The weeds and the thistles still come; but through the "good news" and faith in Jesus we rise above them. The gospel blueprints who we are, people of God who witness to the harvest and witness to the kingdom by performing corporal and spiritual works of mercy. The fruit of the harvest we sow in Jesus name. We might well ask "am I the farmer who scatters the words of God in all the open fields that I find. Am I the person who not only sows, but fertilizes, cultivates, waters and protects the crop." All this work done out of faith that there will be a harvest.

Christian fathers have the same job description as the man in the gospel. Our Baptism compels us to do what the farmer did: to sow the seeds of faith by witnessing, proclaiming, virtuous living, love, and forgiveness, all done in trust, to advance God's reign of justice and peace. Our words, our deeds, our actions, our interest in others are the seeds we plant, producing a harvest we may never see but others will. A harvest known to God alone. A Christian father must be a witness and as a witness he becomes a teacher of faith. He maintains a certain "fit" between what he says and what he does. He is to become a martyr to the faith; not necessarily to die for it-But certainly to LIVE for it. It takes courage to live one's faith. A Christian father must be a missionary, for that is what a Christian is. One who seeks daily conversion, one who walks with others showing them the path to God and encouraging them to follow. One who sets the tone of virtuous living.

The seeds we plant today may not come to harvest in our life time or even in the next generation. When it comes to planting seeds I think of my own grandfather who was bedridden for over twenty five years with crippling arthritis. It turned into a family tradition that every Sunday we went there for dinner so my mother could give Grandma some relief. As a twelve year old I dreaded this weekly commitment because Grandpa would have me sit for hours and read the New York Times. He incessantly stressed the need to know history. At twelve I had little interest in history; I preferred to be out playing with my friends. The seeds he planted in me way back then, took years to germinate.

Grandpa is long passed, but his influence on me and my brothers is still bringing forth fruit and is very much alive. One incident is very vivid in my mind. Not too long before Grandpa passed away, he said something I didn't understand then, but I do now. He said that he was in a great deal of pain, but he offered it up on behalf of his grandchildren that they may never have to suffer. He did not complain "why me"?, because we do not live for ourselves alone. We live for others and suffer for others. When we say "why me?" this is our rebellion against God and His eternal plan. Each of us has a part to play in His eternal plan and we can never be totally fulfilled in our finite experiences. We can be fulfilled only in His eternal kingdom. My brothers and cousins have never suffered. We feel it resulted from Grandpa's heroic witness to his faith. Suffering brought out his best!

I think of my own father; there were so many good things about him. His love of God, his loyalty to family, his gift of forgiveness, were all special gifts from God. One day when I was about fifteen years old, he said to me "I want to show you something special." From his pocket he took out a key and showed it to me. I said "what's so special about a key? He said it was not only special but a magical key. I asked what was so magical about a key? He said, no matter where I am, as long as I have this key I know I have a home and a family that loves me. There can be nothing more magical than that. So many years later I have come to appreciate that thought and try to emulate it. The seeds that were sown in my life so many years ago have resurfaced and come to harvest over and over again, even when the sowers have passed on to new life. Christian fathers and grandfathers should be given special honor not because they are biological but because they are spiritual teachers as well. Christian fathers who lead their family to God are truly joyous people who can take out a key and see in it a loving home and a loving family both here on earth and in God's kingdom.

Though a bewildering plethora of personal choices are part of most modern lives. and opinions, theories, economics—both good and bad—all command attention and response, beneath them all, allegiance to God and his Divine Providence requires a moral decision in keeping with his abiding principles. It is the proposition of this essay that to the question, "What should I do with my life?", we ought readily to respond, "First, welcome children!" It is an assertion that applies to persons of all vocations and walks of life, married or celibate and provides a totally coherent option that matches the challenge that even the most and least important of us will experience. This is particularly salient in a period and society which is so outrageously and increasingly dominated by anti-natalist principles. This results in the fact that we are now faced with a vast and certain collapse of world population beginning in mid-century—only 35 years away—and the almost total collapse of fertility rates. Slow at first, by 2100 world population will be vastly reduced and consist mostly of old people. A reversal must happen, or mankind might not even survive. Population Control, a book by Steve Mosher, is an important reading for all serious persons. It is just one source which outlines impending events, but even the UN, a world leader in anti-population activity, paints much the same picture.

