(Source: Southern Cross, May 1994)
A breath of universal
goodness, love and sanity
When I came to South Africa
in 1980, I believed that Natural Family Planning (NFP) was "Vatican
Roulette." But one day, listening to the BBC world service, I was
surprised to hear a programme on a United Nations World Health Organisation
pilot study done of NFP in Central America on poor, illiterate peasants, which
proved to be a remarkable success.
Since then I have met a lot of
contented NFP couples in different parts of the world, especially in the United
States, where the Couple to Couple League has done a tremendous amount to
promote NFP. I have also discovered, in my travels, accolades for NFP from
people outside the Church and brickbats and cynicism from people inside the
Church!
In America I was pleasantly surprised
to find elements in the New Age Movement supporting NFP. These were ecological
types trying to live according to nature's rhythms. They believed that we seek
to adjust the body to our desires and timetables, rather than adjusting
ourselves to its needs. Not a bad idea, really, when we consider that the
contraceptive pill has a list of "counter-indications" so long that
only a rare woman does not experience some of them. Contraception alters a
woman's delicate hormonal balance for many years.
Pope John Paul II's beautiful Theology
of the Body would surely appeal to these ecologically minded people because
of its holistic approach to sex and marriage.
(See Christopher West's Good News
about Sex and Marriage).
Some feminists in America, such as
Germaine Greer, rebuke women for their careless use of the dangerous pill, and
claim that men do not have to suffer the dangers, only women. No wonder
feminism is so strident in America where the ubiquitous birth control movement
tells them that the pill is liberating, though their bodies tell them something
else.
One prominent New Age publisher in
England, Stratford Caldecott, when he became a Catholic some years ago came to
see the Church's teaching on contraception as "truly prophetic." In a
number of articles in the Johannesburg Diocesan
News, Caldecott talks of the contraceptive mentality as leading to an
attitude where children are seen as undesirable. Increasingly, he says,
children are seen as unwanted byproducts of sex, and it is no accident that
contraception and abortion rates tend to rise together, with abortion as the
second line of defence against the child.
Caldecott noted that the boundary
between contraception and abortion becomes blurred because several popular
forms of contraception really work as abortifacients: they work after the egg
has been fertilised.
There will surely be no good
complaining against the possibility of abortion on demand under the new South
African constitution if we condone the use of abortifacients now.
In America I also discovered while
working with Pro-Life Operation Rescue evangelicals that they had come to see
the greatness of Catholic NFP because it was in accordance with their biblical
principles, especially St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians where he says
to couples: "Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for
a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer" (1 Cor 7:5).
In section 21 of his encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul talks of the
necessity of self-discipline in marriage, and of the need for abstinence to
drive out selfishness, the enemy of true love.
Dr Janet Smith, professor of
philosophy at Dallas University, notes that "since the sexual drive is an
intense one and can cloud one's reason and judgment (due to original sin),
self-mastery is necessary in order for spouses to express their living
commitment to each other." Dr Smith notes that the incidence of divorce
among couples who use NFP is statistically insignificant. Surely here in South
Africa where divorce is destroying families and causing intense suffering for
innocent children, this should make us sit up and take notice.
Keep it
personal
One of the beauties of NFP is the communication
between husband and wife it requires. As the highly successful movement
Marriage Encounter shows, there can be no true or lasting marriage without
constant communication. Artificial contraception, on the other hand, leads to
sex on demand.
Communist China can hardly claim to be
influenced by the Vatican. So it was interesting to hear that a Dr Zhang
De-Wei, a Shanghai obstetrician, announced on a visit to Washington that
although women in China received free contraceptives and an extra vacation day
every month for using a conception-preventing intra-uterine device, they
increasingly favour NFP.
An article in the English newspaper The Universe stated that Muslims in
Indonesia are joining the NFP movement because it is non-intrusive, no medical
procedures are required, and they can regulate the method of birth control by
themselves.
Benin was the first country in
Francophone Africa to introduce Planned Parenthood-style birth control. Fr Rene
Bel, a French priest working in Benin, said that thanks to the family planning
propaganda spread among doctors, medical students, nurses and health workers
generally, sexual activity has spread widely amoung the young, even the very
young, causing numerous venereal diseases, unplanned pregnancies, and subsequent
illegal abortions, along with the concomitant physical, psychological and, most
important spiritual damage.
Rubber
chemistry flawed
Planned Parenthood puts a big emphasis
on condoms as a form of birth control and AIDS prevention. This is regarded by
one American expert on rubber chemistry and technology as irresponsible.
CM Roland says that the AIDS virus is
but one four-hundredth the size of sperm, and that the effectiveness of condoms
for AIDS prevention is actually much worse than for contraception.
It is a well established fact that
latex rubber contains inherent flaws that are 50 times larger than the AIDS
virus. The smallest detectable flaw in latex rubber is one micron. The AIDS
virus is one-fiftieth the size of that. One micron flaw in a condom is an open
invitation to the AIDS virus.
African countries do not seem to be
aware of the profoundly racist basis of Planned Parenthood (which is state
subsidised in South Africa). The American founder of Planned Parenthood,
Margaret Sanger, believed that "Negroes and southern Europeans were
mentally inferior to native-born Americans." She found these people, Jews
and other, to be "feeble-minded," "human weeds," and called
them a menace to the race." No wonder Hitler was a great admirer of
Sanger's ideas!
By Comparison, Humanae Vitae is like a breath of goodness, love and sanity. Funny
how it was vilified originally, and is now declared prophetic!
·
For
more information on Natural Family Planning, please write, enclosing R5 for
post and packaging, to Miss Pat McGregor, National Coordinator (NFP), Khanya
House, Box 941, 0001, Pretoria.
