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 accord 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, pg. 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, 1 0), 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 1 7:5), 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 aid 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 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 personally, 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 can not 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, pg. 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 gives 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 ill 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. 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 completed 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 busybodies-in-law and nosy 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 o 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.R, has said: "We cannot see an adaptation to nature in something which is, in effect a trick to frustrate nature." Rhythm is quite unnatural as currently employed. It requires the couple to "make love by a calendar," so charts, gadgets, and graphs rule romance, not the loving desire of devoted partners. Most medical men assure us a wife's desire for marital u ion 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 on fertile days just 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 permitted and sure method of birth control, seemingly having 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 (I 907) 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 a 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 Rome itself, 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 Misuse 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 Manacheans. 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 impugnable 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 hopefully use the opportunity in our lives of striving for sanctity in our vocation. Verily, there hardly is this 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 sway 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 waiting 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. (John 16:21)

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Updated: January 25, 2000

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