Day 3 – With permission NEO-NFP is presenting Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M, Cap. lucid explanation of NFP. We hope this series is helpful in communicating to others the benefits and logic of NFP!
In today’s installment Archbishop Chaput discusses how the four problems predicted by Pope Paul manifested themselves in society, distorting our thought processes, language and vision…
- From the Holy Father’s final point, much more has flowed: In vitro fertilization, cloning, genetic manipulation and embryo experimentation are all descendants of contraceptive technology. In fact, we have drastically and naively underestimated the effects of technology not only on external society, but on our own interior human identity. As author Neil Postman has observed, technological change is not additive but ecological. A significant new technology does not “add” something to a society; it changes everything — just as a drop of red dye does not remain discrete in a glass of water, but colors and changes every single molecule of the liquid. Contraceptive technology, precisely because of its impact on sexual intimacy, has subverted our understanding of the purpose of sexuality, fertility and marriage itself. It has detached them from the natural, organic identity of the human person and disrupted the ecology of human relationships. It has scrambled our vocabulary of love, just as pride scrambled the vocabulary of Babel.
- Now we deal daily with the consequences. I am writing these thoughts during a July week when, within days of each other, news media have informed us that nearly 14 percent of Coloradans are or have been involved in drug or alcohol dependency; a governor’s commission has praised marriage while simultaneously recommending steps that would subvert it in Colorado by extending parallel rights and responsibilities to persons in “committed relationships,” including same-sex relationships; and a young east coast couple have been sentenced for brutally slaying their newborn baby. According to news reports, one or both of the young unmarried parents “bashed in [the baby’s] skull while he was still alive, and then left his battered body in a Dumpster to die.” These are the headlines of a culture in serious distress. U.S. society is wracked with sexual identity and behavior dysfunctions, family collapse and a general coarsening of attitudes toward the sanctity of human life. It’s obvious to everyone but an addict: We have a problem. It’s killing us as a people. So what are we going to do about it? What I want to suggest is that if Paul VI was right about so many of the consequences deriving from contraception, it is because he was right about contraception itself. In seeking to become whole again as persons and as a people of faith, we need to begin by revisiting Humanae Vitae with open hearts. Jesus said the truth would make us free. Humanae Vitae is filled with truth. It is therefore a key to our freedom.
Copyright – Archbishop Charles J. Chaput