©2011 Victor R. Claveau, MJ
A few years ago, I was asked to put together and teach an adult education program in a small Southern California parish. The program was one evening per week for 35 weeks. The first three sessions were on the foundations of the Church: The Bible, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium. Each session was scheduled for two hours. First, a one-hour lecture, then after a short break, there would be a Q & A on the subject of the evening, then an open question session.
I was gratified when about 115 people showed up for the first two sessions.
Just before the 9 p.m. conclusion on the second night, the question of birth control came up. I really did not want to answer that particular question as I did not think the parishioners were ready to hear the answer. I told the group that I would like to put off my answer as it would take about ½ hour. They elected to stay.
I spoke about the many methods of artificial birth control and explained why they were against the Church’s moral teaching.
At the end of the session there was silence in the room, and I thought “half these people will not come back.”
65 people showed up for the third session and I was quite disheartened. I lost 50 of the parishioners.
At the end of that second session, a woman came to me and told me that she had been scheduled to have a tubal ligation for birth control purposes. She and her husband had five sons and thought that they had given God enough chances to provide a daughter. They went home and spoke until two in the morning and decided to cancel the appointment. I was overjoyed.
Another woman came to me and said that her husband was scheduled for a vasectomy two days hence. He was not at the session where I discussed artificial birth control. She had done everything possible to change his mind. I told her to ask her husband to telephone me and that I would only keep him for three minutes.
The following morning, the phone rang, and the man at the other end of the line said, “You’ve got three minutes.”
I told my caller: “As you probably know, for 14 years I have owned and operated a Catholic bookstore. During these years I had many opportunities to speak to other men about birth control. It was quite common to find a group of men sitting around a card table discussing religion on a Saturday afternoon.
Ten of my customers admitted to having a vasectomy and one man’s wife had a tubal ligation for birth control. Each of them said, in almost the same words, “Now, when I make love to my wife, I can’t get close enough to her. Something is missing.”
I explained, “God designed the marital act for two purposes. First, to continue the human race. Secondly, to unify a man and woman in the most intimate way. When we cut God from the marital bed, we profane the marital act and destroy the unitive aspect of God’s design. It becomes no more than two animals copulating. There are plenty of articles on the Internet about vasectomies, divorce, and vasectomy regret.”
At the next session, the wife told me that he cancelled the appointment for the surgery, and a year later he was showing off his new-born son at the parish Christmas party.