The use of artificial contraception is a sin. Yet most American Catholics use it, have used it or think it's OK to use it.

The use of Natural Family Planning is not a sin. Yet fewer than 5 percent of American couples use it, according to NFP practitioners. What's going on here?

As Fr. James Buckley pointed out in the January 1997 HPR, a big part of the problem is the number of priests who do not support Church teaching on this matter. Or if they do, they are like reluctant parents with sex education: They don't want to discuss it.

It is not a popular issue. It is a hard teaching. It is politically incorrect. And it appears to feminists to be anti-woman. These days, you can't get much worse than that.

A second problem is that priests don't have time to monitor what their lay ministers are teaching in RCIA and CCD classes, Bible studies and RENEW groups. And they can't do anything about what lay "careerists" are teaching catechetical directors and parish coordinators at the diocesan level.

A third problem is the woefully inadequate catechesis these past 30 years. Many couples don't know for sure if they're violating Church teaching by using artificial contraception. If they ask, a lay catechist or a priest may say, "the Church requires that couples be open to life. But the Church also respects being true to your own conscience."

Now what does that mean? It means: Let conscience be your guide. God will love you for being true to yourself.

Baloney! No good parent would tell his son: "It's wrong to shoot heroin, Johnny, but I will love you no matter what you do. So if you have to use heroin, please just shut your door."

This would be a license for death. And telling couples they have to follow consciences formed by Married With Children and Murphy Brown is a license for eternal death.

A fourth problem is lack of understanding of Natural Family Planning. Most priests don't like to sit around thinking about women's temperatures, fertility periods and cervical mucus. And priests certainly don't feel comfortable talking about these things with men and women who come to them for marriage counseling. That's why there are NFP practitioners. After the priest makes Church teaching clear, he can refer couples to NFP programs for the medical nitty-gritty.

The fifth-and key-problem is the modern Catholic's loss of faith in God. How can you convince people to follow God's rules when the God they worship is the God they make up? He's their Ideal Buddy, who loves them, puts up with their shenanigans, and pooh-poohs sin as out-of-date and psychologically debilitating.

Catholics are SUPPOSED to believe that human beings are like guided missiles. The baby is born with his nose pointed at Heaven. Baptism activates the controls. As the child grows to maturity, he can follow the directions of the manufacturer (God) through his manual (the Church), or he can ignore the manual altogether and try to wing it with trial and error (free will). If he ignores the manual (sin), he will pay the price: He won't make it to his goal (eternal life). Even though he is still pointed at the sky (that's his nature), he has messed things up, and his system won't fly.

This missile allegory is what we mean by "natural law." Every creature has its being determined by the Creator and does the things proper to it. A human being's nature is to know and love God and to be happy with him forever. If he makes choices that go against his nature, he will probably be miserable on earth, and he will certainly thwart his ultimate goal. This is true whether or not he agrees with God on what his human nature is. He can accept his nature and make choices to enhance it-or he can ignore his nature and degrade himself.

The important point is that despite our free will, we are enjoined NOT to decide what is right or wrong for our human nature independently of God. THAT information is in the manual, remember. It comes from the Inventor himself. Therefore, to say the Church is wrong about contraception is to replay the original sin of Adam and Eve. God might say to us in this New Eden: "You can harness the powers of the earth, you can conquer disease, you can send spaceships to Mars. There is only one thing you cannot do: claim the rights of the Creator. If you do this, you will surely die."

Counseling couples

When priests counsel couples on the doctrine of life, the explanation should involve more than a simple prescription: Don't use artificial contraception because God says so. That would be enough for people of faith. But we're talking about people who want to believe in a god they invent, their Ideal Buddy.

Priests must explain about human nature and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They must show how Eve's "independence" from God catapulted the world into sin and how the Blessed Mother's "yes" of obedience got it back on track. And they must convince couples that their "yes" to life is the way to keep it on track.

This presupposes that priests have gotten their own act together: They must be shepherds; they must tell their flocks the truth. None of this "listen to your conscience" stuff or avoidance or overlooking sin. Priests must believe in God's laws and the laws of the Church. Even the doubters must follow the rules or risk giving scandal.

When couples plan to be married, priests must talk to them clearly about the unitive and procreative purposes of the Sacrament of Marriage. By loving one another, a man and a woman communicate life itself in sex. Their married love gives meaning to the act, and the possibility of co-creating with God is its purpose. What could be more holy than this? It is as mysterious as the changing of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.

Extenuating circumstances

Suppose the couple pleads they can't afford to have a lot of children because of ill health, finances, living conditions, age-the old extenuating-circumstances argument.

