Marriage Series: Introduction

Many people today walk down the aisle thinking they love the person they are about to marry and hoping they will spend the rest of their life with him or her. This is almost the way it should be. If this were a complete picture, why do as many as fifty percent of marriages end in divorce? Moreover, why are so many people cohabitating instead of getting married?

To answer these questions, we must start at the beginning. I believe that many people today no longer understand the meaning and value of marriage and the family. They do not understand the true, God-given meaning of love. They do not understand the sanctity of the marital act. They may not even understand or believe their marriage vows! How have we gotten to this state? How can we return to God’s way? I hope that you will learn all this and more in the wonderful series, I have put together. I look forward to sharing each post with you!

The topics for the series are:
* An Introduction to Marriage
* Between Man and Woman (Only)
* Soul Mates
* Courtship vs. Dating
* Is “Love” Required for Marriage?
* Chastity before Marriage
* Cohabitation
* Interfaith Marriages
* Engagements
* Prenuptial Agreements
* Getting Married in the Church
* Vows
* “Getting to know each other”
* Marriage is for Children
* The Importance of NFP in Marriage
* True Love … What is Love?
* Raising Children in the Faith
* Theology of the Body and Marriage
* Arguments are Not the End
* In-laws and Family
* Marriage and Money
* Women and the Vocation of Marriage
* The Problem of Divorce
* Some Final Words about Marriage

Just like my last series, I have used a great deal of sources. Instead of linking each source on each post, I have compiled them here for ease of reading. Please read the ones that interest you. They are all Catholic sources and I enjoyed reading them myself!

These are available free online:
* The Holy Bible from New Advent
* Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI
* Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity and Vocation of Women) by Bl. Pope John Paul II
* Familiaris Consortio (The Family in the Modern World) by Bl. Pope John Paul II
* “Letter to Families” by Bl. Pope John Paul II
* “Letter to Women” by Bl. Pope John Paul II
* Family, Marriage, and De Facto Unions by Bl. Pope John Paul II
* “Preparation of the Sacrament of Marriage” from the Vatican
* “Between a Man and Woman Q&A About Same Sex Unions” by USCCB
* “Statement on Same Sex Marriage” by USCCB
* Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan by USCCB
* Married Love and the Gift of Life by USCCB
* Catechism of the Catholic Church on USCCB
* Catechism of the Catholic Church on Knights of Columbus: better for searching
* “Pastoral Letter on Cohabitation” by The Kansas Catholic Conference
* Catholic Dating Guide by Jason E. King
* Preserving the Sanctity of Marriage by Rev. W. Becket Soule, O.P.
* Superstition of Divorce by GK Chesterton
* Divorce versus Democracy by GK Chesterton
* The Defendant by GK Chesterton
* Manalive by GK Chesterton
* Superstition of Divorce Lecture by Dale Ahlquist

These must be purchased:
* Together for Life by Joseph M. Champlin
* “Living Together Before Marriage” by Katrina Zeno and Christopher West
* Theology of the Body for Beginners by Christopher West

Remember to check back here often, as I hope to update this page frequently.

Open to Life: Eugenics and Birth Control

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


Chesterton said in Eugenics and Other Evils, “I know that it [eugenics] means very different things to different people; but that is only because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity.” (emphasis mine)

In 1883, Sir Francis Galton coined the term “eugenics” meaning “good birth”. His idea was to use selective breeding (based on his cousin Charles Darwin’s theories) for “the betterment of mankind”. Many people throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s advocated for eugenics. One woman in particular was a true advocate for eugenics in the United States. Her name: Margaret Sanger.

Margaret Sanger (who I talked about briefly before) edited and wrote for a magazine titled The Birth Control Review. In the February 1919 issue, she wrote an article called “Birth Control and Racial Betterment” with this as its opening, “Before eugenists and others who are laboring for racial betterment can succeed, they must first clear the way for Birth Control. Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit” (p. 11, emphasis mine). This woman is the one who encouraged the Anglican Church (the first church) to accept contraception, and this woman is the one who founded Planned Parenthood – the biggest abortion provider in the nation today.

Now some may say, well that was just the founder of Planned Parenthood. They do not believe those things anymore. My reply to this is simple – where are all Planned Parenthood clinics? Certainly not in rich neighborhoods. What class of people does Planned Parenthood “help” around the whole world? The poor and almost exclusively the poor. However, they “aid” the poor by giving them contraceptives and abortions, by taking away their children, not by eliminating their poverty.

We now have a whole class of people that are unwanted: babies. Innocent children are being slaughtered for “women’s rights”, “choice”, and “population control”. In other words, for “the betterment of mankind”. (Sound familiar? Reread above.) We need to realize that preventing the birth of a child is an evil thing. Most people have always known this, but it is made to sound harmless with the words “eugenic”, “birth control”, or “reproductive freedom”.

