentimes creeps into your life unnoticed. Before you even realize it you see yourself as better than other people: you're smarter because you had more education, you're more powerful because of your high rank on the job, you're richer because the size of your house and bank account. The stealthiness of pride works in such a way that before you realize it you are telling other people how to live their lives and what to do. You say that your intentions are good, that you are just trying to help the other guy out, but deep down inside you puff out your chest because you think you know better than anyone else.

I have never seen myself as a prideful person...until recently. I'm the quiet, reserved guy that you don't hear much from. I normally keep my mouth shut unless I have something important and pertinent to say. But I, too, have fallen into the sly trap of pride. I don't see myself as smarter than others. I'm not more powerful, and I'm certainly not richer. The prideful trap I have fallen into is spiritual pride. Yep, I see myself, not necessarily as being holier than others, but knowing more about my faith and how to live it out. It's an easy trap to fall into, so it seems, in the line of work I'm in. I'm a youth minister and my job is teaching the teens about their faith and how to live it out. However, I don't see myself as prideful when I'm with them. Where I see my spiritual pride coming out is when I'm interacting with my adult family and friends. I tell myself that I am reaching out to them, to help them in their journey, but deep down I feel a sense of pride in that I think I know more than they do when it comes to following Christ.

I have become aware of this sin of pride in my life just recently. And now that I am aware of it, I need to form a plan of action with the opposite virtue--humility. I need to open my mouth only when it is a sincere attempt to help another out, and keep it shut when my motivations are to bring attention to myself and my so-called "spiritual wisdom". I need to ask myself, "Is what I am about to say going to give more to the other, or to me?" If what I want to say is going to give more to me, then I need to keep quiet.

Do you struggle with pride? Maybe it's not spiritual pride you struggle with. Maybe you struggle with some other form of pride. It's an easy trap to fall into. Counteract that pride with deliberate humility. Give of yourself with no expectation to receive anything in return. Don't just give until you feel better about yourself, because that leads to pride. Give completely. Give until it hurts. It is only then that we can become humble. For as Peter says in his first letter: "'God opposes the proud but bestows favor on the humble.' So humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time." (1 Peter 5:5-6)

Life Is Habit Forming

You all have heard the phrase "You are what you eat." When I was a small child, I didn't understand what that meant. As all children do, I took it literally. How could I, or anyone for that matter, become a chocolate doughnut? It seemed ridiculous, and I didn't understand what adults meant when they said it. As an adult, with a more abstract view on life, I have come to understand that if you don't eat healthy then you won't be healthy. If all I ate was chocolate doughnuts then I would be overweight and unhealthy. I guess I would kind of take the shape of a doughnut, but I wouldn't become one.

Just as you become what you eat, your habits form who you are. Your habits form your present, they predict your future. Before the beginning of Lent, I challenged the teens in my youth group to give up one of their bad habits during Lent. Prior to the meeting, I had no intention of discussing this with the teens. I wasn't even going to talk about Lent. I was going in a different direction. But at the last minute, I felt that I needed to add more to my meeting to fill up time. So I threw in a discussion on Lent at the end of the meeting. And, as a part of that discussion, I suggested they give up a bad habit during Lent.

The Holy Spirit must have been at work, because I've encountered the subject of habits several times since that meeting. This has made me reflect on the habits I have in my life. Yes, I do have some good habits. I read every day, and much of that reading is spiritual in nature. I may not make it into Church every day to spend time in silence with the Lord, but I do pray every day. I've also got some bad habits. I won't air my dirty laundry to the world, but my bad habits center around laziness and allowing myself to be too easily distracted with unnecessary leisure pursuits. I'm beginning to see that those bad habits that I have are in direct opposition to and compete with the good habits I have. Oftentimes, those bad habits win out. My laziness and distracted mind keeps me from spending the time I should be spending reading and praying.

I do notice a difference in my attitude based on which habits win the battle in my mind. If I allow the bad habits to win the battle, then I'm impatient and unsettled. I have no peace in my life. I am, oftentimes, filled with guilt in doing that which I should not do. Yet, as they are habits, I keep doing them. When I am successful in pushing the bad habits aside and take the time to spend with the Lord in spiritual reading and quiet reflection, then I have peace. I feel much better about myself and my life. I am a happier person when my good habits prevail.

I am going to spend this Lent, and beyond, changing my habits, one at a time. I am going to rid myself of my bad habits, and I am going to replace them with good habits. I like the way I feel when I have good habits. I want to keep feeling that way. I want a happy, peaceful present. I want a happy, peaceful, future. And I am going to start with asking the question, with every decision I make, "God, what do you think I should do?"

The Baby Gianna Story

Please take the time to read the story of Baby Gianna, being featured on the Creative Minority Report blog. It is not just a story of one mother who chose life, but it is also an expose on Catholic hospitals that offer abortion to their patients. It is an important story, and one we all, as Catholics, need to be aware of. The link to part 1 is below. Links to the rest of the story are on the blog.

Creative Minority Report: The Baby Gianna Story Part 1

We All Desire Holiness

You have within you a desire to be holy.  Whether you realize it or not, it's there. We all, whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist, or agnostic, have within us a desire to be holy. It is written into our soul. It is a part of who we are, a part of how God created us.

What is holiness? Quite simply, holiness is "an insatiable desire to improve oneself and an unquenchable concern for unholy people" (Matthew Kelly). We all want to improve our lives and the lives of others. This is holiness. Unfortunately, we often follow that desire for holiness down the wrong paths. We seek holiness in the world. We seek it in improving our social status. We seek it in improving our economic status. We think that money and status will improve ourselves. We think that we will be happy only if we have enough money and enough friends. But are we really happy? Are we really improving ourselves by having more money or respect in business and society? Maybe, but does the pursuit of wealth and status lead to lasting happiness or self-improvement? No, because once we reach the goal we set for ourselves we ultimately find that it is not enough, and we seek more.

Many people think that in order to be holy you are not allowed to enjoy life. Some people believe that to be holy you have to run away from the world, or that you have to be in a church on your knees all day. All of these are unnatural responses to what holiness is. I say unnatural because there is nothing more natural than being holy. What is unnatural is our worldly pursuit of holiness.

What is holiness? Holiness is a choice. It is choosing what God wants for you and letting go of what you want for yourself. In order to truly improve ourselves, we must learn to let go of what we want. We must, in order to be truly holy, have an insatiable desire to do what God wants us to do. We must allow God to guide our thoughts, our words, our actions. It is only through doing this that we will have an insatiable desire to improve ourselves. It is only in following God's plan for our lives that we can have an unquenchable concern for unholy people. If we can do this, if we can give complete control over to God, then we can fulfill our desire for holiness.

Unanswered Prayers?

I have many unanswered prayers in my life....or at least they seem unanswered to me. I read this today about unanswered prayers. It is  from a document found on the body of an unidentified Confederate soldier during the Civil War:

I asked for strength that I might achieve; I was left weak that I might learn to humbly obey.

I asked for power that I might lead, and win the praise of men; I was given weakness that I might feel the need for God.

I asked for health that I might do great things; I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I got nothing I asked for, but everything I hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am among all men most richly blessed.