I applaud your article by Joseph L. Falvey, Jr., “The Future of Fa therless America.” I agree wholeheartedly that until we do away with the contraceptive mentality fatherless America will not go away. Neither will Pro-Choice America or Euthanasia America. But sad to say our Catholic shepherds have led many astray on this issue, including me and my wife.

All my life I have had a strong faith in God and I have been faithful to the teachings of my Catholic faith. Whenever a moral question has come up in my life I have gone to a priest for counsel.

In the late 1970’s when my wife and I were experiencing financial stress with a family of six (four children) and before Natural Family Planning was even heard of in my diocese, I sought counsel from our pastor in the confessional.

I asked my pastor, would it be sinful for us to use artificial birth control if we didn’t have the financial means to cover the medical costs of a baby? This was during the fierce controversy over Humanae Vitae—an encyclical that I did not have any opportunity to read or study until only six years ago. He asked me “how many children do you have?” I answered “four.” He replied, “O, My God! It would be sinful for you not to use artificial birth control!” So we did.

But I can honestly say in doing so neither I nor my wife “used” each other for instrumental pleasure. In the realm of objective morality we were wrong but we were also wrongly counseled by our shepherd. As a consequence of this wrong our family has suffered the loss and imbalance of not having certain family members that God had intended for us. I deeply regret our decision and I have prayed for God’s mercy and forgiveness for us and our pastor who counseled us so.

A few years later when my wife was pregnant with our sixth child, the morning sickness drug, Bendec tin, was taken off the market and she ended up in the hos pital on intravenous feeding because she couldn’t hold any food. To me she looked comatose and I was fearful for her life. The Christian (non-Catholic) Ob stetrician, a personal friend, asked me “shall I terminate the preg nancy?” I asked in fear and trembling, “Is her life at risk?” He said “maybe.” I said, “I will talk to my pastor.” This was a different pastor than the one who had counseled us on birth control, and one in whom we had a great deal of confidence. His counsel over the phone was a very cavalier, “Sure go ahead.” So we did. But before doing so my wife was first evicted from the Catholic hospital because the ethics committee didn’t want to get involved in the de cision! She was trans ferred to the community hospital where moral issues were not even considered. And the baby, quite healthy according to the obstetrician, was aborted.

Again, though I now believe our decision was objectively morally wrong, we were led astray by our shepherd and our doctor. My wife’s life was not really any more at risk than in any pregnancy, our doctor later advised, and our pastor’s counsel was almost as if to say, “What ever you want to do, do it!” We lost the gift of that child, who would have been such a blessing for our last child who needed a baby brother, not so much then but later on.

Another aspect of “fatherless America” is that husbands and fathers have been denied their God-ordained role as head of the family even in those families where they still abide. “Mr. Mom” is the most absurd aberration of fatherhood imaginable.

The contraceptive, pro-choice, feminist mentality has truly created a fatherless America, but that mentality has invaded the pastoral leadership of our Church. I am sure my wife and I have lots of company in the erroneous counseling we received and the awful decisions we made. All of us need to pray for a restoration of moral leadership in our Church—a restoration of faith and fortitude among our pastors.

Thank God for your magazine and for the few priests who are beginning to show the guts to stand up vocally for what is right. We have two such priests in our parish and they are taking flak every where they turn. But they are also receiving a lot of support.

Though we who have been wrongly counseled have innocently erred, the societal consequences are yet the same, both in the society of our individual families and in society at large. The “bell tolls” for all of us who have lost a member of the Body of Christ.

Where faith goes, our pastors go; where our pastors go our families go; and where the family goes, so goes society.

If the Catholic Church does not soon exhibit its wisdom and truth in faith filled, courageous moral and pastoral leadership we will all be lost.

May God have mercy!

—Name Withheld

In regards to Alberto Ferreiro’s letter in your January/February 1999 issue, the implication that Protestant Christians are “part of the Redeemed Body of Christ” is nonsense as the document Mysterium ecclesiae issued by the Sacred Con gregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on June 24, 1973 makes clear:

But at the same time Catholics are bound to profess that through the gift of God’s mercy they belong to that Church which Christ founded and which is governed by the successors of Peter and the other Apostles . . . . The followers of Christ are therefore not permitted to imagine that Christ’s Church is nothing more than a collection (divided, but still possessing a certain unity) of Churches and ecclesial communities. (pg. 429, Vatican Council II: More Post Conciliar Documents, A. Flannery, O.P., general editor, Costello Publishing Co., 1st ed., 1982)

Pax Christi vobiscum,

—John R. Sheffield

St. Paul, MN