Satan’s greatest success is not when he gets someone to do something that they know is immoral; it is when he gets someone to do something immoral and be convinced that it is not wrong. In the first case, the person can come to repentance and ask for forgiveness, but in the second case they do not even acknowledge they need to repent of their actions.

Such is the case today with artificial contraception. When you take a step back and think about it, it is unbelievable (and diabolical) that just 100 years ago every practicing Christian, no matter their tradition, would acknowledge that artificial contraception is immoral. But today, almost none do; artificial contraception is as normal as cell phones and McDonald’s. As an Evangelical Christian, I never once gave a thought to the morality of using artificial contraception; to me that would be as silly as contemplating the morality of using a fork instead of my hands to eat. This is still the situation in most of the Evangelical world (and scandalously much of the Catholic world as well).

But perhaps the tide is turning:

(RNS) Is contraception a sin? The very suggestion made Bryan Hodge and his classmates at Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute laugh.

As his friends scoffed and began rebutting the oddball idea, Hodge found himself on the other side, poking holes in their arguments. He finished a bachelor’s degree in biblical theology at Moody and earned a master’s degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Now, more than a decade later, he is trying to drive a hole the size of the ark through what has become conventional wisdom among many Christians: that contraception is perfectly moral.

His book, “The Christian Case Against Contraception,” was published in November. Hodge, a former Presbyterian pastor who is now a layman in the conservative Orthodox Presbyterian Church, realizes his mission is quixotic.

In the 50 years since the birth-control pill hit the market, contraception in all its forms has become as ubiquitous as the minivan, and dramatically changed social mores as it opened the possibilities for women.

No less than other Americans, Christians were caught up in the cultural conflagration. In a nation where 77 percent of the population claims to be Christian, 98 percent of women who have ever had sexual intercourse say they’ve used at least one method of birth control.

The pill is the most preferred method, followed closely by female sterilization (usually tying off fallopian tubes).

“People are no longer … thinking about it,” says Hodge, 36, who had to agree with a Christian publisher who rejected his book on grounds that contraception is a nonstarter, a settled issue.

“People don’t even ask if there is anything possibly morally wrong about it.”

For more than 19 centuries, every Christian church opposed contraception.

Under pressure from social reformers such as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, the Anglican Communion (and its U.S. branch, the Episcopal Church) became the first to allow married couples with grave reasons to use birth control.

That decision cracked a door that, four decades later, was thrown wide open with the relatively safe, effective birth-control pill, which went on the market in this country in the summer of 1960. Virtually every Protestant denomination had lifted the ban by the mid-1960s.

Even evangelicals within mainline Protestant and nondenominational churches embraced the pill as a way that married couples could enjoy their God-given sexuality without fear of untimely pregnancy.

“It was a reaction to that whole Victorian thing where sex was seen as dirty,” says Hodge, who lives in Pennsylvania.

Official Mormon teaching through the late 1960s was against birth control. But by 1998, the church’s General Handbook of Instructions made it clear that only a couple can decide how many children to have and no one else is to judge.

There remains one massive holdout among major Christian churches—the Roman Catholic Church, which expressed its opposition in no uncertain terms in Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae.

To separate the two functions of marital intimacy—the life-transmitting from the bonding—is to reject God’s design, Paul VI wrote.

“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,” Humanae Vitae proclaimed.

Janet Smith, a Catholic seminary professor whose writing and talks have been influential for two decades, puts it this way: “God himself is love, and it’s the very nature of love to overflow into new life. Take the baby-making power out of sex, and it doesn’t express love. All it expresses is physical attraction.”

Continue reading…

Some people criticize Natural Family Planning (NFP) as just “Catholic birth control.” It is fundamentally no different, according to critics, than condoms, birth control pills, or other means to prevent pregnancy. These are obviously people who have never actually used NFP in their own lives, for if they did, they would know how different it really is.

