Natural Family Planning

and the

Christian Moral Code

By Jeanne Dvorak

This book is dedicated to the loving Mother of God and her powerful Rosary, which was the help and protection of my husband and me in trying to carry out God’s Will in our life.

Fr. Wathen Books

4049 South Fifth Street

Louisville, KY 40214

I wish to thank all who helped me in my work. Especially am I indebted to Father James Wathen, Sharon Harvey, and my family for their dedication, prayers and encouragement. May it bring honor and glory to God.

Copyright ©2017 Mrs. Jeanne Dvorak
Reprinted with Permission
Fourth Printing

Printed and bound in the United States of America

Fr. Wathen Books

4049 South Fifth Street

Louisville, KY 40214

www.fatherwathen.com

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

God’s Natural Law and Fidelity

CHAPTER II

What is the Contraceptive Mentality?

CHAPTER III

Who Conceives – God or Man?

CHAPTER IV

What Does Science Say?

CHAPTER V

Humanae Vitae

CHAPTER VI

Responsible Parenthood

CHAPTER VII

What are the Fruits of Natural Family Planning?

CHAPTER VIII

Spirituality

APPENDIX

Comments on Casti Connubii

To Priests and Hierarchy

Author’s Note

Letter from the Archbishop of St. Paul, MN,       Condemning NFP

Casti Connubii

“To take away the natural and primeval right of marriage, or in any way to circumscribe the chief purpose of marriage established in the beginning by the authority of God, is not within the power of any law of man…. Thus the child holds the first place among the blessings of marriage. Clearly the Creator of the human race Himself, Who because of His kindness wished to use men as helpers in propagating life, taught this in Paradise, when He instituted marriage, saying to our first parents, and through them to all spouses: ‘Increase and Multiply and fill the earth’ (Gen. 1:28).

• • • • •

“Indeed, some vindicate themselves for this criminal abuse on the ground that they are tired of children and wish merely to fulfill their desires without the consequent burden; others on the grounds that they can neither observe continence, nor because of difficulties of the mother or of family circumstances cannot have offspring…. Any use of the marriage act, in the exercise of which it is designedly deprived of its natural power of procreating life, infringes on the law of God and of nature, and those who have committed any such act are stained with the guilt of serious sin.”

Pope Pius XI, 1930

Introduction

Natural Family Planning

and the Christian Moral Code

Is it possible that in the Church founded by Christ, the bishops and priests of God can teach error? Church history tells us that by the year 325 A.D., almost every single priest and bishop embraced and taught the heresy of Arianism. Begun by a priest named Arius, it stated that although Christ was like God, He was not actually God Himself. Arianism insisted that Our Lord was indeed superior to all creatures – but was less than God just the same. (Cath. Ency. Vol. I, p. 707). However in 325 A.D., the Council of Nicea made clear the Church’s stand on the Divinity of Christ as it had been Divinely revealed by both Holy Scripture and Church Tradition. This definition stated that Our Blessed Lord is both True God and True Man – the co-equal Second Person of the Holy Trinity. This infallible truth of the Faith stands even until today. Such enduring teachings of the Church are part of what is called the Constant or “Divine Magisterium.”

In his talk before the Knights of Columbus on May 28, 1972, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen made the following comments about Arianism:

…However, certain priests and bishops held about a dozen different meetings (which they referred to as “Councils”) from 325 to 385 A.D., and they developed and promoted Arianism. Arianism was a condemned error, yet it was openly taught within the Church for sixty years – while the Constant Magisterium maintained that Christ is God and Man. Not until the laymen intervened at the Council of Constantinople (385 A.D.) did the Church officially reaffirm the Divinity of Christ, and that ended Arianism.

Until the French Revolution (1789), Christian man understood and lived his life as being in complete dependence upon God. But the Revolution raised the cry of independence from God, and man began to search for ways to become self-sufficient. Robert Malthus (1766-1834), a noted economist of his day, predicted that the world would become overpopulated by the mid-1800’s if man did nothing about it. He proposed that people should either wait until their thirtieth year to marry or use his program called “the Rhythm method,” which consisted in refraining from marital relations during a woman’s fertile period (Essay on the Principles of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society).

The so-called “progressive-minded” seized upon this idea because it fit perfectly with their “progressive, scientific findings” and the modern desire for self-sufficiency – in lieu of trust in God. The child, which had always been considered a blessing, now began to be thought of as a burden. Thus did the contraceptive mentality take root.

Margaret Sanger (1883-1960) cultivated and promoted this mentality, and eventually it even led to pressure being exerted from within the Catholic Church Herself to find an acceptable (i.e., “moral”) form of birth control. This was in opposition to the Divine Magisterium which had ever forbade the very idea!

At the turn of the 20th century, the family unit was still strong. People generally showed little interest in this modern birth control notion, although they were already being influenced by the false progress of “modern science” (along with what progress was “true”).

The teaching of the Church through the centuries was that any form of birth control is wrong. Progressives rejected this, for it was not in accord with their ideal of humanist self-sufficiency and irreligion – much less their horror of the self-sacrifice this lack of family planning might necessarily entail. Their contentions caused the Hierarchy to mistakenly but deliberately allow theologians to examine the Rhythm method – though pastors were, as yet, forbidden to condone or recommend this practice (Integrity – June, 1948).

In 1930, Pope Pius XI wrote the encyclical Casti Connubii (“Chaste Wedlock”), in which he stated that it is not wrong for married couples to use their conjugal rights during sterile times:

Nor are these (couples) considered as acting against nature who in the married state use their right in the proper manner, although on account of natural reasons either of time or certain defects, new life cannot be brought forth.

The progressives construed the Pope’s words to be a license for the Rhythm method, and wrongly rushed headlong into promoting it. Then later, Pope Pius XII in an allocution to the Italian Catholic Union of Midwives on October 29, 1951, did “give permission” for the use of Rhythm under certain circumstances. The Pope may have made this judgment based on the conclusions presented by theologians – but, it was a revolutionary mistake just the same! He had not the power to sanction any marital theory that was not in accordance with either Church Tradition or the Natural Law – and such a novelty the Rhythm method certainly was!

In July, 1968, Pope Paul VI published his encyclical Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”), the first part of which reiterated the teaching of the Divine Magisterium, that each and every marital act must remain open to the transmission of life. It then proceeded to void that principle by allowing Rhythm, which prevents that life from occurring!

Now Christ told us that we are to judge a tree by its fruits – a principle by its consequences. This book will seek to prove beyond a doubt that the consequences of the Rhythm mentality are contrary to the Christian moral code. Therefore, Rhythm is definitely an error being propagated within Christ’s own Church, much as was Arianism. It is an error which must be corrected if Catholics are to enjoy clear consciences, and if traditional morality is to be revived.

This book is not being written to criticize the Church Herself – which has ever solemnly mandated against any form of birth control and is the perfect Bride of Christ and our Holy Mother. But, rather, will refute the modernist Hierarchy in charge of Her, which created/allowed this vile confusion that has only, all of a sudden, arisen in our times about NFP and birth control. It is meant to inform the pastors of souls about certain facts concerning the nature of woman, and to remind everyone reading this about God the Father and His loving, Providential care for His children. I wish to encourage married couples to invoke the love of the Holy Ghost so that they may find Divine solutions to their problems, and not resort to the “false science” of this rebellious age. For marriage imposes an awesome responsibility before God. Let them take to heart the following words spoken by the Blessed Virgin Mary to Ven. Mary of Agreda in The Mystical City of God (“The Conception” – p. 556):

The most valuable science of man is to know how to resign himself entirely into the hands of his Creator, since He knows why He has formed him and for what end each man is destined. Man’s sole duty is to live in obedience and in the love of his Lord. God will charge Himself most solicitously with the care of those that thus confide in Him; He will take upon Himself the management of all the affairs and all the events of this life in order to draw blessings and benefits for those that thus trust in His fidelity.

Mrs. Jeanne Dvorak

Chapter I

God’s Natural Law and Fidelity

Natural Family Planning (NFP) is the theory that if a couple observes the natural rhythm of a woman’s cycle and refrains from physical relations during her “fertile” period, they can avoid producing a child. This method is called natural, only because no artificial (unnatural) means are employed at the time of intercourse to prevent conception. However in actuality, NFP is anything but “natural.”

Married couples know well enough what is natural and what is not. But for more than fifty years the members of the Catholic Hierarchy seem not to have had anyone speak to them about the natural reproductive cycle of womankind – and they have been dealing with NFP which relates so closely to it! This cycle affects her emotionally as well as physiologically. Indeed, it is exactly during her fertile period that she often requires the comfort of her husband, and most desires his affection and embrace. Surely we see God’s obvious intention behind this.

It was probably as a teenager that I received my first inkling regarding the special times of the female cycle. A hairdresser explained to me that a woman’s best “permanent” results during the fertile period when all the oils and glands of the body are in harmony. Evidence of this can be seen by the complexion, sweetness, and beauty of many wives during this time, and their desire to be loved by their husbands then. About the mood which follows this one, however, I’m sure many men have had plenty to say! (“What has happened to that sweet, agreeable disposition? Those shining, smiling eyes? That willingness to be cuddled? That ability to handle little Johnny’s problem with the same ease as last week? Why do you hate me now when before I was the greatest?”)

Most teachers of NFP have not given the complete impact of family planning much thought, and people are asked to come to meetings about it “to learn that NFP is within God’s natural order of creation.” From my own experience, and from the true spirit of the Church on the matter, I know that this is very bad. For married couples are supposed to give as little thought as possible to the worries of probable conception or not, and leave the family planning totally to God. As any childless couple can tell you, if He does not want you to conceive, it just does not happen.

Man is different from animal because man has an immortal soul – it will never die. The attributes of that soul are intellect and free will. When God created the world, He established a natural order of things and embedded in all animate nature a rhythm of pulse. At the time of creation, God placed man over both animate and inanimate creatures. But although mankind is put in this superior position, God still set very definite boundaries which man is not to violate: The Ten Commandments, and the laws He gives us through His Church. Yet even before these laws existed, there was His Natural Law. Written in the heart of every man, it also is not to be broken – for He is God the all-knowing Creator, and man is but His creature.

Now, with the teaching of NFP, we take the perfection of our reproductive powers (the cycle of fertility and infertility) and through one of the attributes of our soul (the intellect), we reason that if we use this nature in reverse, we can produce a negative effect. Or rather, we can prevent a positive one. Our intellect presents a scheme which tells us we can have the pleasure of the act of reproduction while avoiding the responsibility of it. At this point the other spiritual faculty (the will) comes into play: We can accept this scheme or reject it. Now to one who professes faith in an all-knowing God, what basis is used to justify adherence to such a thing? For by using NFP we reverse God’s order and nature’s rhythms, satisfy our physical needs to some extent, and attempt to avoid the responsibility of child bearing and rearing. Maybe we are feeling inadequate or unwilling to bear that responsibility. Or maybe we are inclined to imagine our burden too heavy. Therefore, we perhaps assume the right to do something to keep these things from getting worse and beyond our control.

Rather, we must go to Christ’s words – and they say we are either with God or else we are against Him (Lk. 11:23). Jesus says, “Come to Me, all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you” (Mt. 11:28). In other words, “Trust in Me to find a way for you; trust Me to supply for your inadequacies; I made you, I called you to this work, I understand and will help you. I will make your burden easy and your yoke light, if you strive to serve Me as you ought in this state of matrimony to which I assigned you and to which you have agreed. If you please Me while you work out this vocation, it will earn you Heaven. And I will always do My part – if you do yours.”

Regarding the philosophy we must use as our approach to life, Jesus says as well, “Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mt. 6:33). If we do our share, He will supply the rest. Christ tells us that it is to be “as the heathen” to over-worry about material goods. We are not to dishonor His Heavenly Father Who created the world, set its limits, and called us to serve Him in the matrimonial state through which He intends to raise up those souls He desires to have in existence. Woe be to us if we get in the way of this intention – if we get in the way of this holy creativity! A thwarted God is an angry God. He will take married couples to account for those children of whom they have deprived Him. To put it differently: If you don’t want children God’s way, then do not get married.

We are free to accept God’s truths or reject them. But to have peace, these truths must be accepted. His yoke, too, we must take on (i.e., our state of life and His laws regarding it). We know that His laws can be demanding. So Jesus assures us of His graces, His powerful help to carry us through and to overcome our natural fears. Consider Saint Paul as an example. Before his conversion, he was no less zealous in his hatred of Christians, than he was afterward zealous in his love of them. For with his surrender to faith, Paul the Apostle became one who was even granted the power to perform miracles – due to his being united with God in His Holy Will.

There is not one place in the Gospels where Christ tells us we are on our own. What kind of God would He be Who would leave His mortal subjects alone to attempt to discern the future and analyze their own abilities and potential? And this is a temptation of married couples. He tells us that we are free to follow Him or not – but each way has its consequences of good and evil. All throughout the Bible He urges us to trust Him, and promises to charge our natural life with His supernatural power if necessary, even as He did Saint Paul’s. Any form of family planning not only keeps other people from coming into the world, but it stunts our own spiritual growth because it limits all to the finite mind. And because of this lack of faith, we reject the adventure into the infinite which challenges the soul with joyful excitement and hope. When the Apostles were confirmed at Pentecost, did not the power of the Holy Ghost change them? Are we to think God would be less present to us these days, if we cooperate with this grace of the Sacraments?

Each of us has the constant help of the Sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and of Penance. And for those who are married, the Sacrament of Matrimony is not an empty symbol but a definite source of the necessary grace we need to fulfill this state of life all throughout its duration. If we cooperate as we should, our marriages would help sanctify us and make us saints. Indeed, each time we properly use our marriage rights, there is an increase of grace in our souls! (Think of this, as opposed to the sinful effect physical relations have upon those souls making use of them outside the bounds of holy matrimony.) So we see that all things flourish, even our spiritual life in marriage, through abandonment to His Will. The promise of God that He will never leave us on our own can never be broken – for among the things God cannot do is to break a promise.

Consider: Grass can be no more than grass on its own. However, if grass is eaten by a cow, it then becomes part of that cow. A cow is only a cow until it is consumed by man and becomes part of man. Man, in turn, cannot be any more than a human being unless his life is taken up into the life of Christ. Then he participates in the very Divine Life of God. It is a taste of being Adam – before the Fall.

If Catholics were growing spiritually, they would be more awed by God’s Omnipotence. They would indeed become more humble and obedient toward His Divine Majesty; they would lose themselves in Him. However, the opposite is happening. Surrounded by modern paganism, and with the recent changes brought in by the New Church and the questionable power of its sacraments since Vatican II, most Catholics are pulling away from Him and are building up their own egotism. They are becoming the object of their own adoration. In other words, they are losing themselves to themselves. Many if not most married Catholics, even rush head high, headlong and headstrong into the use of artificial birth control and abortion – often with nary a conscience-qualm, and rarely with any of our modern priests preaching or counseling against the matter. It is evident that Catholics are not growing and maturing spiritually, only humanly and in the effects of Original Sin. It is not in building ourselves up that we obtain God’s help and power, but in bending ourselves low in subjection to His perfect Will.

Birth control is fundamentally wrong because it interferes with the primary purpose of marriage: The begetting of children. The souls of these children are then supposed to be raised up to God through the Church; the mutual comfort and support of the marriage partners is the secondary purpose only. As we have seen, NFP also rejects the Providence of God in His Natural Law, for contraceptive planning and observing are methods of doing just that. Are we to suppose that God would establish the laws of nature, and then give us a way of voiding those laws “naturally” – thereby solving the problem that the laws present? Jesus says we are to trust the Father completely, because He loves us and will only give us what is for our good (Lk.11:11-13). And the Christian maxim is that He never gives us a cross that we cannot bear. He never tempts us beyond our strength.

Having taught CCD for many years, I became very aware of the changes in the morals of society and the “catch-words” modernists use to appeal to man’s innate pride. One example is teaching that the Rhythm method is the “intelligent” approach to the temptation of artificial birth control because “the Church approves it.” If sin does indeed come from the heart as Our Lord teaches (Mt. 15:18-20), and the intention of that heart is to frustrate the essential purpose of the act of procreation, then what is the difference between artificial and “natural” contraception? One is accomplished with a physical device, the other through a time schedule. But each begins with the same “desire of the heart” to avoid the responsibility of the act. How can the disposition of the heart be right in one case and wrong in the other?

As we have said, the advocates of NFP argue that the Rhythm method is valid and “natural” in that the marital act is completed in a natural and proper way, and no artificial means of contraception (i.e., condoms, diaphragms, etc.) are employed. Yet the same may be said of “the Pill” – and both methods claim a 98% “success” rate. We might mention here that “the Pill” is an abortifacient – that is, it does not “prevent conception” (as is the impression its promoters like to give us). Rather, it induces the miscarriage of an already existing conceived child! It is a tool of murder, as surely as is any other form of abortion.

In his “right-to-life” film, Dr. Wilkie tells us that “semen of itself is not life-giving; the ovum of itself is not life-giving; and only when the two are allowed to meet is there life-giving.”

The National Council of Catholic Bishops’ statement about marriage tells us that, “the life-giving and the love-giving cannot be separated.”

As we have seen, Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae teaches “that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life.”

These are all facts consistent with the teaching of Christ. How then can NFP proponents instruct God’s Catholic people? They make it their business to impart to couples: 1) how to prevent, through careful monthly calculations, the fertilization of the female ovum; 2) how to have the love-giving but avoid the life-giving through the contrivance of timing; 3) that each and every act must remain open to the transmission of life (as the Law tells us it must). Yet their instruction consist of teaching couples how to calculate the very time when they may perform the marriage act with the greatest degree of certainty that there will be no transmission of life. Is not all this usurping a dominion over life-giving powers not belonging to man? Who is supposed to be deceived – God or man? Is it any wonder that intelligent and informed non-Catholics find the approach being fostered by the Catholic Church’s representatives ridiculous, jaded, and distorted, as well as hypocritical? For they see in it no difference from “the Pill” in intent or effectiveness – it still is birth control.

Concerning Pope Paul VI’s statement that each and every act must remain open to the transmission of life, NFP advocates tell us:

A couple who practices NFP has already inherently accepted the child, should it come along. It is in this sense that the couple must remain open to life while not using contraceptives, and yet allowed to use the sterile times which God Himself has provided.

This is changing God’s Law – that the first purpose of marriage is procreation – into a lie, and they are worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator! After all, why are couples using the sterile times alone? Isn’t it to serve their creature desires? This is that lust of which the angel Raphael spoke to Tobias (Tob. 6:17). To associate this thinking with the unitive meaning of marriage is fallacious, for constant use of the sterile times is against the nature of a woman, and the effects are disastrous as the Cavanaugh Report reveals (about which more later). In this thinking, NFP proves itself to be in error. And note the “smooth” language used by the NFP’ers (“which God Himself has provided”) in order to divert one to error. A “pious” coating indeed!

It has been stated that the separation of childbearing and love can allow a man to turn his wife into a mistress until her ability to satisfy his lust wanes. Is it any wonder that our families are in the terrible state they are with this mentality prevailing for the last fifty-plus years? If a couple has in their hearts the acceptance of a child from their actions, why go through all the bother of observing and checking? Even Pope Paul VI said that the act itself must remain open to the transmission of life. This means nothing can be deliberately done to prevent the meeting of the sperm and ovum – timing included, as well as material methods.

“Thou shall love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength” (Mk. 12:30). To advance in intellectual and social growth, and yet neglect this FIRST and GREATEST COMMANDMENT of the Creator, is declaring that man is independent from God. God is not rejecting man, nor is He allowing him to be led astray. Man makes the decision himself to reject God. And in the case of birth control, man rejects the fact that sexual intercourse is primarily for procreation – with the result of that act being completely God’s domain. Man is rejecting the Providence of God by not trusting that God will take care of whatever He creates. Or else man rejects God Himself because complete marital submission to the Divine Will may mean sacrifice in the form of physical pain, emotional stress, giving of self and time, financial burdens, social obligations and all the rest. Especially it means the sacrifice of trusting that God will provide for the future – a virtue utterly contrary to the modern materialistic spirit and need for absolute security/control over one’s life. Mankind so wants to make earth its Heaven and place of ease, when the world is largely to be a place of test, toil and suffering – only the proving ground for Heaven. God’s Will here is our test, and our job during life is to see that we are fulfilling this Will and living out His Law.

We ask the advocates of NFP how their approach fulfills God’s life within us and preserves true faith in His Providence? We are here questioning the value – and validity – of the principle set forth by this group. Christ Himself told us that those who would seduce us will come to us as wolves “in the clothing of sheep” (Mt. 7:15). Christ came as a “sign of contradiction” (Lk. 2:34), by which He meant that His teaching and moral code would oppose, and be opposed by, the world. How does NFP oppose the evils of contraception, being nothing but a non-artificial means of the same birth control? The world is not concerned about pleasing God its Creator and doing its duty, only about some ever safer and more reliable way of birth control (and discovering how to increase the merely pleasurable side of sexual relations).

The years of this past century until now have been years of change, and as each year passes, the changes accelerate along with their consequences. Advocates of NFP claim that their method has been accepted by the Popes since 1930 (those same Popes who have ignored the request of Our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, and who also eventually allowed the wholesale changes we now see rampant through the Church with the heresy of Modernism). This thinking has infected four or five generations of even conservative Catholics. It has contributed to the moral laxity within the modern Church, and surely to the undermining of marriages and family life. Why are homosexuality, bestiality and every form of perversion now a problem among not just the young but society at large? It is because the primary purpose of sex – procreation – has been set aside, and the secondary purpose has been made primary, therefore putting man’s pleasure before God’s Law. When pleasure is allowed to be primary in sex, who dares set the limits? The abolishing of morals is the result, as Saint Paul tells us (Rom. 26 & 27).

Is not this the time for us to stand up to the world, and show forth the light of Christian morality? Christ’s way is not to find a variant to the world’s immorality. We must condemn all forms of birth control – as well as the immoral mentality to which they have given rise with all its pagan consequences.

Animal life instinctively reproduces according to the Natural Law because animals do not have the intelligence or free will to go against it, and their nature will not allow copulation at the infertile time. In the vegetable kingdom, fertilization takes place spontaneously. Therefore, all nature gives honor and glory to God by following the Natural Law as God made it.

Man is God’s special creation to whom He gave intelligence and free will. The child of God uses his human functions as did Jesus, by being born in human form and living as a human being – and even His human nature was subject to the spiritual. This is the focal point of those baptized into the Fatherhood of God. We have God’s solemn promise that He will guide us in all the problems we encounter through our human drives, if we will only subject our will and actions first of all to Him. Our Lord very definitely gave us the way when He told us that we must become as little children and trust the Father. Again He makes reference to this Fatherhood when He says, “Ask the Father anything in My Name.” If we keep ourselves worthy of His blessings, all else will follow.

Love takes sacrifice, and this sacrifice can require the courage to stand before the intellectuals of the world and say that we believe that God is our Father. We therefore believe that He will take care of and guide His children who trust in this guidance, and He will prepare them for eternity. Look at the covenant God made with man. God promised man that He will always take care of man if man will keep Him as his God. Now the devil would like to see that covenant become null and void, because fidelity on man’s part would destroy the devil’s efforts to lead souls to Hell.

God works with souls as is necessary for each individual soul’s salvation, and so we say that “God hath no way.” This means that He does not follow a definite pattern with each soul. But the devil’s way is easy to detect as he constantly incites man to defy God’s Will, causing man to lose divine grace. We recognize this style of Satan.

If man wants to be faithful to God and keep God’s covenant, any thought of birth control or family limitation is forbidden. If man truly loves God, he trusts Him and gives to God His place of honor in man’s life. Occasionally you hear even traditional Catholics object to leaving themselves open to all the children God wills to send them. They may say something like, “You’ve got to have some morals” – as though putting their marital selves entirely in God’s hands is giving way to so much impure activity, or is merely akin to animal-like abandonment or behavior. Such is their concept or experience of the nobility and holiness of Christian parenthood. Open marital relations, rather, is a practice of love of God and charity to one’s spouse. And it is obedience to God’s Law. (If it wasn’t that children may well mark the path of such “marital abandonment,” might any of these people be that concerned with “having some morals”?)

