Today the air conditioning man told me he got "fixed". So, I couldn't resist...

A friendly young air conditioner tech came over to check the system today.

Small talk led to him asking, "So how many kids do you have, anyway?"

"We have eight."

Startled, laughing, "Oh, are you crazy?!"

I was not offended; I could sense a good heart. "Ha ha, well, two are in college, and so only six are in the house right now."

Then he went and said it: "We had three, and then I got fixed."

I didn't even hesitate, and said with a smile:

"Oh, were you broken?"

Nervous laughter, hesitation. He really was not expecting that.

I continued: "My husband definitely isn't broken, ha ha!"

Embarrassed smile, trying to figure out what to say, not quite meeting my gaze: "Well, my wife decided we were done. Three was tough. She is from a big Mormon family, eight brothers and sisters… her sister has six kids… so after three…"

"Uh-huh." (Because I honestly understood.)

"...she said she couldn't handle anymore. So I got, you know…"

I smiled warmly and explained how we hit the same fork in the road, almost took that route: "Gosh, we had the same situation! We had three, and my husband was going to go get…'broken' [I chuckled again, he accepted the joke], but then we changed our minds. He was Jewish, I was a lapsed Catholic, then we had big conversions of heart and went on to have five more kids, all boys."

I sensed his approval, "Yeah, that's so cool. Amazing. We just...I don't know. It's a lot of work."

"I know, it really is. But nothing worth doing is easy. And these boys would not exist…." I gestured toward the two boys nearby.

He nodded. "Yeah, you are so right. We would have been just like you, with eight, if we hadn't have…."

"Yeah…"

We chatted some more. I told him how everything changes, everything is a season, as it's supposed to be. Things become doable as time goes on and children grow up. I explained that we have four of babysitting age now, and my husband and I can go out together on a whim -- and we do. We have a total of five drivers in the family, which changes the dynamics completely. And, far from being put upon, all the children have begged for a new baby, often scolding my husband and me for being the only ones standing in the way of another sibling.

I also reminded this nice man that my kids are going to paying for his Social Security one day, as we have so few young workers coming up to support the aging Baby Boomers. Doing our part for the economy. He laughed and nodded in agreement.

He seemed eager to assure me that he loves children, loves that there are many young faces at his home: "We have all those cousins for the kids, and the neighbor kids come over, too. We have lots of kids around the house all the time, and it's great."

I told him, honestly, how wonderful that is. Big smiles. Have a great day, thanks again, very friendly.

And I am sad. He seemed sad, too. I think he knows what a blessing children are. I sensed this was not his decision. I sensed that he loves his wife, he loves his kids, and he is a good daddy. I sensed that he cut his family short too soon and would have been overflowing with love for any other child(ren) that could have -- would have -- blessed his marriage.

Anyway, that was a vignette from my day. Back to homeschooling now.



Related post:  Sterilization: Is it getting "fixed" or getting broken?





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Modern day prophesy and NFP Awareness Week

On this day 43 years ago, Pope Paul VI promulgated the encyclical Humanae Vitae ("On Human Life").

Humanae Vitae (it's short; read it!) reiterated the Church's unchanging teachings on human sexuality, specifically the truth that contraception and sterilization are incompatible with human dignity and the nature of married love.

Coming as it did in the midst of the sexual revolution and the advent of the Pill, Pope Paul's letter was met with shocked disappointment, resistance, and even anger on the part of those who had anticipated a change in the Church's teaching.* In the aftermath of the encyclical's release, dissenting Catholic academics and clergy actively encouraged the laity to disobey the Pope and reject the Church's moral teaching of 2,000 years.

In many ways, all hell broke loose.

Pope Paul VI paid a great personal toll for writing those pages, which have since become a modern day prophecy. Who can deny that what he predicted then has come true with a vengeance? Take a look [emphases mine]:

Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.    {HV, 17}

Research fellow Mary Eberstadt went into great depth illustrating how these predictions played out in the ensuing four decades, using empirical evidence from secular sources to vindicate Humanae Vitae and Pope Paul VI. If you have the time, it's worth the read, here.

