Greg Popcak and the Sibling Charting Thing
I guess it was about a month and a half ago I was at a birthday party when someone said “Hey, have you ever heard of Greg Popcak? I just read an article from Catholic Family News about him, and it’s not good. He said brothers should do their sisters NFP charts.” The excerpt from the article read:
The “Brother” Chart
Popcak also advocates that parents should spend quite a few years teaching their teens about Natural Family Planning (NFP) “in preparation for married life”.
In Beyond the Birds and the Bees, Popcak wrote, “Explain to your sons that as God is giving them the gift of their sexuality, He is asking them to spend the next several years learning how to use that gift properly. Part of that means that if he marries, he will be responsible for working with his wife to determine God’s will for their lives, including when to have children and how many children to have. These are decisions that need to be made every month in collaboration with his wife and with prayer. After he is married, part of his responsibility will be to help his wife do something called charting, which means that he will write down the different signs that tell how healthy his wife is and when they could have a baby. I am aware of some families where the brother may chart his sister’s temperatures for her, or even some cases where the mother shares her own NFP chart (minus the coitus record, of course) with the intent of acquainting the young men and women of the house with NFP. I also know some families who object to this idea on privacy or modesty grounds.”[6]
Ok, I personally find the idea of sibling charting icky. I am not comfortable with the idea of talking about my charts with my parents, or anyone else for that matter. I am extremely close to my three brothers, but, well, ohmygosh, the thought is just butt nasty. However, while I think the idea is uncomfortable, I do not see anything anti-Catholic here. Also, nowhere does it say “siblings” should chart each other, but that he knows families who do that and others who do not because they might think it’s gross (not “modest”).
I have a copy of Beyond the Birds and the Bees that I have yet to read, so I cannot really comment on the context anymore than what is written here. I do like what Greg has to say in Parenting With Grace and while I think some of the things quoted may be over the top, Greg is a therapist who treats families who I am sure may have been hurt by teenagers with a bad or immoral sense of sexuality. I don’t know, I kind of think he is being attacked for attempting to put Church teaching into practical use for families, and I personally see very few people who do that.
As for NFP itself, I am not the biggest “pro-NFP” person, I guess I am not as sexually “open” as I should be. I am not “anti” NFP either. I do not like the concept that everyone has to avoid children. I think there may be reasons to avoid, but as someone who wanted nothing but to be a Mom for as long as I can remember, it is hard when people get into your business about how many children you have, and tell you to stop having kids. Saying “well, I’m Catholic” to shut them up and get them out of your business doesn’t hold water because “well, you have NFP…” Ugh. Anywho there is a huge discussion going on at Catholic and Enjoying It! about the CFN article, NFP, ugly pictures of OL of Guadalupe and anything else you can imagine…
I plucked a few comments from the box that worded my sentiments better than I could ever:
Frankly, I find the whole neocon “joy of charting” business a bit rich. NFP is supposed to be used to delay or space children for serious reasons, like severe economic hardship or sickness. Unfortunately, the emphasis in pro-NFP literature on its effectiveness (“99% effective – better than s”) and ism (“like a new honeymoon every month” – at exactly the time when your wife is biologically least interested in ) really does make it sound like Catholic birth control. I really have no trouble with the Missionaries of Chrarity teaching NFP on the streets of Calcutta. But surely no one can argue that the majority of young Catholic couples in North America seriously need to delay having children.
Furthermore, God, in His wisdom, has already provided a form of NFP that doesn’t require charting: it’s called breastfeeding, which naturally curtails fertility until the newest child is weaned.
Mark Cameron | Email | 08.20.03 – 10:06 pm |
My wife and I have been using NFP since the day we married six years ago. I’ve said before on this blog that you can’t believe either side. It is neither immiserating or ineffective, as its opponents say, nor is it easy to do and a bringer of unambiguous and unending joy to a marriage. It’s difficult, and requires a lot of dying to self, but it’s the right thing to do, and if the Church decided tomorrow that artificial contraception were licit, we’d stick with this. We like the natural way.
Now, let me say this: I don’t feel that I’m in any position to tell another couple that they’re using NFP for the wrong reason. You can never tell what’s going on within a marriage. We knew this NFP couple who would have struck others as people who didn’t have a good reason to delay having another child. What those not close to them couldn’t ahve realized, though, is that the wife was struggling with depression, and putting up a brave face to the world while she was seeing a therapist and taking medication for her symptoms. They eventually did have another baby, after she got her depression under control. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if there were some NFP users in their circles who privately thought N. and her husband were using NFP for unjustified reasons.
Rod Dreher | Email | 08.20.03 – 10:26 pm | #