By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent
Few people escape the culture of death without injury.
Gary and Alison Steele, of St. Stanislaus Parish in Lansdale, were no exception to the rule. When they met nine years ago, Gary was reeling from the unexpected breakup of his marriage to a woman who had an affair with his best friend — who also happened to be his sister’s husband.
“I lost my best friend and my wife at the same time,” Gary said. He and his sister were both victims of the same affair, and they both moved in with their parents to try to rebuild their lives.
Meanwhile, Alison Thomas of Perkasie admits that although she went to church every week and loved the beautiful rituals, “I didn’t feel like I needed to go any deeper, as far as learning why we do this or that. I was just happy with the rituals, and I wasn’t interested in being anything but Catholic.”
The two met through a matchmaking service, and within three months, both knew they were headed for the altar. Gary, who works as a finance manager for a local health group, was a non-practicing Lutheran and went through the process of having his former marriage annulled.
On June 8, 1996, he and Alison were married.
“We’re big planners,” Gary said. “Almost from the start, we were talking about how many kids we wanted to have. I was saying two or three, and she was saying three or four.”
But they had no immediate plans for a family and spent the first few years of their marriage on birth control pills. Alison didn’t stop taking them until they both decided the time was right for a child.
But going off the pill and getting pregnant was not the most momentous thing that was about to happen in their lives.
Gary was on the verge of a conversion experience that would forever change the course of their marriage.
“Alison was going to church every week, and I thought that was great because I wasn’t going at all when I first met her,” Gary said. “So I started going to Mass with her every week.” Although Alison asked him a couple times if he wanted to convert to Catholicism, he always said no.
And then, one night, while they were attending a pre-cana team meeting, Gary announced that he wanted to become Catholic: “At that moment I decided I wanted to become Catholic, and just announced it. I didn’t even tell her first.”
He started attending RCIA classes, with Alison as his sponsor, and was confirmed during the Easter Vigil of the Jubilee Year 2000
“While he was in the RCIA program, he started reading Humanae Vitae, and I read it with him,” Alison said.
The document hit them both like a bolt of lightning.
“It was very easy to read and very straightforward. It basically states that contraception is morally unacceptable, and that was really all I needed to hear,” she said.
As far as Gary was concerned, the document “just made sense.” He said it did not take much effort to realize how the widespread use of artificial contraception led to a breakdown of marital fidelity and public morality, reduced women to “mere instruments” of satisfaction for men, and opened the door for many governments to impose artificial contraception on the unwilling in an effort to control their populations.
Every one of the predictions the pope made more than 35 years ago have come true with a stunning accuracy.
The Steeles’ eyes were opened to the truth that the pill and other forms of contraception were creating a dangerously selfish mindset. They wanted no part of that, and started looking into various natural family-planning methods. They came across the Sympto-Thermal method, taught by the Couple-to-Couple League, which trains couples how to read the natural signs in a woman’s body to determine her fertility level.
The timing could not have been more perfect.
“We wanted to find out how to have children, how to know when were the fertile times so we could conceive,” Alison said. “And we also wanted to know how to space our children the way we wanted them.”
Using natural family planning, they brought four children into the world: Joseph, 5; Eva, 4; John, 2, and four-month-old Alaina.
“At this point, we’ve decided that four is where we want to be,” Alison said. “We can’t see planning any more children, so now we’re in the phase of postponing — maybe indefinitely — any more children.”
But their story doesn’t end there, because natural family planning does a lot more than merely help couples regulate the birth of their children. To put it mildly, it changes everything.
“The only way I can describe this change is that it is so magnificently different that we want to proclaim it from the rooftops for everybody, not just Catholics,” Alison said. “We have gotten so much joy from this. We want to share it and let other people know about this joy we have with each other and our marriage.”
Without their realizing it, natural family planning had taken the “mechanics” out of their sex life and made it more meaningful, more natural.
“We’re so much more selfless,” Alison said, adding that it has given them “a greater appreciation for the beauty of sex — it’s the beauty of having babies and a family, and it has really increased our faith in God.”
According to Gary, they have “a totally different view of sex now.
“We respect it more. Before, when she was on the pill, we would just have sex. That was the primary focus. I was more self-centered in terms of sex. It was me and what I wanted and my gratification,” he said. “Being on natural family planning is the exact opposite. … Now I feel like I can completely give myself to her. There’s no barrier between us. … When a woman is just taking the pill, the husband’s not really ‘on-board.’
“With natural family planning, you’re in it together. That’s where the challenge is.” he added.
Alison is not only enjoying a more intimate relationship with her husband, she’s also relieved to be rid of the many side-effects caused by synthetic birth control pills. “I feel like this is so much more free and natural,” she said. “Even though I didn’t experience any major side-effects from the pill, it just made me feel lousy. I’m not putting any chemicals into my body anymore. Now I feel more energetic.”
The positive attitude fostered by natural planning methods has also helped them to deal with the special needs of two of their children. John is mildly autistic and Joe is borderline ADHD.
“You can really get bitter when you have special needs children,” Alison said. “You feel like this is a situation that’s been imposed on you. But being on natural family planning gives you a better appreciation of the babies you have, and each day you have with them. We savor each moment with our family.”
For more information about natural family planning, call the Family Life Office at 215-587-5639.
Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615