Last week an NPR talk show was asking Catholic listeners to call in and share their thoughts about birth control. I found myself wondering whether I’d meet the test. I was certainly steeped in the culture and tradition. My great-grandmother went to Mass to pray for a husband. She met a prosperous widower who’d lost his first job for being Catholic. My grandmother was their eighteenth child. Her inheritance went to the Jesuits. I spent my childhood in parochial schools. I’m the sixth of ten, or seventh of eleven, if you count my oldest sister’s twin. (She lived three days.)
My mother, a convert, followed the Church’s teaching on birth control, despite her severe morning sickness. Somehow she made it through those nine years of nausea without losing her sense of humor, or humility. She’s the archtypal Madonna figure. Self-sacrificing, self-effacing, a calm Lady Madonna.
When I ask her about the rhythm method, she shrugs and says, “We were so stupid!”
According to polls, 98% of Catholic women seem to agree. I remember in high school, in a Family and Marriage class, the priest saying God had special reverence for women. I wonder now, though, how much you can revere someone while at the same time telling them they’re incapable of deciding when and how they’d like to have children? In some ways, it’s as if the little red hen says, “Who will help me plant this wheat?” and the priest says, “Not I. Agriculture is artificial interference with God’s plan.”
I presume that argument didn’t get extended to grains because even the pope likes his bread and beer. Oddly, Viagra is also perfectly acceptable at most Catholic hospitals. I guess gravity is one law of nature you’re encouraged to defy. Go figure.
It used to be that religion, politics and sex were not to be discusssed in public. Now, the three subjects, like drunk uncles at a family reunion, have wrapped themselves so tightly around one another that its hard to know where one ends and the other begins. Right wing politicians whip their congregations into a frenzy over sex. You have to wonder why this unseemly emphasis on our lady parts? What’s missing? Or as the French like to say, “Cherchez La Femme.”
She’s notably absent from the pulpit, or the college of cardinals, conference of bishops or halls of the Vatican. Apparently, she’s not smart enough to think for herself, which is, I’m afraid, the real reason I feel I’m losing my religion. Not because I don’t believe in a beautiful, all loving God.
I do.
I just think she’s been silenced in our Holy Mother Church, along with all those female parishoners who appear to be using their God-given conscience to separate the wheat from the chaff, or in this case, the ridiculous from the sublime.
For more about being/not being Catholic, read these essays by two of my favorite Catholic women writers.
I lost my religion so many years ago when I yearned for any images that looked like my dark skinned self or family. However angst ridden I felt about being an African American girl amongst a sea of white faces Catholicism also gave me a supernatural space where my otherworldly imagination reigned. It has so richly defined who I am and why I have always sought to understand religion that I still yearn for the sanctity of the space (and tour Catholic churches in every new city). Thanks for the post and the references by Julianna and Mary below. It is enjoyable to read about other's journey in the faith.
Posted by: Heather Nicholson | February 20, 2012 at 06:10 PM
Great piece, Shiela.
Posted by: William McPherson | February 21, 2012 at 12:53 AM
I'm very sorry to read that you have experienced these feelings of isolation regarding the Catholic Church. As a female convert to the Catholic Church since 2007, I have also dealt with the issue of using birth control in marriage. By learning more about Natural Family Planning, however, I am completely confident that my marriage and family life will benefit from the absence of birth control. Contrary to the Rhythm Method that you mentioned (which is, agreeably, a faulty, out of date method that no modern woman would put themselves through), NFP is 99% effective - just as effective as birth control. In addition to this, NFP opens communication between marriage partners, since they must discuss the possibility of getting pregnant each time they make love. This method is taught by many religious institutions, not just the Catholic Church; however, it is the Catholic Church that supports its teachings enough to offeri classes and home guides for newly engaged couples. The bottom line is that NFP teaches the woman to keep track of her fertility so that she can both abstain from intercourse when her chance of getting pregnant is high, and also engage in intercourse when she and her husbands are hoping to get pregnant. No steroids or chemicals to affect her body in an unnatural or harmful way, and no believing that we, as women, should place our opinion of when we have a baby over God's opinion. This is not the Church's way of trying to "control" a woman's fertility, nor is it the Church's way of trying to churn out 15+ member families (like I said, NFP is 99% effective). On the contrary, the Catholic Church is the only institution to recognize what an amazing gift fertility is - one that women should be celebrated and be made aware of. Instead of simply popping a pill to avoid pregnancy, we should take this opportunity to study our bodies,, to talk to our husbands, and, most importantly, to grow closer to the only religious body striving to retain what makes us so amazing - our fertility. Simply because the Rhythm Method has failed (and it has) does not mean that women should run off and purchase birth control. There are so many other choices available, including NFP. I hope that you will find your way back to the Church some day, and that you will experience the same contentment I feel every day as a Catholic woman.
Posted by: Chloe Hobdy | February 21, 2012 at 09:34 AM
No given or substances to impact her body in an artificial or dangerous way, and no knowing that we, as females, should place our viewpoint of when we have a child over The lord's viewpoint.
Posted by: casino guide | April 25, 2012 at 04:00 PM