If we want to turn this around, we must know where we left the right path.Birth control has led to the decline in our society (see this post and this one). Speak out against abortion. Use and advocate for natural family planning. Vote for politicians who will overturn Roe v. Wade, make euthanasia illegal, and keep marriage between a man and woman. Do not assume that others will lead the way. Everyone must do his or her part.


Up Next: Eugenics and IVF

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Assisted Reproductive Technologies

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


Doing the research for this post completely shocked and saddened me. I only looked up articles and documents related to reproductive technologies on Catholic websites (mainly the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ site). Nevertheless, what I found on there was beyond words.

One of the worst things I read was how New Jersey passed a law in 2004 making it legal to clone embryos, implant them into women, and then abort them for use in research. Yes, you really did read that correctly. Here is the link. There is actually a whole page full of links related to this topic, but I did not have the courage to read them after that.

Why is it that we do not hear of all these “scientific advances” and research studies in the news? Could it really be that no one in the news media cares about these issues?

We must remember that God’s ways are not our ways. There is holy mystery in God’s choosing to bring human life into being in one manner and not another (ART and the Family).

There is a reason why the Catholic Church teaches that it is immoral for technology to replace the marital act and it is not because of where the use of these procedures will lead. It is because life is sacred, the marital act is holy, and nothing should come between the union of man and woman in their sharing of the creation of new life with God. We may think that warnings of future problems will change people’s minds and hearts, but prophetic warnings from Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae did not prevent people from using contraception. (I will talk about this in a coming post.)

Very few assisted reproductive technologies available today are moral. Those that are include medications that help with fertility and surgeries that repair or reconstruct reproductive organs or that remove blockages. Natural family planning charting (using the sympto-thermal method) is one of the best ways to help identify specific fertility issues in women.


Up Next: What is Wrong with ARTs?

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Contraception and Medicine

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series What is Openness to Life?


Contraception is any action, drug, or device that interferes with conception. Many things fall under this blanket, including sterilization, condoms, diaphragms, jellies, IUDs, hormonal birth control, or any act that does not allow conception to take place within the marital union.

There are many reasons not to do engage in these all things, but I will stick with the most popular forms of birth control today. Of all women in America at reproductive age who have been or are sexually active, more than 98% of them have used contraceptives according to the CDC report: “Use of Contraception and Use of Family Planning in the United States 1982-2002”. The most popular form of contraception in the nineties was surgical sterilization (“The Contraceptive Revolution and Its Fruits”). Today the most popular form of birth control is the oral contraceptive pill (CDC).

Sterilization
According to the CDC report, 3.4 million men and 10.3 million women in America have been surgically sterilized. According to multiple studies, many of these people regret the procedure. Of women who are sterilized, up to 73% of accidental pregnancies that occur will be ectopic pregnancies, which result in either a tubal removal and subsequent death of the unborn child or the death of both mother and child. These women are also more likely to have increased menstrual flow and increased pain, and are more likely to be hospitalized for menstrual related disorders (“The Contraceptive Revolution and Its Fruits”).

For men, according to two large studies completed by the Harvard Medical School, those with vasectomies have a 56% increase risk of prostate cancer later in life. In addition, 50% of men with vasectomies will develop antibodies to sperm, and almost 70% of men who have a vasectomy reversal will develop them. Sperm antibodies reduce the amount of sperm available in the testes and subsequently reduce the chance of conception.

Oral Contraceptives

Hormonal contraceptives are the only drugs available that stop a normal human function from working. When makers of “the Pill” made their first formulations, many women actually died – from a pill made of hormones already present in the human body! The solution … lower levels of estrogen, which caused break-through ovulation. The solution to that problem? Add in progesterone, which changes the lining of the uterus making it inhospitable to implantation of a newly conceived child, thereby causing an early abortion. Even with correct use, the breakthrough ovulation rate is 2-5% depending on the pill used. If pills are missed early in the cycle, ovulation can occur in 25-30% of cycles (“The Contraception Revolution and Its Fruits”). (All hormonal contraceptives can cause early abortions. These include the morning-after pill, the patch, implants, shots, and IUDs.)

The Pill is currently the most common contraceptive with 12 million American women and 70 million women worldwide taking it (“The Contraceptive Revolution and Its Fruits”). Nevertheless, it has many annoying and even dangerous side effects. The biggest problem is, even if a side effect only occurs in 1% of the Pill users that amounts to talking about 8.2 million women worldwide.