What is God’s place? It is in filial trust that we worship and serve God Whose place is above us. Now Our Blessed Mother trusted Him in her Fiat, at the time of the Annunciation. As Don Bosco explains in his Madonna:

Be it done to me according to Thy Word. With this utterance, Mary surrendered body and soul to the Will of God, a Will that she did not understand, but which she accepted. By this acceptance she gave every fibre of her being to her vocation as Mother of God; she accepted, without thinking of herself, but trusting in God. And this first Fiat was the beginning of a whole lifetime of submission to the Will of God.

Where would we be if Our Lady did not say “Fiat” to God’s Will? And look at what happened because she did. Do you think she was ever sorry afterwards? We, too, have our chance to imitate the Mother of God in her submission and abandonment, and it pleases God that we do so. What holy developments will come our way as well!

Fidelity to God is accepting the fact that He is God and we are His creatures. Although we can either accept or reject the Father, He tells those who accept Him that He will take charge of their lives and grant them peace (through a clear conscience). He also will give them happiness in this life and assurance of everlasting happiness in the next. As the Sacred Heart told St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, “Fear nothing, and let Me do with you and in you whatever I will.”

Chapter II

What is the Contraceptive Mentality?

Columnist Paul H. Hallett in his article Contraception Leads to Abortion Designs (The National Catholic Register, June 26, 1977), said:

True contraception is not the taking of life, but it is only a step removed from it. It does not destroy an independent human organism, but it prevents, by human contrivance, the meeting of male and female germ cells by which a human being comes into existence. Its fundamental malice is that it does not respect human life, or it usurps a dominion over life-giving powers that does not belong to man.

The contraceptive mentality, then, is one that rejects the child as a result of the marriage act, and therefore does not respect human life. This disrespect for human life is the basis for abortion, euthanasia, “mercy killing,” etc., because man is rejecting God’s Providential care for him. In his Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul says:

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God. When they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. (Rom. 1:18, 21 & 22).

Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, Primate of the Catholic Church in Hungary, was well aware of the “contraceptive mentality.” In a sermon preached at a parish anniversary and before his arrest by the Communists, he shared these admonitions:

The number of Catholics in this parish has been steadily increasing. In 1781, there were 2,351. In 1941 there were 7,500. I must hope that the worm of sin has not begun to gnaw at the lives of the Catholic families of our nation. Some Hungarian families are suffering from various “modern ailments” like abortion and divorce. Do not let your own family suffer from such ailments. Remember the example of your forefathers, who would not permit anything to undermine the structure of the family.

The modern family is exposed to many temptations. All Catholic young people must struggle to remain pure in body and soul. Also keep this in mind: The life conceived in the womb already constitutes a living individual, a person like ourselves. An unborn child has just as much right to live as a child lying in the cradle or in its mother’s arms; it has as much right to live as you and I. It is also sinful to “be careful” – to deliberately attempt to avoid pregnancy – for all rights involve responsibilities. Those who attempt to avoid the responsibility of conceiving a child turn the sanctuary of marriage into a den of iniquity. The marriage partners become companions in sin. Their marriage will never be blessed by God.

(One of the things the Cardinal unfortunately observed in later years, from looking out of his window when under period of enforced Communist governmental restriction, was the lessening of the number of children in the families he could see passing along on the street outside. This, he knew, was the result of the liberal, socialistic changes in the country, the loosening of the hold of the Church upon the people, and their own loss of faith. To his grief, he was seeing his people “modernize” before his very eyes.)

In the Mystical City of God, Our Blessed Mother tells us that we lose so very many blessings by not trusting in God:

They hold themselves aloof from the Divine Providence, which is powerful and sweet and unfailing…men are given over to their own solicitudes, which are inefficient and weak, blind, uncertain and inconsiderate. From this false beginning originate and follow irreparable evils for man, for he deprives himself of the Divine Protection and falls from the dignity of having his Creator as his Helper and Defender. And what is still worse, if by his carnal wisdom and diabolical astuteness to which man resigns himself, he succeeds sometimes in obtaining what he seeks, he deems himself fortunate on account of this, his own misfortune! And with sensible pleasure he imbibes the poison of eternal death in the deceitful delight, which he has gained, while incurring the alienation and abhorrence of his God (The Mystical City of God, The Conception,
p. 557).

All these things we see in our society, and they are in great part the result of the contraceptive mentality which prevails today.

Chapter III

Who Conceives – God or Man?

Who is God? God is the Creator of Heaven and earth and all things. What is man? Man is a mere creature composed of body and soul and made in the image and likeness of God.

As has been said, man is different from animal because he has an immortal soul endowed with intellect and free will. Man, on his own, cannot produce a human being. It takes God to infuse the intelligent and free-willed soul into each body He has created. This teaches us that God alone causes human life – we merely cooperate with Him. He oversees the conception of each and every one of us individually, and one-by-one. This is unlike animals which He allows to populate “automatically,” so to speak. God’s plans are made for all eternity, and He has set His Natural Law as His plan of procreation. Therefore, how foolish it is for man to think he conceives, just because God allows man’s nature to cooperate with His plan. None of us would be here if God did not decide on an individual basis to let each of us exist. He hovers over our conceptions personally, creating us Himself on the spot, body and soul simultaneously, and wanting each of us in the world for His purpose – for He hopes we will want Him, too.

Cardinal Newman wrote: “He is Almighty and might have done all things Himself, but it has been His Will to bring about His purposes by the beings He created” (A Newman Treasury, p. 356). This tells us we are not born to tell God when, how and why, but to serve Him as His instrument, to be used by Him in His way – even though we may feel that this cross gets heavy and we are persecuted by the modernists of our day.

St. John tells us in the Gospel, “But to as many as received Him, He gave the power of becoming sons of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn. 1:13). There can be no doubt that each conception of a man is truly God’s domain. The awesome thought is that God allows us to share in His momentous action of creating us – and not the other way around. How could man possibly choose the time to conceive, when only God knows the future and a man’s full potential by the power of His grace? How many parents in their later years, come to realize why this or that one of their children was born at a certain time during their married life, or in a certain spot amid their sequence of children? Who knows which child may help them in their old age – or which may become the religious or saint? Who can calculate the loss when God’s certain procreative plan for a family is tampered with or denied? (The story is famous of a woman who told of having confessed to Padre Pio that she had an abortion. Not thinking she was contrite enough, he angrily admonished her for the murder, and revealed that the child was to have been a pope.)

I have a friend who had four girls and was in the sixth month of her fifth pregnancy when her husband was killed. The child was a boy, and when a visitor remarked to the mother how sad it was that the husband was not there, she replied, “He is right here in my son.” What would that mother have wrought by the foolishness of family planning? She would have rejected one of God’s greatest blessings in her life. What right has the finite mind of man to make decisions that affect human history and all eternity? Consider as well that there are many large families into which, for years, only boys were born. Finally, at the end, came a girl. Would those parents ever have known the joy of a baby girl at last, if family planning had been in progress and their string of children cut off, so to speak, “in the midst?” And the same can be said of those all-girl families, ending finally in a boy. All of us must remember that we made serious vows at Baptism. As a result and ever since, we have walked about daily under those solemn promises we made to always choose God’s Will and renounce the devil and all his works and pomps – of which birth control is one of the cleverest, and NFP the cleverest of that!

Children are the direct inheritance of God, to live for all eternity. Therefore, man should have no fear of God’s inheritance. How blest can life be if God so designs to increase our inheritance! Who knows the damage wrought by NFP, as much as by any other form of birth control? Are we to doubt God’s judgment about what is most advantageous for us? How can a woman possibly look God straight in the face and tell Him her heart is open to His beautiful inheritance of the gift of life, when she is taking her temperature and observing and counseling her husband to make sure life will not ensue? When man tries to interfere with God’s power, man suffers all the ills we see today such as St. Paul describes in his Epistle to the Romans. And Dr. Hemingway from Warrnambool, Australia, gives us this broadening bit of information when he views contraception as a worse moral crime than murder:

Because murder leaves the soul intact, the victim can always be compensated in eternity for the loss of his natural life. For this reason, while abortion, murder, etc., are very serious matters, they remain as finite crimes. Their effects are limited to earthly life and the evil associated with them can be undone – if God so wills – in eternity. The same does not apply to contraceptive intercourse. The child denied existence by a contraceptive act is robbed of his immortal soul. He cannot possibly enjoy the bliss of Heaven and not even God can compensate him for his loss. For this reason, the effects of contraceptive intercourse can never be removed and contraception is a crime against life of infinite magnitude.

Contraception blocks the very entrance to life and denies God the love of a new son. Furthermore, contraception prolongs His denial to all eternity, so it is hard, indeed, to imagine any greater evil that man can do. It is hard, also, to imagine any action more pleasing to Satan, the enemy of souls.

Again, God has made man free, with the choice to work with Him or not. The teaching of the Catholic Faith regarding children, which Catholic couples accept on their wedding day, is a Divine Law allowing no tolerance for birth control – for the primary purpose of marriage is children.

Our Blessed Mother also had the freedom to choose, and because of her openness to God she called down many sorrows and sufferings on herself. But did not the blessings God poured out to her and all mankind because of this “yes,” affect man’s world for the best both here as well as in eternity? And so it is with all who subject themselves to God’s Will. When we teach our young people to limit their families – their inheritance from God – we are also teaching them to limit God’s blessings of knowledge and understanding in their own lives. This, in turn, renders them incapable of imparting this knowledge and understanding to their children. In a word, this anti-life spirit undermines the couple’s faith – and any teaching that destroys faith can only come from Satan as it accomplishes his work, not God’s.

As has been said, Pope Pius XII was the first Pope to actually condone the Rhythm method as the devil incited society to exert pressure for a “Catholic” birth control. This drove the wedge of the contraceptive mentality deeper into the issue of NFP, so as to force the door wide open to its acceptance. A lack of knowledge regarding biology may have been part of this destruction; or maybe the problem was in too much wisdomless knowledge. But the underlying thrust is that the Hierarchy should not have had to know this biology in the first place, as God had already laid down His rule (the Natural Law)! Man refused God’s way – although the responsibility of the Hierarchy was to reinforce God’s way, and not listen to the cries of the rebellious who looked to science to placate them. But the devil used the blinded Hierarchy and the recent NFP-prone Popes. They were seduced by the distorted words of the advocates of NFP, perhaps somewhat on purpose – perhaps having other, evil intentions in mind. It is of no small interest to know that the Rockefeller Foundation helped fund the commission researching NFP for the Vatican! What could possibly be the intent here in trying to reduce the number of new souls – and new Catholics in particular?

Regarding some of the harmful side-effects of NFP, at least one eminent Catholic spoke out. John R. Cavanaugh, M.D., a member of the faculty of the School of Sacred Theology of the Catholic University of America and editor of the Bulletin of the Guild of Catholic Psychiatrists of America, was a member of the Pope’s commission which studied the Rhythm method. His conclusions were published in the August 1966 edition of Marriage magazine:

I write as a clinician, as one who deals with the individual person and not with abstract principles, as a scientist interested in people and basing my opinion in large part on the results of this study. I must conclude that the use of Rhythm is productive of serious psychological harm. I recognize that I disagree with the opinions of some of the philosophers. Further, Vatican Council II has stated that the conjugal love of the husband and wife is an important aspect of marriage. I feel it is an extremely important one. Rhythm is, therefore, harmful to the psychological relationship of the husband and wife because:

1)  It deprives a woman of the conjugal act during the time of her greatest desire, during the postovulatory and mid-cycle peaks of desire.

2)  This deprivation causes severe frustration in many couples.

3)  If Rhythm is used, as it is now recommended for safe use, it allows intercourse on relatively few days a month in most cases. This leads to frustration.

4)  Disagreement over its use and quarrels over its failures cause marital discord.

5)  Such marital disharmony with its attending symptoms may cause psychic damage to the offspring.

6)  The reputation for high-use failure in Rhythm causes a high degree of anxiety in even well-motivated couples.

The above comments apply to the psycho-logical aspects of the use of Rhythm. They are not meant to imply that Rhythm may not be biologically effective in the control of conception.

Even Dr. Rock, inventor of “the Pill,” said that Rhythm is unnatural and therefore should be abolished. (Of course, he would want his Pill used instead.)

Chapter IV

What Does Science Say?

Since the onset of “the Pill,” Mary Calderone’s sex education, and Dr. Wilkie’s Right-to-Life programs, people are fully aware of the true scientific facts which make the understanding of the reproductive system universal knowledge. This was not so in the early 1900’s, even among the educated. For sex was a “hush-hush” subject, and certainly not a topic of conversation. But today, even our high-schoolers are taught more about female biology than what was known by many when Pope Paul VI wrote his encyclical, Humanae Vitae – much to the destruction of young purity.

Professor Andre Hallegers of Georgetown University’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology says that, “Humanae Vitae makes no case in logic.” Professor Hallegers, who served on the Papal Commission originally instituted by Pope John XXIII claims:

The Encyclical’s biology is not thought through. It says that intercourse MUST be always left open to the transmission of life, then it asks us to perfect a method – Rhythm – that is closed to the transmission of life. It implies that when a woman is sterile, the marriage act is open to the transmission of life. This is not true. When there is no ovum to fertilize, the act is closed to reproduction. How to explain why intercourse that cannot possibly lead to a baby is intercourse open to the transmission of life? A scientist would say it is closed. We ask: Why is a sterile act fertile? Why is a closed act open?

Roman Catholic biophysicist Dr. Thomas Hayes of the University of California, states:

Rome only gives a hearing to the male oriented picture of what intercourse and reproduction is. The sperm is only HALF a seed. If they are going to talk of the seed in terms of sperm, then they have to talk of the seed in terms of ovum too. Yet you hear no talk about spilling the seed of the ovum.

The Encyclical condemns early withdrawal of the male; why not withdrawal of the female? That is what Rhythm amounts to.

Rhythm is coitus interruptus, female style. It is not abstinence. That is like calling our eating habits periodic fasting, that is untruthful…. The Church has already approved tampering with the total act of reproduction in Rhythm – it should be consistent: approve all banned methods of contraception or ban them all… (Look magazine, Dec. 10, 1968).

When Dr. Billings announced his scientific findings (1942), the hit-or-miss temperature method of Rhythm became obsolete and the ovulation method became the “sure-shot” that NFP adopted. As science progressed, man became what he thought was more “self-sufficient.” Certainly man was intrigued by science, and life became easier; God can allow scientific findings to alleviate man’s suffering. But God’s Laws must always be man’s guide and science must be subject to these Laws in order to keep God’s blessing upon it. For example, the invention of movies could be used for God’s glory and the Faith, as Saint Maximilian Kolbe pointed out. But it is the wrong application of this scientific invention by way of, say, pornography, which can make a movie objectionable, as it then breaks God’s Laws against impurity and gives bad example. So, it is the abuse of scientific discoveries that gets man into trouble. We can always determine what is use and what is abuse by following God’s Laws in truth. Moral truth is as positive as science. Hypocrisy is not tolerated in the truth of science any more than it can be harmonized with fidelity to God. Man has no choice but to accept the truth of God and abide by that truth – or as a consequence suffer untold agony, as we shall see by viewing the fruits of Rhythm and birth control.

Chapter V

Humanae Vitae

Humanae Vitae is the encyclical of Pope Paul VI on birth control. It was brought about to some extent by the many changes society was presenting to man. Primary among these were the theory of overpopulation, the place of woman in society and the advancements of science. Catholics and the world looked to the Hierarchy for an answer to these problems. Of course, these Church authorities should only have restated the values Christ gave to us: Marriage is indissoluble; marital fidelity must be for life; each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. In the conjugal act there is a physical and a spiritual union between husband and wife – this is the unitive aspect of the conjugal act. There must be no abortion, no sterilization. There must be no interference whatsoever before, during, or after the conjugal act to render procreation impossible.

These are all God’s Laws, and even the Pope himself has no authority to change them. The duty of the Pope and the Hierarchy is, as has been said, to reinforce God’s Law and help people believe and understand the power of God’s grace. They should be nurturing in them the will to be submissive to the Divine Will. Attempting to bypass God’s laws can only be diabolical. Through their heroic sacrifices, the Saints show us how the love of God brought them into their own willing submission to God’s decrees in their lives, thus giving the example to all of us.

Before Humanae Vitae, the Popes had promulgated what the divine Magisterium had always taught regarding marriage and children: Marriage is for the raising up of children to God. The devil recognized that if this teaching prevailed, he could not accomplish his aim of destroying the Faith as thoroughly. Satan works through man’s fallen nature, and through that fallen nature, society was used to seemingly exert pressure upon Pope Paul VI. This influence was in addition to his being a liberal to begin with (as the radical changes in the Church over which this Pope presided well prove). Dr. Rock had given the world “the Pill,” and the idea that “scientific advances” could release mankind from traditional morality regarding birth control became more widely accepted. Women were being lured into the work force to achieve “a higher standard of living.” Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood seemed the only spokesman of the post-Christian world. All this became a loud cry of rebellion against the teaching of the Church. For the devil incited man to think that if birth control was used, there would be harmony and peace in the family and better conditions for the education of children already born. After all, did not God give man intelligence to figure these things out?

In accordance with such pressure from within and without the Church, Pope Paul VI stated in the 16th part of his encyclical:

If, then, there are serious motives to space out births, which derive from the physical or psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from external conditions, the Church teaches that it is then licit to take into account the natural rhythms.

Behold the devil’s clever lie. What sense would it make for a couple who have psychological problems to engage in a way of life that produces even more psychological conditions and moral qualms as stated in the Cavanaugh Report? This is the same Pope who said it was in the United Nations that the hope of man must reside – not in God nor His Church, nor even in the promise He held out for the future through Our Lady of Fatima and her revelations!

It is no wonder Humanae Vitae caused such confusion in the Church and amid Her children. Most saw the inconsistency in the encyclical (even though the Pope attempted to make the case for Rhythm by saying that it “makes legitimate use of a natural disposition”) – for with contraception, people impede the development of the natural process.

The real question is: Has the Church ever officially and knowledgeably approved this “safe period” method of conception control? Is it possible that Pope Paul VI had questionable intentions by dealing in such wise with the birth control issue? Did he not have full biological knowledge of the NFP method? Could he have been thinking only from the male-centered concept that the sperm is the seed? We do not fully know. But we do know that sperm is only half the seed – sperm can never of itself cause life. In order to transmit life, the sperm must meet the ovum in order to fertilize the ovum. If this meeting takes place without conception occurring, there is no moral wrong. But with NFP and the “safe period” method, the planning and observing are human interventions that deliberately prevent this meeting and life cannot ensue. When Onan spilled his seed upon the ground, God called it “a detestable thing” and struck him dead (Gen. 38:9-10). Could it be said that God would approve of man knowingly spilling his seed on barren ground to intentionally avoid possible conception? For this is what NFP is. Intervention is morally wrong, no matter which method is used. (Humanae Vitae stresses the intrinsic evil of such intervention, yet later promulgates it by endorsing Rhythm!) Under God’s Law, then, it is impossible that the ovulation method of birth control could be accepted. To approve tampering with the total act of reproduction, as this encyclical does, is to approve all forms, and that cannot be.

Another point: We are told that the Church is a kind and understanding Mother. Granted she is – and always with ETERNITY in mind, as becoming sanctified and getting to Heaven is the purpose of life. But do the advocates of NFP realize into what context it puts Holy Mother Church by speaking as they do? Let me explain by example. My friend and I were discussing the birth control problem and she asked if I thought the Rhythm method was wrong in every case. When I said, “Absolutely,” she told me of a woman in Canada who had thirty-eight miscarriages and said in a case like that, Rhythm should be all right. “Thirty-eight souls!” was what I pointed out to her. Can you imagine when that mother answers to God at her judgment, what a big and beautiful chorus praising the Most High could greet her as they present her soul to God? (The mother had been a Catholic and would have tried to have these children baptized.)

What Church could you call a “loving and understanding Mother,” which would want to teach Her children how to deprive themselves of such joyous fulfillment? St. Paul tells us we are all to run in the race and to keep our eye on the prize. Yes, that woman truly suffered, but unlike God, Who is forever, the childbearing years come to an end. And besides, what suffering in this life can be more important than the salvation of a soul for the honor and glory of God?

Now Part 26 of Humanae Vitae tells of the “Apostolate in Homes.” It explains that couples should share their experiences with others. This is where NFP claims to derive its authority to teach. But again, God’s people are being deceived. Certainly couples should share their good ideas in raising their families. But are they to expose their connubial intimacies so that other couples may prevent the meeting of the male and female cells, thus stressing pleasure rather than procreation? And as well, wrongful discussions of sex and married life are against the 6th and 9th Commandments, whether one is married or not.

Unfortunately, the clergy and Hierarchy do not really – or do not want really – to understand NFP if their intention is to help Catholics be holier. In teaching couples to observe the Ovulation Method, advocates of NFP discuss what is intimate between husband and wife as part of this education. And this is very personal, especially to the woman. When such sacred matters are thus flaunted, self-worth recedes, and the individual or couple becomes vulnerable to other sins in marriage.

Christian families are the basis of a well-ordered society, and God is the most necessary part of that marriage and family structure. The attitude toward the sacredness of conjugal intimacies is fundamental to a couple’s relationship with God. If we believe God is a real, living God Who created us, we must believe He will take care of us as He has promised, and we are to live our lives as proof of that belief. This may sound naïve – but it is God’s truth! “Unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt. 18:3).

Could it be that without the grace of God we are creating a situation for the abuse of the procreative act – the sin of withdrawal – that would be peculiar to the Catholic? Again, Onan did exactly that and God struck him dead “because he did a detestable thing” (Gen. 38:9-10). The devil tempted Eve, causing all of us to suffer. Is woman allowing herself to be tricked again by Satan in the planned withholding of the ovum to make the act void of its purpose? And is God’s justice causing humanity again to suffer as St. Paul describes in his Epistle to the Romans, through infidelity, adultery, etc.?

Did not Christ tell us to beware of the “doctrine of the enemy” – that it is an unseen leaven which, fermenting in human hearts, sours and corrupts life? Did He not tell us that the devil would fool, if possible, even God’s elect? Is not this exactly what the doctrine of birth control in NFP has done to the core of society – the Catholic family – and consequently to the whole of society itself?

Times have changed, yes. But the part that has changed is not morality (as truth is unchangeable). Rather it is in part, the layman’s knowledge of biological facts. Our world is suffering today not so much because the pagans are using contraception but because God’s own Catholic people are, and thereby are incurring sin and rejecting His providential care. Like the hypocrite in the Bible, they assume an arrogant, presumptuous attitude springing from pride and resentment, wanting to believe that by using NFP all will be well between themselves and God. But Jesus tells us that God sees their hearts and their hearts are at one with pagans. And our Blessed Mother tells us in The Mystical City of God, (p. 242):

The more the children of Adam study and exert themselves to reach the evil objects of their carnal and animal passions, and to attain the means of indulging them, so much the more will they fall into ignorance of divine things, by which alone they can come to their true ultimate end. This ignorance and worldly prudence is still more abominable and still more hateful in the eyes of God when it occurs in the children of the Church.

It was not the Gentiles who crucified Christ – it was His own who rejected His loving care and Will for them, exemplified by His humble life of submission to the Will of God. Sister Lucy of Fatima said that Our Lady made known to her the reason we have not obtained the Consecration of Russia during all the years since the apparitions of our Blessed Mother there: It is because the sins of Catholics have prevented it! In this light, all of us have thus held a share in the withholding of Our Lady’s promised “period of peace” from the world. (It may be good to mention here that little Jacinta Marto, also one of the Fatima children along with her brother, Francisco, said Our Lady made known to her that most souls go to hell because of sins of the flesh.)

The only way to overcome abortion and all other immoral practices of today – in addition to the traditional restoration of the Church in all orthodox dogmas and in liturgy – is through Catholics imitating Christ in His obedience to God the Father. We must have humble trust in Him. The First Commandment does not tolerate man’s attempting to usurp a power that belongs to God alone. And the sham of NFP is one aspect of the chaos we suffer amidst the gross immorality of today’s society.

The statement is made that the Church’s stand against birth control is impossible to observe by many faithful and generous spouses. Yet it cannot be believed that God binds men to impossible standards.

Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical “On Christian Marriage” (Casti Connubii) says:

There is no possible circumstance in which husband and wife cannot, strengthened by the grace of God, fulfill faithfully their duties and preserve in wedlock their chastity unspotted. This truth of Christian Faith is expressed by the teachings of the Council of Trent. Let no one be so rash as to assert that which the Fathers of the Council have placed under anathema, (cursed by God) namely, that there are precepts of God impossible for the just to observe. God does not ask the impossible, but by His commands, instructs you to do what you are able, to pray for what you are not able that He may help you.

This same doctrine was again solemnly repeated and confirmed by the Church in the condemnation of the Jansenist heresy which dared to utter this blasphemy against the goodness of God.

So we understand God does not bind men to impossible standards. But now, the advocating of birth control projects a social standard. God never promised His grace to help keep the status quo. He did, however, promise all the help we need to keep His Will first in our lives. In fact, He put it very bluntly when He said that we must come trustingly to Him, as little children come to their earthly father for help. As a mother of fourteen children, I can assure you that anyone who goes to God, ready to accept His way even in the face of being considered a fool, will grow in wisdom, understanding, courage and all the gifts of the Holy Ghost. These gifts guide our thinking and teaching of our children so as to make it possible to observe the stand the Church takes, which is God’s stand. At His Ascension Jesus told us, “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Mt. 28:20). God’s grace will not be void in those who trust in Him.

Chapter VI

Responsible Parenthood

The propagandist uses catch words and slogans to appeal to and seduce his prey. Among these is the expression, “responsible parenthood.” Advocates of NFP claim that when Pope Paul VI used this utterance, he meant that we should use our God-given intelligence to become aware of ourselves in a physiological sense. We are then to manipulate the basic principle of sex to avoid conception and thus serve what society comprehends as the common good.

Certainly Catholic parents must be responsible in the fulfillment of their vocation and the raising of their family for the honor and glory of God. That includes the temporal needs as well as the spiritual ones – to say nothing of education. And this is what “responsible parenthood” should mean. Society, however, thinks rather in terms of worldly values, such as “convenience” and “the common good” (i.e., read population control).

God on the contrary, thinks of souls with Him in the everlasting bliss of Heaven. In this lies true wisdom and the way to proceed in the matter. Even if a child dies before birth because of, say, the starvation of the mother, its soul is nevertheless alive and has a chance for Heaven – with us waiting upon the Providence of God regarding its necessary baptism.

Father Leo Trese, a columnist of some years past, asked mothers to write their thoughts to a wife who was troubled about accepting the family that God sent. Here are some of the many replies received:

From Minnesota, one mother wrote:

I would say your problem is frightening, but trust in God always. After the birth of my second child, I was told that is was doubtful whether I ever again would become pregnant, and that if I did it would be fatal.

I went on to have eight more children in eleven years, all healthy, happy and intelligent. Two already have full scholarships to take them through college.

As for Rhythm, it did not work for me, either, and we were not strong enough to practice it long. I decided that it would be better to go to heaven, young, than to hell, old. Our house is rather decrepit and lacks plumbing (almost a sin these days), but it is comfortable and neat with lawn and flowers…. Now I am 45 and feel that it was worth it all.

Here is another reply:

I am a mother of nineteen children and am living proof that the Church is right and the prophets of doom, wrong.

I was a registered nurse before my marriage – and know the methods of preventing conception if I believed that this was the thing to do. As it is, I thank God for every one of my precious children and almost twelve grandchildren. May God help us to get back to seeing the beauty and wonder of a marriage lived in intimate union with our Maker, even though we have to walk in footsteps red with His Blood for many years. “Sow in sorrow, reap in joy” is so very true in my case.

At 52, I am stronger and healthier than I have been in years in spite of a chronic kidney infection which plagued me all during my years of childbearing.

One letter that will (if we read between the lines) make us ashamed of ever complaining about our own crosses, is this one from an Ohio mother:

Really it is not so difficult. Those who have the courage to follow God’s Laws will live their faith in a wonderful happiness.

That I speak from experience. I had to face this problem many years ago. I felt that I must decide to live with Christ or without Him. I accepted everything from God’s hands confiding completely in Divine Providence. He gave us ten little souls under circumstances very doubtful from a natural point of view. We are refugees from behind the Iron Curtain. We had to go through many hardships, needs, fright, cold and starvation.

My husband died in consequence of the persecution, but the children were saved and led by God in a wonderful manner. Some of the children have received vocations, and the peace and joy I got even among the biggest difficulties are not to be compared to any hardships. I can only agree that His yoke is sweet and His burden light.

Still another mother speaks:

I would tell her to go ahead and have her babies as God sends them and she will never be sorry. If we put our trust in the Mother of God and St. Gerard (Patron Saint of expectant mothers), they will see us through unless it is the Will of God that we die an early death. In that case if we did not die in childbirth we would die in some other way.

I had thirteen babies of my own and raised an adopted one besides. When I was expecting my third child, specialists had to be called in and I was told that I must never have another child if I wanted to live to raise my family.

Of course, I did not die when the next one was born and now she is a professed Franciscan nun. As to the financial part, we never have been on relief and never went hungry, although sometimes we did not have much choice in what we ate. I made over clothes that relatives gave me, and one of the nicest things that children have told me is that they never “felt poor.”

Remember that the children you have will soon leave your lap, but the children you prevent will never leave your mind. I am past 50 now and active as a young person.

Let another mother speak:

My first three children came within less than three years. A Caesarean section was necessary for my fourth child. Due to this and to the development of severe varicose veins, my doctor advocated sterilization. My husband and I would not consent. I told the doctor that if God wanted me to be a cripple He would choose His own way.

My fifth baby was delivered normally and was one of my easiest. Now I have eight – and to think that if I had said the word to the doctor, I would not have these last four babies. I am 43 now and not a cripple. It is a great battle but I definitely do not feel like a martyr.

I am proud to think that God gave me the strength to carry on and to have these little ones who gave me so much courage as I held them in my arms every day. But my battle is only partly won and I must go on now and encourage my own daughters in their duties of motherhood; the world is so demanding today….

Now these are responsible parents: They did it God’s way! What foolishness to doubt God’s promise and reject His Providence. That can only be what the devil wants us to do.

St. John Marie Vianney, the “Curé d’Ars,” and patron saint of parish priests due to his holy life and work in that French town, once had this written about him regarding Holy Matrimony:

Both in the pulpit and in the confessional he had never ceased from proclaiming the strictness and the sweetness of the laws of Christian marriage. He had been heard and understood. God’s blessing rested upon the homesteads of the village. To use the imagery of the Bible, “the wife was as a fruitful vine, on the sides of the house,” and “the children as olive plants, round about the table of their fathers.”

Facing the church stood the house of the Ciniers with their ten children, pere Mandy was the father of twelve; twelve children formed a crown of honour for the desGarets; the families of Fernand and Fleury Treve had fifteen children each. During the pastorate of St. John Marie, the population of Ars was more than doubled. Between 1818 and 1824 there were ninety-eight baptisms as against forty burials.

…Married people were shown the nobility of their calling, and he exhorted them to fulfill holily its duties. A lady of the name of Ruet…had already a large family, and was about to become a mother once more. She came to Ars in order to seek courage at the feet of its holy Curé. She had not long to wait, for St. John Marie summoned her from amid the crowd. “You look very sad, my child,” he said, when she was on her knees in the confessional. “Oh, I am so advanced in years, Father!” exclaimed this expectant mother. “Be comforted, my child,” he warned, “if you only knew the women who will go to hell because they did not bring into the world the children they should have given to it!”

“Come now, my little one,” he said to another with fatherly kindliness, who confided to him her anxiety because of her large family. “Do not be alarmed at your burden; Our Lord carries it with you. The good God does well all that He does: When he gives many children to a young mother it is that He deems her worthy to rear them. It is a mark of confidence on His part.”

Now there must be some couples in Heaven who bless their decision to accept all the children God willed to send them, as this balanced and kept their finances modest, thus preventing indulgence in harmful vanity and excess material goods. It also made them stay humbly close to God, in supplication that He supply their needs. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter Heaven,” Our Lord has told us. For some, being “rich” in children was the loving sign of a Provident God, Who knows both our weaknesses as well as our needs. He will do what it takes for us to make it to Heaven. It seems risky to want it any other way, as those now in Hell through deliberately planning few children (thus having a correspondingly greater material but subsequently soul-destroying affluence) should well testify.

The obligation in married life consists of being a good, helping partner and of taking care of the children God sends as best one can. We are then to trust that God will fill in where human nature fails. In this way, we will be able to face God unashamedly concerning our conduct. To twist it around is Godless. And to say that this thinking is too “simplistic” and “naïve” – catch-words again – to put into practice, is to slap God in the face. For He is the One Who designed that way of life in His creation of man. Man has only one way to go, and that is to be subject to God’s way. For man will someday die and be required to answer to God for his conduct.

Webster’s Dictionary defines responsible as: “Able to answer for one’s conduct and obligations.” What is the proper conduct in marriage? As Catholics following Christ’s laws, the Divine Magisterium tells us that we are to leave each and every act of marriage open in the transmission of life, and trust that God will take care of the child He may create. The Our Father is the supreme prayer for teaching us trust in God and in His paternal care, for reminding us of this His role in our lives, and to ask for His continued help and the grace we need to properly do our part.

There doubtless is more than one set of parents who turned to using birth control in order to “keep a handle” on their circumstances, and not bring into the world more children than they were comfortable having. How many of them later found that one of the children they did have was, for whatever reason, a greater deal of trouble than what twelve put together would have been? Consequently, they did not get out of the stress they sought to avoid after all! There may be both for them and for us, a lesson in this. For sure, it is better “to fall into the hands of the living God” than into our own. He will not be mocked.

Chapter VII

What are the Fruits of Natural Family Planning?

In his Epistle, St. James the Apostle tells us that it is by faith, along with good works through the Church, that we work out our salvation. Therefore, having faith, trusting in God’s judgment and practicing charity towards God and man by keeping His Laws, are what will bring us to Heaven. We live believing in God’s promise – or covenant – that He will guide our lives and give His help (graces through prayer and the Sacraments) to overcome the human drives and weaknesses we encounter because of the effects of Original Sin.

Faith through the practice of the Catholic Religion, is basic to man’s peace and eternal happiness. The devil was sent to Hell because he refused to serve God. In retaliation for his damnation, he determined to usurp the adoration from man that man is to give to God. How could this be done? The Bible tells us the devil is a clever liar. God did not take Satan’s intelligence away when he was condemned to Hell, and the devil knew that if he could destroy man’s faith in God and beguile man to break off cooperating with God’s covenant, that man’s road to destruction would be made easy. How could these objectives be most effectively accomplished? Pride was the devil’s downfall, and yes, the devil could get to man in the same way – through pride.

Now holy family life can only survive with the help of faith. So faith must be broken down. But how? Science! Through science, give man solutions to the hardships in life. That would bring man from faith in God, to faith in science, and seemingly make God’s covenant with man unnecessary and/or empty. Science could supply the answer to problems – whereas trusting in God did not seem to satisfy. Moreover, God asked for sacrifice with a constant eye to Eternity, whereas science gave instant satisfaction and an “easy way out” that appealed to human weakness. Birth control would break the covenant with God by destroying trust in Him regarding procreation, and that would break down the family – a sure way to society’s destruction.

With Catholics trusting the Pope and the Hierarchy, they might easily follow if the devil could ensure the Pope and Hierarchy would be influenced toward a “Catholic form of birth control.” In essence, deceive them with semantics: Do not call it birth control, for the Church of God could never accept that. But since the Hierarchy seemed somewhat ignorant concerning the biology of women, fool them by using the word “natural” to name the fertile and infertile times of a woman’s cycle. Get the Hierarchy to teach that man can use self-control such as they do in celibacy; incite them to believe that this self-control is supposed virtue for the sacrifice that has to be when limiting the family “naturally.”

After all, did not God Himself create the fertile and infertile cycle of a woman? Does He not expect us to use what He created to preserve our world? The devil’s scheme in all of this was to get the Pope and theologians so preoccupied with all this “scientific knowledge,” that it overshadowed the truth of God’s Natural Law. For although God gave man charge over the world, He certainly did not give man charge over His domain. And conception is God’s domain.

God is Creator – conversely, we are His creatures. He made us to carry out His Will, and His Will is to fill His Heaven with souls for His own honor and glory and their eternal happiness. Would God then give man a legitimate way to negate His objective? To believe that God would give to man His own power over life in this way is diabolical.

Now God is all-knowing, and in creating man He instilled into him one of the greatest gifts man needed for his survival – parental love. Without this gift, man’s propagation would have been self-destructive. Man finds the root of his parental love in the depths of God the Father’s paternal love for man.

In marriage, this paternal love comes from nature. If man is faithful to God’s Natural Law, man instinctively knows solicitude, tenderness, affection and all the sweet emotions that come from natural parenthood.  However, if man dishonors God’s Natural Law through contraception, these natural qualities are distorted or lost as God’s help is rejected. The dimension of paternal love is thereby restricted, and man starts on the way of self-destruction (birth control, abortion, euthanasia, etc.). So we see paternal love as a kind of basis of the preservation of the human race.

As much as God wants each soul in Heaven, we know that Satan, in his revenge for his own condemnation, wants all souls in Hell. How best to accomplish this goal? The master-stroke would be to break down and do away with parental love – Fatherhood, Motherhood and the family – which “keeps the world going” for God and man.

The mentality which demands a form of birth control, actually fears faith in God’s judgment of conception. Even conception among the most destitute and poor is the hand of God – a prospective soul for His honor and glory. Now because of the Catholic faithful’s acceptance of NFP and the other forms of birth control as well, parental love is being destroyed. The devil reigns in the home instead, robbing it of all those sweet emotions and tender affections that are natural to the paternal heart. Consequently the high divorce and separation rate, and untold thousands of emotionally disturbed children, demonstrate the deprivation of that natural love.

We are now entering the fifth generation of the popular use of the Rhythm system. How has society adapted to this? The family is torn, suffering abounds, and man has turned from God to self. What has happened to the bond of mother and child? “Mother” is the day care center, while the woman is out pursuing her own interests, or is out through the need of helping to keep the home financially afloat.  Even the mere idea of being a loving wife and mother has been taken from the heart of the “liberated” woman.

What has happened to the child without the love and security of Mother? The child has turned to self. Discipline (that special love) is nil, because parents are not working together to train and discipline the will of the child to be submissive to God’s Will. How can they? They themselves have forsaken God’s Will. So the child turns to the savage instincts left him by Original Sin, and we are left with the sad statistics of outrageous homicides, suicides, drug use, alcohol use, sexual perversion, unwed mothers, murders, rape, abortions, abuse of parents, rejection of authority – all those evils St. Paul tells us would happen when we reject God’s Law. And how much the worse it is with the Traditional Mass and Sacraments – those bulwarks of salvation and sanity – under such devastating attack and disappearance in our times.

When on September 19, 1846 the Blessed Mother appeared to two shepherd children in LaSalette, France, she did so weeping and grieving not only over the sins of laymen, but those of religious and the failures of the Hierarchy. She is Mother and has all the qualities that belong to that name. She saw the terrible suffering toward which her children were headed and the future problems of the Church, so she warned and pleaded. At Fatima, Portugal in 1917, she there made known that the penance God now demands is that we live true to our vocation in life and its duties. And the first purpose of the vocation of marriage is to leave one’s life open to God’s Will and to raise and educate the souls God sends for His honor and glory. The devil knew then that he must urge man to believe that man creates these souls. He also knew he must change man’s heart from believing that the child is a blessing, to believing the child is a burden. For who in this day of “intelligence,” “education,” and “maturity” – the devil’s lexicon of pride – could possibly do a “responsible” job with more than just a few children? With this effort of the devil on all fronts in the past 100 or more years, man, of course, would feel he could do all on his own now. Man, it seemed, had fully developed his independence from God. This scheme left the devil’s ultimate intention hidden – because as man pursued the world, mesmerized by science in the foreground, he was leaving all thought of God in the background.

The devil was challenging the Blessed Mother to crush his head. He felt he had man’s mind and heart – and consequently his soul. For he even was able to fool and draw most of the Hierarchy and theologians into use as his tools, and with them, so many souls.

Yet the Blessed Mother preserved her own, for God’s promise to preserve the truth prevailed indeed through the Divine Magisterium, which cannot and did not alter itself to suit the modernist clergy. The Catholic Church’s moral stand has never changed: Birth control is wrong – is against the Natural Law – and will be for all Eternity. And this includes NFP which as we have seen, falls well within the category of birth control despite the modernist’s attempt to “canonize” it (and despite the mixed statements of Pius XII and Paul VI that have confused it – and these in defiance of Pius XI’s clear directives as late as 1930, against any family planning whatsoever. Remember, even Popes have to obey the just or permanent laws of Popes before them; they have to be “good Catholics” too, submitting and practicing the Faith just as do the rest of us. They take a solemn oath, also, that as Pontiff they will protect the well-being of the Church, and keep intact Her body of devotions, dogmas, sacraments, etc. Just because a man becomes a Pope, does not give him license to change and to do whatever he will. Whatever he enacts must be legal, lawful and in accordance with the Faith.)

God, man’s Creator, knows the future – and understands man’s weakness better than does man himself. God told us He would write His Law in man’s heart. So a conscience was built into man – a determiner of right and wrong. Even in the marital domain, man is alerted to wrong by physical or mental repercussions, as was clearly indicated to us in Dr. Cavanaugh’s report.

Chapter VIII

Spirituality

The spiritual aspect is basic to every part of our life. This is not surprising, for we exist in the first place only because of the value of our soul. Now God’s constant care in nurturing this, our spiritual value, lies in the graces He gives to us through prayer and through the Sacraments He has left us. God meant them to be the most powerful help man can be given. As we have said, man is finite – his ability is limited. He does not know what tomorrow will bring; God, however, does. It is in living life as it should be lived in accordance with His Will, that we will gain our salvation – or conversely, our eternal damnation.

Again, Our Blessed Mother tells us in The Mystical City of God (The Conception, p. 556):

Mind well, then, my daughter, this danger, and let thy whole solicitude be to cast thyself securely into the arms of thy provident God and Lord. He being infinite in wisdom and power, loves thee much more than thou lovest thyself, and He knows and desires for thee greater goods than thou ever canst learn to desire and request. Confide in His goodness and in His promises, which do not admit of failure; remember what He says through His Prophet to the just: That it is well with man (Is. 3:10), since God takes upon Himself his desires and cares, and charges Himself with them in order to deal with them according to His generosity. By means of this most secure confidence thou wilt even in this mortal life enjoy the blessedness of a tranquil and peaceful conscience; and although thou mayest find thyself surrounded by the tempestuous waves of trial and adversity which cast over thee the sorrows of death (Psalm 17:5), and although the terrors of Hell may surround thee, suffer thou and hope in patience, so that thou err not from the portal of the grace and the good will of the Most High.

We point out again that the devil does not want man to give this homage to God, so he comes as a wolf in sheep’s clothing with erroneous opinion, to destroy hope in men’s hearts. With husbands and wives in mind, Father Hugh Calkins, O.S.M., said some time ago:

We know that hope not only springs eternal but it brings Eternity as its reward. It devastates right here on earth the creeping paralysis of despair born of these hard times. It cures insecurity by abandoning itself to the constantly supporting arms of God. Married couples, so fearful of what to eat and wear with children arrived or coming, need frequent meditations on that famous sixth chapter of Matthew: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Seeking His justice means doing His Will, doing it with hope in your heart that God will provide and reward generosity. He never is outdone in generosity, as we all should know from experience. Surprising how God fills your heart and life with pulsating affection of children, once you trust Him enough to have the children. Surprising how little warmth there is in the mink coat, the vacation, the television set, the car that you fought so hard for, while denying your arms the warm embrace of children. Or is all this surprising? God keeps His word. It would be well to meditate frequently on St. Paul’s vivid reminders about “the greatest Sacrament” married people give each other on their wedding day. Matrimony joins two hearts and souls and lives by fusing natural and supernatural bonds that day. God and husband and wife become partners that a great vocation might be fulfilled. The virtue of hope receives a mighty increase that day through the grace of Matrimony. At every instant of their married life, the married couple has God’s assurance that His grace is sufficient for them. No obstacle is insurmountable to God.

So, you can see why the devil does not want man to trust God and thus activate hope, because the devil would then be rejected in man’s heart and his anti-life plans brought to naught.

We know society is hard-nosed and says we must have “a Catholic birth control.” However, at the time Christ walked the earth, society then was also hard-nosed. When the rich young man asked Christ what he should do to get to Heaven, Christ told him, and the young man walked away. Christ did not run after him and offer him an alternative.

Let us quote Archbishop Sheen from his book Way to Happiness. He says:

The soul of a child does not emanate from the mother’s soul or body, but is freshly created by God Himself Who infused it into the body of the unborn child. The human mother does not bear a mere animal, but a man made to the image and likeness of the God Who created him. Every child born to woman has then two fathers: his earthly father, without whom he could not have life, and his Heavenly Father, without whom he could not possess a personality, a soul, an irreplaceable “I.” Thus, every human motherhood involves a partnership with the Divine.

Therefore, if God plays such an important part in conception through the marriage act, He must have a definite plan for each conception which He may permit from the act. And if He has a plan for each of His creatures, who are we to dispute His plan because we cannot perceive this plan? Christ told us we are to live in the world, but not to become a part of the world. What can possibly make up for a life that was meant to exist, but does not exist, because we interfered? When we stand before God at our death, what do we possibly say to Him concerning the souls He intended to give life to, but which were thwarted at our hand? How will our plan be justified in contradistinction to His? To concede to birth control in any form is to become a part of the world, and Christ has forbidden this.

Hear Our Blessed Mother’s instruction from The Mystical City of God (The Transfixion, p. 242):

My dearest daughter, the wisdom of the flesh has made man ignorant, foolish and hostile to God, because it is of the devil, deceitful, earthly and rebellious to the Divine Laws (Rom. 8:7).

Can man successfully reject God’s Providence? The problems of the modern Catholic family give us that answer. St. Paul tells us our trust in God must be part and parcel of living our life. Did not God say He takes care of the birds in the air and the flowers in the fields? How much more His children who will live forever?

Oh, yes, we know that this kind of thinking strips man of his self-sufficiency and makes him completely dependent upon God. And certainly we can expect the liberals and the “jet-set” to reject that humble trust. For from the time God created angels, there has been the cry of “Non Serviam” – “I will not serve.” Yet, still, there will also be the faithful few who truly love God and will hear His command with joy. They alone, and those who are repentant for having once resisted, will be among those who reap the promised reward and escape eternal torment.

God has never forced anyone to love Him and to do His Will. He gives man free will to choose Him or reject Him, as all of us know.

The faithful Church must do as Christ did with the rich young man: Give man the truth. Tell man conception control is God’s domain alone, and man is to leave his life completely open to the will of God. God’s Law is positive. He never made any concessions, and He will not in the case of any form of conception control in marriage. Fidelity to God gives man no choice in what his marriage duty calls for.

Saint Augustine in his Confessions (chapter on Truth and Life) tells us of the difficult time he had subjecting his imbedded habits to his understanding of God. In the course of his conversion, he sinks back into his former ways and is held fast by them. His life is wretched because God demands that he make a choice, for “God disdains to be possessed together with a lie.”

Is not this exactly where we are today with God? Being truthful with ourselves, we must admit that we do understand God’s requirements. However, we also are smug with the scientific advancement of knowing that we can detect ovulation, and avoid conception while not giving up sensual pleasures. Too, we may be just simply sore afraid to lose control of our own circumstances and destiny.

Being secure in the protective, loving arms of God the Father can provide such a sweetness in our soul, that we know nothing offered by the world’s attitudes of self-sufficiency can compare with it. Yet trusting in science and the ways of the world can hold us so firmly, that today’s Catholic families are generally fouled and wretched. God demands they make a choice, for He “disdains to be possessed together with a lie.”

The Hierarchy of the Church can reverse this terrible destruction of the Catholic family by bending low to God’s Will and teaching Her people to imitate Christ and Our Blessed Mother in saying, “Thy will be done.” A century of pushing towards self-sufficiency in marriage has offended God greatly, and the resulting sufferings of man are destroying all the earth. Read what Father Calkins wrote in the June, 1948 issue of Integrity Magazine:

The thing is out of hand. A method meant to be a temporary solution of a critical problem (as perceived by the modern Hierarchy – Ed. Note) has become a way of life, a very selfish, luxury-loving, materialistic way of life. What theologian would ever justify practices like these actual cases I now cite: Parish priests giving a copy of a book on Rhythm to each engaged couple with a word of approval; preachers explaining in weekend retreats the advantages of this method for having children as you planned them; teachers in some of our best colleges teaching the method, often to girls who are well-set financially; gynecologists lecturing in leading Catholic medical schools and telling classes of young doctors how to teach this method to patients, so that the doctors assume Church approval to recommend the method has now been given them; engaged couples planning their wedding day with Rhythm cycle all plotted so no pregnancy results until a year or two passes, so that they can enjoy all the privileges and none of the obligations of marriage.

Naturally, the commercializing of Rhythm has hit a new high. Expensive gadgets are now available – “every medical and theological student, nurse and social worker should have one” reads the blurb. So now our people have fool-proof methods of “making love by a calendar,” effectively blocking God’s creative designs. It is enough to make God vomit out of His mouth the creatures who ignore so completely the divine purpose of Marriage. How will we ever convert Godless America, or produce modern saints, if we will not give God citizens for His Heavenly Kingdom? And most ironic of all, Catholics so anxious to be in on Catholic Action (which to them means anything from bingo to flag-waving), are often the most determined advocates of Rhythm. They labor so hard to get others to attend lectures, Cana conferences, book reviews; but to have babies as God wants them to – don’t be silly. Have you noticed the heavy emphasis on Rhythm among our wealthy parishes, among our college graduate couples, our social and cultural leaders?

Rhythm Mentality

So there has sprung full-grown, from pagan propaganda, this vicious Rhythm mentality – a state of mind that will not trust God. Our moderns concede God knows how to balance the universe in the palm of His hand, knows how to harness atomic energy, can dangle stars and planets at His fingertips – but children? Oh, no, God just does not know how to arrange things there. We will take care of that through family planning. But the planning centers about how not to have a family. So our do-gooders extol either the practice of total sexual abstinence (oh so piously), even when the other partner is unwilling and is being unjustly defrauded, or the practice of methodical Rhythm. They do not admit or do not care about the mortal sins such systems produce. They are determined. No Pregnancy Now. There is the state of mind that despairs of God’s help.

These bleeding hearts, especially busy bodies-in-laws and nosey neighbors, scream protestingly: “Who will take care of the next baby?” The simple answer is: The same God that takes care of you even when you resist His will. “But we must give our children security and education.” Just because God does not give parents and children all that today’s phony materialistic standards require, does not mean He fails them. He did not give His own Mother much in material security. But Heaven, not security, is the goal set for the babies God sends. God established marriage primarily to give children life in this world that would bring eternal life.

Too many people are trying to play God. God alone is still the Author of new life. And God does not need alarmist doctors, despairing parents, not even thoughtless priests trying to run His affairs and deciding when new life shall be born. What God wants from us is free will cooperation with His Will. That is the one contribution we alone can make. What God demands from married partners is willingness to have children He shall decide to send. People get to Heaven only by doing God’s Will, not by planning things for Him.

Well, then, should every couple have a flock of children? That is up to God. Every couple should have the children God wants them to have. But they are not having them. Forty-four percent have only one child. And Catholics living in cities now have far fewer children than the families in rural areas (which are about eighty percent Protestant). Obviously, family planners are planning families out of existence. That certainly is not God’s Will. The use of Rhythm by so-called “devout” Catholics is a major factor in that falling birth rate. You say the birth rate is up higher now? Yes, on first and second babies. But it continues to fall steadily in the number of third, fourth and later babies.

Too Much Prudence

The Rhythm mentality has a tear-jerker argument. It is turned on, full stops, something like this: “But God wants people to use prudence in bringing children into the world. Neither God nor His Church demands people have as many kids as possible. People should use discretion, be decent enough to plan their family. Is it not far better that a few kids be well fed, clothed, educated, than a large family endure poverty?” It sounds good, does it not? People advancing this line are often quite righteous about it. What pharisaical smugness – they feel sorry for the “imprudent pregnancy” of poor parents. But I am sick of them. They are the kind who probably pitied Mary of Nazareth, carrying a Baby Whom God had sent, but for Whom Joseph and Mary could not find a home (talk about a housing shortage and tough landlords). They are the kind who pitied my own mother when she carried me, her twelfth child. Sweet chance I, and many another poor kid like me, would have to be priests, if Rhythm mentality prevailed. And…there would have been no Bernadette of Lourdes, coming from a jail flat, nor Teresa of Lisieux, from sickly parents and a mother who lost three babies in a row, and most certainly not a Catherine of Siena, a twenty-third child, if the “prudent planners” had their way. What all these extollers of prudence forget is: God’s Will is the end of man. The essence of sanctity is doing His Will within our state of life. It is His job to run the world – our job to do His Will. Prudence is a cardinal virtue, highly praise-worthy indeed. But faith, hope and charity are supernatural virtues far more praiseworthy. And the greatest of these is charity. What nobler way to practice charity, than to cooperate with God in passing on new life when God wants it to be born, not when humans think it should? Let only God play God.

Advocates of Rhythm are fond of stressing how “natural” the method is. But Father Lavaud, O.P., has said: “We cannot see an adaptation to nature in something which is, in effect, to frustrate nature.” Rhythm is quite unnatural as currently employed. It requires the couple to “make love by a calendar,” so charts, gadgets, graphs rule romance, not the loving desire of devoted partners. Most medical men assure us a wife’s desire for marital union is most vehement precisely during the fertile period. It appears the Jews followed a more natural procedure in abstaining during sterile periods, as the Book of Leviticus indicates. Even Dr. Ogino, the originator of the method, viewed the method primarily as a means of having children. “Rhythm in reverse”: Having relations just on fertile days in order to have children, is natural.

Another hidden cost is infidelity. Women puzzled by the misbehavior of husbands at certain time periods might well remember the desires of the flesh respect no calendar. Men not living a properly satisfactory sexual life with wives, and too much calendar restriction, are easy victims to feminine wiles outside the home. The coolness and jittery bickering caused by Rhythm is incalculable. The fulfillment of marriage as a vocation demands that husband and wife minister to each other’s needs through tenderness and understanding often best expressed through the lovemaking and intimate union postponed by the Rhythm calendar. How stupid to live a love-life holding your breath.

What Father Calkins observed as problems more than fifty years ago has certainly been proved as accurate on all accounts to this day.

How could the devil fool God’s Catholic people so much as to have the contraceptive mentality advance to where it is now? Family planning uses words such as “virtuous continence,” “sacrifice,” and “abstinence.” Now these words are very much a part of the sanctity of the Priesthood as well as lay life. They have, in their true sense, deep spiritual meaning in our Catholic religion. However, when used to promote NFP they are lies and evasions of duty. Continence and abstinence are virtues in themselves and draw many blessings on man. But timed abstinence or continence with the express purpose of avoiding conception is not virtue, because virtue is spiritual and gives God recognition of His place in its power.

Then we have the word “sacrifice,” defined as “the surrender of something, for the sake of something else.” Spiritually you would surrender your privilege for the honor and glory of God, as the Archangel Raphael told Tobias to keep himself continent from Sara for the first three days of their marriage” and to give thyself to nothing else but prayer with her.” But, the so-called “sacrifice” in the abstinence of NFP is surrendered for another purpose entirely – to avoid conception. Therefore, it lacks spirituality in that the act is used to serve the creature rather than the Creator. Where does that kind of act give God recognition? Tobias told the Angel Raphael that he was afraid to marry Sara because he heard she had been given to seven husbands and a devil killed each one. The Angel Raphael replied, “Hear me and I will show thee who they are, over whom the devil can prevail. For they who in such manner receive matrimony, as to shut out God from themselves and from their mind and give themselves to their lusts such as horse and mule which have not understanding, over them the devil hath power.” St. Raphael told Tobias he must be willing to be joined with Sara, moved rather for love of children, than for lust.

It is easy to see that only lust is developed through NFP. Catholic couples are suffering the same lot as the heathen. Life has lost its meaning and the soul its value. This fruit as well tells us NFP is a positive error and not of God.

Material and scientific advancements become more important than spiritual advancement as man loses sight of his goal of personal sanctity and Heaven, and centers his attention on earthly accomplishments. Rarely in this fever of modernist self-sufficiency did Catholics ask if the true, traditional Church accepted this NFP theory – if, say, there was already a permanent Church position on the subject which no one or no Pope should even question (much less alter). But no! As it is now with most liberal ideas and the devil’s works, this method spread virtually unopposed. Because the Hierarchy condoned it, most people remained silent, (happily used it), and NFP advanced to where it is today: a seemingly permitted method of birth control which appears to have the Church’s blessing upon it.

Birth control requires: 1) pre-meditation, 2) planning, 3) reflection, and 4) full consent of the will. The Rhythm and the ovulation method fulfill every requirement to its fullest extent.

Firstly, couples must reject God as the giver of life. They must believe that they, as a couple, conceive. The First Commandment is already broken with this first step – pre-meditation – because they desire to usurp the dominion over life-giving powers that belong to God alone. They are determined to stay His Hand.

Then comes the second step: Planning – and this again rejects God’s Providence. The couple sins against the First Commandment here, by directly planning the absence of the ovum, leaving only barren ground. So the result is not life, but only self-gratification.

In step three, reflection, situation ethics is applied. The couple knows that they are using a method of birth control which, again, is absolutely sinful.

Full consent of the will, the fourth step, occurs when the couple applies the learned method to accomplish birth control. So much for proof that these (Rhythm and Billings) methods are in fact simply forms of birth control. For if the method was natural, there would be no need for pre-meditation, planning or reflection.

Pope St. Pius X (1907) wrote an encyclical telling us of what would happen if we incorporated modernism (a form of liberalism) into the Church’s thinking, condemning it as a heresy. And NFP is modernist poison.

After seeing a vision of our modern times and the future suffering of the Church in these times, Pope Leo XIII gave us the Prayer to St. Michael, in which that holy Archangel is asked to protect us from the devil and his influences. At LaSalette, Our Blessed Mother told us, “Rome will lose the faith!” What is not from the traditions or defined dogmas of the Church, even though it may come from an angel of light or the mouth of the Pope of Rome himself, should be suspect. As a modernist advance in Catholic married life, NFP is suspect and to be rejected. For we wonder why such an idea would be handed to us from the modern Hierarchy, in opposition to what the Church has ever taught, required, and guarded in the past concerning matrimony? Firstly, it is a principle of Ethics, that a thing used in opposition to the purpose for which it was intended is a mis-use or perversion of it – that is, to use something against its own purpose is not permitted. Also, in his day, St. Augustine condemned Natural Family Planning most stringently, saying it was something greatly in vogue with the heretical Manicheans. Finally, the First Vatican Council declared that there is never anything new in what the Church has always basically held or taught – “novelty” in religion is to be suspect. After 2,000 years, it is suspiciously late for Her to, all of a sudden, approve something so previously un-Catholic and reprehensible as NFP!

At Fatima the Blessed Mother begged us to pray the Rosary. It is our hope, help, and a mainstay. She told us God demands we live our vocation in life with faithfulness to His laws. Again, the only way man can fulfill this demand of God in married life is to turn from the modern theory of self-sufficiency to the virtues of humility, obedience, and trust in God. We must reject the temptation to either presumption, or to despair of living our life according to what seems God’s difficult ways, and instead use the opportunity in our lives of striving for sanctity in our vocation. Verily, we hardly have a choice in the first place, as it is all in simple obedience to begin with. For in marriage, we are commanded as part of receiving this holy Sacrament to let God have His way with us regarding children. If we do it not, sin will be ours. Like murderers, adulterers, and those who commit other mortal sins we would not even dream of doing, Hell will be awaiting us no differently.

Those of you who have lived this faith in God understand exactly where the devil has tricked and snared God’s Catholic people and has caused them to let NFP so easily into their lives.

