My Experiences of the Unpopular Catholic Truths of Sex, Birth Control, and Abortion: Part 2

I want to briefly revisit the topic of Sex outside of marriage and then continue onto birth control and abortion. Although there were several times for me that my sexual experiences were not motivated by a desire for love and closeness, there were times when they were.  One example is many of the times I was with my daughter’s father, at least in the begining. It is a good thing to desire intimacy, love, and a deep connection with someone. However, seeking to fulfill that desire in the wrong ways can bring about pain and more loneliness. In a Catholic Journey talk father Greg pointed out that some of our deepest and most intimate relationships with people have nothing to do with sex. Our relationships with our parents, our children, our best friends, and other important people in our lives can be very intimate and loving in such a different way. Father Matt had an excellent homily that I whish I could have recorded and shared with you all about why even an engaged couple should wait until marriage.  He had a very special communion cup of his up on the alter. He used the cup as a metaphor of our bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit, and even vessels of the body and blood when we receive Jesus at communion.  He used a can of Sprite as a metaphor for worldly desires making reference to Sprites ad slogan “Obey your thirst”.  You had to be there and hear it all to get the full effect but basically the point is, it is a terrible sacrilege to  pour Sprite in a communion cup (he didn’t do it by the way), and it is in the same way a sacrilege to defile our bodies by having sex outside of marriage. 

It may at times feel like sex is bringing you closer to someone you love, or think you love, but if you are not married that cheapens it. It should be something that is an expression of unity with that person on a spiritual level not only the physical level.  It can be degrading and painful to share yourself with someone in that way who does not have that understanding or respect of you, of themselves, and of the relationship.  Pornography also degrades and cheapens the act of sex in such a devastating way.  When someone is looking at porn they are viewing the body as a sexual object, if they have that view and aroused by that, then they turn to you… it is not any different than using their partners body as a masturbation tool.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to have the experience of love and connection to someone in an extremely special and unique way? To be with someone who has such a respect for you and themselves as God’s creation that they waited until you were married to them? Someone who’s heart was focused only on you and on God when having that intimate time together?  It could be such a beautiful thing if it is kept pure. When we are having sex in sin we must leave God out of it, and I have learned by experience leaving God out of anything is a really bad idea.

Using birth control may not seem on the surface like it takes away from the intimacy of that sexual union. It does. There is a physical and emotional difference when you have sex with openness to life. I can’t explain it but I know that I did experience negative feelings toward my daughter’s father when I had to remember to take a birth control pill every day. My body also didn’t like birth control, my blood pressure was up too high because of it and my doctor began to recommend other birth control alternatives.     I decided an IUD would be ideal for me because I would not have to think about it at all, it would be in place for up to 5 years and I could just put it out of my mind. Or so I thought.  I only had the IUD in place a few months when I had very painful cramping followed by the more painful experience of my body rejecting the IUD. It came out of place in a painful way and I had to go to the doctor to have it removed the rest of the way.  So much for that idea! I have never had a good experience with any form of birth control. I guess you can say it was effective at least since I only have one child and I did not use birth control when I got pregnant with her.  I originally wanted more children but the problems I had with my daughter’s father changed my mind, I was not open to life when I was with him. I did not want to have any more children with him and it was mutual. That should have been telling me I should not be with him at all, but I was not willing to see it in that way yet. 

My mother once told me she was using two forms of birth control when she got pregnant with me. She was in nursing school and several people told her that having a baby while in school would ruin her future. They told her she wouldn’t graduate, she should have an abortion. She was also told by her family to have an abortion when she was a teen and pregnant with my older sister. Lucky for my sister and I my mom did not listen.  When my mom told me she had been using two forms of birth control I thought about that a lot, I also thought about how there are couples who try for years to have a baby and they can’t.  I was a teen when I heard of this and my thought even then was that God is the one in control of the creation of life. Our “control” is limited by what God allows or doesn’t allow, by God’s divine providence.  I let go of that idea in later years before recently remembering and embracing it. We can use natural family planning, it's not difficult to do, you just need to keep track of your cycles and learn what the fertile time of your cycle is. That is natural, it is embracing God's design and it is still having an openess to life.

I want to conclude with a few links to some inspired advice on good authority.  (“On good authority” is a phrase that was on my mind this morning, anything that comes from the church we can say we have this information on “Good authority”.)

Father John Corapi on dating:  http://youtu.be/NfLyEAaVO6A

Father Matt’s blog, scroll down to 2/08/2011 “advice before dating”: http://www.catholicstreet.com/my-blog.html

Father Greg “Shining a light on Catholic Sexuality”: http://youtu.be/XnvIATCGAyM