Question:

I don’t understand how Naprotechnology is any different than using birth control. If you have a hormone deficiency, aren’t you just going to take hormones anyway to supplement the issue? So why is Napro any better than the Pill?

First it's important to understand differences between the Creighton Model FertilityCare System and NaProTechnology.

The Creighton Model FertilityCare System is based on a woman's ability to recognize her body's natural signs of her fertility (specifically, the presence and characteristics of cervical mucus that are observed when wiping), and then using those signs to make decisions with her spouse about when to engage in the marital embrace with respect to their desire for children. It is also a beneficial health monitoring tool, as there are many signs that can be present in the charting that could be indicators of underlying health problems.

NaProTechnology was developed as a "spin-off", if you will, of the Creighton Model. NaProTechnology is a certification that healthcare providers can obtain that allows them to review a woman's Creighton chart, identify potential problems, then pursue evaluation and treatment that are COOPERATIVE with the woman's natural fertility when present.

The primary mechanism by which many hormonal contraceptives, such as "the pill," function is to effectively shut down the reproductive system by flooding the body with artificial hormones that suppress ovulation. Depending on the product used, women may have monthly withdrawal bleeds from the artificial progestin, but these are not "true" menstrual bleeds.

The primary mechanism by which many hormonal contraceptives, such as "the pill," function is to effectively shut down the reproductive system by flooding the body with artificial hormones that suppress ovulation.

There have been many studies to date that have shown the side effects and potential risks of artificial hormones, which brings me to two additional points. One is that, in NaProTechnology, we utilize "bioidentical hormone therapy" - treating conditions with hormones that are chemically, functionally, and structurally identical to that which is made by the woman's body. Additionally, we utilize these hormones ONLY in women who are felt to be deficient in that particular hormone, and ONLY in the part of the woman's cycle where the hormone is needed.

For example, one can divide a woman's menstrual cycle into two parts: preovulatory and postovulatory. In the preovulatory phase, estrogens are the dominant hormone in preparing the cervix, uterine lining, and ovary for ovulation. In the postovulatory phase, estrogens are still present, but progesterone becomes the dominant hormone, stabilizing the uterine lining in preparation for potential implantation of a new human life. If we give progesterone before ovulation occurs, this is likely to STOP ovulation from occurring - this is the principle behind emergency contraceptives.

Another important point to make is that hormonal contraceptives are often offered as "treatment" for conditions such as ovarian cysts and endometriosis, but the medication does nothing to stop the progression of endometriosis and only provides symptomatic relief. Obviously this can be valuable in certain situations, as endometriosis can be quite debilitating for some women. With ovarian cysts, there are often underlying hormone abnormalities which are contributing to the development of the cysts which can be effectively managed with NaProTechnology without shutting down the reproductive system.

I hope this is a helpful clarification, and I'd be happy to provide further help if needed!

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that life as a Catholic woman does not unfold in a vacuum, laboratory, or ivory tower. Being a woman rarely looks like the depictions of the Blessed Mother in Renaissance paintings, or seldom feels the same as the emotions of Bernini’s “St. Teresa in Ecstasy”.

Being a woman rarely looks like the depictions of the Blessed Mother in Renaissance paintings

Instead, being a woman, Catholic or not, is often dirtier, more often lived without clean lines and easy questions. At times, it is uncertainty and confusion, and in the darkest times, despair. It can look like a slumped over, exhausted body. It might sound like tears and sighs, and the question, “Why?”. My experience as a Catholic woman has taught me this, that over the course of my life, salvation worked out in the day to day is not always beautiful, ideal, or clean. More often, this journey with myself, my neighbors, and God leaves me with bruises, cuts, and scars.

As a survivor of sexual assault, I have learned what it means to continue walking in and through my trauma, to struggle to reconcile my experience of my own reality with the ideals and expectations of my Catholic faith. The event of my sexual assault left me with intense anxiety, trouble fully trusting others, tendency towards isolation, and many other psychological wounds. Like many other women who have experienced trauma, I was profoundly changed after the assault, and I have been struggling to repair the ruptured meaning of who I thought I was since the day it occurred. Though pain, loneliness, and anger have sometimes estranged me from the knowledge of my own identity as God’s beloved daughter, I have kept walking, even when my trauma made it difficult for me to see the path. However, the light illuminating the darkness has been my own strength, first gifted to me by God, and increased over time through my own volition, grace, and the healing of others.This strength that played a role in shaping and sharpening by nature of my trauma is resilience. Because of it, I have been able to make the intentional choice to keep trying, living, and breathing. Through resilience, I have grown into to my new identity of “survivor”.

