Contraception...the True Teaching

Lately, contraception has been forefront in the news.  Not only because of the Health and Human Services Mandate, backed by President Obama; but also because it has taken a front seat in the Republican Presidential Candidates' debates.

The Catholic Church has once again been under fire as being against women's health care, anti-choice, and stuck in the dark ages.  Feminist organizations have attacked it for its hard stance against contraception and abortion, and have questioned how a bunch of old men can sit there and make decisions for women.

The truth is, it isn't those "old men" making the decisions.  In order to understand that statement you need to be able to accept that the Church is following teachings from Jesus Christ since the time he created the Church.  The Church stands by it's teaching that nothing should stand in the way of the possibility of having a child every time the husband and wife have sexual relations.  The reason God made us male and female was so that the parts went together and life is created.  If you try to use the same parts, no baby can be had.  I heard a statistic once that said that if all the people alive today were homosexual, in three generations mankind would vanish from the face of the earth.

As time has gone by, I have heard an even better way to explain why contraception should not be used.  When a man and woman marry, they commit to each other 100%.  In sickness and in health, richer and poorer, etc., but 100% nonetheless.  If you now use contraception, you are no longer giving yourself to each other 100%.  You are now keeping a part of yourself away from your spouse.  What most of secular society fails to realize is that the Catholic Church places a very high honor on the sacrament of Marriage.  It is not just a contract, something we conveniently do so that we can share medical costs or get tax breaks.  That is what a civil union is for.  Marriage is two people becoming one...forever.  You cannot become one, share in each other in the richest of ways, if you have placed a barrier between you.

I will cover marriage and divorce in another blog...it deserves much more time than this.

So what about all the arguments for contraception?  You know, the rather weak excuses given to allow promiscuity between unmarried couples...and selfishness between married couples.  This statement is a bit judgemental, but often the truth hurts.  The pill and other devices have allowed unmarried people to have carefree sex with little fear of repercussions.  It has caused a huge drop in morality in our society.  We now see an increase in premarital sex, infidelity, and numerous other issues.  Married couples place their wants and desires ahead of what God intended marriage to be, the avenue for procreation.  Natural Family Planning can do the same for a married couple as the pill can, with almost the same effectiveness.

One last reason the Church has against the use of contraception is that most of the methods out there today, other than a condom, are abortifacient.  That is, when they do their job, a baby is aborted.  To accept this, you must first agree with the Church's teaching that life begins at conception.  By the way, science has, in the past couple of years, come to agreement with what the Church has taught all along.  That being said, as soon as the egg is fertilized, a new life begins.  The pill, keeps that fertilized egg from implanting in the woman and aborts it.  If it does implant, it starves for lack of nourishment caused by the pill and aborts.  The IUD, sponge, and other methods like those, have much the same effect.  They either stop and kill the sperm, or keep the fertilized egg from implanting.  Basically, every time these methods work as designed, a baby is aborted.  Don't believe me?  Do some research.

The usual defense against what I just wrote is that it is just a clump of cells, it isn't a baby until it implants in the woman.  And then, it is still able to be aborted because it is only a fetus...the term baby seems to make it harder to abort.  Personally, every time I have heard a woman say she is pregnant, she says she is having a baby, not a fetus.

Contraception is not a positive tool in a marriage.  It divides and separates what is supposed to be a union created by God in which his intent for a marriage can be carried out.

It's Not About the Easter Bunny!



Deny yourself and take on more

 Even though I had planned a series of blogs on misconceptions about the Catholic Church, today is special, so I had to write a little bit about Lent.

This is one of my favorite times in the Church calendar.  It is a season that helps us to focus on the upcoming celebration even more than Advent does for Christmas.

As a child, this was not such a favorite time.  Our family gave up popcorn, soda, and candy.  Inevitably, one of my friends at school would offer me some candy and I would either turn it down or take it home and save it until Easter.  We also went to Mass every day of the week.  This part I did not mind so much because I was able to be the Altar Server, which I loved.  I didn't care so much, however, for the Stations of the Cross because it was longer and I had to walk along the Stations with the priest while I held the cross.  I gained a new appreciation for my walk when we had a priest in my high school years who could not walk the Stations himself.  He told me that someone had to walk the Stations or we would not receive the Indulgences.  Now I had a purpose.

