Natural Family Planning and the Conjugal Relationship

Dr. Evelyn L. Billings
Printed with permission

"God's in his heaven, all's right with the world". These words come from Robert Browning's poem "Pippa Passes". It is a poem that we probably all know and the words have a cheerful ring. However, on further thought it may seem that God is a long way from us, rather remote in His Heaven. How then could things be all right with the world? There tends to be at times a prevailing feeling particularly amongst the young that God gets on with His affairs and we get on with ours. This point of view does not always work for our happiness.

Constant Meeting of God with Man

Earth and Heaven must have a meeting place otherwise the concept of a loving God makes no sense.

There is bountiful historical evidence of such meetings in the Old Testament "Yahweh God fashioned man of dust from soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life and thus man became a living being." And later in order that Adam should not be alone "Yahweh God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. The man exclaimed,

'This at last is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh!
This is to be called a woman for this was taken from man.' ".

It was not long before the man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden. Guilty of the primordial disobedience they listened to the terms of the banishment given to them by Yahweh. And so they left Eden and the Tree of Life was guarded by the flame of a flashing sword. The first human beings on earth were in no doubt as to who God was and in those days acknowledged His supremacy. When Eve conceived and gave birth to Cain she said, "I have acquired a man with the help of Yahweh".

There was another meeting. When Abraham was a hundred years old and his wife Sarah was 90, she gave birth to Isaac. When this was foretold to her she had laughed to herself, but Yahweh asked Abraham "Why did Sarah laugh and say 'Am I really going to have a child now that I am old?' Is anything too wonderful for Yahweh?" In those days the affairs of men were acknowledged to be the affairs of God.

In what must have been a perplexing and agonizing moment in Abraham's life, he was told by God to sacrifice his precious son. The order seemed to negate God's promise that he should be the father of a great nation. However, in an act of faith and obedience which overrode his natural human love for Isaac, Abraham set about fulfilling God's request. His knife-bearing hand was stayed but his act of faith remained as an example down through the years of the Covenant of the Old Testament and still remains today to remind us of the faithfulness of God who demands faithfulness but who also loves more than the demands that He makes.

Later still there was another meeting when Moses came close to God in the burning bush. He was told to go to Pharoah and to take the sons of Israel out of Egypt. "I shall be with you" and "I shall help you to speak and tell you what to say", was God's spoken assurance.

When we come to the New Testament we see in an even more vivid way how God met His people in the Incarnation and in the elevation of a human being, the woman, Mary, to the Divine Motherhood of God's Son. As the human mother of the Second Person of the Trinity she became "Mother of God". There never was such a meeting as this -- one which was to endure in our hearts for all time.

An Act of Perfect Love

Humanity was created in beauty, perfection and vitality, endowed with the gifts of intelligence, freedom of will and with love. So, coming close to us in the Incarnation, Our Lord took His own unique human form as we each take our own unique human forms. In that form and with those human attributes that we share with Him in His human nature, He subjected His kingly will with Divine and terrible clarity of foresight to an ignominious, humiliating and excruciating death. In this He was accepting our crime and misery and paying our debt with perfect love. In this act He showed us how perfectly human nature could act. Our wonderment is partly expressed in the words of the 17th century poet Watts, when pondering the mystery of the Cross,

"Did 'ere such love and sorrow meet
or thorns compose so rich a crown?"

When we seek the justification for such anguish as we meet Him in the Crucifixion, we are told simply that the reason for this terrible sacrifice was that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son", in order that we should gain everlasting life. In His humanity Christ gave His life as a supremely willing act of love. St Ignatius caught the essence of this love at self-expense when he prayed; asking that we, in our humanity, could learn to love in response to crucified Love:

"Teach us to serve thee as thou deserves
To give and not to count the cost,
To fight and not to heed the wounds,
To toil and not to seek for rest,
To labour and not to ask for any reward,
Save that of knowing that we do Thy Holy will."

After the dreadful darkness of Calvary and the awesome Resurrection, many people met Him again before He went back to His Father. How their hearts burned within them as he talked with two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus, and how inexpressible was their joy when they recognized Him as He broke the bread, as if to assure them of all the subsequent meetings He would have with humanity in future days, in the daily Eucharist.