We must properly adhere in God’s way to this procreative facet of married life – indeed, the primary purpose of married life, the begetting of all the children God intends us to have – if we are to live a life blessed both by and with Him. The submissive Catholic couple, is the happy and at peace Catholic couple. Try it! Taste and see! And remember Our Lord’s holy words on the subject:

A woman, when she is in labor hath sorrow,

Because her hour is come;

But when she hath brought forth the child,

She remembereth no more the anguish,

For joy that a man is born into the world.

(Jn. 16:21)

Appendix

Comments on Casti Connubii

It is often repeated in defense of the Rhythm method (ovulation control) that the encyclical “On Christian Marriage” (Casti Connubii) by Pope Pius XI (1930) permits Rhythm.

Let us look at what the encyclical says and who interpreted it. Understand that right reasoning is God-centered – and distorted reasoning is man-centered. Part IV of the encyclical, “Vices opposed to Christian Marriage,” is where the often quoted paragraph mis-used to defend Rhythm can be found:

Nor are those considered as acting against nature who in the married state use their right in the proper manner, although on account of natural reasons either of time or certain defects, new life cannot be brought forth.

Right reasoning tells us what the Pope meant: It is not wrong to have marital relations when a woman is already pregnant, nursing, past menopause, or during her normal sterile time of the month (“natural reasons of time”). Then the Pope refers to “certain defects,” which right reasoning tells us is sterility in either partner for one reason or another. But most certainly this does not give permission for the act to be used exclusively at the sterile time in order to avoid conception! This is what these Rhythm-promoters erroneously contend that the Pope was granting.

Theologians quote the Pope as also saying: “For in matrimony, as well as in the use of matrimonial rights, there are also secondary ends.” Right reasoning again shows us this is true in marriage, for the secondary ends have their right as the marriage is lived and fulfilled. However, in the definite planning of the use of Rhythm, these secondary ends set aside the primary purpose, in order for the secondary ends to be accomplished. This can never be justified even for the well-intentioned spacing of children. The Natural Law of God tells us the primary purpose can never be set aside, as the encyclical indeed goes on to say “so long as they (the secondary ends) are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved.”

Now when God created man, He gave man the directive to increase and multiply – therefore, the Natural Law. When the fertile time is deliberately avoided, man is only studiously serving himself. If an artificial device is used to disrupt the act, everyone knows it is wrong. However, these theologians say that if man uses the so-called “natural way” (Rhythm), it is permitted in order to space children, or keep from having children altogether in “serious” circumstances. They argue that in using Rhythm, man is not using an artificial device, and the act remains open to life. As we have said before, if the act is so open to life, why all the observing and checking to make sure the act is not open to life?

When the Pharisees used this type of conniving to justify their selfish desires, Jesus outright called them the liars and hypocrites that they were. Casti Connubii tells us:

But no reason however grave, may be put forward by which anything intrinsically against nature may become conformable to nature and morally good. Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.

Casti Connubii again tells us:

No difficulty can arise that justifies the putting aside of the law of God which forbids all acts intrinsically evil. There is no possible circumstance in which husband and wife cannot, strengthened by the grace of God, fulfill faithfully their duties and preserve in their wedlock their chastity unspotted. This truth of Christian Faith is expressed by the teaching of the Council of Trent: “Let no one be so rash as to assert that which the Fathers of the Council have placed under anathema, namely, that there are precepts of God impossible for the just to observe. God does not ask the impossible, but by His commands instructs you to do what you are able, to pray for what you are not able that He may help.”

Casti Connubii also says:

Nevertheless, since it is a law of Divine Providence in the supernatural order that men do not reap the full fruit of the Sacraments which they receive after acquiring the use of reason, unless they cooperate with grace, the grace of Matrimony will remain for the most part an unused talent in the field unless the parties exercise these supernatural powers and cultivate and develop the seeds of grace they have received.

These modern theologians say that man has a “responsibility” to be “prudent” in using the marriage right. The prudence practiced in Rhythm is a material prudence. True prudence is fidelity to God and its fruit is fullness of grace, as Casti Connubii calls that “unused talent.”

Where did theologians come up with such man-centered interpretations of an encyclical written to be God-centered? If Casti Connubii were to be read without their slant, it is easy to see that the Pope is by no means trying to promote Rhythm.

Modernism already had come full bloom in Europe with George Tyrrell’s and Tielhard de Chardin’s further development of the self-sufficiency produced by the French Revolution. Progressives pushed for “Liberty,” saying they were freed from the heavy bond of fidelity to God. Man now had science to explain how God’s creation worked, and the devil used his conniving tricks to get the theologians of the Church to cooperate with the “father of lies,” for the Rhythm method is a falsification of the intrinsic nature of the marriage act.

We are told “encyclicals carry the weight of doctrine,” when they are in line with Church Tradition – Casti Connubii is such an encyclical, and also carries the truth of right reasoning regarding the vocation of marriage. The same cannot be said of the later Humanae Vitae of Paul VI. With each Pope stating something entirely different from the other (and Paul VI two contradictory things at once!) – one encyclical has to be wrong.

We must all beg the Holy Ghost for the grace of discernment to cope with this world and the pressures it exerts upon us. God promised HIS Providential care, and that is man’s security even under the very threat of death. For Heaven is the goal toward which our life must be aimed. “We have not here, an everlasting city.”

To Priests and Hierarchy

I have been told by Priests and Bishops that what is projected in my writings is “the way of perfection.” That is, it is a preferred way but not a required way – it is highly encouraged, virtuous, but not necessary. This is much the same as how becoming a fully perfected and sanctified saint while on earth, is preferred to “merely managing to save one’s soul.” Perfection is the better state for one’s soul to be in before death, but is not necessarily required in order to simply save it (not that such a wonder as salvation, even “barely” achieved, is mere or simple…).

We naturally beg to differ with these clerics who are obliged to help us in taking care of our souls, and yet would have us sinfully break the Natural Law to do so. Like murder and sodomy, it is an unnatural perversion fraught with evil consequences, to frustrate the obligation to have children in marriage openly and as God would send them. We also know that although Papal encyclicals may enrich one another, they cannot contradict one another without at least one of them being unorthodox. As we have just seen, Casti Connubii and Humanae Vitae contradict each other in that Casti Connubii tells us that there is no possible excuse to put aside the Laws of God (which forbid all acts intrinsically evil), yet Humanae Vitae says that if there are serious reasons, one can use NFP (part 16). Each and every act is supposed to be left open to the transmission of life; the rest is to be left to God.

Of course, NFP advocates will not admit that their method of birth control is intrinsically evil. However, St. Augustine tells us that, “intercourse even with one’s legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented.” Preventing conception is exactly the purpose of NFP. This makes it intrinsically evil, not only frustrating the primary purpose of marriage, but bringing on other sins and trials in its wake. Remember, the whole purpose of the Church and Her sacramental system is to help men become united to Jesus Christ, refrain from sin, and to assist them to do God’s Will in such a virtuous way that they are made as holy as possible by the time their course upon this earth is run. NFP is one of a myriad of stumbling blocks to this purpose. In dealing with it, or any other problem while in this life, we should remain mindful of this double assurance of Our Savior:

In the world you shall have distress;

But have confidence,

I have overcome the world.

(Jn. 16:33)

Author’s Note

Many people ask me questions about our family. Here are the most frequent:

Q.  You raised your family back when society and economic conditions were different. Would you have that many children today?

A.  Yes, I would still leave my life open to God’s Will as I vowed on my wedding day, for God’s promises to be man’s help will be as effective today as they were yesterday and will be tomorrow.

Q.  Did you have any life threatening pregnancies?

A.  Yes, five. My second, ninth, eleventh, thirteenth and fourteenth.

Q.   What about your children? They have to live in today’s world – what are they doing?

A.   It’s a long list, but I will tell you.

1. The oldest has six children and teaches in their parish parochial school.

2. The second has nine children and is a dentist and oral surgeon at the local hospital.

3. The third is married two years and has one child.  He is with the United States Postal Service.

4. The fourth has nine children, taught in the local Catholic high school but now has his own driver education schools.

5. The fifth is a professed Nun with the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, and is currently the principal of a grade school in Chicago.

6. The sixth has nine children and is Production supervisor with a computer corporation.

7. The seventh has six children and is an Inventory Analyst for a computer corporation.

8. The eighth has two children and has his own driver education schools.

9. The ninth has no children and is Supervisor for a plastic manufacturing corporation.

10. The tenth has four children and is mother and housewife.

11. The eleventh is single and a hair stylist.

12. The twelfth has two children and is pursuing medicine to specialize in pediatrics.

13. The thirteenth is single and works with a building contractor.

14. The fourteenth has two children and is pursuing medicine to specialize in geriatrics.

That adds up to 11 good marriages (all practicing Catholics) and 50 grandchildren, most of whom only knew their loving grandfather in his years of rapidly declining health. It is not because my husband and I could afford it that our children went on to higher education, but rather that they aspired to it enough to search out scholarships, loans and grants to put them through.

(And just to mention it – Those who mistakenly feel that couples having large families “do not know how to practice chastity” in their marriage, should be reminded or informed that in the days of antiquity, the Church had times when She did counsel [not command] marital abstinence. Obviously not an example of NFP in use in order to avoid having children, those couples who were able were advised to consider the penance of abstinence during Advent and Lent, as a fitting sacrifice or preparation for Christmas or Easter, and also on the Vigils of certain other Feasts. – Ed.)

Suggested reading (available for free via Internet):

Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI’s encyclical on Christian Marriage

Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence,

by Father Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure and St. Claude de la Colombiere

St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans

Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis

Old Testament Book of Tobias (Chapters 6, 7, & 8 particularly)

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Please share this information with anyone you know who has been captivated with and/or misled by the devil’s slogans and sophisms on this most important matter. For at our judgment, each one of us will have to answer to God – on HIS terms, not ours.

Letter from the Archbishop of St. Paul, MN Condemning NFP

“The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

Editor’s Note: Mrs. Jeanne Dvorak’s thorough understanding of Natural Family Planning was not something cultivated overnight. She providentially had a mentor in her own mother – the intrepid Catholic woman, Mrs. Mabel Vashro.

When NFP began to Catholic-surface throughout the 1930’s, Mrs. Vashro felt compelled to oppose this new and modern threat to the Faith both by letter and in person. It happened that just as the third printing of Natural Family Planning and the Christian Moral Code was underway, an aged and timely letter addressed to Mrs. Vashro was discovered. Not only did it offer her support, but came from none other than the Archbishop of St. Paul, MN – the bishop of her diocese.

This Archbishop, John G. Murray, was born in Waterbury, CT in 1877, the son of Irish immigrant parents. While one of his brothers, James, became a prominent lawyer in New York City, John graduated from Holy Cross College, Worcester, MA in 1897, with the highest honors ever bestowed upon a student up to that time. From there he went on to study at the University of Louvain in Belgium. Ordained in 1900, Fr. Murray was first assigned to Hartford, CT and later consecrated auxiliary bishop there. In 1925 he was made bishop of Portland, ME, and finally appointed the third Archbishop of St. Paul, MN in 1931, where he remained until his death in 1956. A zealous, careful guardian of his sheep, this pastor and shepherd was most diligent in protecting the souls assigned to his watch. As the following letter attests, Archbishop Murray did not hesitate to oppose – and publicly – what he called the “notorious and malodorous Rhythm System.” Clearly it can be seen from this that despite any mistaken, so-called “approval from Rome,” NFP was both new and evil – a veritable nuclear bomb on the Catholic scene. Neither customary nor traditional, it created the highest controversy, and rightly so. Later in 1949, it is noteworthy that the Archbishop was also compelled to prohibit the Catholic parents of his diocese from allowing their children, whether in public or private school, to receive sex education (which education resulted, a priori, from the original immoral breach contraception’s secular advance had made). This protective action of the alert Archbishop Murray is not surprising, as NFP’s appearance in the Church, a thing both foreign and hostile, had already revealed him as its undaunted, mortal enemy.

With Mrs. Mabel Vashro, the Archbishop found a kindred spirit and servant of Christ, who would help him oppose the liberalizing and breaking down of the Catholic family unit in his diocese via means of NFP – even should his own radical and disobedient priests be the culprits.

And Jeanne Dvorak found a mother well worth emulating.

Archbishop Murray’s letter to Mrs. Vashro follows. It is self-explanatory. Consider it our Imprimatur.