Natural Family Planning takes the dignity of ordinary men and women seriously.

Natural Family Planning
by Father Ronald Lawler, O.F.M., Cap.
Director of Religious Education Ñ Adults and Families,
Diocese of Piflsburgh, Pennsylvania,
author of Teaching of Christ and other works.
Reproduced with Permission

One of the constant objections to Natural Family Planning is that it asks too much of people. Many will acknowledge its positive features as a form of family planning it reverences life, is never abortifacient; it has no deadly side effects; it demands only a moderate amount of abstinence. Still! - it requires self denial and self discipline of a kind that ordinary people will not put up with. At the bottom line, this logic says, it won't work.

But this objection fails to appreciate what an "ordinary person" can and will do - given a motive and loving help. The New Testament portrays Christ as actually demanding far greater things of people than Natural Family Planning does. Everywhere he appears pastoral and compassionate, understanding about human weakness. For that very reason, everywhere he made great demands. "Is divorce permissible for any cause?" This was asked by legal minds expecting a legal answer in accord with somewhat lenient Jewish divorce practice, but the question evoked a stunning answer. "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder."

The objection comes back: "But Moses said . . ." That was no answer to him. "From the beginning it was not so." It was the hardness of hearts that had generated laxity in this matter of principle. And our human hearts do tend to be hard. Still Christ did not despair of us and find technological ways to solve problems while our hearts remain unaltered. He demanded and made possible newness of heart. His own disciples were stunned at this sexual ethic. "If what you say is true," they marvel, "it is not good to marry at all!"

Implicit in the apostles' protest was the lament, "You don't understand." Throughout the gospels there seems a readiness to acknowledge that the Christian teaching on sex and love seems incredible to the unconverted heart. To live as husband and wife until death is a grand ideal. Mere common sense can dismiss difficult ideals. But in its suffering when the ideals are not pursued, the modern world may be ready to hear again and to understand Christ, who makes seemingly difficult demands in order to be kind and lead us to greatness.

Moral theology ought always be written with remembrance of the sublime vocation of the "ordinary person." Its task is not to make life easy in the flabby and self destructive sense but to help make a good life possible. In the light of the gospel, ordinary people are called to greatness and made capable of it by grace, as the very meaning of their lives. Marriage is a sign of the love between Christ crucified and his Church. It is both a grand and frightening vocation. It cannot be lived unless people make efforts toward love that is like Christ's; that is, unless they let him make them begin to be great.

Natural Family Planning takes the dignity of ordinary men and women seriously. It is sensitive to their needs and has experience of their weakness. But it knows how splendid is the greatness that can spring up in the human spirit. In fact, it is for the sake of this goodness and greatness that the universe was made.

In the gospels, openness to the truth is central to goodness and greatness of heart. Our times are days of image making and advertising, days of rhetoric, propaganda, days of untruth. There is always a temptation when faithfulness to known truth would be demanding, to be false to the truth and the truly good one knows. This is not out of any direct contempt for truth, but there can be a kind of willingness to be not quite open to the truth. Such an attitude would be opposed to . the truthful joy of Catholic faith. Beyond the obscurities of human confusion, Christ dwells always in the family of faith, and by his Spirit guides us into all the truth. He teaches us what love requires and gives strength to do it.

When there is too great a concern to find "pastorally tolerable," that is, soft and undemanding ways of living Christianity, a terrible price is paid. Then priests begin to hear the terrible words we now hear too often "We don't know what our faith teaches anymore." We are inclined to be silent, fainthearted, even unsearching, caring little about what the truth that we are to live in love might be.

This truth is revealed to us in the inner sanctuary of conscience, where we are alone with God whose voice echoes in the depths of our hearts. For Catholic faith, conscience is not a mere subjective norm, an inner voice that a man has a right to follow in contradiction to what he is able to realize is God's law. Rather, the truly conscientious person must always be truly seeking what is really God's will, whatever it may cost. Such a person desires earnestly never to confuse personal preferences with the call of God. If we find that, no matter what we contemplate doing, the Lord always agrees with us, we can be sure we have a bad connection. For our conscience to be a reliable moral guide, it must be formed by God's wisdom revealed through His Scriptures as interpreted by His Church.

It is true that people must be free to make their own decisions, for only in freedom can we truly act as persons made in the divine image. But freedom and responsibility to choose truthfully are not opposed. We have a duty to choose what really is good, to the extent that God enables us to know the good. The Church maintains great openness to diverse views whenever that is suitable. Many moral questions are infinitely complex. When revelation and the earnest reflection in faith has led us to no decisive teaching, the Church always calls for freedom. But when the Church has taken a decisive position, then scholars, and indeed all the faithful, have a duty to give religious assent. Those who believe that Christ really dwells in the Church as a teacher, and that His spirit guides it into the truth, are ready to say yes when the Church insistently proposes a moral teaching which expresses the convictions of the longstanding lived experience of a Church guided by the Spirit of Christ. Even if some theologians dissent, they are easily refuted by the most brilliant moral thinkers of our time who teach in communion with the Magisterium.

Often such dissent arises from genuine pastoral concern about the difficulties of couples and families. But that genuine concern does not confer validity on any argument made in its name. It is possible to be kindly and sincerely wrong. The moral revolution in the Church was not based on any real grounding in serious scripture scholarship, in investigations and tradition or in rational developments in moral theory. It was based on a mistaken sense of pastoral compassion and on the forlorn hope that someone will provide justification for what people are now urged to do. This is a frail footing for those who would stand against what the fathers and doctors and saints have always said, and against what experience and faith have taught us as necessary for honoring the dignity of man and of human love.

The task we have to do for the Church is so overwhelmingly important that we cannot be content with small successes and self righteousness. For all our frailty, God has given us something needed in the whole family of faith and the whole human family. Let us acknowledge our responsibility.

We must ask God to make us and our leaders long for greatness and goodness of heart. Our vocation to become Christians is a serious one. With such a vocation, you are called to help the world, and to do this you must lean on Christ and draw from him the courage to carry out your vocation faithfully. God has not given us heroic models like John Paul II and Mother Teresa simply so that we might admire them. You too must be flames of fire. For the whole world wants and yet resists what God calls you to give it. So you must give generously, from the greatness of heart that Christ will create in you, and with you.

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