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November 16, 2006
Quiverfull
There's an article in a recent issue of Newsweek about a small movement among some Protestants that is totally, absolutely against any kind of contraception or even fertility awareness and conscious birth spacing.
Mollie at Get Religion blogs on the piece and on another on the same subject in the Nation
Back in 1995, when the quiverfull.com Web site was founded, it had only 12 subscribers; today, the site, which is administered by the Bortels, has more than 2,600. Many followers have abandoned mainstream churches in favor of smaller nondenominational congregations of like-minded families. A cottage industry has sprung up in support of them. There are books like “A Full Quiver,” by Rick and Jan Hess; Web sites like blessedarrows.com, which raises funds for couples to have reverse vasectomies or reverse tubal ligations; and scholarly treatises like “The Natural Family: A Manifesto,” put out by the Rockford, Ill.,-based Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society and the Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank in Utah. “We’re still on the fringes,” says Jan Hess. “But it is much more embraced than it was before.”
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Comments
"There's an article in a recent issue of Newsweek about a small movement among some Protestants that is totally, absolutely against any kind of contraception or even fertility awareness and conscious birth spacing."
It's also worth noting that there is an ever-growing number of Catholics who would also fall into this camp (sometimes colloquially referred to as "providentialists").
While their staunch opposition to contraception is clearly admirable, the underlying notion of providentialism is that learning how a woman's body works is, per se, against God's will.
Such a notion is untenable.
Posted by: John Jansen at Nov 16, 2006 9:42:27 AM
Ah, it's nice to get updates on the unsupervised wing of Christianity. It's "movements" like this that make me thankful for hierarchies.
If knowledge is a form of power, and the men in this sect choose to remain unknowledgeable, think of how much power women wield. It'd be the equivalent of willing blackmail. While some feminists might argue to the contrary, I wouldn't be surprised if a certain power-hungry type of woman found this sect very, very attractive. - PH
Posted by: Philip Howard at Nov 16, 2006 9:55:09 AM
Any dissenters from the cult of NFP must be rigorously suppressed.
They're anti-science, anti-knowledge of a woman's body. Ignorant, maybe even misogynist. Their women are male-hating harpies who use their bodies for blackmail.
Good, good... Keep the criticism coming. If God wanted married couples to just have at it and shag without consulting charts and thermometers, He wouldn't have given us graph paper.
Posted by: Boko Fittleworth at Nov 16, 2006 10:30:03 AM
If God didn't want us to think about family planning, he wouldn't have given us minds. The "Providentialists" and "Quiverfull" crowd apparently want us to have clear minds, uncluttered by the problems of reason and logical thinking as applied to our families. Their theology is "sola insensatus." - PH
Posted by: Philip Howard at Nov 16, 2006 10:40:48 AM
"quiverfull", "blessedarrows.com" - you have to smile at that!
Posted by: AmericanPapist at Nov 16, 2006 10:47:10 AM
Yes, because anyone who has thought about the matter and come to a different conclusion than the NFP cultists clearly hasn't thought at all. Clearly is against thinking.
Great work on making these people out to be stupid. Now we need more on how they're evil.
Posted by: Boko Fittleworth at Nov 16, 2006 10:53:03 AM
Any father who wants to turn over his daughter's womb to a God fearing young man is mistaking flesh for Life. Nonetheless what is fertility awareness? I have heard the sermon that married people have a duty to live as virgins if they do not want children. Huh. Essentially fertility awareness to this group of people simply means how to have as many offspring as humanly possible, and they know the human reproductive system and its workings considerably better than Ian Wilmut or Evan Wolfson, it shows.
Posted by: n at Nov 16, 2006 11:09:33 AM
God bless them for their generosity and openness to life. While I wouldn't agree with their opposition to NFP, certainly their position is a lot more refreshing than those people who see children as an evil burden to be avoided at all costs. I recently saw a website of a woman who boasts about her abortion, refuses to have any more children and instead dotes on cats. What a sad thing.
Posted by: Sr Lorraine at Nov 16, 2006 11:11:52 AM
Talking to self in mirror: Do not get involved in a 100+ comment blog-post on Amy's blog today.
I'm staying out of this one, but it's difficult.
Posted by: Lily at Nov 16, 2006 11:33:02 AM
Talking to self in mirror: Do not get involved in a 100+ comment blog-post on Amy's blog today.
