A World in Need of the Truth and Beauty of Our Message

We live in a world where we are bombarded with different messages. I cannot check my phone messages or email on my phone without seeing a news item that screams to me: “Open me! I’m interesting!” A friend sent me the meme on the left. She knew I would find it funny since I am both a bicyclist and a motorcyclist. The meme is a reference to the male college swimmer who competed against men for three years. Over the last year, because he claimed to be identified as a woman, he competed against women swimmers and won a swimming championship. While my first reaction to the meme was amusement, upon further reflection I realized that I wanted to cry.

Later in the day, as I drove on the Interstate 80 freeway to a meeting in Sacramento, I saw a large billboard advertising the business below.

I pondered the destruction of human life and the negative impact on marriage and family that invitro-fertilization foments in our culture and dreamt that someday I would see a NFP billboard like the one below.

Checking email later that day, I read a message from a friend who sent me a YouTube video-interview of Helena, a 23 year old woman who de-transitioned from being a “transboy” for a couple of years. I found Helena’s account mesmerizing. She was extremely articulate, honest and profound in her willingness to critique her journey. The links to the interview can be found HERE and an article can be found HERE.

In the 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI prophesied that wide-spread use of contraception and sterilization would lead to the breakdown of marriage and the family. In 1981, in Familiaris Consortio Pope John Paul II wrote: “The situation in which the family finds itself presents positive and negative aspects: the first are a sign of the salvation of Christ operating in the world; the second, a sign of the refusal that man gives to the love of God.” (FC, 6) As forward-thinking and prophetic as these two popes, now canonized saints, were, I am inclined to think they still could not have imagined the state of affairs we find ourselves in now.

How did we get here? Where do we go from here? Many articles, books, podcasts, etc, have been produced trying to answer these questions. I cannot change the world by myself, but perhaps I can change a few hearts. Often, in a wedding homily, I review the three questions that are asked of the spouses-to-be just before they make their vows.

The questions are:

Have you come here to enter into Marriage without coercion, freely and wholeheartedly?

Are you prepared to follow the path of Marriage, to love and honor each other for as long as you both shall live?

Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?

God willing, the bride and the groom are able to say “I have” or “I am” to each of these questions, because each has a strong understanding of his/her own identity as a man or a woman created in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by Jesus Christ. Each understands that marriage can only be entered into freely and fully. Each knows that for his or her own good and for the good of any children with which God may bless them, each must be committed to the other for life. Each appreciates that being open to having children is part and parcel of Catholic marriage and that, over the centuries, the Church has reminded couples that God blesses them with children so that heaven can be more abundantly populated. (Pius XI, Casti Connubii, 13) Finally, the bride and the groom understand that a child is a gift to be received rather than procured.

What does this have to do with Natural Family Planning? Everything. Again and again, despite the challenges, disappointments and hardships and along with the joys and the spirit of thanksgiving, couples who practice NFP know that they are committed to it for the good of their marriage and family, for the good of society, for their own worldly and, someday heavenly, well-being. You are reading this newsletter because you already know and agree with all this. Together, little by little, let’s spread this beautiful and truth-filled message so that love and truth will win out over the falsehoods of our time.