The great thing about NFP is that using it helps one to recognize the great gift of marital sexuality as well as the great blessing of children in a marriage. Whereas artificial birth control focuses exclusively on preventing the natural consequence of sexual relations, NFP helps a couple focus on the two primary purposes of sexual relations: procreation and marital unity. This often leads them to a deeper marriage and a greater openness to children – and even a greater appreciation of the Catholic Church, as can be seen with this couple:

Couple credits NFP for changed worldview

Chris and Christelle Hagen weren’t Catholic when they decided to use natural family planning instead of artificial birth control.

Christelle was initially attracted to NFP for health, not moral, reasons, she said. At first, Chris was surprised she didn’t want to use birth control pills, but he was happy to oblige.

Now, 13 years into their marriage, the Hagens, members of St. Michael in Stillwater, say using NFP has positively affected not only Christelle’s health, but also the way they view their marriage, intimacy and children.

NFP also opened the door to the couple’s exploration of the Catholic faith, and their eventual conversion to Catholicism from the Evangelical faith in 1999, said Chris, 34.

Learning to trust

Unlike contraception, which uses barriers or hormones to prevent the marital act from producing life or, in some cases, can act as an abortifacient, NFP ensures the couples’ marital act is always open to life. When a couple does not want to become pregant, they abstain from sex when the wife is fertile.

According to the Catholic Church, NFP is the only moral way to regulate pregnancies.

Christelle, 37, first learned of NFP while living with a Catholic family after college, and she explained it to Chris, whom she was dating. They made a decision to use NFP after they married.

But, out of fear of pregnancy, the Hagens used condoms during their honeymoon. A few nights later, however, they had a spiritual experience — something Chris said is difficult to describe.

“We both felt an intense amount of fear, we felt very vulnerable, and we both had the sense — we were experiencing this at the same time — that it was because we were using condoms,” he said.

They didn’t use a condom after that night and tried better to trust God, they said.

Their Evangelical church didn’t teach contraception was wrong, and initially, the Hagens thought that, while it was wrong for them, contraception wasn’t wrong for everyone, Christelle said.

They eventually changed their minds. Chris was persuaded by the fact that no Christian denominations approved artificial birth control until the 20th century. Although Christelle had already changed her mind, a miscarriage eight months after their wedding confirmed her beliefs, she said.

“That experience for me was really a turning point emotionally for NFP, because I realized more of what was at stake with sexuality — that it had incredible power to it, the power to create life, and after that, I’ve never looked back,” she said.

They started to teach NFP, which they did for eight years as a couple through Couple to Couple League. When Chris became too busy to co-teach, they retired from Couple to Couple League, and Christelle focused on her growing interest in childbirth and parenting.

Practicing NFP deepened their appreciation for children, they said, and today they have four, ranging in age from 2 to 9.

Continue reading…

In the 4th century, debate raged within the Church surrounding both Christological and Trinitarian issues: were you an Arian, a semi-Arian, or a defender of Nicea? Do you believe that the Holy Spirit is God or not? People would literally get into fist-fights at the local shops over these issues. It is reported that jolly ol’ St. Nicholas punched the heretic Arius in the face during the Council of Nicea. People realized that these issues were vitally important, as all of Christianity revolves around the identity of Jesus Christ and the nature of the Godhead.

Today debates in the Church are not about such sublime and elevated topics. Most Catholics might not deny the Christological and Trinitarian definitions of the early Councils, but they don’t put much thought into them, either. Today our debates are over sexuality, specifically, what I like to call the “pelvic trinity:” abortion, contraception and homosexuality. This unholy trinity of issues are of course interrelated and they all revolve around our “right” to engage in sexual activities with no consequences. But these issues go even deeper, as they touch whether we have the right to define morality as we see fit, or if there is One above us who makes those determinations. Ultimately, it comes down to the question of who is in charge: us or God.