I believe that I have always had the capacity for strength and survival, even before my trauma; however, the virtue of resilience is a part of myself that I have the ability to nurture, cultivate, and form most intentionally after the assault. Like strength, resilience involves the possession of power and agency, but also includes the ability to endure even in immense pain and challenge. Resilience connotes not just an ability to survive a single instance of suffering, but the capacity to endure of repeated discomfort or pain in different forms. Cultivating this sense of power and agency that can withstand both daily anxiety and life-altering events has involved the intentional effort of all the parts of myself: the spiritual, intellectual, psychological, and physical.

The virtue of resilience is a part of myself that I have the ability to nurture, cultivate, and form most intentionally after the assault.

The formation of my resilience has taken quite a bit of time, and has involved a variety of things like therapy, trusting relationships with mentor figures, supportive friends, challenging myself in healthy ways, immersing myself in my studies, strengthening my physical body, writing from my authentic voice, knowing when to rest, honest prayer, and striving for holiness in the context of my individual life. For me, cultivating resilience has looked like starting therapy, even though I didn’t want to, but also freedom to remain angry at God for months. It has felt like increasing the weight of my deadlift in the gym, but also allowing myself time to grieve. It sounds like the ability to have compassion for myself, restoration in trust in others, and a breakthrough in a new, more honest and authentic relationship with God.

If the effects of trauma have wreaked havoc in all areas of my life, producing cracks and fragmentations, resilience has not only filled in the rifts in my spiritual, physical, and mental life, but has also moved me to be a unified and integrated soul. Resilience nurtured over time has not only given me strength to live out my life even as a survivor of sexual assault, but also continue to live through the new transitions of my young adult life, broken relationships, failure, disappointment, disillusionment, and confusion. In trauma, depression, and anxiety, cultivating resilience has allowed me and so many other Catholic women to continue on in what Dorothy Day called “the business of living”:

“...What saves us from despair is a phrase we read in The Life of Jesus of Daniel-Rops, ‘getting on with the business of living.’ What did the women do after the Crucifixion? The men were in the upper room mourning and praying, and the women, by their very nature, ‘had to go on with the business of living.’ They prepared the spices, purchased the linen clothes for the burial, kept the Sabbath, and hastened to the tomb on Sunday morning. Their very work gave them insights as to time, and doubtless there was a hint of the peace and joy of the Resurrection to temper their grief...Because no matter what catastrophe has occurred or hangs overhead, she has to go on with the business of living.”- Dorothy Day, “The Business of Living, ” in Selected Writings (p. 103 American Catholic Gender Identities)

This “business of living” - our daily life, the routines we know so well, the familiar and mundane, and also the disruptions and interruptions in our plans, the unexpected joys and sorrows, the extraordinary hidden in the ordinary - is where our salvation is worked out. The ability to go on with our lives, to have hope that our life can continue despite a major life altering event, depends on our willingness and capability to cultivate resilience. Resilience not only allows us to continue walking on the path of daily life, but also has the potentiality to transform and redeem the catastrophes of our lives into things that move us towards greater life and love through our openness to this virtue’s formation. In the many hours of therapy that I have participated in, I always remember this wisdom, “Recovery and healing are not always linear, but are always forward moving”; resilience is what allows for the movement to take place, the trust to keep living to resurface, and the hope that God is still there to return.

The ability to go on with our lives, to have hope that our life can continue despite a major life altering event, depends on our willingness and capability to cultivate resilience.

Out of my experience, I have found that as a Catholic woman and survivor of sexual assault, I have a capacity for inner strength that allows me to endure great suffering and the uncertainty of daily life. Although resilience is only one facet of my identity, it is one of the parts of myself that I am most proud of, as it is something that was not obtained easily. Resilience is a part of my identity that has arisen from my particular experiences in life, been cultivated to allow me to be drawn further and further on the path of holiness, and fostered the restoration of right relationship between myself, God, and others. This virtue resonates with me, as it isn’t an ascribed, generic, impossible ideal that I have to squeeze my identity into; rather, resilience is natural-fitting garment that I myself have partaken in weaving, dyeing, and wearing.

