Go to Mike in Columbus, Ohio, Mike you are on with Trent Horn. Hi, thanks for taking
my call. Thank you. So I have--my friends have kind
of been pushing natural family planning on me, and I've looked into it quite a
bit, and I guess I'm just a little bit confused, because I the whole like
planning aspect doesn't sit well with me. And I just, I don't know how to approach
it, I guess. I mean, I kind of thought when I got married that getting married
meant having children. So I don't know why I would want to plan my family. Well
that's an interesting question, Mike. Yes, when we marry as Catholics we promise to
be open to life, and that the fulfillment of marriage is found in having children.
But God also gave us rational minds, He helped us understand what is prudent,
what's a good decision that we should make, and one of the things He gave us is
the ability to understand when a couple is fertile or not fertile, and how to
choose when to engage in sexual relations to plan, for example, the number
of children to have, or when someone would have a child. Would you agree that
a couple may want to have children but might decide they could only care for a
certain number or at a certain time?
Well yeah, but would you agree that God will provide? I mean, like, we live in the
richest country in the world. Well just because we live in a prosperous country
doesn't mean people have each--every couple is prosperous. There's many people
in the United States that are trying very hard to get by on very meager means.
But what if God were to say, you know, I had...you know..imagine I decided to have
15 children, on a very very low salary, and I purposely chose to have this many,
and I go to Heaven and I say, "God," you know, "God will provide."
God says, "Yeah I provided you with the means to have THIS number of children!" It
just seems to me that...yeah, Mike, wouldn't it be, for example, we have to
practice prudence. Like for example, if a couple spends, you know, 80 percent of
their income on something like like rent, for example, they don't leave enough over
for food and they simply say, "Well, God will provide," isn't that just a shorthand
excuse for them to act irresponsibly in that avenue? Yeah, but I don't know anyone with 15 children...
I know people with 12. Who can provide! So I'm just saying, Mike, couldn't someone--we should
responsibly--we should be responsible when it comes to caring for our children,
would you agree? I should. But I don't think we should use that as an excuse to be...
to reject God's will for our family. Well, how does a person know...what do you mean
by God's will for someone's family? What do you mean by that? Well I mean, "Be
fruitful and multiply," doesn't the Church teach that that's one of the purposes of
marriage, is to have children? Sure, but wouldn't someone fulfill that
purpose even if they have one child?
Well, yeah they would, but I mean...that doesn't... Mike, let's look at it this way. Would they
fulfill the purpose if they received the children from God they felt like they
could care for? Wouldn't they be fulfilling God's purpose if they say,
"Well, we raised the number of children we reasonably felt that we could." Like for
example, would you agree that if a family feels like they're stretched thin with
four children--they've got no money left over at the end of each month, it's
pretty tight--it would be irresponsible for them to go out and adopt a fifth
child. It would, but that's relative. I mean, "stretched pretty thin is relative." But would you say, though,
there are--are there circumstances where a family feels like... Yes. Okay, so it seems to
me that all we would disagree is, you know...yeah, I want to follow you
through with this where we're going. And I'm glad that you
understand--many people don't--that part of marriage is having children. That's
awesome that you get that, 'cause a lot of people just can't see that obvious
reality of marriage. But it seems to me, I'm trying to see where your
disagreement lies, that there's--that we have to keep having children in order to
in order to fulfill God's will. I would say a couple should responsibly receive
the children they can care for. Does that make sense to you? It does...and I don't even--I mean, we're
kinda on the same page. I just--it seems, in my particular parish, there's kind of
like an over-emphasis on natural family planning. So I don't want, you know,
I couldn't handle 15 children, but four or six doesn't seem unreasonable, and it
seems like 80% of the time I hear about natural family planning, and 20%
of the time I hear about, you know, the blessings of larger families. Sure. And
I think, Mike, the reason you might hear that a lot more, like "natural family planning, natural
family planning," is so that people... to give them an alternative to the
culture's easy sell of contraception. That it's just a--do you see where I'm saying that?
Yeah, yeah. I mean the culture is just throwing at them, "This key to solving your problems,
if you feel stressed out, worried about family, number of children, the key to
your problems, my friend, is to go down to the pharmacy, go to your doctor, get a
prescription, pick up this and your problems go away." I mean, that is a
seductive, false promise in our culture, so the Church is gonna--and I agree, and I
actually agree with you, Mike, in the sense that when I talk to people about
natural family planning, a lot of people say, "Oh, it's great way to plan your
family, great way to, you know, make sure you don't have too many children that
you can't care for," and I'll remind them, well natural family planning, yes, it
helps you plan so that maybe if you don't feel as if you can have a child,
but one of the other great things is, if you're struggling with infertility,
natural family planning is a very efficient way to track fertility so you
CAN have a child. I've known many people who were diagnosed with infertility but
went to a natural family planning physician and were actually helped to
have a child through this method. So I agree with you, there can be an
imbalance in how it's presented, but I think part of that imbalance arises
because the Church is trying to fight a culture that heavily, heavily promotes
contraception, you see what I mean? Yeah, I see. I see. Okay, great, well yeah, definitely give
that some more thought, and I'd recommend our friend Jason Evert has a
great website, ChastityProject.com has resources on contraception, I think One
More Soul is another organization that--Cy, is that correct?--they have some good
resources on that. They do indeed, yeah. Very good. Well thank you so
much, Mike, for for calling, hopefully we'll we'll catch you another time.