‘Ultimately, truth wins’
Interviews with couples engaged
in natural family planning
By BRIAN GAIL
Special to The CS&T
The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is wrong. In today’s world, many couples find that teaching hard to accept. But we found three Catholic couples that have accepted the teaching wholeheartedly.
Mike, who is in software sales, and Agnes Ferguson, a former nurse, have been married 13 years and have seven children. Tony, who works in commercial real estate, and Mary Kate Hayden, a mother and wife, have been married five years and have three children. Jim, head of the Papal Foundation, and Felicia Coffey, a former harpist, music teacher and musician, have been married eight years and have four children. The Fergusons and Coffeys are members of St. Denis Parish while the Haydens are members of St. Cyril of Jerusalem.
Why have these couples accepted this teaching so wholeheartedly while others find it so difficult? What do they know that others may not? Read on.
Q: Researchers report that nine out of every 10 Catholic couples of child-bearing age are contracepting. Didn’t you folks get the word?
Mike: You can go to Humanae Vitae and get an excellent explanation of why we’re not contracepting. God wants us to be open to life. It’s as simple as that.
Felicia: Before we were married, I heard that couples practicing natural family planning had a 1 percent divorce rate. I said, “I want that 99 percent chance. I want everything in my favor for a solid marriage.”
Agnes: I was blessed to have parents who were very faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church. They always had reading material around for us to look at — I know we had the Humanae Vitae encyclical.
My mom was very open about her pro-life work and so was my father, and I think there was this whole acceptance of the Church and its wisdom and the beauty of its teachings.
Q: How was the decision not to contracept made?
Jim: Frankly, there didn’t need to be a discussion because we wanted to follow the Church’s wisdom. I once heard Janet Smith, the great pro-life speaker, say that a woman’s chances of finding the four things she wants in a relationship — love, tenderness, fidelity and respect — are much greater in a marriage where there isn’t contraception. I wanted these things for my wife.
Felicia: We didn’t discuss contraception because we both knew it was wrong. We both come from large families, and like Agnes, we had parents who were great examples of generosity. We both just wanted kids. So even though we did take the class for natural family planning, we didn’t really use it.
Q: Did anyone influence your decision?
Tony: I was a big believer in contraception. In college, I helped a girl write a paper about how the Church was totally off-base in not allowing contraception. Then, I was really struck by how John Paul II talked about the Eucharist. That opened me to what the Church taught on other things. But what convinced me most was hearing about the increase in communication among spouses who practice natural family planning. A husband has to be intimately involved to make this work or it’s not going to work.
Mary Kate: In college at Mount St. Mary’s, Tony would fire questions at the seminarians who were studying to become priests. A lot of them were on fire, and holy young guys, and they were cool. He asked them, “What’s wrong with contraception? Why does the Church want to get into our personal lives?” And they would say, “The Church is a mother, and a mother wants what’s best for her children.” Then they would explain everything. Then I started to pray the daily rosary and everything in my life changed — my attitude toward modesty and toward relationships in general. The Blessed Mother’s purity and example touched me. And that had a profound influence.
Jim: It seems like the Holy Spirit, over the last 10 or 20 years, has raised up tremendous movements in the Church — apostolates like Catholic Answers, and One More Soul, and the Couple to Couple League. These organizations produce just incredible material — books and tapes and things — to help couples understand the Church’s beautiful teaching on love and life. And now we have great speakers like Christopher West teaching John Paul II’s vision of the theology of the body. These things are out there at the service of the Church.
Q: How has your decision to be open to life affected your relationship?
Mike: It’s brought a tremendous depth to our family. We have seven children, and I can’t imagine life without each and every one of them.
Agnes: It has brought us much closer together. Many nights when we go to bed, we lay down and we start talking about the kids and what they did and how much fun they had. Each child calls the couple to grow closer.
Mary Kate: After each child, I’ve felt closer to Tony. Our love for each other has grown and we have a lot of joy together. But I think it’s because of all the sacrifice. When you go through pregnancy, you give up certain things. Giving them up together draws you closer.
Q: How does that work?
Mary Kate: I think by being open to life, you let God into your life. When you’re using birth control, you block God’s grace from flowing into your marriage. God is all-knowing so He sees we’re open to what He wants and He has blessed us greatly. We’re very happy.
Tony: Because of Mary Kate’s C-section, the doctors asked us, “Can you space the children out a little bit?” We took that as a real sign from God that we need to practice natural family planning. Couples told us about the “honeymoon effect” of natural family planning. That, when you willingly abstain for a certain period of time, your heart grows fonder. Separation, as they say, really does make the heart grow fonder. That separation leads to a honeymoon experience every single month. It’s like a big gift.
Agnes: We have not practiced NFP except for a short time between our second and third child, but I think that openness to life increases your generosity. My parents never talked about contraception, but they had 10 children and my mom would say, “I have 10 children and I love them all the same.” Children actually force you to be generous. They force you to be selfless. They force you to give of your time. They force you to put yourself last. Basically, when you learn to do that, it can’t help but improve your relationship with your spouse because you have to think of his needs and he has to think of your needs. There was a specific time when we were practicing the Creighton method of natural family planning and we experienced our greatest intimacy because we were communicating so well. We knew where we were. It helped us be more peaceful together.
Q: What about sexual intimacy?
Mike: Intimacy is much easier because you don’t have to bring a science lab into the bedroom. You don’t have to have all the paraphernalia, You’re not disrupting your wife’s body with pills and chemicals.
Agnes: Contraceptive manufacturers tell you that it’s safe to take a birth control pill. I can’t believe that’s a healthy thing for a woman’s body. I can’t imagine doing that to myself. I can’t imagine taking a pill every day for a condition that isn’t a disease, that isn’t a sickness.
Tony: The ills of contraception are one thing. But certain types of contraception are, in fact, abortifacients. And that just takes the wrongdoing to a whole other level of risk and evil.
Mary Kate: In terms of intimacy, I would suspect couples that use natural family planning are together more than couples who use birth control. When you make the sacrifice to abstain five to seven days each month, you make it a point to really enjoy the time you’re together.
Agnes: When a couple is looking forward to being intimate, you’re bonding even if you’re not actually being intimate at that moment.
Q: Do you fight about money a lot?
Mike: I don’t know if I’d call it fighting, but there’s certainly a lot of discussion. You need to plan. But again, it’s that communication that helps keep you bonded.
Agnes: You focus on the same goals. There are certainly things you have to say “no” to when you have seven children, but there are a lot of things you can do that you just can’t put a price tag on. God really does bless you. I think you see that not just in financial ways, but also in the people in your life who want to help you through the things that are sometimes difficult.
Felicia: I think it’s tragic when I hear a couple say, “I just can’t afford to have any more children.” I always think, “Gosh, I never thought of children in terms of money.” It never crossed my mind. You don’t have to have the newest car seat or the newest this or the newest that. You have what you need.
Jim: I actually think you probably fight less. When you’re open to life, you’re saying to yourself, “OK, this is working well, so I’ll be open to other things that the Church proposes.” And money is one of those things. The Church’s classical teaching on money is that we are to be open and to give “the first portion” back to God. Some call that tithing, others call it stewardship. When you start doing that, there’s a real ripple effect. You find yourself being richly blessed in your marriage. There’s always enough and there’s always something to share with others.
Mary Kate: I’ve heard some couples say, “We’re not going to have more children because we want each of our kids to have their own bedroom.” I’m not judging them. People want the best for their children. But what’s better than brothers and sisters? I come from a family of seven children, and I’m so thankful for every one of my brothers and sisters. Financially, we did not have everything, but we did learn good qualities of generosity and self-giving. We live in a world where we are going to face suffering. So why try to put our kids in a bubble and think that life is perfect because they have the best bedroom and best bike? If they don’t have siblings, who’s going to support them? So God does bless you — the more children you have — but he really blesses the children by giving them brothers and sisters.
Mike: I think the cost projections to raise a large family are overblown. Society has created a false standard over the past 20 or 30 years as to what you, as a good parent, need to provide for your child and it’s grown exponentially. All that’s required is that you raise your children to be good Catholics, that you love and feed and clothe them, educate them, teach them to be good contributors to society. And, by the way, you certainly achieve economies of scale as you have more children. When you have a small family, you have to buy a new car seat, then another new car seat. You don’t get the re-use like you do when you have seven or eight children. Now people in our neighborhood know we have seven children ... so bikes magically appear at the most surprising times. God does provide. So I tell young couples, “Don’t be afraid of the costs of a large family because things tend to work out.”
