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Dear friend,
Wanting to adopt children is a noble thing, I myself am an adoptive parent, so I can relate. Many of us feel called to help those born into impoverished and dire circumstances from abuse, war, and poverty. That was the case for my wife and me after 9/11. We wanted to help our country too, which was being attacked on so many levels. Though my wife and I could not conceive, even parents who can conceive, adopt when they fell prompted by the Lord to do so. Let me first commend you on this.
That being said, your marriage is a sacred institution, made so by the Lord, and He said,
be fertile and multiply, because in this way you participate in God's creative act. It is a duty
in a marriage to be open to Life, not closed to it, because it is part of the very character of the relationship, and the act that qualifies it, sexual intercourse. That act is reserved for marriage alone and becomes the chief sacramental expression of that relationship.
- It is like receiving Holy Communion with the Lord — you wouldn't spit out the Host before digesting it would you?
That is precisely what birth control does — it says I will take part of you, but not all of you — not the life-giving dynamic you and I possess together.
Our culture has divorced the two fundamental aspects of sex from each other:
- the unitive, and
- procreative qualities.
It is like separating food from digestion; that never leads to a good thing. Consider bulimia, overindulgence, etc. All of these things would be liken to a disorder, but never when it comes to sex. Ponder the analogy for a while and you will start to see the correlations.
- What happens to a person that only wants the taste of food, but not the calories?
If someone seeks sex just for the flavor, it can be had with anyone, in any circumstance, for there is no moral underpinnings to connect it to anything but pleasure seeking or relationship enhancement.
Statistics show that couples who use birth control have a significantly high rate of divorce, whereas couples who practice Natural Family Planning (NFP) have a very low rate of divorce (in the single digits). You can't have a dysfunctional dynamic in a relationship and expect it to flourish. It will act like a cancer and eventually ruin it.
Ask all of your divorced friends if they practiced birth control — you will probably see 100% did.
It is not a coincidence.
If you think that I am suggesting that every time you have relations with your spouse you have to want to conceive, you are mistaken.
NFP simply equips you to choose when the most appropriate times to have relations — when discernment has led you to either seek conception or avoid it, but never with the intention to completely close the act to life-giving potential, which defines its essence. That means you always place your relationship in God's hands, who will bind you even closer together as a family. Seek out an NFP family and you will see what I mean.
There is much more to say on this subject, but for the sake of brevity, I will leave it at that for now.
God bless you.
Bob Kirby
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