Natural Family Planning International

Background. 2.
The passage of the anti-contraception Comstock laws in the 1870s  did not quiet the debate for long.  The Church of England illustrates what was happening.

1908:  The Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops condemned marital contraception.
1920:  The Lambeth Conference repeated its condemnation,
1920s:  Progressives built their ideas about love, marriage and sexuality on birth control.
1929:  Walter Lippmann, a secular humanist, wrote a book, A Preface to Morals, in which he said the acceptance of contraception was the greatest revolution in morals that had ever occurred, and he complimented the churches for recognizing this and opposing it.  He also said that the revisionists were following the logic of birth control instead of the logic of human nature.

1930, August 7.  The Lambeth Conference accepted marital contraception.  Anglican Bishop Charles Gore warned that such a move would entail the acceptance of much else including sodomy.  He was voted down.  Eighty years later the Anglicans had not only accepted sodomy but even openly sodomite bishops.

1930, December 31.  Pope Pius XI issued Casti Connubii (On Chaste Marriage)–his response to Lambeth.
N. 56:  Those who indulge in unnatural forms of birth control “are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.”
N. 57:  “If any confessor or pastor of souls, which may God forbid, lead the faithful entrusted to him into these errors or should at least confirm them by approval or by guilty silence, let him be mindful of the fact that he must render a strict account to God, the Supreme Judge, for the betrayal of his sacred trust, and let him take to himself the words of Christ: “They are blind and leaders of the blind: and if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit.”  Strong and prophetic words indeed.

John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant

Background. 1.
There is nothing new or revolutionary in any of the sexual immoralities practiced today.  They were existent in Old Testament times and were common in the Roman Empire before Christianity led to the revolutionary rejection of these behaviors as sinful.  What has been revolutionary in the last couple of centuries has been the rejection of biblical and Christian sexual morality by people who still call themselves Christian.

How did we get to this state?  The Apostle John wrote: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” (1 Jn 4:18)  I submit that something like the opposite is also true.  Perfect fear casts out love.  That’s where we are today.  I suggest that we can, for practical purposes, date the start of the modern sexual revolt as 1798.  That was when Thomas Robert Malthus, a 32-year-old economist and Anglican clergyman published An Essay on the Principle of Population.  He alleged that population will grow geometrically while food supplies will grow only arithmetically.  Fear of overpopulation and starvation.  Malthus advocated self-control for family limitation and perhaps late marriage.  Self-control in 1798 would have meant total abstinence until menopause.

In 1823, the neo-Malthusians continued the fear factor but dropped Malthus’ morality and recommended contraception via condoms.  By 1873, the birth control debate came to the United States and the Comstock laws, passed by essentially Protestant legislatures for a basically Protestant country, made illegal the sale and distribution of birth control devices.

John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant

In his 1995 teaching on prophecy, Fr. Al also noted that prophecy was a means of deliverance.  Moses was the prophet of deliverance from the slavery of Egypt.  Jesus was the prophet of deliverance from the slavery of sin.  I suggest that the teaching of the Church regarding marital chastity is the prophecy of deliverance from the slavery to sexual sin.

Father Al noted further that the general reaction to prophecy is negative.  Certainly that was the case in the Old Testament.  Certainly that was the case among most of the Jewish leadership at the time of Jesus.  And certainly that was the reaction to Humanae Vitae.  And it is also the reaction of most bishops and pastors to the idea that a full course on natural family planning should be a normal part of preparation for marriage.  In 1989 a committee of American bishops published a document on preparation for marriage in which they urged that every engaged couple should be required to attend a full course on NFP, not just a couple hours squeezed into a pre-Cana Day (Faithful to Each Other Forever by NCCB Bishops’ Committee for Pastoral Research & Practices, Dec 1989).  At present, 21 years later, only six dioceses have that requirement.  In western Cincinnati, only Fr. Mark Watkins at St. Lawrence has that requirement.  I understand that perhaps some of the recently ordained associate pastors have that as a personal goal, but it’s not yet a parish policy.

So your request may meet with initial rejection.  And my request to you may meet with initial rejection.  That is all par for the course.

You may rightly ask: Is this necessary?  Aren’t people already well instructed on these things?  And aren’t large numbers of Catholics already practicing NFP?  After all, we see empty pews and the closing of schools and parishes.  Isn’t that due to the selfish use of NFP?  As far as we can tell, less than 5 percent of Catholics are using natural forms of conception regulation.

If 95% of married couples in their fertile years are using unnatural forms of birth control, that means that the typical Catholic parish is very badly affected or infected by slavery to sexual sin.  In turn, that means that you and your pastor have the opportunity to help deliver your parish from that slavery to sin.

John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant