During recent months the Church has been under a renewed attack because of the sexual abuse scandal that became public in 2002. Pope Benedict XVI has been under special attack which is horribly ironic since he is the man who has done more than anyone else to cleanse the Church of what he has called “the filth.”
What is especially upsetting in all of this is the absence of any public reflection on the aberrant moral theology that led to the sexual sins of the Great Scandal. As far as I can gather, this sort of sexual scandal was practically unknown throughout the ages. So the obvious question is, “Why now?” “Now” refers to the Sixties through the Eighties and perhaps into the Nineties. There have been very few reports of such activity since the Scandal became public in 2002. What was going on in the Sixties?
Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln famously asked the bishops at their Dallas meeting in June 2002 to investigate the causes of the priestly sexual abuse scandal, but the responding silence was simply deafening. He didn’t even get a second to his motion! While none of us lay folks know the whole story, there are some things that seem tremendously obvious to me, so here is my “investigation.”
During the Sixties, there was a massive effort to change Catholic teaching on sexual morality. In my “dirty books” box where I keep theology and sexuality books that I don’t want on our bookshelves, I have 18 books published in the Sixties and Seventies. (I was teaching theology at the time, and I had to read this stuff.) The Sixties list of nine starts chronologically with a 1964 book titled Contraception and Holiness with a Foreword by Archbishop Thomas D. Roberts, S.J. of India. Four of these nine books (one in 1966, two in 1968, and one in 1969) were authored or edited by Father Charles E. Curran, undisputed leader of the anti-Humanae Vitae movement. The nine books published in the Seventies include four by pious-sounding Protestants for whom contraception wasn’t even a moral issue.
The Church has traditionally held that its teaching on sexual matters is a matter of natural law, and the gist of these books was to paint a different picture of the natural law, one in which contraception could be accepted. In his 1970 book, Sex: The Radical View of a Catholic Theologian, Michael Valente spelled out the logic of accepting contraception. According to this self-described revisionist, intellectual acceptance of contraception involved the destruction of the whole natural law theory and left the dissenters with no natural law basis for saying “no” to any imaginable sexual activity between consenting persons or even with animals. The 1977 Human Sexuality by the Catholic Theology Society of America (CTSA) drew an equation between Catholic spouses using unnatural forms of birth control and Catholic homosexuals doing sodomy. Both were against the rules, so to speak, but the gist of the book was that the rules would have to change to reflect our new understanding of the natural law. It reflected well what had been circulating in Catholic seminaries for some years. The CTSA book was condemned by the U.S. bishops, but for the most part they didn’t clean up their seminaries.
At the same time, many seminaries welcomed men with same-sex attractions while their admissions staffs weeded out overtly orthodox heterosexuals. In the culture, as contraception became almost universal and as more heterosexual laity engaged in marital sodomy, there was an increasing acceptance of same-sex sodomy. “Fidelity” came to mean being faithful to who you are now, not to previous vows and traditional teaching. Under these theological and social conditions, some seminarians and priests completely rejected the received teaching that marital contraception and sodomy of all sorts are serious violations of the natural moral law.
There is a perverse logic to contraception, so some priests “logically” began to put their new disordered thinking into action. Having read the material in these books, I can easily imagine that someone who bought into the “new understanding” of the natural law could easily think he was doing a young person a favor by getting him started early with sexual experimentation, same sex or otherwise. After all, there was a homosexual advocacy group which used the slogan, “Sex before eight or it’s too late.”
Some of the principal dissenters are dead, and others are getting old, but their students continue their devious work and control most of Catholic education at every level. The problem of priestly pedophilia has been suppressed by disciplinary measures, but the theological problem remains. And the effects it has on marital chastity are almost overwhelming.
According to the latest National Survey of Family Growth, (released May 26, 2010) the number of women who reported “current use” of modern methods of natural family planning is 0.1%, or only about 64,000 women in the entire country. (“Current use” means within the month of the interview.) This number is down from the 0.2% current use reported in the 2002 NSFG (about 124,000 women), and the 0.3% in 1982 (162,000). Among church-every-Sunday women, there was a 0.4% rate of NFP use, but the every-Sunday folks ended up eventually with an even higher rate of sterilization after their two or three children. Such surveys raise all sorts of questions, but the gist is that the NFP “movement” isn’t making any real progress. (My thanks to Professor Richard Fehring for providing these statistics.)
