From a letter to a doctor who inquired about our approach to teaching NFP.
When the subject of morality and biological/medical education comes up, I think of a day in the medical school education of my second daughter and her future husband. The University of Cincinnati medical school brought in an “expert” to explain to the future docs about the patients they might be seeing. People doing sodomy and whatever with, of course, some consequences. The whole purpose of the day was to instruct the future docs not to be judgmental.
I would like the medical schools to bring in informed Catholics who could help future docs why believing Catholics believe that unnatural forms of birth control are immoral and thus not be judgmental and thinking that such Catholics and some others are crazy or luddites. We try to do that in Chapter 1 of our manual. Explaining Catholic belief in terms not only of the proscription of contraception but also in terms of covenant theology of the marriage act might help some of them. After all, if that theology helped Kimberly and Scott Hahn accept Catholic teaching on birth control when Scott considered himself the most anti-Catholic person at their seminary, perhaps it can help others as well.
Anyone who reads our manual will realize that it does not take many words to explain this sort of thing—the idea that the human sexual act ought to be 1) exclusively a marriage act and 2) a true marriage act, a renewal of the marriage covenant. That simple idea gives meaning to the sexual act. It helps people to understand the intrinsic dishonesty of 1) sex outside of marriage and 2) marital contraception.
I think that almost every theist can understand that the acceptance of contraception means the acceptance of the idea that modern men and women can take apart what God has put together in the human sexual act. A couple of questions suffice: “Who put together in one act what we call ‘making love’ and ‘making babies’?” A thinking theist has to say, “God.” “What is contraception except the effort to take apart what God has put together?” Well, what else? Thus, the acceptance of marital contraception logically entails the application of that “taking apart” to the entirety of imaginable sexual actions including adultery, fornication, incest, and—of course—the acceptance of sodomy, provided only that the parties are of legal age and have given mutual consent.
If you are dealing with a person who claims to be an atheist, it may be helpful to note that no one can prove that God does not exist. The logicians have long told us that no one can prove a negative. If you think it might be helpful in dealing with an unbeliever, you can give her or him a brochure I developed (at the request of a prisoner) titled “Why Believe?” Yon can download it (free) at http://nfpandmore.org/brochure.shtml .
I better stop now. You have hit my hot button.
John Kippley