Under these circumstances, it seems to me particularly distressing that the currently prevailing educational efforts in the Church on the topic of NFP seem to fail to promote its worthy common usage among Catholic couples. Even episcopal advertisements for educational programs about NFP are devoid of reasons for its use.¹ Were it not so, and were Catholic sexual morality more clearly and consistently preached, our statistically based presence in modern societies would hopefully be entirely different. As regards births, abortions, contraception, infidelity and divorce there is no clear current difference between Catholics and the people among whom they live.

Recognizing the Problem

No one would doubt that some Catholics are well instructed in the ends of marriage and the conditions necessary to morally employ NFP, and no one should assert that periodic continence is wrong in the circumstances of many people's lives. Certainly, I do not so assert in this essay. Nevertheless, having repeatedly witnessed highly defensive sensitivity among persons who have been involved in NFP education programs, it provokes a perplexed response in my mind as I see, hear and read how many of those educators seem to react to the need to have serious reasons for the practice of NFP. Their defensive reaction may be a tip-off to underlying contradictions and seems to reflect a gap between a truly Catholic perspective and a general perception of many people who see in NFP a way to achieve the very same objective as with artificial contraception. Similarly, phraseologies like "approved by the Church," "responsible parenthood," "promotes unity and harmony," etc., which are common, seem to me to be either taken out of context, simply false and, even more troubling, destructive of a Catholic understanding of both the Sacrament of Marriage and the overarching purpose and character of our Faith in Jesus Christ and His Church. A much more important Catholic issue is at stake than a response to "the pill" or aid to childless couples, and it is being ignored.

Issues associated with ethics and theology are generally examined today through the prisms of modern science, as Cardinal Ratzinger observes in his comments about Auguste Comte in the first pages of Chapter One of his little book, Faith and the Future, Ignatius Press, in English, 2008. (First published in German, 1970.) The future Pope notes with sardonic understanding, speaking about the evolution of modern thought. "Gradually, the positivist form of thinking would come to be applied to all departments of reality. Finally, even the most complicated and least comprehensible department, the ultimate, longest defended citadel of theology, would be successfully subjected to positivist scientific analysis and exposition. Moral phenomena and man himself—his essential human nature—would become subject matter for the positive sciences. Here, too the mystery of the theologians would little by little have to lose ground to the advance of positivist thinking. In the end, it would be possible to develop even a 'social physics', no less exact than the physics that charts the inanimate world. In the process, the realm of the priest would ultimately vanish, and questions about the nature of reality would be handed over totally to the competence of scholars." He concludes, "It seems incontrovertible that today, the mentality described by Comte is that of a very large section of human society. The question about God (i.e. what He wants) no longer finds any place in human thought."

Persons intending to speak about Catholic family life do so today in the context of Economics, Demographics, Sociology, History, Politics, Positive Law, Agronomy, legal precedent, Climatology, Actuarial statistics and probably many other scientific specialties. The "realm of the priest (God's representative)" in public discourse has largely disappeared, as they themselves join in with pseudo "Malthusian" argumentation. Unwittingly, not only have the priests abandoned their own realm of expertise, the spiritual life, but they effectively add weight to the argumentation of anti-life forces by engaging those forces on their own chosen battleground (their sciences, however dismal), rather than the sciences of the Spirit and Faith. In these latter, the Cardinal Virtues are the God-chosen battleground of our Christian battle.

I find it particularly revealing that man can find the center of his most telling response to marital ethics and theology in a simple consideration about the Cardinal Virtues : Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. Each can be offended against by excess or deficiency, except for Justice. When we act with Justice, giving to each his due, there is no fault of excess. The virtue is practiced and made our own. We find however, when we examine ourselves, that an excess of Justice has another name. It is generosity.

In light of the above, I believe that there are three evident assumptions that should establish the parameters of our thinking: 1) Analogously to Our Lord's human nature being subsumed into his Divine nature, our humanity should aspire to respond mightily to our Christian vocation and condition as children of God, rather than just living as 'nice', naturally good people who act like everyone else with nothing but a watered down vision of life; 2) God favors generosity with life; 3) God's innate option for life requires "grave" or "serious" reasons for us to deliberately choose another path.

Background

Replacement is the only (qualified) natural fertility-expectation from a married couple. I do not doubt, however, that the end of the Covenant of Marriage is and must be at the service of our supernatural life, as expressed by its very existence as a Sacrament in the Church. Therefore, the issue in Christian marriage is simply this: generous parenthood in imitation of God the Father, through the mutual love and support of the spouses, all tending to cooperate with salvation for ourselves and the great family from which we have come and toward which we tend...