The Experience of Women

There is an immense importance in noticing and naming virtues like resilience that arise from my experience as a woman- firstly, for their inherent value, and secondly, for their necessary use in the conversation surrounding what it means to be a Catholic woman, especially at this precise moment in our culture. In my work as a PhD student studying catechesis, I have had the opportunity to study the content and methods that comprise the Church’s ministry of handing on the faith to all Catholics throughout the life cycle. Experience - the events, emotions, thoughts, and worldview of a particular person in their unique lived reality -is a possible means of coming to know the faith. In addition to divine revelation, experience is also itself a form of revelation- a way in which all human beings can come to know deep truths about themselves, the Church, and the Trinitarian God. In this way, resilience is a virtue that comes forth from my experience, and has revealed deep truths to me about myself as God’s beloved child and about God in his steadfast love. The process of naming this virtue out of the revelation of my experience and cultivating it has led me more deeply to the sources of healing that the Church has to offer, namely, the Eucharist. Arising from my lived reality as a sexual assault survivor and Catholic woman, resilience has been a way in which God has revealed his presence to me in the midst of my pain and suffering.

While the ideals of Catholic womanhood that come to us through ascribed, traditional narratives might be worth considering in the conversation of what it means to be a Catholic woman, I believe that the virtues that arise from individual experience are equally important. As Catholics, we are called universally to holiness, but the way in which this is carried out in our lives differs according to who we are individually. The particular, unique parts of us are the way by which we personally and saliently come to know, love, and serve God and others. Our experiences are loci of salvation, meaning that in our small daily lives, the grandeur of salvation history unfolds through our individual participation.

Our experience, and the experience of so many others in throughout the Church’s tradition, plays a role in the entire Church’s life.

Our experience, and the experience of so many others in throughout the Church’s tradition, plays a role in the entire Church’s life. This is recognizable in the communion of saints- from Dorothy Day’s “long loneliness” to St. Therese’s experience of God’s love as a tender Father, recorded in The Story of a Soul, to the Blessed Mother’s being “greatly troubled” during the Annunciation - the Church grows and matures in her understanding and ministry to women because of the naming of their experiences. In my individual life as a survivor, I know that, like my sister saints, I too have a responsibility to the Tradition to name my experience; resilience may not be a word common to the Catholic Tradition’s understanding of what it means to live as Catholic woman, but through my individual life and story, someday, it could be. In this way, resilience has formed not only my identity, but informs the identity and experience of women in the entire Church. This process -the fearless, unapologetic being of myself and ourselves as women- witnesses to the incredible feminine power to give life, not just biologically, but emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically. By being ourselves, having the courage to name the most traumatic events in our lives, and continuing to walk bravely as women of faith, we breathe new life into the Church for women everywhere and in every generation.

From Dorothy Day’s “long loneliness” to St. Therese’s experience of God’s love as a tender Father, recorded in The Story of a Soul, to the Blessed Mother’s being “greatly troubled” during the Annunciation - the Church grows and matures in her understanding and ministry to women because of the naming of their experiences.

I have come to believe that resilience is not only part of my story of healing and survival, but is also essential to my working out of my own salvation in my own individual call to holiness. While my trauma was not of God and never something itself to which I was called, my process of recovery is a part of my vocation, a component of the self-gift that I can give to other women and the world. My resilience is something I am proud to have partaken in cultivating myself, out of my individual, life-altering experience; more importantly, resilience helps me articulate what it means to be myself, a Catholic woman in a particular context, with a particular reality. In naming my experience and the virtue that has arisen from it, I hope to add my story to the canon of possibilities of what feminine striving for holiness might look like, and challenge other women to do the same.

When I was a freshman in college, I had my life planned out: I would graduate from Notre Dame with a degree in theology and English, a teaching contract, and an engagement ring. My fiance and I would be married by the time I was 23, and I would have three to five babies by the time I was 30. In my mind at the time, early marriage and motherhood was the only way I would be truly happy; in fact, I saw teaching as a placeholder until I became a full-time stay-at-home-mom.

Fast forward to today: I’m 34 (not 23) and my eight month old firstborn son is napping as I write this. My husband Kristian and I were married only a year and a half ago, in December 2016, and I spent nine years of my adult life teaching high school theology (and loving it). It turns out that the Lord’s plan for my life was blessedly different from 18-year-old Christina’s plan.

And even though I’m thankful for my single years, which spanned over a decade of my adult life, I wish I had embraced one particular truth way sooner than I did: the Christian vocation to love doesn’t begin when you get married. It begins now.