Ditto. :)
Posted by: John Henry at Nov 16, 2006 11:41:07 AM
I may not be the only one who is having trouble distinguishing the serious criticism from the sarcasm here. I have heard the argument advanced that it is possible to use NFP with contraceptive purpose, and that such use violates at least the spirit of Catholic teaching on reproduction. I'd prefer to believe that Catholic couples are not trying to avoid children as such, but are seeking God's will as to how they should exercise stewardship over their bodies: Protestants, too, even though they do not have the benefit of an authoritative teaching. As a matter of fact, the first talk against contraception (c. 1973) I ever heard was by a Lutheran couple; the Catholics in the audience were rather shocked to hear their testimony that they had come to the conclusion (before Humanae Vitae) that contraception was contrary to God's will and they should give it up. I know a number of large families, both Catholic and Protestant. One Protestant family I know has 11 children, now ranging from college freshman to newborn. Whether they are conscientiously opposed to NFP I don't know.
Posted by: Henry Dieterich at Nov 16, 2006 11:48:59 AM
To save a 100 comment screed, I will lay down some ground rules.
1) The desire to have as many children as God will grant you is not disordered, but it is the ideal expression of marital love.
2) NFP is not objectively evil.
3) NFP is not objectivley good.
4) Through the course of human events it may be necessary to suspend procreation. This may be due to health or financial reasons.
5) The prudent application of judgement in less than ideal circumstances is not sinful.
6) NFP is a licit application of judgement.
7) Abstinance outright is a licit application of judgement. It is the ideal, but not required.
Posted by: M.Z. Forrest at Nov 16, 2006 12:09:04 PM
Where are we going with the criticisms, folks? Seriously - if we are going to criticise someones theology, we need to point to both where it fails and how to correct it properly.
The Church teaches that even though NFP is acceptable, it is not a "Catholic condom" - Catholics must have a *positive* reason for resorting to NFP. Actual issues of health; true financial danger (as in 'we might not be able to feed and clothe us all', not 'we will only be able to go to Disneyland every *other* year'), or under persecution.
A fair number of theologians in communion with Rome think that in the absence of these positive reasons we Catholics should look a lot like the Quiverfull crowd.
Posted by: Deep Thought at Nov 16, 2006 12:35:55 PM
"To save a 100 comment screed, I will lay down some ground rules.
1) The desire to have as many children as God will grant you is not disordered, but it is the ideal expression of marital love.
2) NFP is not objectively evil.
3) NFP is not objectivley good..."
I'm trying to get my head around the idea that learning how a woman's body naturally works can be considered "not objectively good."
Posted by: John Jansen at Nov 16, 2006 12:38:34 PM
M.Z. Forrest, while I think I can agree with most of your ground rules, I perceive a distinction between abstinence deriving from the desire to renounce worldly distractions as a way of giving one's life more completely to God (in which case I find myself asking, "then why get married in the first place?"), and abstinence deriving from the plain desire not to have children, which strikes me as selfish, ungrateful, distrusting in God, unfaithful to the Church's view of marriage; in short, starkly sinful. NFP has been described as "a ladder out of the contraceptive mentality". The thing about a ladder is, you can travel either way on it.
Posted by: Romulus at Nov 16, 2006 12:41:24 PM
I don't understand their premise. Are they saying that every ovulation means "God wants me to have a baby *right now*"?
Is that what their position boils down to?
Posted by: Pes at Nov 16, 2006 12:47:33 PM
I'm trying to get my head around the idea that learning how a woman's body naturally works can be considered "not objectively good."
An objective good is one the brings us closer to heaven. In other languages, there are two words for good, one speaking to heavenly good and one speaking more in the sense of useful or beneficial. We are using 'good' in two different ways.
Romulus,
Abstinance of course can be used used for evil. In the perfect sense, abstinance is a form of mortification, which is one of the strongest forms of prayer. In fairness, Joseph and Mary never intended to have children when they wed. Marriage is not just ordered toward having children. Sex however is ordered toward having children.
Posted by: M.Z. Forrest at Nov 16, 2006 12:51:26 PM
"An objective good is one the brings us closer to heaven."
And does not learning how a woman's body naturally works allow a couple to more fully appreciate God's awesome creative power -- and, thereby, bring them closer to heaven?
