HAPPY NFP AWARENESS WEEK

Published in the U Matuna, the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Agana, Guam on 7/29/12


Oh, so you didn’t know it was Natural Family Planning Awareness Week? Well, if you had plans for it, you’ll need to wait till next year. It ends today (July 22-29).  


NFP, for those who may not be aware, is a non-contraceptive system of birth regulation considered moral by the Church if employed for “serious reason” (HV, 10).

NFP, which relies on the systematic observation of bodily indicators to identify a woman’s fertile period, has its advocates and detractors. And while I personally find the whole discussion of birth regulation fascinating and could spend several columns on it, I’d like to cut to the chase in this column and speak directly to the thing that, for most married couples, makes the regulation of births an issue in the first place: money.

For most of us married folk, when it comes to “making babies”, the big issue is not moral, theological or doctrinal, it’s financial. We don’t check the Catechism before we engage in a potentially procreative marital act, we check the bank account. We ask whether or not we can afford another child, and more often than not, the answer is “no”.

We say, sure, grandma had 12 kids and mom had 6, but times are different, it’s more expensive these days. It’s harder to earn a living. It’s not like it used to be, etc., etc., etc. And for the most part, pastoral mentors agree and give couples wide latitude to limit the size of their families (albeit via moral means).

But given that the Church allows only one method of birth regulation - and allows it for only “serious reason”, and given that most of us blame “the cost of living” as the reason to not have another child, we must ask ourselves if the cost of living is a “serious (enough) reason” for a sacramentally married couple to intentionally delay or avoid pregnancy.  In other words: Is it really more expensive today than it was a generation or two ago?

The answer is yes and no. Let’s start with the “no”. According to InflationData.com, the Consumer Price Index in 1960 was 29.6. At the end of 2011, it was 224.9. That means it is approximately 10 times more expensive to live today than it was in 1960.

However, wages, over the same period, have also seen a ten-fold increase. According  to the Social Security Administration, average wages in 1960 were $4007.12 and 41,673.83 in 2010

So, statistically speaking, it is NOT more expensive to live today than it was 50 years ago. It’s about the same. So why is it that we feel we cannot possibly afford another child? Here’s the “yes” part of the answer:

Today we spend 10 times more on our sports addictions than we did in 1960, 37 times more on travel, 43 times more on games, 54 times more on hair care and cosmetics, 60 times more on pets, and...wait for it...178 times more on our “phone” bill - which of course is not our “phone” bill, but the cost of assuaging our incessant need to be permanently connected to the rest of the world through an ever expanding array of gadgets that we just have to have.

True,  the cost of housing is 72 times more than it was in 1960, which, when compared to only a ten-fold increase in wages, represents a significant financial burden.  However, some of that is our own doing. While family size has nearly halved since 1960, the average square footage per home over the same period has more than doubled. In other words, increasingly smaller families are demanding increasingly larger  homes.

And of course there is healthcare, which today costs 30 times more than it did 50 years ago. However, the real “elephant in the room” is the cost of education, specifically “higher education”.

Today we spend 146 times more per family on education than we did in 1960. And since 1985, college costs have exploded, increasing a staggering 498.49%. By comparison, healthcare costs have grown at less than half that rate.

True, many more of our children are going to college these days, but the question which concerns us is whether or not the desire to send our children to college qualifies as the “serious reason” necessary to justify the moral use of NFP.

Of course, the same question could apply to everything from “Do you really need that data plan?” to “Do you really need that big of a house?”

However, the cost of education is so disproportionate to every other expense that there is little question that the specter of its cost probably has more to do with our increasing reluctance to “accept children willingly and lovingly from God” (as we promised), than any other factor. (More later.)

Jesus Gets a Visit from the 1%

There has always been much speculation about the three guys who chased a star across the desert and ended up as extra pieces in just about everybody’s manger scene.

Where did they come from? How long did they travel? How did they know what the star meant? Was there really a star? Were they kings, magicians, sorcerers, wise guys, priests? Were there three or was their a fourth? Wasn’t one of them black? What happened to them after they exit Matthew Chapter 2?

One thing we can surmise about the Magi is that they were wealthy, not just because of the expensive gifts they delivered but because they were able to take quite a bit of time off from work.

It is thought that the Magi hailed from Persia which is about 1000 miles due east of Bethlehem. A trip of that length on their all-terrain camels would have taken at least a year. So a year to get there and a year to return. That’s either quite a bit of accumulated leave or they were all self-employed and doing well enough to close up shop for awhile.

In any event, the Magi were definitely among the “haves”, the “1%”, as modern agents of class warfare would call them, the “millionaires and billionaires” of their day.

And while, the presence of the Magi in the Nativity narrative is rich with meaning on levels much deeper than economics, the presence of the very rich and the very poor as the first to adore the Christ allows us to ponder the role of wealth in Christian worship.

As we know, the Catholic Church is often criticized for its great riches. Given its cumulative real estate holdings, its vast art collection and general assets worldwide, in terms of net worth, the Catholic Church is indeed probably the world’s wealthiest privately held entity. Critics, both external and internal, have contrasted this wealth with the personal poverty of Jesus and the “sell all you have and give it to the poor” message.

They have a point. How did we get from a poor carpenter’s shop to the gilded glory of a St. Peter’s?

This self-conscious contradiction manifested itself, post Vatican II, in a faux poverty movement that gave us a stripped down Catholicism: barren churches, folk music, and what I call “Birkenstock” university congregations.

For those who may not know, Birkenstock is a brand of sandals, very expensive sandals. In retrospect, it was comical to see otherwise rich kids at my university (1970’s) attempt to identify with the Church’s “preferential option for the poor” by donning sandals that actually cost more than a decent pair of shoes.

Of course this false, but otherwise sincere attempt to “identify with the poor” did not stop with young, university idealists discarding their Oxfords for Birkenstocks.

Many of us, at least in the states, saw our churches, even those that were not so grandiose, converted into little more than upscale barns in the name of some vague notion about renewal and simplicity.

But this attempt to outwardly dim our worldly glory by the “drabbing” down of our sacred spaces was even more ironic than the Birkenstock revolution, since, while stripping the embarrassing gold from our sanctuaries, we cashed it in for cash-guzzling air-conditioning monsters, the cost of which could probably pay for a church more magnificent than the one we just stripped...or feed the hungry in our parishes many times over!

But back to the Magi. The desire of the faithful to bestow the riches of the world on our sacred spaces and make them ever more glorious begins with the presentation of the three expensive gifts to the Christ Child. And, as far as we know, Joseph and Mary did not return the gifts, give them to the poor, or lecture the wealthy visitors on the evils of materialism.

On the contrary the Holy Family accepted the gifts of the Magi as the rightful due of the King of Kings, and “since ever since” the faithful have endeavored to imitate the Magi in honoring our King with the best, the beautiful, and the expensive.

Thus the glory of a St. Peter’s Basilica, the Cathedral at Notre Dame (France), New York’s St. Patrick’s, and our own Dulce Nombre de Maria Cathedral-Basilica. It is by Divine design that we move from straw to gold, from manger to throne, from catacomb to cathedral, and from carpenter to King. Now...about those Birkenstocks.

Christmas Season vs Shopping Season - Is there really a problem?

It is true that the "Christmas Shopping Season" seems to start earlier and earlier each year. By some accounts Christmas merchandise has appeared on retail shelves as early as late August. Such early sightings of tinsel and mistletoe have raised a predictable lament among some who are rightly concerned about the "reason for the season"

While I certainly empathize, I would like to suggest that there is no necessary correlation between the "shopping season" and the "Christmas season." In other words, we are not forced to celebrate Christmas early because retailers do.

Whether we admit it or not, all of us (who celebrate Christmas) feel the pressure to shop for Christmas gifts, and all of us will. And though year after year our churches warn us about the commercialization of Christmas, etc., we still find ourselves "making a list and checking it twice" while the pastor is yet speaking and then rushing from the church to the mall to get it all done!

I believe my mom had the right idea. She would do her Christmas shopping in July. By August all the presents were wrapped and "hidden" away until Christmas. With the "shopping" part of Christmas done months ahead of time, our family had the leisure to pay more attention to the "reason for the season," as was our wont.

As Christmas approached we still shopped for Christmas items, but more for fun stuff -- decorations and such.

So rather than curse the retailers perhaps we should be thanking them, so that when Christmas comes we can spend more time thanking Him.

Holy Cards, Coffee, and the Temple - to those who have a problem with church gift shops

A short thought. Even before my wife, Leone, took over the operation of the Café at the Ave Maria Gift Shop at the Cathedral Basilica, I heard many negative comments about the operation of both the gift shop and the café within the Cathedral building.

