|
NFP conference challenges 'Restless Hearts'
By Joyce Coronel, news@catholicsun.org
November 20, 2008
SCOTTSDALE — More than 200 Catholics gathered at Notre Dame Preparatory Nov. 7-8 to mark the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae and listen to a wide array of presentations about marriage, sexuality and family life.
Dubbed “Restless Hearts: Rediscovering Living and Loving in the Modern World,” the weekend offered sessions in both English and Spanish that detailed the Church’s teaching on sexual morality and offered thoughtful reflections on the vision and implications of Pope Paul VI’s landmark encyclical.
Jennifer Roback-Morse, an economist and scholar, spoke of the prophetic vision of the late pontiff. His warning that widespread acceptance of contraception would lead to a general lowering of morality and a lessening of respect for women have become all too real, she said.
Roback-Morse drew listeners in with another presentation cleverly titled “Finding Lifelong Love in a Hook-up World.” She offered a unique perspective on how to get young people to practice chastity: make the hook-up uncool.
Thirty years ago, she said, smoking was considered cool, “but now you’re a pariah if you smoke,” adding that the damaging health effects of casual sex need to be emphasized.
“We’ve got to make it seem that if you’re engaging in this kind of behavior, you’re a loser who can’t control yourself,” she said.
Roback-Morse gave a number of examples of what she termed “dumb sex.” Cohabitation, which many people think of as a “test drive” for marriage, isn’t just immoral, it’s not smart, she said.
“It turns out that living together is preparation for divorce and you have a higher probability of divorce, not lower. So that’s dumb,” Roback-Morse said.
She also criticized the practice of women who use an anonymous sperm donor to achieve pregnancy outside of marriage.
The use of the anonymous donor means that “you’re making a plan that your child will never have a father,” Roback-Morse said.
The first generation of donor-conceived children have come of age and are expressing distress over not knowing their fathers, she said.
“If we think of what is owed to the child, we’ll see that this is an injustice that is being perpetrated,” Roback-Morse added.
So, if there’s dumb sex, what then, is smart sex?
Smart sex, Roback-Morse said, recognizes the truth about human sexuality and its two purposes: procreation and spousal unity. Paul VI wrote of it in Humanae Vitae, she said, but the Church has been teaching about it since the Middle Ages.
Smart sex is married sex because it is within marriage that the two purposes of sex can flower.
In modern culture, Roback-Morse said, “we have separated sex from relationships, so we’re separating ourselves from one another.” The child that springs from marriage should be a focal point of unity between spouses rather than a source of friction.
'Catholic, Chaste and Dating'
Rosa Camou, a catechist who primarily works with young people, offered another unique vision of how to live Church teaching on matters of sexuality with her presentation “CCD for Dummies,” which she offered in both English and Spanish.
CCD, in this case, short for “Catholic, Chaste and Dating,” included a one-page list of tips about dating wisely. She emphasized the negative physical and emotional consequences of pre-marital sex and tips for practicing chastity.
“Don’t date for the sake of dating. You have a heart and it is fragile. Pray for yourselves, your friends and those you are attracted to,” Camou said.
She also asked teenagers to have standards about those whom they date and to base those standards on Catholic values.
For those who are married, Mark and Jenelle Van Brunt, parents of six children, spoke about the challenges of marital chastity in their presentation titled “I’ve taken a cold shower… now what?”
“Our sexuality is a gift and it requires us to be a gift to one another. It involves the gift of self-sacrifice,” Mark said.
“Marital chastity leads us to virtue, not white knuckles,” he said, adding that during times of abstinence, couples could unite their sacrifice to that of clergy and religious.
Fr. Paul Sullivan spoke about Humanae Vitae and marriage preparation as an invitation to God’s love.
“It offers couples a love that is dynamic and profound,” Fr. Sullivan said. “It’s total. It’s not the average, temporary, conditional love the world offers, and when they discover it, they never turn back. It gives them joy.”
Mike Phelan, director of the diocesan Office of Marriage and Respect Life, addressed parents interested in helping boys become real men. As the father of four sons, he has a passion for the topic and spoke about the development of a boy’s character.
Phelan recommends that mothers cultivate admiration for their sons’ fathers in little ways, encouraging the leadership of fathers.
“Only he can lead them,” Phelan said. “So many women haven’t met a Christ-like man — a man willing to die for his family. They’ve experienced abandonment.”
To break the cycle, he said couples need better preparation for marriage and at the same time, there is a need to strengthen the families that already exist. He also sees a need for young men to be mentored by older men.
The conference offered other sessions that addressed topics including the dignity of the child, the sexual revolution, pornography and the use of Natural Family Planning.
|