*For more on what was happening at that time and behind the scenes, go here.

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Now, it's no coincidence that the week marking the promulgation of Humanae Vitae is also designated as Natural Family Planning (NFP) Awareness Week.

So, if anyone missed the wildly popular Natural Family Planning post which ran in March (thanks Alison!), now would be a great time to read it, here. A quick and painless way to promote NFP this week is to simply hit the facebook "recommend" button at the end of that post (or tweet it to your friends, link to your own blog, etc.). You'd be surprised how many people have never heard about NFP, or how many are curious about NFP but would never ask on their own.


And for a humorous series of short videos on "NFP vs. Contraception" made by some clever seminarians, please visit the blog Making God Laugh, where polkadot has them posted.  :)

Try to spread the word this week, as all our voices do add up. We've got the power of the New Media and social networks to reach people in 2011 in a way that Pope Paul VI never could back in 1968. Let's not let him down.

Sterilization: Is it getting "fixed" or getting broken?

I've promised a contraception post for a long time.

For the moment, let's forget about condoms, diaphragms, spermicides, birth control pills, birth control patches, birth control rings, birth control sponges, birth control implants, birth control injections, IUDs... and whatever other contraceptives I am forgetting (I am sure the scientists are working on more ways to thwart fertility as we speak!).

Let's start with an easy one: Surgical sterilization.

Specifically, vasectomies and tubal ligations.

First, some background. When my husband and I were first married, we wanted approximately two children. Maybe three, but that was pushing it. We liked the first two so much that I talked him into number three (and quickly at that, so that we could be free to "have fun and travel in our forties" -- ha ha ha!).

After number three, it was time to get serious about getting sterile. My husband and I had agreed that he would get a vasectomy. I joked to friends that I surely wouldn't be the one getting sterilized because "it was against my religion [Catholic] but not his [agnostic Jew]!" As a lapsed Catholic at the time, I guess I thought that was pretty clever.

But a funny thing happened on the way to our "planned barrenhood": We both had profound conversions of heart. And one of the easiest things to see when we took the secular blinders off was the immorality of surgical sterilization. What once seemed responsible now seemed perverse.

Think about what surgical sterilization is: It's the deliberate mutilation of healthy organs.

Even from a secular standpoint, the very concept should be repellent: Paying a doctor (a healer!) to cut up, burn, disconnect, or otherwise destroy healthy organs, for the express purpose of destroying their normal, healthy functioning. In other words, there is nothing wrong with Jane's reproductive organs; in fact, they are working as designed (this is called "health"). But Jane will pay someone to go in to surgically mutilate her organs so that they don't work as they are intended to work. From a Natural Law standpoint, this is clearly disordered.

What an irony that we call this getting "fixed" when we're literally getting broken.

Now, this is a bit more painful, but let's look at it from a Christian standpoint: We know that our bodies are "fearfully and wonderfully made" by the Lord, and that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. The gift and blessing of fertility is mind-boggling in its goodness. In giving us the gift and blessing of our fertility, God has designed us to bring forth His children. What an unspeakable honor, of which we are not and could never be worthy! And yet instead of being awestruck with gratitude or even trembling in reverence for the gift and blessing of fertility, most Christians see no problem with taking this most precious gift and destroying it without a thought. (As one now-regretful Christian  friend told me, "I tied my tubes without batting an eye." She is much older now, and it's one of her two biggest regrets in life -- the second being not throwing out her TV.)

Please understand.... I don't think that most Christians intend to throw the gift of fertility back in God's face when they sterilize themselves, and I could never weigh in on the culpability of any individual. Our culture long ago replaced the Judeo-Christian view of sexuality with the Planned Parenthood view, so the confusion is understandable, if tragic.

But if we step back and give it a moment's thought, the truth should hit each Christian like a ton of bricks. God did not make a mistake when He designed our bodies. His design for our bodies, and for bringing His children to life, was perfect and deliberate. To reject it, to take a healthy body and willfully destroy its most incredible function, should be unthinkable.




Related: The Day the Air Conditioner Tech Told Me He Got "Fixed"






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