I wish I had embraced one particular truth way sooner than I did: the Christian vocation to love doesn’t begin when you get married. It begins now.

As a twenty-something, I had an unspoken belief that I couldn’t really begin my life or live my vocation until I got married. I call this the “waiting room” or ‘limbo” mentality regarding single life: because I wasn’t in my official Vocation yet, I was in a perpetual holding pattern. Not only is this false, it did damage to me as a person (body, mind, and soul) and impeded my preparation for marriage. Practically, this meant that I postponed or even avoided doing the following for some portion of my single years:

Putting down roots in my community.

Cleaning my room.

Investing/saving money.

Learning how to cook.

Cleaning my bathroom.

Taking care of my car.

Learn about my fertility.

Traveling to certain places I had arbitrarily decided would only be enjoyable with a husband (like the Holy Land).

But here’s the thing: I wish I had started doing all of these things in my early twenties. Instead, it took me until I was 30--only two years before I met my now husband-- to figure out that the Lord was calling me to live an integrated, abundant life now. I’m a bit embarrassed when I look back at how poorly I took care of myself, and my inner feminist cringes to think that I was waiting for a man to do some of those things for me (although I still have zero qualms about letting my husband handle *all* car-related issues).

Why was I waiting for marriage to live my call to love fully? Because I had made Vocation into something it is not: an idol, a “missing puzzle piece” that would fill up all of the empty spaces of my life and satisfy me completely. But here’s what I learned the hard way: Vocation isn’t a piece to your life puzzle, and it certainly won’t make you perfectly happy all the time; your Vocation is a path to holiness, a path to heaven, which means that it will entail not only the joys of the Resurrection, but the suffering of the Cross.

I had made Vocation into something it is not: an idol, a “missing puzzle piece” that would fill up all of the empty spaces of my life and satisfy me completely.

Regardless of how close you are to engagement or entering the novitiate, your vocation to love began at baptism and continues into eternity. Single women have a unique opportunity to love in ways that women who have entered into the married or consecrated state simply do not. What does that look like in your life? I can’t give you specifics because I don’t know you, but if you’re anything like me, it means that you can incorporate some (or all) of the following in your life:

A solid block of time for conversation with the Lord each day (30 min-1 hour is definitely within the realm of possibility for most single people).

Weekly adoration (if you’re a night owl, consider taking one of those graveyard shift hours).

Daily Mass.

A yearly retreat.

Daily spiritual reading.

Volunteering time to your parish, a social ministry in your city, a community garden, etc.

Bringing a meal to a postpartum mama that you know or to a family going through a tough time.

Sending snail mail to friends, just because.

Go to therapy regularly.

Opening your home to others for dinner, games, or just to chat.

As a new mom who at eight months postpartum is still finding her prayer rhythm, I am thankful to my single self for spending all of those hours in adoration and daily Mass. When we became pregnant with our son, I was thankful that I began taking my health seriously and going to a NaPro physician before I started dating my husband. When I’m exhausted from a night of frequent nursing and feeling bereft that I don’t have the time or energy to volunteer at my parish during this season of life, I’m thankful that I gave so freely of my time and talent as a catechist when I was single. When my husband and I have tough conversations that at one point in my life would have triggered an anxiety attack, I’m incredibly grateful for the years I spent doing my personal work in therapy before we met. And when a girlfriend offers to visit me at home because taking my squirmy son to a restaurant or coffee shop right now is not enjoyable, I’m thankful for all of the times I was able to help my mom friends before I got married.

Single, married, or consecrated, we all share the vocation to love. What that looks like on a practical level changes based on your state in life, but no Christian is called to more or less than the gift of herself. How will you live that call today?

In April of this year, Attorney General Jeff Sessions enacted a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy along our country’s southwest border that directed immigration officials to detain anyone entering the United States illegally, and charge all adults with federal crimes.

This opened the door to the Family Separation Policy, where in detaining adults crossing the border, the US government also forcibly separated any children traveling with their parents, and placed them in various places ranging from Customs and Borders Prevention Facilities in open air cages, to children immigration shelters or tent camps… the exact policy and process for handling these children is unclear. What is clear is that the parents are not given any information about where their child is being taken, or any say over what is happening to their child as they await prosecution and serve the time after sentencing.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has no transparent process to reunite the families.

