Fr. Neuhaus: We shall not weary, we shall not rest

Go read the entirety of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus' closing address at the annual convention of the National Right to Life Committee:

We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every unborn child is protected in law and welcomed in life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until all the elderly who have run life’s course are protected against despair and abandonment, protected by the rule of law and the bonds of love. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every young woman is given the help she needs to recognize the problem of pregnancy as the gift of life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, as we stand guard at the entrance gates and the exit gates of life, and at every step along way of life, bearing witness in word and deed to the dignity of the human person—of every human person.

[...]

The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed. I expect many of us here, perhaps most of us here, can remember when we were first encountered by the idea. For me, it was in the 1960s when I was pastor of a very poor, very black, inner city parish in Brooklyn, New York. I had read that week an article by Ashley Montagu of Princeton University on what he called “A Life Worth Living.” He listed the qualifications for a life worth living: good health, a stable family, economic security, educational opportunity, the prospect of a satisfying career to realize the fullness of one’s potential. These were among the measures of what was called “a life worth living.”

And I remember vividly, as though it were yesterday, looking out the next Sunday morning at the congregation of St. John the Evangelist and seeing all those older faces creased by hardship endured and injustice afflicted, and yet radiating hope undimmed and love unconquered. And I saw that day the younger faces of children deprived of most, if not all, of those qualifications on Prof. Montagu’s list. And it struck me then, like a bolt of lightning, a bolt of lightning that illuminated our moral and cultural moment, that Prof. Montagu and those of like mind believed that the people of St. John the Evangelist—people whom I knew and had come to love as people of faith and kindness and endurance and, by the grace of God, hope unvanquished—it struck me then that, by the criteria of the privileged and enlightened, none of these my people had a life worth living. In that moment, I knew that a great evil was afoot. The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed.

In that moment, I knew that I had been recruited to the cause of the culture of life. To be recruited to the cause of the culture of life is to be recruited for the duration; and there is no end in sight, except to the eyes of faith.

Do you know what Humanae Vitae actually says?

Uncle Di comments at CWN's Off The Record about an article in today's Boston Globe, Debate over 1968 encyclical rages on. He notes sourly that the "debate" is never really engaged because the reason's behind Pope Paul VI's affirmation of the Church's teaching against contraception are never really given:

Funny: I thought this debate was about contraception. The "inseparability" that Pope Paul highlighted in Humanae Vitae was the natural link between the act of marital love and the process of human procreation. Break that link, the Pope warned, and all hell will break loose in human relationships, as reverence for human life declines. But after that one memorable line about the "disposable soda bottle," we've heard nothing more along those lines.

It's not just that fashionable liberals can't come to terms with the argument of Humanae Vitae. It's that they can't even state the terms of the debate accurately. It would be too embarrassing to revive the old-fashioned idea that the use of the human reproductive system might have something to do with human reproduction. So instead of summarizing Pope Paul's thesis, the squeamish journalist substitutes an inane formula: "the inseparability of marriage and love." Globe readers unfamiliar with the argument of Humanae Vitae-- and that will describe all Globe readers, if the editors have their way-- will nod in agreement that love and marriage go together (I feel a song coming on..), and never learn what the Pope said and why he said it.

Too late now. The debate is over. The defense has rested. Or rather I should say the defense is rested-- which is understandable, since the defense never got out of its chair.

I often find dissident Catholics disparaging the "authoritarian and oppressive declarations" of popes without ever engaging the arguments made. This seems to crop up in outcries against the Church's moral teachings on contraception, marriage and homosexuality that make arguments using the natural law. I found the reasons given by the Church quite, well, REASONABLE even before I was considering becoming Catholic. It resonated true that sex was designed for the procreation of a new person. If one has some notion that God does things for a purpose and that it's bad to do things some other way, then clearly a deliberate frusteration of that purpose (like contraception) is to be avoided.

Here's Paul VI (emphasis added):

Observing the Natural Law

11. The sexual activity, in which husband and wife are intimately and chastely united with one another, through which human life is transmitted, is, as the recent Council recalled, "noble and worthy.'' (11) It does not, moreover, cease to be legitimate even when, for reasons independent of their will, it is foreseen to be infertile. For its natural adaptation to the expression and strengthening of the union of husband and wife is not thereby suppressed. The fact is, as experience shows, that new life is not the result of each and every act of sexual intercourse. God has wisely ordered laws of nature and the incidence of fertility in such a way that successive births are already naturally spaced through the inherent operation of these laws. The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. (12)

Union and Procreation

12. This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.

The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason.