Critics most often cite the scripture story where Jesus drives out the buyers and the sellers from the temple as evidence that there should be no business undertakings in a church.

My first thought would be if Monsignor Benavente and Archbishop Apuron have no problem with it then perhaps we should reconsider our negative positions in the light of proper Church authority. Perhaps a polite inquiry would be the Christian thing to do.

However, I find it a bit funny how quickly Catholics can become scripture scholars when we need to back up a personal opinion. Never mind that we have no idea where to find it in the Bible…or perhaps even where to find a Bible!

For your reference the passage can be found at Matthew 21:12-13:

Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those engaged in selling and
buying there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of
those who were selling doves. And he said to them, "It is written: 'My house
shall be a house of prayer,' but you are making it a den of thieves."

The real issue is whether or not the gift shop and café is included in the “temple” proper – the “house of prayer”.

The answer is NO. The gift shop and the café are not “in” the “temple”. They are attached to it in the same way that the bathrooms, the radio station, the Catholic Cemeteries office, the parish office, and the soon to be completed museum, are attached to it. But the temple, the place of prayer, is not intruded upon by any of these other offices or places of activity.

Rather than fret over the “buying and selling” I would be more concerned over Jesus’ desire that His Father’s house be a “house of prayer”. Given the amount of conversation and visiting that goes on before and after our Masses within “the temple”, and even as we go to and from Holy Communion, I would say that we have much more to be concerned about in offending the Father in that regard than the folks selling coffee and holy cards next door.

Buy Something - "Materialistic" wrongheadedness

‘Tis the season when we will once again hear warnings about the evils of “materialism”, warnings to which I used to whole-heartedly add my “amen”. But then something happened! I actually had to start earning a living.

For awhile I was able to insulate myself from the bothersome reality of the marketplace by being a teacher. Teachers are not immune from economic realities, but it takes awhile to get to them as their level of pay is not immediately linked to performance in the way a salesperson’s is.

Well, I’m now a salesperson. And unless someone buys something...my children don’t eat.

I used to abhor the Christmas decorations going up after Thanksgiving (now it’s after Halloween). I scoffed at those “greedy” store owners trying to milk good God-fearing people like me out of money that I thought should otherwise be used for some "good purpose". (Whatever that is!)

God loves to teach me humility. So he made me a businessman and gave me a store where I have to sell stuff or my bills don’t get paid. (I started putting Christmas stuff out in September.)

I don’t scoff anymore. I thank God for every breathing person that walks into my store.

I only relate this little conversion episode to get at a bigger point: As we enter the “Christmas shopping season” I want to encourage pastors, preachers, teachers, and anyone who may publicly hold forth on the topic, to rethink their traditional “Christmas -
materialistic” speech.

Here’s an illustration. I recently heard a talk in which the speaker criticized a wealthy person’s purchase of a yacht. The purchase was said to be “materialistic”. Presumably the money spent on the yacht could have been used for “better” purposes.

I understood the point, but I wondered if the speaker understood just how many people got to eat that night - and many nights thereafter - because someone bought a yacht...and “someones” keep buying yachts.

And it’s not just the people who build the yachts; it’s also the people who make the stuff that they use to make the yachts. And it’s the guys who sell yachts, and who work at the marinas where they park yachts, and so on.

The sad part is that by putting so much emphasis on the perceived evils of the accumulation of "things" - the actual evils of personal selfishness and greed often escape unchallenged and are even emboldened by a certain pride as we whisper to ourselves: “I thank thee O God that I’m not like other (business) men.” (I inserted the word “business” in case you didn’t notice :>)

A very wealthy person I personally know was recently criticized by a fellow church member for his purchase of a private plane. The charge was typical: “that money could have been put to better use”. (Funny how people who don’t have money always know how to spend the money of people who do!)

My friend’s reply was “What did you buy today that gave somebody a job?”

We must remember that the Nativity story not only included the shepherds and their poor gifts, but the Magi and their very expensive ones.

Give somebody a job. Buy something.

PS. What makes the "materialistic" sermons even more hollow and vapid is that Christmas is the only time of the year that is dedicated to buying "things" FOR OTHERS. We go shopping with the express purpose of wanting please someone else. The season itself, be the shoppers good Christians or not, embodies and enforces the Christian ideal of selflessness. Let's go shopping. Merry Christmas.