With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that disgraced Catholic priest Fr. Alberto Cutié (aka “Father Oprah”), who left the Catholic Church to become Episcopal after being caught with his mistress last year, has adapted his own views on sexuality to be more in line with his new ecclesial communion. He was recently ordained an Episcopal priest and now he is admitting that he had struggles with the Catholic Church’s position on the pelvic trinity:

As a Catholic, he secretly struggled with his church’s stance toward homosexuality, contraceptives and his own celibacy. As an Episcopalian, he’s speaking freely about his support of openly gay clergy, of birth control, and, when a woman’s life is in danger, even abortion.

This should come as no surprise, as the most common modern response to personal failures in the area of sexual ethics is not to repent and try again, but instead to redefine sin and continue in your activities. Fr. Cutié justifies his own failures in practicing sexual self-control by rejecting the immorality of just about any sexual activity. He exacerbates his own sin by encouraging others to engage in similar sins to make him feel better about himself.

But Christ through his Church has a better way: instead of wallowing in sin which harms the human person, the Church’s sexual ethic frees one to live as God designed us to live. And failure to live up to this sexual ethic is never total: even when we fall, Christ always offers us the grace – through confession and the Eucharist – to get back up and try again. We should never get discouraged, as success in the moral life is measured less by our falls than by how much we keep striving for holiness.

Please pray for Fr. Cutié that he might be one day reconciled to Christ in the Catholic Church.

The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church has strong words regarding the relationship between a country’s population growth and its overall health as a nation:

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia stresses the importance of solving Russia’s demographical problems and improving nation’s health.

“What’s the good of having economy, if our nation is sick? How will we reclaim these boundless spaces, vast lands, not only in European part of Russia, but in Siberia as well?” the Primate said at organizational meeting of the Belgorod branch of the World Russian People’s Council.

He reminded that birth rates had recently grown in Russia.

“We hope this tendency will be stable and our people rather than strangers with alien culture and alien faith will inhabit our vast lands inherited from God and our hardworking forefathers and this greatest treasure – our land – will be cultivated by descendants of those who merged it to the great Russian state,” Patriarch Kirill said.

Would that all religious and political leaders realize that a nation’s best resource is its people, and the more children we are having, the better. For those who believe that overpopulation is a problem, check out these videos:

One of the remarkable features of the decade of the 1960’s was the wildly optimistic view people held for technology and its ability to make our life better. Commercials abounded that touted the latest technological product that would mean less work, more leisure for the suburban American. Artificial turf was seen as superior to natural grass for ballparks across the country. Children had to be bottle-fed rather than breast-fed because of the wonderful vitamins that man put into the bottles. And of course, The Pill would free women everywhere from nature’s “curse”: bearing children.

The epitome of this messianic view of technology was the television show Star Trek, created at the height of man’s love for artificiality. Much of science-fiction up until this time took a dark view of the future, with aliens invading and robots taking over the world. But Star Trek had a different view: technology would not only not be our downfall, it would be our savior. In the Star Trek world, the advent of faster-than-light warp travel led to the end of poverty, greed, war and apparently Original Sin.

Over the years it has become apparent to almost everyone that modern technology is not, in fact, the savior the 1960’s thought it would be. No one makes a baseball park with artificial turf anymore and no one argues that bottle-milk is superior for a baby over breast-milk. Commercials still tout the time-saving features of the latest gadgets, but no one actually believes that these devices will save any time – they in the end fill it with things we don’t really want to do.

But there is one artificial technology that we still cling to vociferously, refusing to examine any evidence that it might actually be harmful to man. That, of course, is The Pill. When technology impacts something of marginal interest, such as a baseball game, we have no problem analyzing it objectively to see if it is truly beneficial. When it impacts someone we love, such as our baby, we are willing to reject it if the evidence shows it is harmful. But when it impacts our own selfish needs, especially one so powerful as the sexual drive, we refuse to see the evidence right in front of our face.

This is the curse of Original Sin: we want to make ourselves gods, controlling the world around us to make it in our image. We think we can make our own Garden of Eden. But we have found that the artificial things that we make don’t hold a candle to God’s created universe. But we cling to our false, artificial world if it allows us to wallow in our sins. We need to remember that the salvation of this world comes not from technology, but instead through the work of a Carpenter’s son who was nailed to a wooden Cross for our sins, and makes that salvation available to us through such humble (and natural) things like water, bread, and wine.

National Review has an enlightening article about one of the most addictive and destructive drugs in the world: pornography. It is probably the most destructive force against marriages today.

What is not mentioned, however, is that most mainstream TV and movies are now the gateway drugs for this evil.

Most practicing Catholics recognize the dangers of pornography on the spiritual life. Perhaps nothing in our society is better able to lead one away from God than this terrible evil. And, sadly, viewing pornography has become socially acceptable, thus leading many people astray.

Marcel LeJeune over at Aggie Catholics has written often about the plague of pornography, and he recently put up a very good post that shows that pornography’s destructiveness is not only spiritual, but it actually messes with your brain. He writes:

We have known for years that porn is destructive to marriages, families, individuals, and society.  We also know that is is addictive - more so than crack or heroin.  Science is just now finding out just how destructive it is to the brain.  Using pornography radically changes the neuro-pathways in the brain by causing the body to inject strong neuro-stimulants directly into the pleasure center of the brain.  Repeatedly doing this means the structure of the brain itself is altered and the effects are devastating.  As one psychologist puts it, “pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their (men in particular) brains.”

Go read Marcel’s whole article, and then redouble your prayers for all people who are ensnared by the evil of pornography.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!

I do not normally keep up with celebrity gossip, but as a golf fan, I haven’t been able to avoid the Tiger Woods scandal. At the time of this writing at least 11 women – mostly a combination of porn stars, cocktail waitresses and clubbers – have been intimately attached to the married golf star.

I think most people – even those who are not religious – find Tiger’s actions reprehensible; if the accusations and rumors are true, he appears to have engaged in extra-marital relations on a very frequent basis with many, many women. He seems to have no control over himself and his desires and little respect for his marital bond. Obviously I too condemn such behavior, but we would miss an important lesson if we just thought this was a problem unique to Tiger or even to celebrities.

Tiger engaged in adulterous behavior on a wide scale because a wide scale of women were available to him easily. As the comedian Chris Rock cynically noted, “A man is only as faithful as his options”. I don’t agree with this statement as it doesn’t take into account the power of grace, but there is truth in it. How many men in Tiger’s place would have been able to remain completely faithful? I think we can answer that question by looking at what is available to most men on a wide scale easily: pornography. Considering the tremendous commercial success of pornography, it is ridiculous to think many married men are not engaging in it. Yet every time a married man views pornography, he is engaging in adultery just like Tiger.

For both Tiger and the average husband viewing pornography, he is committing adultery when it is convenient for him to do so. For Tiger, that involved real physical contact with woman. For the average husband, it involves virtual contact. Christ told us that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully commits adultery with her in his heart: so how is the married man who views pornography any different than Tiger?

Tiger’s family life is imploding very publicly right now, but pornography is causing many families to implode silently. We should pray for Tiger and his family and also for all husbands struggling with pornography.

I have four daughters, the oldest of whom will soon be entering her teenage years. In five years, three of my daughters will be teenagers at the same time! Unlike many parents, I am actually looking forward to their teen years, as it is a wonderful time in which they are becoming adults and hopefully growing in their spiritual lives.

However, I am under no illusions about the dangers of the teenage years in our society. Over the past fifty years, our culture has decided that during the teen years it is acceptable to behave in beastly ways without consequences. This especially applies to the area of sexual relations; it is assumed by many people that teens are just going to do “it”, so all a parent should worry about is protecting them from physical harm (with no regard for the psychological/spiritual/mental harm of pre-marital relations). We see this in the push for teenagers to learn about contraception, while ignoring the possibility of abstinence.

