"Couples Who Use Natural Family Planning Almost Never Divorce"

Dr. Janet Smith always has a knack of putting across the Church's teaching on important life and reproductive issues in ways you'll never hear the mainstream media, or even some Church circles.

A professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, here's what she says in response to a poor piece by AFP news agency on the Church's teaching on contraception.

Noting that more than one out of three babies in the United States are born to a single mother, one out of four pregnancies are aborted and that more than one out of two marriages end in divorce, she says:

“If people were living by the Church's teaching on sexuality, those things wouldn't be happening, and those things are a path to misery."

“People born out of wedlock have a very hard life, as do their children. People who get divorced have a very hard life as do their children, and their friends and their family,” Smith asserted, adding that on the other hand, “people who don't get divorced and stay married and raise their children, generally have very good lives.”

“Couples who use natural family planning almost never divorce,” she pointed out. “The divorce rate at tops, we think is around 4%.”

In light of these facts,“who looks foolish?” she asked. “The Church for not changing a teaching that almost guarantees happiness or a culture that is pushing an agenda that almost guarantees misery?”

Also, “it is really, patently absurd for women to be putting chemicals in their body to correct a condition that is not a defect.

“Fertility is a perfectly healthy condition,” Smith emphasized.

For more on why contraception is against the natural moral law, this is a helpful article. (Interestingly, many believe the Anglican church began to decline after its decision in the 1930s to allow contraception.)

As always, the Church's teaching offers an unmatched anthropological vision, one of basic reason and common sense.