As I got older, Lent became a time that was not so much what I was giving up, but what I could do extra.  I tried to read the Bible more, or do a daily Rosary.  Although this was, in my opinion, a good way to follow the Lenten path, it didn't seem like enough.  I justified not giving up anything because I really didn't eat much of the things I was giving up.  This year, I decided to make a significant change.

Lent is meant to be a time of reflection and preparation for Easter.  I shared what Lent was and meant to my family with a reporter.  I learned a lot about the history of Lent.  It is not as much a Biblically based season as it is traditional.  The Church, in it's earliest years, used this time to prepare converts to the faith.  As the years went by, more and more of the Church's members took on the penitential aspect of the season for themselves.  I am thankful that we no longer follow the complete removal of meat from our diets during Lent.  That, to me, would be just too much!  "Fat Tuesday" was originally a way for people, along with neighbors, to get rid of all their meat, dairy, and other food stuffs that had to be refridgerated over the Lenten season.

As I was saying, this year I wanted a significant change.  Along with our family dropping the soda, popcorn, and candy, I also chose a few other things to deny myself.  They are not drastic, but I think they will cause me to think of the season I am in as I make a choice to follow my plan.  As always, I have also chosen to spend more time with God, whether it be in reading the Bible, other religious writings, or in prayer.  I am hoping that this year, Lent can be that nudge I need to make a life-change.  As one of my favorite writers, Matthew Kelley says, "Our lives change, when our habits change".

We Are Called, But Can We Follow?

As Catholic Christians we are called to evangelize, to spread the Good News.  Admittedly, Catholics are not as good at this as our Protestant brethren.  We tend to be uncomfortable about discussing our faith with others, we don't go door-to-door sharing our message of God's love.  You also don't see too many Catholic programs on mainstream television, they are usually broadcast on the Eternal World Television Network (EWTN) or The Catholic Channel on satellite radio.  Why do you think we have such a tough time sharing our Faith? 

I believe the answer is twofold.  First, we have become poorly catechized as a church.  We, as Catholics, know less about our Church and what/why it teaches what it does ,than most atheists.  This leads to and intertwines with, the second.  That is, we find ourselves often defending our Church and what it teaches and believes from an onslaught of secularist thinking and false understandings by other churches and peoples.  I would like to discuss some of the major issues in society today that seem to be the hardest for people to understand, and difficult for most Catholics to explain because they just don't know. 

Over the next couple of blogs, I will lay down an explanation for these, to the average Protestant, as I have had them explained to me and learned through my own continued education in the Faith.  The topics will offer my best understanding on them, and what I go by when I explain to others.  They are:  contraception, Mary's place in the church, Confession, marriage (maybe mixed with contraception)/divorce, statues (idolatry), and the three parts of where our beliefs come from; The Majesterium, the Bible, and tradition.

Mary

Many Protestants misunderstand the position of honor the Catholic Church gives to Mary, the Mother of God.  They falsely believe that Catholics worship Mary and place her on an equal footing with God.  This is absolutely not true.  Yes, there is a prayer called The Hail Mary which we say a lot, especially if you say the Rosary regularly.  There is an important line in this prayer which, by the way, is taken from the Bible (Luke 1:42).  It says, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners...".  Note the request for prayers.  We are not praying to her as we would to God, we are asking her to intercede for us.  Now the arrow flies, that we don't need to have her pray for us, or the saints for that matter.  We can pray right to God!  Absolutely, you sure can.  But I pose this question then.  If there is no need to go to others, then why do people ask for "travel mercies", or please pray that my father gets better, or ask us to pray for them for any number of reasons?  If Jesus will listen to anyone, wouldn't he listen to his own mother?  We Catholics call on what we call, The Communion of Saints to help us in times of need.  That is why you will hear Catholics pray to saints for different reasons...asking for their help.

Here is a simple example that shows how our request for intercession from Mary works.  I had discontinued my son's allowance due to a lack of work performed.  After a while, he went to my wife to see if she would talk to me about getting his allowance back.  Why didn't he just go to me?  Why ask her?  He thought maybe she could sway me a little bit better than he could.  He needed her to intercede for him.

Mary is given the honor due her by her position in life.  As the Mother of God, she deserves to be revered and honored, not worshipped.  If a Catholic never said a Hail Mary his entire life...it would be OK.  It doesn't make him a bad Catholic.  Mary is given the honor we should all give to our mother's.

Next time I will take a look at statues and art and the misconceptions behind the Church's use of them.