After parents are released, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has no transparent process to reunite the families, or indeed any indication they are keeping track of where the children go. In the 5 weeks that this policy was in place over 2,000 children were removed from their parents and forced into this ‘system’. Trump finally directed a statement to end the family separation policy on June 20th, amidst cries of outrage from US citizens and statements of disapproval from other world leaders, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

No matter what your stance on illegal immigration is, this is a gross abuse of power and a direct violation of children’s rights and international law. The UN has already condemned such action from the United States. The President of the American Academy of Pediatrics described these events as “government sanctioned child abuse”. Seperating children from their families is highly traumatic for both the parents and the children, and can very likely lead to a lifetime of psychological trauma to overcome. This policy is reminiscent of the Japanese Internment camps and Holocaust concentration camps of WWII - detaining and abusing people because of their nationality/ethnic background. We are placing vulnerable people who are put into US custody in less than ideal conditions, without support, resources or advocates. To those  arguing that people seeking asylum are ‘committing a crime and deserve to be punished’ - I would like to challenge you to take a more empathetic view of our fellow human beings who are being taken advantage of, detained, and abused.

We as catholics are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. Nowhere does God dictate where the ‘neighborhood’ ends. Indeed, we learn in the story of The Good Samaritan how we are called to help everyone, no matter how different from ourselves they are. Our call to love transcends political, geographical, ethnic and cultural boundaries. These people are just as loved by God as you - and as your mother, your brothers, your friends, and your community. In our call to be Christians, we are called to love them as God loves them - and that means protecting them from having their humanity threatened - protecting them from situations like these.

Our call to love transcends political, geographical, ethnic and cultural boundaries.

A second calling of Catholicism is the protection of human dignity. While many Catholics readily apply this principle to working to outlaw abortion, we must remember that defending human dignity is a call to protect ALL human  life, and fight against ALL violations made against it. We are called to fight just as hard for the children who are dragged from their parents and placed in uncertain living conditions, with no clear process to be reunited with their families, as we are to defend the right to life for those in the womb.

The USCCB (US Conference of Catholic Bishops) has spoken out against the Trump administration and this new policy for exactly these reasons. Bishops across the country have written about their outrage for the new policy, denouncing it as “a grave sin, immoral (and) evil”. An official statement was made by Bishop Jose Vasquez, Chairman for USCCB’s Committee on Migration, calling for the end of the policy on June 1st, saying that children are a gift from God, not a tool of deterrence, and that family unity was a cornerstone of Catholicism. Other Catholic organizations and movements, such as The New Pro-Life Movement, have joined in speaking against the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Pope Francis released a statement condemning these policies as well. To learn more about Catholic social justice teaching relating to immigration, read this statement from USCCB here.

While the President has officially called for an end to this policy, the call to halt separation of families is perhaps even more insidious than the call to begin. Without a clear policy on how to reunite families, or any documentation linking the detained children to their parents, the damage done in 6 weeks will take many many months to correct… and that's only if the public remains vigilant to this gross abuse of human dignity. If we allow this issue to die and be swept under the publicity rug, if we do not continue to hold Trump and his administration responsible and accountable to fix this travesty - these children could very easily remain where they are kept for years, or worse - disappear in a cloud of inept government handling.

If we allow this issue to die and be swept under the publicity rug... these children could very easily remain where they are kept for years, or worse - disappear in a cloud of inept government handling.

As Catholics we must advocate on behalf of these vulnerable people , our brothers and sisters in Christ. People that our country has proven to not respect nearly as much as we should respect human life. This crisis is not over simply because Trump issued a statement claiming he ‘fixed it’. Even IF these children are reunited with their parents, families are still being detained, innocent children are still being held in jail with their parents as they await prosecution, there is still no protection for vulnerable peoples seeking asylum from unsafe conditions in their native country, and we are still living in a country that is divided on how we should treat people who are not as privileged - as LUCKY - as american citizens are.

Consider the fact that, those of us who were born into American citizenship received these rights not through hard work, determination, or some sort of intrinsic right - we were randomly lucky to be born in a wealthy first world that has all the opportunities that we have been offered. We believe that “to whom much is given, much is expected.” (Luke 12:48) It is our responsibility as Catholics to help those who were not so fortunate, and ensure that the human dignity of EVERY PERSON, born and unborn, is upheld and respected, and to protect those who are vulnerable from harmful government action.

This fight is not over, and we must not be tempted into thinking that it is. It’s our duty to care for our vulnerable neighbors, and make sure to not let the clean-up of this executive order be swept under the rug.