So God then did not stay remotely in His Heaven. Still He meets us in the ordinary events of our day. It is in the realization of the role of the Creator in the begetting of our children, that we come to understand one way in which God meets human beings, in their beginnings and later in their co-operation with him in the beginnings of others. The love which is His spirit and His choicest gift enables us to love our children at all cost and enables us to be sure that no matter how much we love them, He loves them even more. In this lies our great hope. Having made us custodians of His Love He has endowed us with its tremendous power. Having bought us back so dearly, He will not want to lose us again. It is in the enactment of our human love that God meets us constantly.

Translating and Applying this Message of Love

How do we translate this powerful Christian message into the varied lives of people of our times? How can we convey this message of love to ordinary men and women in ordinary circumstances, faced with common problems? How does it apply in the back seat of a car where there are two starry-eyed teenagers imagining that they are in love? How can the message be given to the girl who would in all blind faith and trust invite this adolescent boy to take her virginity? -- this boy who may not have thought much further than the last erotic video he has seen, when, urged on by his natural hormones, admirous of her beauty and oblivious of her humanity, accepts her reckless invitation. Perhaps they see no good reason for denying themselves or each other in the excitement, fantasy and curiosity of the encounter.

The disillusionment both physical and emotional which so often follows, leading maybe to pregnancy and in frenzied panic to the terrible expediency of abortion, are bitter experiences. The abandonment of the friendship, the loss of trust and subsequent reluctance to trust again are severe costs to the girl. This young woman becomes a mother bereft of child and self-esteem. The way back to health of mind and soul is long and painful. The reason why she should have denied herself the light-hearted adventure becomes painfully obvious. Somewhere in all the pain and grief is a sense of loss which must be explained. The natural urge of finding and cleaving eternally to the chosen one has become a shattered dream -- something very precious which is gone. "Can it ever be reclaimed?" she asks herself. She must be helped to see that it can.

How can the Christian message of love, which alone furnishes the explanation, be applied? What does this have to do with natural family planning? Simply this. It is not a technique designed solely for avoiding conception or of choosing to conceive. It is a message of love between man and woman which attends as much to the happiness of man and woman as to that of the children. As such, it will prevail in the constant struggle between good and evil in which all humanity is engaged in the role of human procreation because for this it was designed. Experience has shown that happiness is the outcome of this way of living. This is the message of Pope Paul VI's Encyclical Humanae Vitae.

In creation which the Almighty God saw as good, He delighted in human beings and endowed them with intelligence above the beasts, and this intelligence would, in time, enable them to amass a vast amount of knowledge and competence in reproductive science. He gave them the privilege of continuing the human race themselves and the power to accept or reject the privilege. He gave the animals only physical instincts and laws of nature which they were obliged to obey -- dictated by seasons, by tides of the sea and by food supplies conducive to the sustenance of new life. To human beings He gave love so that they would choose well, intelligently and in conformity with the Creator's will for the sustenance of new human life.

Design of the Physical Act of Love

A physical act for initiating new life was created, designed to donate genetic information from man to woman to form the instructions for future development and growth and the energy necessary for this to take place. This act of intercourse was to be subject to the Creator's will because its generative outcome is governed by the patterns of fertility and infertility which He had created in the woman. The act of intercourse therefore was created as an act of love to include three elements:

The reproductive-biological capacity.
The binding capacity of love between man, woman and child in which the physical union between mother and father and the responsibility to the child remain joined in a permanent commitment.
The spiritual element which acknowledges the Creators' will.

This act of creation was seen by God as good. Such was His faith in human beings. It is for this reason that the natural control of fertility engenders good for those who yield to its gentle disciplines. The faith of God in man is not misplaced. Couples find strength in the goodness of this natural regulation of birth and can see what is meant by Our Lord's words, "My yoke is easy and my burden light". In subjecting their will to the Creator's will in His discipline of creative love they find an unexpected depth of love and peace in their marriage.

In Dante's Il Paradiso, in his journeying through Paradise when he talks with the Blessed, he experiences their all-pervading love. One of these souls, Piccarda, explains the source of the soul's joy: "Brother", she says, "our love has laid our wills to rest". And adds the famous words which explain the essence of the soul's heavenly joy: "In His will is our peace".

If it is possible to heap joy upon joy, then it is to be found in man and woman experiencing at,the one time and together a human love for each other and through their own wills the greater love wherein is peace.

In the long discourse in the Gospel of St. John leading up to the Passion, one of the things that Jesus said was, "My food is to do the will of the one who sent me", and still talking to His disciples He said, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; remain in my love. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in His love. I have told you this so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete".

Later in His prayer to God the Father he affirmed: "I have loved them as much as you loved me". The meeting of the man Jesus with God in the Passion was a tremendous assurance of that love given for the rescue of the entire sinful race. From this example we take our instructions, in the practical means that we have of helping ordinary men and women. We teach with love, in conformity with the teachings of the Church.

