The Church should Condemn the Rhythm Method

Miracles come from unexpected sources and in mysterious ways. We must be mindful that God is much bigger than we are, and The Lord's ways are not our ways. To cite only two examples, from the Catholic heretics of the Protestant Reformation came the great gift of nearly universal education and literacy; from the Reign of Terror and anti-theocratic ideas of the Enlightenment came American ideas of inalienable rights and social mobility.

The Lord's garden has both the lily and the rose: both must be nurtured; both are His work and essential to his plan.

I welcomed the USCCB Rigali-Murphy joint statement of October 21, 2008,(http://www.usccb.org/prolife/Rigali-Murphy-Joint-Statement.pdf ) a two-page letter in clear and simple language outlining items of interest to Catholic voters. To claim one is only a Catholic if focused on the legal issue (Roe vs Wade) is as misguided as concentrating only on the pragmatic side of supporting universal health care, family leave, etc. and other social justice concerns involved in abortion and other important issues. Neither political party is a "Catholic" political party, and there are "cafeteria Catholics" on both sides of every issue I have examined.

I would never try to teach an atheist about Eucharist by simply stating that the bread is the body of Our Lord. When one side sees "clumps of cells" while the other sees a "child", simply repeating these definitions to each other moves no one. Will perceptions change if the law changes? The Bishops claim that they will; I tend to doubt it. Is it effective to mis-represent scientific facts that are objectively verifiable, as I've seen too often in pro-life literature? My experience with my own teenage boys contradicts that, as adolescents think in black/white terms and will reject the whole cloth. Those who advocate our position must give accurate, even-handed, and objective voice to facts; then we can open the moral eyes to see the substance and the fruit of the policy positions. Only then do we have a chance to change perceptions and so change public opinion.

My own opinion is that no perceptions will change on social issues, nor will the moral authority of our bishops be restored, until the Catholic Church condemns the rhythm method of birth control. How can it be moral to have sexual intercourse during the woman's infertile periods? This claim denies the biology of God's design, perpetuates myths about seed and field that deny the procreative power The Lord has given to women, and debases sexual union to a bodily function where the passions are wastes to be eliminated.

We had the fight about Mother Mary centuries ago: she isn't just the "Christ-Bearer", she is the "Mother of God". (My reading indicates that the 1968 encyclical on contraception was promulgated by the Pope and reactionary Curia against the best consensus of the committees of bishops and theologians most educated on the issue. I see it more as a conservative backlash against Vatican II than against the Pill, the women's movement, or any of the stated issues.)

Some might claim that my problem is that I am not well-enough versed in JP2's Theology of the Body...Well, as I waded through texts and listened to lectures, I concluded that he wasn't talking about any person that I knew, including myself. St. Augustine's Confessions seemed to reflect daily life better.

Should the Church reject the rhythm method as being contrary to God's design of the human body, perhaps we can also come to understand that we are in the midst of a revolution of science, changing ideas and science about sexuality--and biological science in general--that exactly parallel that of astronomy and physics in the previous centuries.

Can't we embrace facts first, and then guide people's moral choices? Let's begin the discussion at the beginning, by rejecting the first great mistake in our discussion of spacing births within marital life.