So what can you do?

Continue to pray for these immigrants, the mothers and fathers and children, especially those seeking asylum from life-threatening conditions.

Call your representatives to let them know you are still aware that this is an ongoing issue that needs to be addressed.

Keep updated, keep informed, and educate others on the facts of what is going on - don’t let others obscure the reality of the situation.

Finally, and most importantly, do not support zero-tolerance policies that open the gate for acts like this one to come to fruition.

Love thy neighbor, Jesus tells us. Now it’s time for us to act.

Please read at your own discretion as this does include some details around sex within marriage.

Picture this: it’s your wedding night (ok, it’s actually a month after your wedding night because you’re using NFP and your cycle got super messed up from all the wedding stress). After all the anticipation, all the (im)patience, all the excitement, you finally get to have sex with your husband. And it doesn’t work. Like physically, your bodies aren’t letting it happen. You take a break and do some mood-killing research to find out if you licitly can use lube, literally praying that you can find good advice from Catholics without stumbling onto something pornographic.

It’s the next night. With your new knowledge that yes, you can use lube, you try again. And it is “meh.” You try to reassure yourself that everyone’s first time isn’t great, and hope that it will get better.

But you keep trying and it doesn’t get better. In fact, it’s often painful. You feel let down because you’re not enjoying something that people talk about like it’s this magical experience. You feel guilty for resenting your husband a little because he seems to be the only one getting anything out of it. You question how intoxicated strangers can have sex so easily while you and your sober husband are struggling to make it work. You start praying (more like begging God), that you can at least feel emotionally closer to your spouse.

You question how intoxicated strangers can have sex so easily while you and your sober husband are struggling to make it work.

Finally, sex gets enjoyable until you notice a disturbing trend. Every time you have sex a few days before your period, you’re getting violently sick to your stomach. Again, you turn to Google carefully crafting your search terms to find something that won’t scar you for life. The good news is that what you’re experiencing isn’t all that weird. The bad news is the only advice offered is to use condoms.

Oh, and on top of all of this, your phase 2 is long and you’re still TTA (trying to avoid).

And through this frustration, you do figure out ways to better communicate with your husband. You find ways to strategically word Google searches to answer those questions. You re-develop your understanding of chastity. You start to figure out how to make sex mutually enjoyable. But in the back of your mind, you can’t help but wonder if you’re missing something.

And ladies, I think we are missing something: honest conversations about sex.

I think we are missing something: honest conversations about sex.

I get it: our culture bombards us with sexual imagery, and the Church counters by promoting chastity. But in our fight for purity, we hide too much. We don’t give advice which either leaves women confused or forces them to trudge through internet filth to try and find answers to their probably very common questions. Though talking about sex should have limitations, protect the chastity of others, and respect the privacy of the couple, it shouldn’t be a completely taboo topic.

So what can we do to help transform the conversation about sex?

First, don’t be afraid to talk to your spouse about sex. Be honest about what makes you comfortable and uncomfortable. Admit when you feel like there is too much pressure. And be willing to laugh. Simcha Fisher says “if you can't laugh about sex, then you're doing it wrong...for the standard issue, mildly neurotic, moderately messed up, original sin-damaged, salvation-seeking, temptation-fighting, humility-seeking, minimally humorous human being, laughing about sex is the sign of good emotional and spiritual health.”

Second, talk to your partner about boundaries for conversations with others. Sex is between you, him, and God, and that relationship is key. Use your best judgment, but the best idea is to first talk to your spouse. Maybe your husband is ok with you talking to your bestie about how you’re struggling to get aroused, but he probably doesn’t want you crowdsourcing about his own issues.

Sex is between you, him, and God, and that relationship is key.

Third, use prudence for your state of life or the state of life of the person asking you for advice. While engaged couples should have access to information about sex, there are likely certain topics that aren’t appropriate prior to marriage. Our conversations shouldn’t lead someone else to experience lust. So I’m not saying you need to be handing out a step-by-step guide for how to have enjoyable intercourse. I’m saying it is possible to talk about sex without coming off like Cosmo, and we need to maintain the reverence this topic deserves.

Fourth, learn to be comfortable talking about sex. I don’t mean learn to be crass, I mean learn the biology and don’t be afraid of it - God designed it after all. Despite our very-sexualized society, we get really weirded out by the words “vagina” or “penis.” And if you really want to make people uncomfortable, bring up “cervical mucus.” While these aren’t great lunchtime chats, being able to talk about sex in a more technical manner will help you be more comfortable seeking advice if you need it. At the very least, you should be able to talk to your doctor about it.