It seems to me that this needs to be emphasized in any instruction about sexuality. Taken in context, generosity, particularly in married life, always has been taught by the Universal Church but, perhaps in an effort to stay contiguous and interactive with degraded societal behavior, rather than standing aloof, Catholic education on this subject has appeared to present NFP as an alternative to contraception, and it has never even come close to publicly, adequately and consistently presenting the required human, moral and religious justification necessary for individual couples to veer off from God's general plan of life for the human race.³ As prima facie evidence of the general failure to give a truly Catholic catechesis on this aspect of marital life, we need look no further than consideration of the fact that Catholics are statistically indistinguishable on abortion and contraception from the people among whom they live. Repeated national polls have established this beyond doubt.

Conceding the present Catholic statistical situation , it should be important to examine the use of the key word "responsible" as used in the teaching of Pope John Paul II. Nowhere does the Pope suggest that this word, in any sense, mandates limitation of pregnancies, even for those who are poor or badly situated economically, or excludes the Christian responsibility for generosity. The word "responsible," in the usage of JP II, quite simply means that we should examine ourselves regarding the issue of generosity in our response to God's Holy Will and never, wily-nilly, elect to limit births for arbitrary, self-seeking reasons. The late Holy Father was a foremost advocate of our individual free will, not as a theoretical thing but as something we need to apply and be "responsible" for. So used, there is an implied blame for its misuse. Having or avoiding children is not an indifferent choice. It is close to the very purpose of mankind's life on Earth, and the social reality of communal salvation (Spe Salvi, 14).

The Popes have used the words "grave" or "serious" with regard to the reasons we might need in order to use NFP, but "how-to" instruction, isolated even briefly from this context, must be very close to the rationale of the irreligious segment of our population. Without a valid motivation, NFP shares in the perspective of those who reject their fertility, and who have failed to consider the essential Christian virtue of generosity, particularly as a response to and in imitation of, our incredibly generous Creator. Pro-creative generosity, dealing as it does with the most elemental impulses of our God-given nature, must be great enough to thrust Catholics into a great trust in Providence, or risk being a Faith without Faith, one that risks little for the sake of the Kingdom – something that is required of everyone. Faith, Hope and Charity reside in this expression of a generous response to God as nowhere else.

The Current Adoption of NFP As An Element of Marital Theology

It seems to me that an early consideration in any examination of NFP suggests that the physiology of either timed conceptions, conception avoidance, or achieving conception in spite of problems, is essentially a matter to be dealt with by a faithful medical professional. Of great importance is also the role of lactation and nursing which deserves a major place in any properly motivated instruction about spacing children when considered necessary. I think that if it is to be examined and explained under the auspices of the Church, it should be explained as an element of natural religion and physiology, i.e. natural phenomena of which we can take note.

The prime Catholic message must be to preach a generous life; to be counter-cultural, especially in a society which denigrates life; to inspire both our fellow religionists and our culture with the glorious happiness and purposefulness of living for others, all in response to the Person who saved us. Preaching NFP as a kind of "legal" alternative to contraception is to preach a deficiency, a half-truth. I think it would be best presented as a kind of "backwater" of natural theology, provided by our understanding Creator and given as a kind of relief valve for times of serious distress and need. Thus understood, He seems to beg for our loving trust in his Providence, but refuses to condemn us in our human distress. To use NFP otherwise is to adopt the world's perspective that we should arbitrate with God over our own lives. "When I get my degree," "When we have more time and money," "This far and no further," "This part of my life is for me," "I need to enjoy myself and relax" and a hundred other expressions reflect this attitude.

An education in sexuality can best be taught in the context of family life, but, an authentic Catholic sexual life should not be an education in avoiding pregnancy or disease, or some psychological or economic problem. Such an education, would be a perversion of Catholic life and tear at the heart of Western civilization, particularly when it results in sterile marriages from their beginning, marriages which, in a true sense, have never even been consummated. I have even heard that NFP instructors have advised their charges that they should practice NFP for the first year just "to get to get to know each other". Such instructors should logically be the first witnesses at the likely ensuing annulment proceedings, but not in defense of the bond.

