Humanae Vitae For Protestants

Looks like Natural Family Planning is gaining support among Protestants, according to Catholic News Agency.

This, of course, is good news. First, the Church's teaching on contraception is a major hurdle for Protestants seeking to convert. If they can get past this, everything else becomes much easier. An interesting bit from the article:

Historically, some Protestant perspectives grew from an antipathy towards Catholic and fundamentalist families, she claimed. The Anglican Communion, which includes the Episcopal Church in the U.S., in 1930 changed its teachings which formerly forbade contraception, while Methodist literature after World War II advocated limiting the number of children to an ideally two-child, sex-balanced family.

You learn something new every day. More interesting was that word is getting out regarding the abortifacient properties of the pill.

Phaedra Taylor, 28, told the Austin American-Statesman that she ruled out taking birth control pills after reading claims that the pill can cause abortions by rendering the womb hostile to a newly conceived human life.

"I just wasn't willing to risk it," she said, explaining she wanted her faith to guide her sexual and reproductive decisions after her marriage, before which she had been abstinent.

The same thing happened to my wife. She was convinced that contraception was wrong way before she became Catholic.

Protestants supporting NFP isn't all that new. Sam and Beth Torode wrote a good Protestant book about it called Open Embrace. They abandoned the practice because, "there is a dark side we weren't aware of."

Oooooooooo. A dark side, huh? Sounds so . .. .sinister.

Anyways, they wound up converting to Orthodoxy so that their genitals could have a freer reign. Sad situation, but it is very good that other folks are seeing things from the Church's perspective and giving NFP its due. Let's just hope they don't fall prey to the Dark Side! (cue creepy music or the Imperial March, whichever you prefer).

On that note, let's close out with one of my favorite lines from one of St. John Chrysostom's homilies on Romans. For what it's worth, he's one of the most revered saints in all of Orthodoxy as well.

Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility (translation- the pill), where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well…Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you condemn the gift of God and fight with his laws?…Yet such turpitude…the matter still seems indifferent to many men—even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks.