Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Contraception, Abortion, Love, and Natural Family Planning
I know that couples have to plan their family and for that there is natural family planning. The way to plan the family is natural family planning, not contraception. In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self. This turns the attention to self and so it destroys the gifts of love in him or her. In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other as happens in natural family planning, and not to self, as happens in contraception. Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows very easily.
I also know that there are great problems in the world - that many spouses do not love each other enough to practice natural family planning. We cannot solve all the problems in the world, but let us never bring in the worst problem of all, and that is to destroy love. And this is what happens when we tell people to practice contraception and abortion.
The poor are very great people. They can teach us so many beautiful things. Once one of them came to thank us for teaching her natural family planning and said: "You people who have practiced chastity, you are the best people to teach us natural family planning because it is nothing more than self-control out of love for each other." And what this poor person said is very true. These poor people maybe have nothing to eat, maybe they have not a home to live in, but they can still be great people when they are spiritually rich.
I also know that there are great problems in the world - that many spouses do not love each other enough to practice natural family planning. We cannot solve all the problems in the world, but let us never bring in the worst problem of all, and that is to destroy love. And this is what happens when we tell people to practice contraception and abortion.
The poor are very great people. They can teach us so many beautiful things. Once one of them came to thank us for teaching her natural family planning and said: "You people who have practiced chastity, you are the best people to teach us natural family planning because it is nothing more than self-control out of love for each other." And what this poor person said is very true. These poor people maybe have nothing to eat, maybe they have not a home to live in, but they can still be great people when they are spiritually rich.
This is in regards to Mother Teresa and what her sisters were doing to help couples with NFP. In the late 80s, my husband was with the Jesuit, Fr. John Harden. They were talking about NFP and Mother Teresa, wondering how her sisters taught NFP. Fr. Harden said, "Let's call her up." So Father phoned her. Mother Teresa told my husband that in some areas her nuns taught the temperature method and in other area the mucus method. I thought this might be of interest to your readers. Sheila
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful post! Thankyou
ReplyDeleteSheila,
ReplyDeleteThat is very interesting! Just recently I discovered that the Sisters of Charity taught NFP, but I wasn't aware of the details. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you, Jackie, for your kind words.
God bless you both! :-)