The priest could say: "Listen, if there was anyone who had "extenuating circumstances," it was the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was underage. She was betrothed to a man who could rightfully reject her. Her family could reject her, too, leaving her without moral or economic support. And she faced public stoning for carrying a child whose father was not her husband. She had every reason to tell the Angel Gabriel, "Get out o' here!" But she said, "Yes!"

Priests should make it clear to young couples that Natural Family Planning is available if they need to postpone conception for health or financial reasons. And they should promote NFP volunteerism in the church bulletin and in Mass announcements.1 Nurses and users of NFP should be asked to step forward. Discussions on NFP should be offered in the parish and then easily accessible classes in the diocese.

In the Diocese of San Jose, couples are required to take an introductory NFP class before they can be married in the Church. This is a good first step. The problem is, the real training occurs in the eight-session comprehensive program that costs $225. Only 10 percent of the couples sign up for the advanced program, often after they have been married and have confronted the negative side of artificial contraception. An obvious improvement in overall participation would be requiring ALL the classes and underwriting the cost.

We don't understand

Sometimes couples sincerely don't understand why NFP can be OK while artificial contraception is not OK. Priests can try a little Socratic dialogue here.

Priest: Let's consider body weight. Do you agree that everyone should try to maintain a healthy body weight?

Couple nods yes.

Priest: And do you think that watching calories and exercising is a good way to do this?

Couple nods yes.

Priest: But do you also agree that eating whatever you like and then regurgitating afterward is not a good way to control weight?

Couple shudders.

Priest: So there is a right way and a wrong way to reach a desired goal?

Couple agrees.

Priest: Well, Natural Family Planning is like watching your calories. It will postpone conception. And it is the right way to do it. Artificial contraception is like regurgitating your food. It is the wrong way. Just as regurgitating would damage your digestive system over time, so artificial contraception will damage your marital relationship. It is intrinsically disordered because it violates your human nature, the nature God has given you. Do you understand?

Couple nods yes (hopefully).

Priest: Of course, with calorie-counting, you sometimes fail and gain a pound or two. You accept the inevitable mistake here. NFP is 99 percent effective, but if you conceive, it is a blessing intended by God. Babies are a joy. Babies are the result of human love in concert with God, who infuses them with a soul. Babies are miracles. They are what life and marriage is all about. Do you understand?

The couple is holding hands and blushing.

Controlling the lay ministers

How do priests control the people who are usually responsible for imparting this information: the diocesan personnel, the catechists, the NFP practitioners, and all the other folks who have occasion to "run the show" in some program or other?

This is not an easy task. You can only do so much. You can give homilies that make it obvious where you stand on issues. You can screen applicants for parish programs. You can encourage a young-marrieds club and be a frequent speaker on key issues. You can develop your own training program for catechists, both CCD and RCIA. You can offer parishioners the opportunity to be Catholic together: Bible study, youth groups, homeschoolers' groups, feast-day celebrations, novenas, rosaries, perpetual adoration. You can pray.

Priests can help people understand the story of the rich man who came to Christ asking what he needed to do to be saved. Jesus told him to follow the commandments. The man said he did. Then Jesus told him to love his neighbor. The man said he was generous. Finally, Jesus told him to give away everything he owned and "follow me." The rich man turned away.

This is not just an interesting Bible story. It is a story about life choices. Most of us try to keep the commandments and try to be generous to others. But when the going gets tough, when we're asked to give up what we really value: time, money, career, prestige-we walk away.

The model for Christian marriage has not changed in 2,000 years. It is still Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus. This model has a lot of utilitarian appeal: If society really followed it, we would have fewer deserted wives, fewer children in poverty, fewer children born without fathers, fewer children on drugs and in gangs, less disease, more conventional happiness. But the supreme value of Christian marriage has nothing to do with utility. It is our calling, our vocation to a life in Christ. Marriage is the living model of Christ's relationship with his Church.

G.E.M. Anscomb sums it up nicely in Contraception and Chastity:

the critical question is: where does the compass-needle of your mind and will point? This is tested above all by our reactions when it costs or threatens to cost something to be a Christian. One should be glad if it does, rather than complain! If we will not let it cost anything; if we succumb to the threat of losing our life, then our religion is indistinguishable from pure worldliness. . . .

[This teaching] is indeed against the grain of the world, against the current of our time, but that, after all, is what the Church as teacher is for. . . . The Church teaches also those truths that are hateful to the spirit of an age. n

1 Couple to Couple League, P.O. Box 111184, Cincinnati, Ohio 45211-1184. Human Life International, 7845 Airpark Road, suite E, Gaithersburg, Md. 20879; or ask for a Natural Family Planning coordinator at your local diocese.