Agnes: The saddest comments I get are from people who are beyond their childbearing years — well into their 50s and 60s. They’ll tell you their biggest regret is not having had more children. They’ll say, “We were so worried about money. We were so worried about tuition. We were so worried about making sure they had everything we could give them, we stopped at two.” Imagine. That’s their biggest regret.
Q: Do your friends think you’ve gone over the edge?
Tony: The reaction Mary Kate and I get is disbelief at first. Friends will say, “You’ve had three kids in five years. Are you crazy?” But then they’ll come over to the house and play with the kids in the backyard and say, “This is actually pretty cool.” Big families are fun. The greatest joys everybody has are relationship joys, not material joys. That’s why I’m always surprised when people from these big families are not open to more kids. So many of them talk to me about these great memories they have of doing so many fun things with their brothers or sisters.
Q: Do you feel called to witness to other couples?
Agnes: I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find the nasty comments are more likely to be directed to me than to Mike. Strangers, even friends, will say, “You’re crazy”, “You’re irresponsible”, “How can you do this again?” I work at staying positive because you never know where the other person is coming from. One woman in particular would come up to me and say, “How do you get out of the house? You must have to hire two babysitters whenever you leave to watch all these kids.” It got to the point where I wanted to avoid her because it became a real drain on me. But by the next summer, she was expecting another baby. So I think she was just trying to figure out how I did it; she wanted to take notes. She really wanted another baby and had been trying to talk herself out of it. So it’s important to be a positive example, not just for your own children, but for others as well.
Q: Is there some deeper truth at work here — this entrusting of your sexual intimacy to God?
Jim: Absolutely. God’s our Father; we’re his kids. If we don’t get this right, then we create a whole host of problems for ourselves. Just look at our society. Everything Pope Paul VI wrote about in Humanae Vitae so prophetically has happened because men and women have ignored a very fundamental divine truth about conception. So we’ve got to get this right. That means trying to discern and follow God’s plan for our marriages and families, and really trusting that God’s in control.
Tony: There is a great joy in letting go. Alcoholics Anonymous always says, “Let go and let God.” God [tells] us, “Give Me a shot here. Be open to Me and let Me show you how much I’m going to bless you.” When you surrender, there’ a great peace and joy that settles in because you’re not in control anymore.
Jim: That’s a great point. If we could do it all on our own, we wouldn’t need God. God wants to be in our lives. And this is just one of the many ways we can let God into our lives to give us the help and the blessings that we need.
Q: John Paul II referred to sexual intimacy as being an icon of the Trinity — a sacramental giving and receiving of love that is totally without condition. And, because man and wife are the actual ministers of the sacrament, he said, “Conjugal is liturgical”. How have you experienced this in your intimacy?
Tony: Christopher West also makes this point. He says, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could renew our vows on a regular basis? Well, that’s exactly what the husband and wife do in the conjugal union.” Imagine how happy the world would be if you had those wedding nights happening over and over throughout the year. There’d be repercussions throughout the whole world. There’d be happier kids, happier people, and a happier world.
Felicia: Contraception turns the conjugal act into something selfish. You think about yourself and so you think less of your partner and pleasing him. When you think of the Trinity and that unbounded love — the constant and total giving and receiving of love — that is what we’re called to do in our conjugal union, to be thinking only of pleasing the other, to minister to the other.
Q: Is there a practical difference between contraception and natural family planning if the end is the same — regulating the number of children?
Felicia: Natural family planning is also about having children; it’s not just about not having children. Some couples, unfortunately, really struggle with fertility. They have used natural family planning to help them conceive. Using NFP helps a woman to better understand her own body. She will know when that “window” is open. And she and her husband can take better advantage of it. Our culture teaches that contraception is OK, that there are no bad effects on a woman’s body. That’s simply not true. Scientists finally conceded about a month ago there is, in fact, a link between contraception and breast cancer. Only with natural family planning can you be certain there is no harm being done to a woman’s body.
Mike: I think it’s important to understand that NFP isn’t Catholic contraception. If you go into marriage saying, “I’m going to use NFP so I never have kids,” you don’t understand Catholic teaching. NFP is a blessing from God. It can be abused, just like any other gift from God. So, it’s not just about the mechanics. It’s also about praying and being involved in God’s plan for your family.