Fifth, and finally, don’t be afraid to seek out information. There are some good books out there like The Good News about Sex and Marriage and Holy Sex. Find a trusted Catholic friend who will give you non-problematic advice.  If there seems to be a medical hinderance, talk to your doctor.

♦♦♦

Early in my marriage, a friend commented that I was talking about sex more, but I was very technical about it. It didn’t process with me much then because all of my conversations about sex were about timing due to NFP, nothing else.

I was convinced that it was entirely inappropriate to mention the other struggles. My husband and I were convinced we were enormous weirdos who were the only people on earth who couldn't figure out sex.

I was convinced that it was entirely inappropriate to mention the other struggles.

Fast-forward to the present where things have changed dramatically and are so much better.

I am fortunate to have a supportive husband who is a faithful Catholic. By talking about our struggles, laughing at the challenges, and openly talking about what God intended for sex, things have gotten a lot better.

Yes, sometimes things get awkward or sex is just “meh,” but because we’re communicating, we’re able to make adjustments, laugh it off, and not feel like there’s something wrong with us because every sexual encounter doesn’t cause fireworks.

My husband and I were talking to another married couple. My husband revealed that he had talked to my friend’s husband earlier in the day about his own struggles with sex earlier in our marriage. What could have been an incredibly awkward moment instead turned into an opportunity (ok, so it was still kind of awkward) to give the advice I needed all those years ago: use lube, don’t put too much pressure on yourselves, and most importantly, you aren’t you aren’t a freak of nature if sex doesn’t always come naturally at first.

This author would like to remain anonymous.

As a theology student, one of the most common issues I hear raised in feminist theology is the apparent preference in Christianity for male metaphors to describe God. And, to be honest, I never used to understand what the big deal was. Why can’t we just call God “Father”?

But, deep down, it made me uneasy. When I heard others propose that we should address God as “she” and “Mother”—after all, God is transcendent, right?—I wanted to disagree but their arguments rocked something inside me. I became uncomfortable and anxious over even passages directly from scripture that compared God to a mother.

Was there something about my womanhood that made the image of God in me lesser than a man’s?

After finally reading a fairly convincing account of why we should use female pronouns, I couldn’t let the uneasiness remain any longer. I needed answers. If men and women are made in the image of God, then why wasn’t femininity a suitable metaphor, too? Was there something about my womanhood that made the image of God in me lesser than a man’s?

In Search of Transcendence

The discrepancy seemed hard to argue with, and, as other theologians pointed out, didn’t the preference for male pronouns violate God’s transcendence? If a woman is not an appropriate metaphor for God, then surely she is inferior in some way to men, or her ability to bear the image of God lesser, right? But I knew that scripture whole-heartedly disagreed with this. Despite the patriarchal culture in which it was written, the Old Testament doesn’t hesitate to employ feminine and maternal metaphors for God:

“I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, and will tear open the covering of their heart.” (Hosea 13:8)

“As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.” (Isaiah 66:13)

“As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God.” (Psalm 123:2)

The Catechism tells us that God is neither male nor female, but this only made the selection of male metaphors seem arbitrary.

And then I had a lightbulb moment.

Why Do We Call God ‘Father’?

I had been focusing on the fact that both men and women are made in the image of God, but that’s not why we call God our Father! We call God “Father” not because men are made in the image of God, but rather because that is the revelation given to us in Christ.

We call God “Father” not because men are made in the image of God, but rather because that is the revelation given to us in Christ.

The belief in the image of God in humanity begins in the Hebrew scriptures (not in Christianity), but the people of the Old Covenant did not address God as their “Father” because this was not the revelation given to them. When Moses (who, according to scripture, spoke to God ‘face to face, as one speaks to a friend’) asked to hear God’s name, he is given “I am”. This means that even the great fathers of the Old Testament were not permitted to address God as Abba, and that is precisely what marks Jesus’ teaching as so revolutionary.

