By Anthony Barich
There is a profound ignorance among Catholics about the role of fertility with intimacy in the communication between spouses preparing for marriage in the Church, Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton said.
When it comes to discussing intimacy as a key part of this communication between a couple preparing for marriage, “it’s like a light goes out”, as “they never thought it’s something they would talk about together”, Bishop Sproxton said in his homily for a special Mass closing Natural Family Planning Week at Highgate on 21 August.
“There is a profound ignorance” of the issue of fertility relating to intimacy, he said, as natural family planning encourages couples to take a shared responsibility in this key part of their relationship.
“There is a great need to give them a sense that this type of communication is so important for the health of a marriage,” he said.
Derek Boylen, director of the Archdiocesan Natural Fertility Services and of Catholic Marriage and Education Services (CMES), told The Record that the Church has an important role to play in today’s world promoting modern methods of Natural Family Planning such as the Sympto-thermal multi-indicator method, Billings and Napro-technology.
It is often through the work of Church organisations such as pre-marriage education and schools programmes that people are first introduced to modern Natural Family Planning.
“Couples who use these methods say that the benefits to the relationship go far beyond family planning. NFP helps to improve couple communication and encourages couples to make family planning a shared responsibility. NFP also helps couples who are planning a pregnancy, helping them to fulfill the dream of having children of their own,” Mr Boylen said. He told The Record last month that up to 80 per cent of the couples who go through his CMES office are cohabiting, and therefore likely contracepting. It is also likely that a higher figure are already sexually active before marriage and are also contracepting.
While only two years ago up to 80 per cent of NFS’ clients were non-Catholic, the number of Catholics using the agency has doubled through increased promotion from within the Archdiocesan agencies and among Catholics themselves.
This ignorance of the importance of fertility in family planning and therefore in healthy marriage can lead to workers in the Archdiocesan agencies – over 60 of whom were present at the Mass – to wonder whether their message is getting through, Bishop Sproxton said.
But they can draw strength, he said, from the Gospel of the day – John 21: 15-17, where Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him. The true nature of the dialogue is lost in the translation from Greek, the Bishop said, as Jesus actually firstly asked Peter whether the apostle has that divine love that made it possible to lay down His life for His friends and enemies.
Peter’s humble answer was that “I love you but I know this love is limited as I am only human”. On the third occasion, Jesus asks Peter whether he will love Him with that human love, as Jesus will transform it into that divine love. Jesus did exactly that, he said, as Peter ended up being martyred for his faith in Jesus as the first Pope.
This illustrates a key promise of Jesus’, he said, that “if we ask in this Eucharist to have the love that has the dimension of the Cross (suffering), we will receive it to continue in the tasks He asks of us”.
“He can complete our little effort and make it more potent and an important witness for the Gospel and the truth that we stand for in our faith,” he said.