Commencement Address at Franciscan University of Steubenville by John F. Kippley, Dec. 13, 2008: Part 3
Next, I want to encourage you to be actively and fully Catholic. In other words, become a warrior in the culture wars. You cannot avoid being involved in today’s culture wars because you will be challenged at work, in your socializing, and even in your local parish. Be aware that our Catholic Church is hated and ridiculed today especially because it is the only major worldwide voice that is opposed to the culture of death, that is, the culture of immorality and abortion. Look upon the challenges of the culture wars as opportunities to work for a culture of life, and use those opportunities well.
What I am going to say next may be old news for most of you, but it bears repeating one more time before you hit the road. As Pope Paul VI predicted in Humanae Vitae 40 years ago, the widespread rejection of Catholic teaching on birth control has led to a general decline in sexual morality. American Supreme Court decisions have made clear the social and legal connections between sexual immorality and abortion. The bottom line is that if we want to build a culture of life, we have to persuade people to live according to the Christian Tradition regarding sexuality. If we want to live in a civilization of love and life, we all need to pray daily and work for a rebirth of chastity, including marital chastity. I invite you to get involved in building a culture of life.
Another suggestion for getting involved in the culture wars is to get involved in the natural family planning movement when that’s appropriate for you. This is the front-line activity in the battle for a culture of life.
Because of the nature of our work for the past 40 years, I would like to clear up a few misunderstandings about Natural Family Planning. First, NFP is not “Catholic birth control.” We definitely encourage generosity in having children.
Second, in our teaching of NFP, we encourage ecological breastfeeding. That’s the pattern of frequent nursing that naturally postpones the return of fertility. We know a number of couples whose only form of baby spacing has been ecological breastfeeding. This is God’s plan for spacing babies as revealed in the Book of Nature. Some of the happiest couples we know are those who let ecological breastfeeding space their babies and have relatively large families.
A third misunderstanding is that NFP is only for Catholics. Very briefly, NFP does NOT mean Not For Protestants as I will show in a minute.
To be continued next week.