But this mindset has also entered the realm of vaccinations. There is now a standard vaccination pushed on pre-teen girls which is to protect against HPV – Human Papillomavirus. This is a sexually transmitted infection, and the assumption of the vaccination is that the vast majority of girls will be sexually active in their teen years, so they should be vaccinated to protect themselves against HPV. My wife has been adamant that we will not get this vaccination for our girls, and I found a great article called “Girls and Gardasil: The Protection Game” which details the reasons not to give it to our daughters. It really is worthwhile to read the whole article and it is difficult to just excerpt parts of it. But here are some of the opening paragraphs:

Most people would agree to vaccinating their children against infections that are generalised within the community so that everyone stands an equal chance of catching them – whooping cough and measles, for instance. But there is a new class of diseases that are increasingly being targeted by vaccine developers: sexually transmitted diseases such as Hepatitis B and cervical cancer, and this is where parents need to consider more carefully whether to immunise or not…

The argument advanced for vaccinating schoolchildren is that most will be sexually active by the time they are eighteen and will have caught the virus by their early twenties; therefore, to be effective, the vaccine has to be administered prior to sexual debut. While this may appeal to parents with a pragmatic approach to life’s challenges, parents who are looking at the overall formation of their children need to take other factors into consideration. They have probably already had conversations with their children about the importance of exercising sexual responsibility prior to marriage and, with luck, they have been demonstrating steadfast fidelity and mutual support in their own marriage.

Deciding that they need to vaccinate a daughter against a sexually transmitted disease seems like a vote of no confidence in the child’s ability to display sexual self-control or choose a like-minded husband. It is like saying to a child, “Eat healthy foods, don’t overindulge and you won’t become obese … but, just in case you can’t control yourself, we’ll give you gastric banding surgery in advance.” Child psychologists are agreed that children are good at spotting when parents give them contradictory messages – and may later use them as justification for their behaviour. A school-based programme adds a social message that early sexual intercourse is allowed, as long as one uses “protection”…

The question we should be asking is, do we base our family decisions on worst case scenarios or do we try to support our children by building a “best practice” ethos within the family? And, importantly, using worst case scenarios to justify vaccination against STDs does not take into account the other ways of preventing cervical cancer nor the possible side-effects of vaccination.

Do read the whole article, and if you have pre-teen girls think carefully when you are asked to give them this vaccination. Are you possibly straining a gnat but swallowing a camel?

A study found that people who use condoms have poorer mental health than those who do not:

A leading Scottish psychologist has claimed that condom use is associated with poorer mental health, problems with stress and depression, saying his research shows the natural conjugal act can significantly boost the mental wellbeing of men and women.

But my favorite line was the following:

“The more often people are using condoms independent of age, independent of the nature of their relationship, the greater use of immature defense mechanisms against stress”

So using an immature defense mechanism against parenthood leads to a greater use of immature defense mechanisms against stress. Who’d have thunk it?

There is a plague that has been quietly sweeping the world the past decade. It has always existed, but recent advancements in the developed world have actually caused this plague to spread like wildfire. It infects men disproportionally, but almost no one is immune. It is far more deadly than the swine flu, and can have an incubation period of just a few weeks.

What is this plague? Addiction to pornography.

Pornography is one of the most destructive forces known to man – it destroys marriages, leads to crime, enslaves women, and most importantly, kills the soul. The spread of pornography in our internet age is one of Satan’s greatest successes. Now almost anyone can access pornography at anytime in the anonymity of their own home. Furthermore, Hollywood has made “soft core” porn standard-fare in popular movies, thus killing our consciences to this terrible plague. Pornography can be as addictive as the worst drugs, and as difficult to overcome.

But there is hope – the power of grace can overcome any sickness or sin. The Knights of Columbus have recently started a website called “Fathers for Good” which has a whole section dealing with the issue of pornography, including a list of resources for those struggling with this terrible addiction.

I urge anyone who is struggling with this issue to get help immediately – your family and your soul could be hanging in the balance.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!

Last week Christopher West, a popular proponent of John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” was profiled on ABC’s Nightline. When I watched the piece (video available in the link provided), I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. The whole segment seemed to be completely focused on sexual acts, devoid of any serious context. It even presented Mr. West as being a fan of Hugh Hefner and made him appear to be supportive of the sexual revolution. I do not know Mr. West, although I am vaguely familiar with some of his work, but I do know the media and I assumed that ABC was to blame. Considering our culture’s distorted obsession with pelvic issues, it is not surprising that they would divorce issues of sexual acts from the context of male-female relationships as intended by God.