Agnes: Contraception is about fear and control. We say, “I will not let God make this decision for me. I’m not going to allow Him into my life, into my bedroom, into my marriage. I do not want another child.” This is the mentality that opens the door for abortion. Now, obviously, there are a lot of people who contracept who would not abort. But this mindset does open that door — at least for some. They think, “I have a really good reason for not having a baby right now and if NFP fails me, abortion won’t.”
Mike: That’s a good point. There are Catholics who say, “Of course, I would never have an abortion or euthanize my grandmother. That’s clearly evil.” But what they don’t see is the slippery slope and the easy link between contraception and both of those two admitted evils. In the U.S., it didn’t take us long to slip down that slope. It wasn’t until 1930 that the Protestant churches allowed contraception. Abortion was legalized 43 years later. And now, in the state of Washington, euthanasia has, de facto, been legalized.
Q: One of our bishops said, “Contraception is a spiritual cancer on the Mystical Body of Christ.” Do you agree?
Mike: You can quickly see just in sheer numbers how the Mystical Body of Christ has been attacked in our generation alone. When our kids don’t have virtue being modeled in their family life, they begin to pick and choose the teachings of the Church they want to follow. This brings with it great pain and unhappiness.
Agnes: I heard once, I’m not sure if this is true, most priests come from a family of four or more children. Well, the average family today has two children. We are losing vocations because there’s just not the numbers in our families to produce them.
Tony: George Weigel recently wrote, “John Paul II’s theology of the body will be a time bomb that will explode sometime in this century.” And I get the sense just from living and practicing NFP that it’s going to eventually become a huge thing — even outside of the Church. You can’t hide the evils of contraception forever. First of all, it’s expensive. Every month you’re shelling out money for pills. Second, most women I’ve talked to don’t like it. They may feel it’s necessary, but they don’t like it. Ultimately, truth wins. So I really believe that once John Paul II’s beautiful view of marriage is properly taught and promoted, even the wider world is going to say, “This is good stuff — we need to be doing this in our marriage.”
Q: What will it take to reverse the numbers?
Mike: If you mean getting most married couples to use NFP, I’d say some of our priests are going to have to be willing to take tough comments when they’re shaking hands with parishioners outside of church. We may even see the church collections fall off. But so what? We’re called to be faithful, not popular.
Jim: I would agree with Mike. We’ve just got to hear it from the leaders we look to in our Church; our priests, our religious, the ones who teach us. Yes, they’re going to take some shots. But they’ll always have a place at our dinner table. They’ll always have friends like us and many other couples who are working very hard to live this truth.
Felicia: Young people need to be informed. Married couples that have been using contraception are not just going to stop overnight because someone tells them it’s wrong. Many may already know the Church says it’s wrong. People believe John Paul II’s theology of the body is actually going to be the catalyst to overturn the sexual revolution. But it’s not going to happen if that beauty doesn’t get out there. We have to support and exhort our priests. We have to support young couples. Not just say, “Good luck with your baby.” We have to help them. We need to get to young people and teach them so they can have good and holy marriages. So they can have big families. Then, if by nothing else, by sheer numbers we’re going to win.
Agnes: We lay people must be willing to speak about chastity in marriage openly when necessary. Yes, getting the support from our priests is vital, but we lay people need to do more, too. We need to say to our priests, “Father, if you ever get questions from parishioners who want to talk about NFP, we’re willing to help.” Because sometimes people look at a priest and think, “Well he’s living a celibate life, what does he know?” We also need to change what our children are getting taught in our Catholic schools. It needs to be the Church’s teaching. I went to a Catholic school and I loved it, but I remember once receiving as a handout a copy of something from Cosmopolitan magazine about all the different kinds of birth control available. That’s really not appropriate. We need to hand out copies of Humanae Vitae. We need everybody, including our teachers, to be on the same page.
Q: Last question: what do you hope to leave as a legacy for your children?
Mike: I’m sure our kids will say a lot of things —“He wasn’t the best carpenter. He couldn’t figure out the remote control.” There’ll be a long list of things I didn’t do right. I hope they will say, “he did live a faithful Catholic life. He did his best to live the Church’s teachings — and to pass them on to us by word and example.”
Brian Gail is the founder of Gail Force Communications.