This is why we need your support. There is a real temptation for us to give up. Why not just play golf and tennis and watch the rest of the culture keep sliding downward? There must be a real temptation for you not to support this effort. After all, don’t you wonder if your financial gifts aren’t just money down the drain?
Perhaps what keeps all of us going is Mother Teresa’s reminder that God doesn’t demand success but only effort. So, we aren’t quitting. The Lord has blessed Sheila and me with good health, and we believe that the eco-breastfeeding insight and the covenant insight are not our inventions but are His gifts to be shared as widely as we can. We think that every NFP program ought to incorporate these insights into their programs, but that’s not happening yet.
One of our efforts is having some success. Starting March 26th, visitors registered to download the entire NFP manual. In the first two months through May 25, we had 763 registrations from 50 states and 36 foreign countries. Sometimes one registration will lead to more registrations from the same country in the next day or so. On May 16, we had one registration from Lithuania, then two more on the 17th and two more on the 18th.
We ask for a donation of $10, but we also offer the manual completely free to those who consider themselves poor. It is fulfilling to be able to help people in diverse circumstances, and some days are really exciting. For example, Saturday, May 22 was a slow day, but we had registrations from Singapore, Thailand, Lithuania, and the Ukraine as well as two each from California and Virginia. It is gratifying to receive thank-you notes from married students and other struggling couples unable to afford an NFP course in their area and very grateful for the free download.
Another good thing about the registration process is that it forced us to make arrangements for electronic payments at our website. You can now donate via your credit card or PayPal.
I’m happy to report that the download donations quickly paid for the costs of setting up the system, and I’m happy to note that they will pay for some of our regular monthly expenses, but we still need your support for our international effort in Slovakia, and we need to do much more to raise awareness of the NFPI service.
Another good thing we experienced recently was a seminar on mission-based non-profit organizations. The experienced presenter kept emphasizing how we need to keep focused on our mission, and that includes clarifying it. “Does your mission statement fit on a T shirt?” he asked us. Now it does. “Restore the Culture.” Or a bit longer, Restore the Culture through the Triple Strand. Specifically—
Restore the Culture of Generosity. The two-only culture isn’t good for kids, their parents, the Church or the overall culture. Our manual carries the Catholic call to generosity, and the proper teaching of ecological breastfeeding helps to encourage appropriate generosity in having children.
Restore the Culture of the Covenant. We are a covenant people with mutual responsibilities. We need to restore a culture of faith in the Church as mother and teacher and a culture of obedience to its teachings. We need marital chastity; we need to live marriage as a covenant and to respect the covenant-renewal meaning of the marriage act.
Restore the Culture of Self-Help. We do not pretend to have a one-size-fits-all NFP solution. That’s why we teach all the common signs of fertility and infertility. Couples can figure out for themselves what works best for them. Do some couples want to know the earliest possible start of Phase 3 infertility? That’s why we teach different rules for the different ways that the signs cross-check each other.
Please pray.
Please help us to restore these aspects of a culture of life. First of all, please pray for the work of NFPI every day. This is an apostolate that is battling the same evil spiritual powers that gave us the priestly sex scandals. We can’t even make a good effort, much less actually succeed, without divine help, and that calls for lots of prayers. They don’t have to be a long; it would be great to be remembered in any way you can work us in.
Please donate generously.
Please help us to promote the website, the Home Study Course, and the manual. Promotion costs money and requires persistence. Please help NFP International to maintain its support of the Classic Triple Strand program in Slovakia.
Please double your money.
A major donor wants to see the NFP International effort more widely promoted and has offered to match donations during the month of June up to $7,000.
Please share the news.
Please help us find more good folks like yourselves who understand the importance of promoting and teaching marital chastity via the right kind of NFP course and materials.
Reward yourself.
If you have not already done so, read the original 1967 temperature-only study by Dr. G. K. Doering. You will be glad you did. It provides great support for teaching the Sympto-Thermal Method.
Thanks very much for your prayers and financial support. May God continue to bless you and your family in every way this summer.
In his service,
John F. Kippley
President
NFP International Inc. is a 501-c-3 not-for-profit organization. Donations are tax-deductible. Please make your check payable to NFP International, and mail it to
NFP International, P.O Box 11216, Cincinnati OH 45211
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