If you've never read this brief encyclical, you can find the full text of Humanae Vitae here.

Amy Julia Becker and Downs Syndrome of FT On The Square

A major annoyance of mine as a Catholic science teacher is when objections to certain kinds of research or medical procedures are brushed off as unscientific. The discipline of science has no internal means to judge the morality of any given experiment or treatment. Society can and certainly should limit unethical research. Indeed we do, which is why human trials are so difficult to conduct. There are lots of hoops to jump through to make sure it's relatively safe for the subjects involved. Amy Julia Becker shares a personal example at FIRST THINGS - On the Square:

I remember how I felt two hours after my daughter Penny was born, when I first found out that she had Down syndrome. I sifted through my brain for some scrap of information about this “thing” that had just happened to our family. All I could come up with was early death and mental retardation. The doctors didn’t help much. In the hospital, we received a list of all the things that might go wrong with our baby–heart defects, leukemia, Celiac disease, developmental delays. Despite the hundreds of thousands of people with Down syndrome in America, even the medical professionals didn’t seem to know much about it.

...

I heard a report on NPR about a new ethics recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. ACOG has stated that doctors unwilling to provide abortions have an obligation to refer their patients to another physician who will provide the procedure. In the words of the spokesperson on NPR, “if a physician has a personal belief that deviates from evidence-based standards of care . . . they have a duty to refer patients in a timely fashion if they do not feel comfortable providing a given service.” Studies show that women who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Trisomy 21 (the technical term for Down syndrome) terminate the pregnancy 85 percent of the time. Since new medical guidelines–“evidence-based standards of care”–suggest that all women, regardless of age, be screened for Trisomy 21, it is most likely that the number of prenatal diagnoses, and the number of terminated pregnancies, will increase. In other words, evidence-based standards of care result, more often than not, in the elimination of people like my daughter from our society.

As a result, I am somewhat skeptical about the standard of care offered to these mothers. I’m also skeptical when “personal beliefs” are pitted against evidence, therefore implying that a physician who is unwilling to perform an abortion has defied (“deviated” from) the evidence. I understand that many women face unbearably difficult choices in regards to the health of their babies. Some choose to terminate pregnancies because they have been given information about the near certainty of physical abnormalities leading to their child’s early death. And yet many women choose to terminate a pregnancy based upon probabilities, fear, and misinformation.

Lost and confused

Gender switch roils United Methodist Church

When did it become controversial to affirm that self-mutilating surgery was wrong? Doesn't this seem like a no brainer? Cutting off functional breasts, sewing on a fake penis, and injecting foreign hormones is clearly seriouly disordered.

Finally, those who argue the "God doesn't make mistakes" and "Don't mess with creation" lines readily make use of medical procedures to change their bodies, Phoenix said.

"Think of all the vaccinations, medications and pharmaceuticals we take," he said. "We completely alter our bodies."

No, true medicine seeks to heal our bodies of faults and preserve our health. It does not seek to destroy the natural functioning of a healthy person. At least, it shouldn't. Birth control and sterilization were previously viewed by Christians as "unnatural" because they frusterate or destroy the ability a healthy person has to conceive a new human being. At the 1930 Lambeth Conference, the Church of England formally permitted the use of unnatural methods of birth control. This was the first time in history that an organized church body broke with the traditional Christian morality regarding contraception.

Now, few churches stand with the Catholic Church in affirming the immorality of contraception. But one can see where it leads. When the connection between sex and procreation is discarded it becomes difficult to appeal to the human body or "human nature" in support of other sexual norms. If we can ignore the natural meaning of the sexual union between a man and a woman, then what stops us from simply ignoring the meaning of maleness and femaleness itself? Isn't it just our body? Isn't it just accidental? Maybe God did make a mistake with some people and ensoul them it the wrong shape...

It reminds me of a blurb I read in the local paper this past week. A local public school will prohibit students from allowing undergarments to show during the school day. No more bra straps on the shoulder or sagging belt lines. Don't worry, though. The administrators aren't doing anything rash. The new commonsense policy won't go into effect until next year.

This is news? Shouldn't a principal be able to say, "You, put on a decent shirt or you have detention"? This is why I'm glad my school has uniforms. We fight with the students over tucking in their shirts, or whether the type of leather on their shoes is dark enough. We pick our fights here so that we don't have to wring our hands about whether thongs can show above the waistline.

