I've been listening to NPR this morning, as I surf the 'net. And sometimes, I wonder at the secular mindset...
Just now, we had a report about "advances in contraception" -- all about the intense research into somehow negating the awful, horrible fertility You-know-who cursed us with. Of course, the holy grail of this movement is "male contraceptive," which is really about revenge -- it's you men who cause this problem! The researcher was so proud to report they'd damped down sperm production from a count of 40 million to 4 million. Ah, progress!
And then, we heard about IUDs and "vaginal rings," and who-knows-what (I was only half-listening) -- all part of this relentless war against...well...against ourselves! Against our own nature. I mean: even if you reject God, how insensate must one be not to notice the conspiracy of our own human nature--as part of the entirety of Nature -- against the lust for sex that can be guaranteed to be fruitless? And dare anyone ask why we must, must--MUST DAMN YOU!--have sex on demand, without any possibility of new life?
Doesn't anyone notice what Ralph McInerny calls the "ecological" argument--the distortion and contamination of a natural ecology of the human body? Doesn't anyone notice the grimness and ugliness of this?
All this, by the way, followed only a few minutes after another feature -- I kid you not -- about progress in women freezing their eggs so they can be...wait for it...fertile!
I couldn't help thinking: if someone were to ask, Why are we doing this?--would heads explode from asking the unthinkable, sacrilegous question (sacrilegous to the worship of sex and self)?
4 comments:
I heard my first full explanation of NFP in a four week program that Father James Sullivan did at St Gertrude in Cincinnati before he left. It was part of his millenium lecture series that went on for a number of years. It was so well done that I could not believe any sane person would do anything else. Why the church does not teach this as a mandatory part of getting married or for those who wish to join a parish and are childbearing age is beyond me. My two kids just went through the laughable program put on by the Cincinnati Diocese for marriage prep and gained nothing of value. It was like some time you had to put in to get the OK to marry in a church, not like something that has been given to mankind as a gift from God. What I have found since coming home to the Catholic Church is so much variation that it is hard to tell true church teaching and this is sad because what is truth has such beauty even as it calls us to sacrifice. BE NOT AFRAID was JPII's call I wish more preists would hear. It's really not about butts in the seats as much as it is leading the children of God home.
Um, Father, I just found your blog.
Might I continue your theme by asking, what would happen if you delivered this as homily?
Well, I may, you never know...
I wouldn't be so explicit; it really makes parents squirm when you talk very candidly about contraceptives and sex; and the thing is, that becomes an excuse for not receiving the message.
So when I talk about contraceptives, I use circumlocutions.
And, I may be wrong, but the jocularity would perhaps not go over well in a homily.
I can say from bitter personal experience that this "sensitivity" to topics and terminology can border on the fanatical -- to the point that even the use of common technical jargon is found to be "unacceptable in a Sunday homily. After all, children are present."
Another few generations of ignoring the topic will, of course, result in so few children that this objection will no longer be even remotely valid.
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