Catastrophic Worldwide Consequences of Avoiding the Purpose of Marriage

It is no secret that projections indicate the Russian people, for example, could be reduced to a population of 112 mm by the year 2050.⁴ It was around 200 million in 1990. Contraception, abortion, materialism, alcoholism, a plunging birth-rate, and despair are irreversibly destroying their country. Having killed or rejected so many children, their economy lacks any engine of sustainability, and that result is spreading throughout the world. A secularly emancipated and emasculated Europe is beginning to realize it has a catastrophic future dominated by a fecund Islam. Italy is down to a 1.2 birth rate, and its Government is considering minor bribery to induce its women to increase births by trying to get them to cut back on the widespread practice of abortion. ^{5, 6} Despite Mexican immigrants, our own USA has a good chance for being a collapsing and unintelligible society by the middle of this century, having completely lost its essential roots in the "West," to say nothing of its economy. Authentic Western society, as a living reality and as a glory of the Catholic Church, is on the edge of disaster. Its deterioration cannot be the Will of God. It is the result of sin, apostasy and a deliberate, self-centered withdrawal from the generous sharing of life. Even the U.N.'s anti-natalist population predictors admit that the world will drop by many billions of persons between 2050 and 2100, and it presents no basis for expecting a leveling-off or a stable population thereafter. Those that are left, after what has been called the "White Pestilence" has subsided somewhat, will still be dominated by the reproductively over-age. The future at that point will be a grave question. This is not alarmist propaganda. The Actuarial and Demographic sciences support these predictions. "How ominous are the current fertility figures? Very ominous." ⁷

The Only Solution

Today, there is only one explicit norm of behavior that dominates general society: "What do I want?". It is totally in opposition to Christian life and it simply confirms, in the minds of the young Catholic couple, an incoherent norm of behavior: "How do I do what I want without seeming to sin?" Such a minimalist perspective should hardly win the hearts of a serious Christian. Rather, "What does God want from me in a spirit of generous response to His great sacrifice for me?" - that is the question deserving of attention, just as continence (a topic not often if ever reflected on or even spoken of today) should occupy a place of honor and preeminence in the spiritual life of married couples if pregnancy must be avoided. I have felt deep support for my perspective by reflecting on St. Paul in his letter to Romans, VIII, 12/17 (and elsewhere). He begins this paragraph with these words: "Thus, brethren, nature has no longer any claim upon us, that we should live a life of nature (that is, our fallen nature). If you live a life of nature, you are marked out for death. If you mortify the ways of nature through the power of the Spirit, you will have life." He does not condemn "nature," but rather urges us to a much higher standard when responding to God in its use. A little further on, he tells us that nature has been preempted by the hope we look forward to.

Despite vast evidence to the contrary, there are those who regard the world as already vastly over-populated, perhaps because of the visual perception created by large urban populations where we have come to live, especially over the last half century. This ideology has assured the world of its coming nightmare. There are also those of us who think we are not the judge of what God meant when He said "Fill the Earth," but who have an underlying sense that God meant something much greater than we have so far surmised. At the present time we have ceded the battleground to God's enemies and now find ourselves embroiled in discussions and arguments about methods to limit life and how to accomplish such things as "sustainability" and "reproductive health" (part of the rhetoric of Planned Parenthood, and that of Cardinal Renato Martino e.g., the Vatican's former representative at the UN)⁸. They seem to quake in fear that we have already reproduced too much, rather than why and how we should follow God's plan of filling the earth. While we cannot expect the Godless to talk about God's Will, it appears the Church itself must do a much better job of presenting a positive view of life, particularly among its adherents.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is my impression and opinion that ambiguity, timidity and, worst of all, explicit disagreement with Church teaching dominates the thinking of many persons engaged in marriage preparation, bishops, priests, teachers and students. The minimalist view presented under the label of NFP, (which I would contend is better called "Not For Propagation"), has tended to jeopardize the spiritual lives of countless "Catholic" couples, at the deepest Christian level, by presenting a muted, truncated or distorted vision of the Church's complete view of marriage. It seems to me there is no way a healthy Church can exist in countries so affected without a serious and pervasive change. The light of God's Providence and generous family life, provided through our corporate Catholic memory, and which had existed and permeated our culture in the West for so many centuries, has nearly been extinguished in the gloom of a new ethic of self-fulfillment. A kind of Catholic rejection of conception is leading the way, rather than a generous life, and hope in a Provident God which is made real in the ancient practice of continence within marriage when prompted by the circumstances of life.⁹

I have found in extracts of Cardinal Newman's sermon "Ventures of Faith" a particularly poignant and apt (composite) quotation. I offer it as a summary of what I have been trying to say:

No one among us knows for sure
    That he himself will persevere.
Yet each and every one among us, for just a chance,
    Must make a venture, without a sure return.

It's a venture strange with nothing in it of
    Anxious fear and risk, danger or uncertainty.
Faith, the essence of a Christian's life, lies
    In ceding, on His word alone, what we have for what we have not.

Generous hearts speak sincerely and self-assured, but with ignorance,
    Of what they will do for Christ and, for their sincerity,
They are taken at their word as a just reward.
    They have yet to learn how serious that word truly is.

"They say unto Him, We are able" and
    The vow is recorded in heaven.¹⁰

End Notes and References:

¹ An example is presented in the News Release of the Couple to Couple League of Arkansas published July 26, 2008, by Malea Hargett, Editor

Natural family planning now updated for younger couples
Sympto-Thermal Method courses led by nine Arkansas couples

It concludes:

"Research has proven that the method is 99 percent effective and less than 5 percent of couples who practice NFP get divorced.

"You develop certain virtues that are good for marriage, like patience, understanding, communication. You don't take your spouse for granted. You have God's blessing because you are following his rules, not the world's rules for sexuality." (The question might more properly be asked, how many NFP couples have more children than the prevailing birthrate? This question and the bold type is added to emphasize the perspective of the News Release.)

² This approach to the Ends of Marriage places both children and the mutual love and support of the partners into a single end which sublimates both to our supernatural Life. The obvious purpose of our bodily organs cannot be ignored, and we need to recognize that, if the desirable love and support of the partners was of "equal" status to reproduction, most marriages of history, certainly before the Romantic period in which we live, would be invalid. I cannot conceive a Sacrament to be in any way essentially dependent on emotional factors. In marriage, one person effectively says to the other, "I will be exclusively faithful to you for the rest of my natural life, and have children only with you". These three goods (bona) of marriage, i.e. exclusivity, fidelity and children (see St. Augustine), could properly be expanded, it seems to me, to include "common life". This latter is representative of the mutual support and affection that is present either from the beginning of the union, or develops as life goes on. In any event, all four "bona" are devoid of emotion and represent the essence of wedlock.

³ See the Press Release issued by the Diocese of Phoenix, AZ.

Natural Family Planning becomes part of Phoenix Diocese, Published: June 20, 2008 by Bishop Thomas Olmsted at www.diocesephoenix.org/mfrl/MFL/nfp.html.

It is not only devoid of the "why," it also touts, "NFP is based on advanced science, and has been demonstrated to be 99 percent effective in avoiding pregnancy when a couple understands their fertility and practices the method correctly."

⁴ The UN's medium variant projection. S. Mosher, Population Control, p.9.

⁵ Three out of four Europeans will have disappeared by the end of the 21^st Century and the population, including Russia, will number only 207 million. By then the population decline will be irreversible, with surviving Europeans averaging more than 60 years. S. Mosher, Population Control, p.8. Population Control is a resource worthy of reading by every serious person, particularly clergy, politicians, married couples, and all who are concerned about life on Earth.

⁶ "In demographic terms, Europe is vanishing." Premier Jacques Chirac in 1984. "Soon our countries will be empty". "Falling Population Alarms Europe," The Washington Times, 2 Dec. 1987, pp.1, 8, at 8.

⁷ Robert Marcellus, A Foundering Civilization, The Human Life Review, Winter 2002.

⁸ Archbishop Renato Martino, 94-09-07 Statement of the Holy See, UN Population Div.

⁹ "Continence" and "generosity," it seems, are two words no longer common in Catholic marital preparation, They seem like tow centers of gravity spinning around each other in the lived Catholic marital experience, and which contain within themselves the essential virtuous elements of spiritual growth. A relevant comment of Pope Benedict to Brazilian Bishops, Sept 2009: "....if the Church fights only a rear-guard action against the forces of secularism, justifying Catholic faith and practice only in secular terms—apologies rather than apologetics, as it were—rising generations will not even understand the nature of the conflict, and the struggle will be lost." The transcendence of our Faith seems already to have been lost in the context of Catholic marriage ethics in re. NFP.

¹⁰ Cf. Cardinal John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, A Selection, Longmans Green, & Co. 1900. pp. 20,22.