It's too bad that so many Christians didn't put up a fuss earlier about exactly what is "natural". Now they have to debate whether that flap of skin sewn between her legs makes her a man.

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EDIT: The blurb to which I referred referenced a district spokeswoman who said there has not been problems with boys wearing saggy pants and girls having bra straps showing, but "we are staying up with current issues and to make sure everything is covered." Ok. Then why did this make the news?

Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, July 22-28

Children are blessings, not burdens - gifts, not rights. Fr. Ubel, pastor, St. Agnes Catholic Church

This is NFP Awareness Week! I would like to pass on to all of you the truth of human sexuality that has so transformed my marriage and my life.

My wife and I were not Catholic when we were engaged or married, but at college my then-fiancee had Christian friends who decided to pracitice NFP. My wife's reaction was, "I guess they'll be having a baby soon!" After she learned that NFP can be practiced at the 99% effectiveness level, it appealed to her. When Amy brought it up to me on the phone my first thought was, "Are you telling me that even after we're married we'd have to not have sex sometimes?!" It was such a selfish reaction. I knew that sex before marriage was wrong, but my understanding went no deeper. I didn't have any idea what marriage was for, nor how the marital embrace related to it, nor did I have any moral compass to direct my actions as a married man. I thought that any kind of sex within marriage was fine. I felt angry that my future wife was suggesting that I have some kind of self control once we had wed.

Thankfully, God softened my heart and we took an NFP class from the Couple to Couple League. We learned what God created marriage for, and just what we were about to enter into. We learned that all Christian churches condemned contraception until 1930. We also had light shed on the tremendous good of human sexuality, and what the union of a husband and wife communicates about God and about love. We've enjoyed the blessing of NFP our entire marriage. First we used it to postpone pregnancy for three years, then to acheive pregnancy, then to space our children using total breastfeeding.

The most important fruit I see from our practice of natural family planning is the innoculation it provides against the "contraceptive mentality." There is a key difference between NFP and contraception.

While both may seek to limit family size:
- Contraception actively severs the God-given relationship between sex and procreation. It contradicts the meaning of sex, and thus the meaning of marriage.

- Natural family planning never interferes with the natural consequences of sexual relations at any time. It cooperates with the natural cylces which God has designed as part of a woman's fertility.

I know that this may seem subtle, but I cannot overemphasize how crucial it is. The difference is made apparent when a husband and a wife are asked how many children they would like to have.

Are children a burden which require us to consider how many we can bear? Do we have a right before God to have children when we desire them? Can we achieve true "birth control" by using contraception when we don't want to get get pregnant and then go off it when we feel ready? If so, then a couple might say, "We plan to have two kids spaced three years apart."

Are children a blessing from God on a couple's marriage? Is a child a gift given by God, created and cared for by the cooperation of a mother and a father? Must we respect the integrity of our bodies as the expression of our personhood and the image of God we bear? If so, then a couple might say, "We receive our children one at a time from God. We don't think God is asking us to be more open to another baby right now, but we'll prayerfully consider this every month as we are aware of the fertile time when we might conceive."

I was reminded of this difference last week as I listened to a radio broadcast of Focus on the Family. Dr. Dobson interviewed three women who had experienced surprise pregnancies. All three were Christian women, but all three were simply shocked that they had become pregnant while using "birth control." All three were afraid and thought about abortion to some degree, and one decided to go through with it. The tone of the whole show was somber. The show was entitled, "Hope in the Midst of Unexpected Pregnancies" (Part 1, Part 2).

If a child is treated as an unwanted side-effect of sex to be surpressed with a pill prescribed by a doctor, then there is no need to think about the chances of having another baby when a husband and wife have sex. Abortion becomes the logical, even if abhorred, next step when a woman is faced with a surprise pregnancy. This is the contraceptive mentality.

If a couple is reconsidering every month whether God is calling them to greater generosity in family size, and they are sacrificing by abstaining from relations during the fertile time, then an unplanned pregnancy should never be unexpected. That is was sex was designed for! The couple may of couse have many fears and questions regarding the future care of an
unexpected child, but they always remained open to the possiblity. They never closed their relationship to children by manipulating the language of their bodies.

I encourage everybody to learn more about NFP and the meaning of human sexuality within marriage. Your relationships to each other and to God will be transformed forever.

Further reading:
Marriage: A Communion of Life and Love by Bishop Victor Galeone