It is not for us who teach the Ovulation Method of natural family planning to decide who is ready or who is fit to be taught. We teach everybody. The ordinary couples, the adolescents, the sorrowful young women often little more than children themselves whose babies have been taken from them. These especially we love and help for if we do not what void might engulf them!

This knowledge taught with love will work its own good in its own good time as we have seen so often. It is not for us to predict that in this case or that the method will not be properly applied no matter how likely it may seem. We do not ever know the depth of human hearts. All we know is that all are responsive to love, and that what they most need is to be encouraged to try.

It is not necessary for teachers to pound the table laying down the law, but they must know the law and follow it themselves. The light will shine from them in their determination and patience in teaching, their love for the baby, their refusal to criticize, accuse or blame, and in their refusal to compromise and enter into a course of false compassion when propositions are put forward to solve difficulties and objections by contraception, sterilization or abortion.

Barrler Contraceptlon a Barrler to True Love

Sometimes couples resort to barrier contraception. There is a temptation to regard this as relatively innocuous. The spurious argument, that it is better than abortion, is used. The use of the condom in particular has become more prevalent in latter times partly because of the dissatisfaction with other artificial methods and also partly because of the AIDS propaganda which seeks to present condoms as a preventive against the virus. People foolishly suppose that if this is so, which it is not, then it can prevent pregnancy which it cannot in a high percentage of cases. Teachers must be absolutely firm in their view of barrier contraception. Quite apart from the considerable unreliability of the barrier methods in preventing pregnancy, there are other important aspects of the practice to be considered.

On a practical level, use of barriers confuses the natural observations by stimulating secretions which prevent a clear identification of the beginning and end of the fertile phase. There is moreover a psychological and philosophical reason for avoiding barrier contraception. The three reasons for adopting artificial methods are:

Fear of pregnancy, and fear to trust oneself or one's spouse.
A desire for freedom for intercourse at any time.
Lack of knowledge upon which to base a good decision.

Fear of pregnancy has a complicated background. The baby is often presented as undesirable in the individual lives of a couple because of its economic and personal demands. Particularly is this so amongst women who wish to set a career before family. It must be recognized that sometimes the fear is well justified, for example, the mother's ill-health, or in some of the least-affluent parts of the world where parents are unable to feed their children and see them dying of hunger. These problems have solutions other than preventing or disposing of babies. Poor health and poverty need solidarity, co-operation and love to mitigate the effects of these problems.

Under ordinary, normal circumstances reluctance to accept a baby as part of the marriage contract is a negative attitude in marriage. Resorting to a device which can be blamed rather than oneself if pregnancy does occur constitutes a failure to accept self-reliance and the responsibility of marriage and therefore constitutes another negative factor. If the baby comes to be seen as a failure of the method, that baby is in danger of elimination at an early stage of life. This illustrates the sinister link between contraception and abortion. It is a spurious argument which states that contraception is better than abortion. Some so-called contraceptives are misnamed and operate to procure the ending of new life. As well, all contraceptives and abortifacients operate insidiously by eliminating the baby psychologically from the minds and hearts of those who are engaging in reproductive activities, and in this way strike at the heart of the marriage commitment and weaken the bond. If the bond weakens, other problems, unrelated to reproduction, remain unresolved and at last become unbearable.

Some have argued that if couples are not married, they have a responsibility not to allow their sexual activities to produce children and in this way they justify contraception and even abortion. This has even been praised as a social responsibility by those whose chief aim is to prevent births. But it must always be remembered that the act of intercourse will never be an act of love unless it is totally acceptable with all its benefits as well as responsibilities. Men and women have a natural desire to give themselves to each other completely when they are truly in love. And when the gift is incomplete so is their love. This leaves in each an emotional void which nothing can fill. There is no other way than total commitment in order for man, woman and child to be happy in one family.

There are those who say they use contraception and still love each other. Contraception is often used because there is nothing better known. It is true that people who use these methods are doing so to solve a problem which is important and of course they do love each other and are doing what they think is best. But when the information is given about a natural method and people really do love each other, in the use of the method they realise how much greater their love becomes. This has been stated many times by couples who are glad to have their fertility problems solved and are glad to be freed from the physical ills associated with deviations from normal physiology. But they are principally glad because their marriages have strengthened with a happiness and security not experienced before. Over the world and over the years, this is the most common comment.

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