Just Her Memory

As a young writer and journalist, I have been faced with many adversities regarding my faith. In the midst of a society that holds a “do what you feel is right” kind of attitude, young adults like me are scoffed at for even having faith, let alone defending it, especially when it comes to controversial issues like abortion.

I have been an avid pro-lifer my entire life. I have been a part of different groups for this cause since I was a young grade-schooler and have attended about seven pro-life marches in Washington. Though I did all these things, I never realized how deep my passion was for it until I was faced with an assignment to write a poem about something I care about. It was my chance to take something that I was passionate about and turn it into something artistic and something that people respond to. 

For my whole life, my father has been reading and donating to Mother Angelica’s cause and to the National Catholic Register. I respectfully submit the following poem. It is my hope that it will inspire more people to fight against abortion. I pray that women and men alike realize that a baby in the womb is more than just a “blob of tissue,” that God has breathed life into him or her.

Just Her Memory

Today my heart beat for the first time.

Who will be the one it will love someday?

Today I hear my mother sing her rhyme,

Her voice calls, like the sea sounds in its bay.

Today I stretch my little legs with might.

I imagine my feet touching the sand.

Today I have dreamed a beautiful sight,

Visions of flowers dance across the land.

Today my mother cried her heartfelt tears.

I wonder if she wept because of joy.

It seems as if she faces inner fears.

She doesn’t know if I am a girl or boy.

Today my mother took my life from me,

Now I am no more, just her memory.

         Diana Weckenbrock

         Cincinnati, Ohio

 

The Borrowers

Correct me in my thinking: Marriage is between a man and a woman. It is a commitment and a sacrament. It is blessed by God, who said, “Increase and multiply.”

A marriage between a man and a woman can result in procreation. However, a marriage between two men or two women has to include a third human. Two men cannot have a baby unless a third person is included to carry the baby. Two women need to “borrow” the male reproductive cell. Therefore, there are always three persons in their marriage, nullifying a two-person commitment.

         Elizabeth Zerhusen

         Cincinnati, Ohio

 

Teaching NFP Well

Pertinent to “Standard-Bearers for NFP” (Vatican, Jan. 25 issue):

Your article on the Billings system of natural family planning contained one significant error of fact and made three statements of opinion that need comment.

The Australian Billings teachers are quoted as saying that the Billings method “was the beginning of understanding the significance of the mucus with regard to fertility. It was Dr. John Billings who actually discovered that this was significant and is tied to fertility, and that was more than 60 years ago.”

That is factually wrong. Cervical mucus was first described in the medical literature in 1855. Dr. W. Tyler Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians in London, wrote that cervical mucus “appears to afford a suitable medium for the passage of the spermatozoa through the cervix uteri into the uterine cavity.” Interestingly, this was only five years after the Vatican had first given its approval to the principle of abstaining from the marriage act during the fertile time to avoid pregnancy.

In 1948, Dr. Edward F. Keefe, a New York obstetrician published a small booklet to accompany his special NFP thermometer used in a temperature-based form of NFP. Soon he was also teaching the mucus sign, along with the temperatures, and in 1953, he added the mucus sign to his explanatory booklet, along with an illustration of stretchy mucus. Keefe had his patients observing cervical mucus at the mouth of the cervix (the os) because that is where he, as a doctor, would obtain it. His patients told him that when the mucus was most abundant and stretchy, it was quite high and the os was much more open. Keefe listened to his patients, made a careful study and in 1962 published his findings on the cervical changes as a sign of fertility. In 1964, Billings wrote a book on NFP, and it taught the mucus sign and the temperature sign. It was in 1970 or 1971 that the Billingses focused solely on the mucus sign.

So why did the Billingses drop the temperature sign? At an NFP symposium in the ’70s, John Billings explained that the temperature sign was so easy to use that women would get careless in making their mucus observations. His answer to that problem was to drop the easy-to-use temperature sign. The answer of those of us who teach the cross-checking Sympto-Thermal Method is to emphasize the value of the mucus sign and especially at those times when the temperature sign is of less value. But to experience that special value, women need to have regular cyclical experience.

In a response about effectiveness, the Australian women said, “We don’t think there’s any question mark over its effectiveness. All the studies that have been done — well-controlled studies — show the method to have been 98% to 99% effective.” That calls for interpretation. The best studies are comparative, and the only two comparative studies of which I am aware have found that mucus-only is less effective than mucus cross-checked by either the temperature or hormonal detection via urine dipstick analysis.

In a study done in the late ’70s, the difference was so significant that the study was cut short. The investigators could no longer pretend that they did not know which was more effective in actual use. That study was brought about by the U.S. bishops, whose Human Life Foundation persuaded the National Institutes of Health to undertake it.

Ironically, even though the results were significantly in favor of the cross-checking STM, many dioceses promote mucus-only systems without informing couples about the results of the study sponsored by the U.S. bishops. The bottom line is that while mucus-only can be good and very good, the cross-checking systems are better.

With regard to China, the work of the Billingses is certainly admirable, but it is certainly questionable as to whether those results apply to the Western world. For one thing, the Billings system does not explicitly teach marital chastity during the fertile time. Teaching the avoidance of genital contact can be interpreted in strictly practical terms and says nothing about other forms of marital unchastity.

The interview subjects offered an opinion as to why their system isn’t more widely known and used. I do not wish to argue with them, but I would point to another factor not related to funds or method. In 1989, a committee of the U.S. bishops issued a document on marriage in which they urged that every engaged couple ought to be required to attend a full course on natural family planning.

Twenty-six years later, there are six or seven dioceses that have adopted that policy. I don’t think it’s appropriate to require couples to attend a course that will teach only the mucus sign or only the temperature sign or only ecological breastfeeding or only practical reasons for abstinence from full marital relations or only physiology.

But if the right kind of course is required, there will be a great increase in the number of couples adhering to Catholic teaching and doing the right thing for the right reasons. The right kind of course will include evangelization and will teach Catholic sexual morality. This is important.

I have had couples who did not have such instruction tell me, after they stumbled upon our materials, that they had practiced mutual masturbation and other immoralities for years, thinking they were doing “NFP.” And, of course, the right kind of course will teach ecological breastfeeding as well as all the common signs of fertility. It will thus respect couples’ God-given right to know these things so that they can make informed decisions.

         John F. Kippley, founder

         Natural Family Planning International

         Minneapolis, Minnesota

 

Corrections

On page 2 of the March 8 issue, St. Norbert College was incorrectly identified as being located in Minnesota. It is in Wisconsin, as the story on page 11 in that issue correctly indicated. In addition, due to editing errors, “Why Do Catholics?” (March 8 issue) was incorrectly phrased. The question should have read: “Re: the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God): Why did it change from ‘sin’ to ‘sins’? What ‘sins’ are being referenced?” And the answer should have read: “The change was made in the context of the revision of the Roman Missal and the Lectionary to more closely conform to the official Latin liturgical text. In the official Latin text, the Agnus Dei has peccata mundi (the sins of the world). This was previously rendered ‘sin of the world’ in the English translations that were part of the 1970 and 1975 editions of the missal, perhaps because most Scripture translations render the Greek of John’s Gospel that way. Since the new Latin edition of the missal came out in 2002, the English translation now says ‘the sins of the world.’ These sins are of course original sin, which we inherited from Adam, as well as our own personal sins, from all of which Christ came to deliver us (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 408).” The Register regrets the errors.