Some of these side effects include: headache, nausea, weight gain, lowered libido (which may never return even after stopping use), fatigue, breast tenderness, fluid retention, carbohydrate intolerance, spider veins, depression, high blood pressure, cervical ectopia (damage to the lining of the cervix), higher cholesterol, growth of fibroid tumors on the uterus, blood clots, increase risk of heart attack and stroke (for smokers), increase risk of cervical cancer, and 40-1000% increase risk of breast cancer (possibly more aggressive and appearing at a younger age).

The younger a woman is when she starts taking the Pill and the longer she takes it before her first full-term pregnancy, the higher the risk of breast cancer. Women who use the pill for four years or more before their first full-term pregnancy have a 52% increased risk of breast cancer (OSV Newsweekly Article).

Condoms
The third most popular form of birth control according to the CDC is the condom. The only medical side-effect problem associated with condoms is latex intolerance or latex allergy. However, condoms only have an 87% rate of preventing pregnancy and only a 46-82% effectiveness in preventing HIV. They offer no protection from herpes and HPV (a cause of cervical cancer) because these STDs can be transmitted through contact with areas not covered by the condom (“The Contraceptive Revolution and Its Fruits”).

** All unnatural methods of birth control have less obvious but even more serious side effects – spiritual, emotional, marital, and societal.

Natural Family Planning
Ecological breastfeeding gives the best nutrition to babies and costs nothing. Systematic NFP costs only a few dollars for thermometer, charts, and study materials. It can help a woman detect health problems early on, which can allow healing and even returned fertility for some infertile couples.

Natural family planning is natural. In a world caught up on health and the organic, no GMO, natural food craze, it sure seems hypocritical to see those same people engage in unnatural and even chemical forms of family planning.


Up Next: Chesterton and Birth Control

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Why Use Natural Family Planning?

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series What is Openness to Life?


Most people, when they hear “natural family planning”, think of the old-time, rarely reliable rhythm method. It is important to realize that present-day natural family planning methods differ considerably from the Calendar Rhythm that was taught early in the last century.

Breastfeeding as it is commonly done in the United States has little or no effect on the return of fertility. Even mothers exclusively breastfeeding, but not following any of the other six standards, can have menstruation (and fertility) return within six weeks postpartum. With ecological breastfeeding, the chance of pregnancy is almost zero during the first three months, less than 2% between 3 and 6 months, and about 6% after 6 months (assuming menstruation has not returned). The average return of menstruation is 14 to 15 months postpartum, with 72% of mothers experiencing their first period between 9 and 20 months. (NFP: The Complete Approach, 2) When menstruation returns early, there is a tendency to be infertile for the first few cycles, while those whose menstruation returns late are likely to ovulate before their first postpartum cycle.

Many health agencies, both national and international advise that all babies should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months because of the many health and psychological benefits to both mother and baby. Ecological breastfeeding offers the best opportunity for maintaining good milk supply for the duration of the breastfeeding period. According to NFP: The Complete Approach (6),

Ecological breastfeeding requires close mother-baby contact. This is good for both mother and baby. This best helps babies to thrive. We like to think of it as God’s own plan for baby-care and baby spacing, but it generally precludes working outside the home or being excessively busy with a home-based business. The proper care of babies takes time. The combination of mothering and homemaking is a full-time job. [Sound familiar?]

One of the many advantages of ecological breastfeeding from a purely moral standpoint is, although you need certain conditions to justify additional spacing of babies with systematic NFP, you do not need any sort of “spacing” reasons to breastfeed. When ecologically breastfeeding, you are doing what is best for your baby, and this just happens to postpone the return of fertility as well. Extended infertility is a normal, God-given side effect of following God’s plan for baby care, and it is respectable and appropriate to hope for this along with all the other advantages of breastfeeding.

What about the systematic methods of NFP? When couples follow the guidelines for chaste abstinence during the fertile period using the symptom-thermal method, they have a 99.6% chance of not conceiving based on a German study published in February 2007 (NFP: The Complete Approach, 2). Using systematic NFP to conceive also has benefits. “About 80% of couples with normal fertility conceive within six cycles, frequently one to three cycles. Couples with marginal fertility will usually conceive within six to 12 cycles” (3). This is because accurate charting helps the couple determine the most fertile time of the cycle. Charts can also be useful for getting help with infertility, as most doctors will ask for them.

Some women take the pill for “medical reasons”. However, the pill only masks the symptoms; it does not treat the illness. Many people can go years with a serious reproductive health issue (such as endometriosis), and when they want to conceive, only then will they realize they have a fertility issue. Nevertheless, charting can help explain certain physical symptoms and emotions, as well as help determine abnormalities in a woman’s health. Some women may even identify underlying health problems and find healing with the knowledge gained through charting.