Well, it appears that Christopher West also takes issue with ABC’s presentation. On his website, he notes some errors with a number of points in the report. He also granted an interview with Catholic News Agency in which he gives further corrections to ABC’s sensationalism of his work.

However, some Catholics are still not happy with Mr. West’s apostolate, including Alice von Hildebrand. Her main objection seems to be that she does not think Mr. West is “reverent” enough in his discussions of sexual issues and does not take seriously enough the problem of concupiscence.

This is clearly an important issue. We live in a culture is that is incredibly sick when it comes to sex. You cannot walk in a mall without seeing semi-pornographic images and you cannot watch more than 15 minutes of prime-time television without some message urging sexual relations without any responsibility. High schools and colleges are deep in the “hook up” culture, which reduces the God-given gift of sex to an animal urge. How are we as faithful Catholics to respond to such a culture?

On the one hand, I am uncomfortable with some of the Catholic responses to the sexual revolution, which try to be like a “Catholic Dr. Ruth” or as “edgy” in its language as Howard Stern. Dr. Hildebrand has a point when she urges us to be reverent when speaking of sexuality and to always remember that we are all afflicted with concupiscence. Yet I also think that one of the beauties of JPII’s Theology of the Body is that it breaks free of the Puritan demeaning of sex. Sexual relations between a man and a wife is a wonderful gift from God and one of its purposes (along with begetting children) is to unite a man and a woman as “one flesh.” St. Paul tells us that marriage is a “mystery” that reflects the relationship between Christ and His Church – how incredible is that? The response to culture’s worship of sex is not to proclaim that “sex is evil” or even to avoid talking about sex, but instead show how sexual relations can and should point people to worship of sex’s creator. From what I have seen, this is the ultimate intention of Christopher West’s apostolate.

Inevitably, good people can make mistakes and perhaps go beyond the proper boundaries when discussing sexual relations. We need to pray that everyone involved in this type of apostolate stays close to the Lord and helps others to understand God’s gift of sex in its appropriate context.

Reason #4,503,294 to kill your TV:

Study: Children Who View TV Targeted for Adults Engage in Sexual Activity Earlier

A friend sent me a link to an article with the following headline:

No such thing as virginity, author says

My first reaction was “boy, anyone can get published these days” (ironically, the same reaction I had when Our Sunday Visitor agreed to publish my book). Somehow the author, Jessica Valenti, lives in modern America and thinks our society emphasizes virginity too much. That’s what I often think as I’m walking through the mall looking at semi-pornographic pictures of whores pop tarts everywhere. In spite of the actual reality of our culture, Valenti is offended by the fact that a few souls have decided to resist the oversexualization of our girls (and I do mean “girls” – try to find modest clothing for a 12-year-old girl and see what happens) by promoting virginity.

Valenti especially criticizes “virginity pledges” – when someone makes a public commitment to save themselves for marriage. There has been a lot of publicity about these pledges over the years and some have questioned their usefulness. I do believe these pledges can be worthwhile (I took one before I was married and found it was helpful), but of course they are only one piece of the puzzle. Chastity is not just a commitment to avoid performing a single action – it is an entire way of life (and it doesn’t end at marriage). It involves how you dress, how you talk, who you interact with, what you watch, and countless other actions. If someone is unchaste in their clothing or their viewing habits, they are very unlikely to be chaste in their sexual life.

Unfortunately, almost every aspect of our culture puts tremendous pressure on our young people to be unchaste in word and thought – which will often lead to a lack of chastity in action as well in spite of the best efforts to fulfill a “pledge.” We need to teach our children from an early age about the dignity of the human person by word and action so that when they become teenagers they can see that being chaste is a fundamental way to show respect for that dignity, both of one’s own person and others.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!