Posted by: John Jansen at Nov 16, 2006 1:45:17 PM
reductio ad absurdum?
thelrd in TEXAS
Posted by: Larry Davis at Nov 16, 2006 1:47:19 PM
For many women ecological breastfeeding alone spaces babies perfectly. However, whenever this is not the case, I fail to see how it is good or God's will to have to put a young baby on formula due to a new pregnancy at a time when the previous baby still needs his mother in suvh obvious ways. Thus, I think that the 'financial reason, etc.' way of thinking forgets that the existing children may have needs that make nfp legitimate. This point often seems to be ignored.
Posted by: MariaM at Nov 16, 2006 1:56:19 PM
So, I forgot the point I meant to make. It seems that many of the quiverfull families not only do not practice any sort of fertility awareness, they also limit breastfeeding in order to have as many children as possible. So it is not simply a matter of not avoiding, but, rather, of trying hard to procreate at a pace which is not natural, literally.
Posted by: MariaM at Nov 16, 2006 2:05:04 PM
Sigh. Why do conversations about this always end up the same way?
The "quiverfull" sort point at the NFP people, and say, "Selfish!"
The NFP people point at the quiverfulls, and say, "Irresponsible!"
I'm an NFP person, myself. And yes, there are health reasons. I may never see my small family grow, and that's sad, sometimes.
But I've known lots of quiverfull families, and lots of them are quite wonderful, focused on their kids, loving, and generous.
I've known examples of selfishness among BOTH NFP and quiverfull families. And I've known of irresponsibility among both,too.
It can be selfish for a husband to insist that his wife, who is homeschooling her kids and who finds each pregnancy more draining than the last, be able to prepare for her eleventh child with as much joy as she prepared for the first. It can be equally selfish for a wife in good health with two children spaced five years apart to insist on another five-year break before she and her husband try for number three. However, and this is the whole point of NFP, no one but the couple and their confessor REALLY knows whether either couple is, in fact, being selfish at all! The woman expecting her eleventh may really be joyful and excited, just a little too tired to show it readily. And the woman who insists on the five year break may suffer from severe depression and be in therapy for it, and each pregnancy may make things worse. We are, quite simply, not in a position to judge the internal affairs of someone else's marriage.
For instance, one couple with six or seven children may decide that NFP is licit at this time, because otherwise the husband will have to take a promotion that requires him to travel 50 percent of the time. In their judgment, having dad at home is more important than having another child right this minute. (And please. Families that take these debates seriously aren't talking about having to drop Disneyland visits; most of them are already at the discount grocery and thrift store clothing level.) But another family having this same debate may decide that as long as the promotion/travel job is available, they should keep having children, and dad's absence is just one of the sacrifices they are being called to in order to have the family God wants them to have. Guess what? They're both right!
We need to find a way to be in charity with each other, whether we use NFP or don't. If the quiverfulls will quit questioning whether NFP is ever licit outside of some life-threatening medical condition, I bet the NFP families would stop insinuating that the quiverfulls lack responsibility or self-control.
Posted by: Anonthistime at Nov 16, 2006 2:20:04 PM
"We are, quite simply, not in a position to judge the internal affairs of someone else's marriage."
You're absolutely right. No argument here.
Posted by: John Jansen at Nov 16, 2006 2:24:47 PM
And does not learning how a woman's body naturally works allow a couple to more fully appreciate God's awesome creative power -- and, thereby, bring them closer to heaven?
In so much as NFP causes a couple to "appreciate God's awesome creative power" it is good. In other words NFP is good subject to a couple "appreciat[ing] God's awesome creative power." Therefore, NFP can be considered a subjective good. It is not however an objective good.
Posted by: M.Z. Forrest at Nov 16, 2006 2:37:11 PM
In fairness, Joseph and Mary never intended to have children when they wed.
Indeed, but that is a special case, not least because Joseph proceeded with the marriage only in obediance to a divine command.
Marriage is not just ordered toward having children. Sex however is ordered toward having children.
Agreed completely. Which is why I'm troubled by the thought that some may use NFP systematically with the intent of avoiding pregnancy. Though we can't look into the hearts of others, and must not presume to judge them, it's hard to deny that while NFP may have legitimate uses, its practice invites abuse (and in its abuse can give rise to scandal).
Posted by: Romulus at Nov 16, 2006 3:23:17 PM
