Those Who Can't Shouldn't Teach

I've spent the entire week going back and forth about whether or not I should say anything about this, but I've decided that I will.

Last Sunday, while I sat in the pew with the young one in tow, reading his books about lizards and dinosaurs and disregarding his picture missal, the monsignor gave his homily and noted the Catholic Church had announced that this is "Natural Family Planning Week." After he said this, the usual boilerplate attack ensued blaming in vitro fertilization and other methods of both conception and birth control aside from the traditional practice of intercourse between a husband and wife.

I won't turn this into an advertisement for what the Church calls "natural family planning." Part of the reason why is because, based on everything I've read and heard about it, I believe it is not a method of practicing birth control. It is a means of determining optimum conditions for conception, based on incredibly naive notions about basic female biology and assumptions that all of the mechanical elements needed on the part of a man and a woman will work perfectly every time.

Also, I should state categorically that my faith is very dear to me. I couldn't imagine my life without it. Still, I feel that I have to say something. Also, I think the Catholic Church is a wonderful institution made up of basically devout people performing great work for those who are elderly, sick, infirmed, lacking basic shelter of one type or another, struggling with birth defects or malnutrition, or any one of hundreds of other maladies, afflictions or tragic circumstances. The "bad apples," especially those that were covered up by Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston, are always the ones who make the headlines, though, but that is true of human nature in general.

The Church gets a lot of things right, and telling young men and women not to have sex until marriage is the right idea (though simply proclaiming abstinence is naive...as I and others noted in "Birds, Bees, and Bush" a week or so ago, it has to be followed up with the right education about condoms and birth control). However, when it comes to giving advice about sexuality to married couples, they don't have a clue.

What prompted me to finally say something was an Email from a friend of mine announcing that a couple he and his wife are close to just had a baby girl. I know that the wife has made what I would call extraordinary sacrifices to deliver this child, including practicing methods that the Church finds abhorrent, though I hear that she is devout herself. However, the arrival of this child, as it is with any child, is a blessed miracle.

I know of many other couples (and I'm sure you do also) who have had to go to all kinds of great expense and sacrifice to either bring their own children into the world or adopt others, and though I know the Church would support these families, I just wish I heard a little more understanding about their sacrifice from the pulpit on Sundays and not blanket condemnation.

Actually, if the Church wants to make a difference on this, they could lean on their Repug politician benefactors (who, as we know, will pontificate about the sanctity of life forever, but will do everything they can to make it difficult for the child and parents to receive support by underfunding all kinds of programs to help the family, including WIC, once the child finally arrives) to hold hearings on why a married couple with the love and means to support a child has to spend thousands of dollars and travel halfway around the world or more to Russia, China, Bulgaria or other places to adopt, since the couple is automatically disqualified from doing that for a child in this country because they are anywhere from 35-40 years old.