Up Next: God is Love

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: What is Natural Family Planning?

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series What is Openness to Life?

Natural family planning (NFP) is a way of using God’s plan and, consequently, respecting Church teaching to achieve or avoid/postpone pregnancy by using the physical methods that God has built into human nature. There are two different types of natural family planning: systematic NFP and ecological breastfeeding.

The first type, ecological breastfeeding, is the form of nursing in which the mother fulfills her baby’s needs for frequent suckling and her full-time presence and the child’s frequent suckling postpones the return of the mother’s fertility (Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach, 1). Ecological breastfeeding is explained by the seven standards listed below.

Sheila Kippley created the phrase “ecological breastfeeding” to differentiate this natural and traditional form of baby care from “cultural breastfeeding” (the use of bottles, pacifiers, and baby-sitters, which contribute to mother-baby separation and less frequent suckling).

To remain infertile during breastfeeding, you must follow all seven of these standards for ecological breastfeeding. In less developed countries, these practices are customary and therefore babies are frequently spaced two to three years apart without contraception or periodic abstinence.

1. Exclusively breastfeed for the first six months of life (no other liquids and solids). After six months, slowly begin to introduce other liquids and solids.
2. Pacify your baby at your breasts.
3. Do not use bottles and pacifiers.
4. Sleep with your baby for night feedings.
5. Sleep with your baby for a daily-nap feeding.
6. Nurse frequently day and night, and avoid schedules.
7. Avoid any practice that restricts nursing or separates you from your baby. (Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing, 4)

According to NFP: The Complete Approach, “The great strength of ecological breastfeeding is that it is truly God’s Own Plan for naturally spacing babies, and it does not require systematic fertility awareness and periodic abstinence. Another great strength is that it encourages extended breastfeeding that carries many benefits for both mother and baby.” It also requires mothers to take full responsibility for the care of their babies instead of designating such responsibilities to others (something I have discussed previously). Its only weakness is the fact it is countercultural in the West and as a result will be difficult without support from the husband, family, and/or friends.

Systematic natural family planning is the method that uses a woman’s natural physical signs to identify the fertile and infertile times of the menstrual cycle. Using this method allows you to “know the most-fertile days in the overall fertile time for achieving pregnancy. All true NFP systems use chaste abstinence during the fertile time as the method for avoiding pregnancy. The use of systematic NFP involves both the knowledge of fertility and putting that knowledge into practice” (NFP: The Complete Approach, 2).


Up Next: Why Use Natural Family Planning?

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Series Introduction

With all my discussions of truth and Chesterton, I thought I should talk about a very important topic, relevant to married and single people alike – openness to life. This will remain a very reverent discussion.

In this series, I am planning posts on:
* What is Openness to Life?
* What is Natural Family Planning?
* Why Use Natural Family Planning?
* God is Love
* Contraception and Morality
* Contraception and Society
* Contraception and Medicine
* Chesterton and Birth Control
* Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs)
* What is Wrong with ARTs?
* What is Wrong with IVF? (I)
* What is Wrong with IVF? (II)
* ARTs Related to IVF
* Theology of the Body
* What is Wrong with Fornication?
* Prophesies in Papal Encyclicals
* Eugenics and Birth Control
* Eugencis and IVF
* Eugenics and Abortion
* The Population Myth
* Closing Remarks

In my articles I have used many sources. Instead of linking sources on each article, I am going to compile them here and link to this page on each post. Feel free to read the full documents:

Casti Connubii by Pope Pius XI
Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI
Evangelium Vitae by Blessed Pope John Paul II
Deus Caritas Est by Pope Benedict XVI
Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan by USCCB
Married Love and the Gift of Life by USCCB
Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology by USCCB
In Vitro Fertilization: The Human Cost by USCCB
“Contraception and Abortion: The Underlying Link” by Rev. Walter J. Schu, L.C.
“The Contraceptive Revolution and Its Fruits” by John Bruchalski M.D. FACOG
The Well and the Shallows by G.K. Chesterton
Eugenics and Other Evils by G.K. Chesterton
Social Reform versus Birth Control by G.K. Chesterton
The Thing: Why I am a Catholic by G.K. Chesterton
Eugenics and Other Evils Lecture by Dale Ahlquist
Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach by John and Sheila Kippley
“Use of Contraception and Use of Family Planning Services ...” - CDC report

Some of my sources are not available for free. If you are interested, you can purchase them:

"The Contraception Question" by Christopher West
"Infertility and Reproductive Technologies: A Guide for Catholics" by Steven Bozza
“Living Together Before Marriage” by Katrina Zeno and Christopher West
Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing by Sheila Kippley
Theology of the Body for Beginners by Christopher West

Next Post: What is Openness to Life?