Furthermore, Jesus is the only person with the authority to address God as Father and to reveal Him in such a way: Jesus is a Son of God by nature, who invites us to be sons and daughters by adoption. This is why our liturgy introduces the Our Father by exclaiming, “We dare to say…” The Catechism puts it this way:

“We can invoke God as ‘Father’ because he is revealed to us by his Son become man and because his Spirit makes him known to us. The personal relation of the Son to the Father is something that man cannot conceive of nor the angelic powers even dimly see: and yet, the Spirit of the Son grants a participation in that very relation to us who believe that Jesus is the Christ and that we are born of God.” (CCC 2780, emphasis in original).

Though masculine and feminine metaphors (e.g. “God cares for us like a mother”) are equally true, it’s inappropriate to address God as “She” or “Mother” because we have no authority to alter the divine revelation of Christ.

The Eternal Feminine

Okay, so maybe we can’t call God “Mother”, but I still wanted to know that femininity had a place in eternity. It seemed that man was enshrined in eternity, and woman excluded. Where do we find woman in the eternal?

So maybe we can’t call God “Mother”, but I still wanted to know that femininity had a place in eternity.

1) Eternal salvation.

In The Eternal Woman, Gertrud von le Fort describes woman as “the bearer of salvation” not only in the religious sense but in every sense. She describes the feminine nature as that which conquers time:

“In her ageless form the differing destinies of queen and beggar woman lose their contrast. The distinguishing characteristics of nations and the disparities between primitive and highly developed culture vanish in her presence. Motherhood can never become for woman the special assignment of a certain time; it is her task, simply and utterly. […] Under the form of virgin [a single woman] she stands solitary in the face of time; as bride she shares time with a man who lives in it; as mother she conquers time.” (Gertrud von le Fort)

2) The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit has been regarded with both masculine and feminine understandings. St. Louis de Montfort, for example, regarded Mary as the Spouse of the Holy Spirit (thus implying a male metaphor for the Holy Spirit).

On the other hand, the Holy Spirit has long been associated with the “femininity” of God. In her Essays on Woman, Edith Stein describes the correlation like this:

“Inasmuch as the Holy Spirit is deity, we find it again in woman’s destiny as ‘Mother of the Living’. The Spirit goes out of itself and enters into the creature as the begetting and perfecting fruitfulness of God; just so does woman bring forth new life from her life and helps the child to a most perfect development when he or she attains an autonomous existence.”

3) Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom)

In the Hebrew scriptures, the presence of God is personified as the female “Sophia”, the Greek word for “Wisdom”, and is seen as being present at creation.

“When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. […] Then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.” (Proverbs 8:24, 30)

“For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. […] Although she is but one she can do all things. In every generation, she passes into holy souls.” (Wisdom 7: 25, 27).

♦♦♦

All of these examples and more have set me on a mission to understand womanhood in light of eternity, and, so far, the answers have not disappointed. As a Catholic woman I desire to be obedient to the teachings of the Church, and I’ve discovered that affirming those teachings and traditions don’t need to be in conflict with the dignity of woman. The more I understand scriptural references to God as a mother, the more I delight in calling Him “Father”. Rather than being nervous or uncomfortable with these feminine metaphors, I enjoy them because they reassure me that my Father isn’t a dominating man who is ashamed to be compared to a woman. Instead, I have full confidence that my Father delights in having His Heart described as motherly because no woman will ever be more motherly than God Himself.

We last heard from therapist Julia Hogan, LCPC on practical ways that children of divorce can heal from the wounds caused by their experiences. For this second installment in our three-part series, we turn to fellow Catholic women who have been there - who are there. They generously shared a part of their lives. To those of you who shared your stories and made this post possible - thank you.

If you want to better understand where children of divorce are coming from, this is for you.

If you want to learn how divorce can impact (adult) children - not based on statistics, but on real, lived experiences - this is for you.

How have you been impacted by your parents’ divorce?

Emma: It is a lasting impact, not just a one-time thing. While there are both positive and negative aspects to the divorce, it is something that has completely shaped my life, my relationships, and my identity.

Josephine: I am still untangling the impact, even though it happened 27 years ago. The most profound impact has been on the feeling that I am worthy of love. I have worked through a lot of that, but part of me is still really afraid of a serious relationship and getting rejected, which has made me hold back from being truly vulnerable and/or pursuing potential opportunities.

I am still untangling the impact, even though it happened 27 years ago.

Sydney: I think the way I saw the world was very different from other kids. They were more concerned about going to their friend's house or going to see a movie, but I was always more concerned with spending time with my family. Since the time was split from the start, nothing ever felt like enough. I also, for a short period of time, ended up in a really dark place because I thought that the divorce was my fault. They say that is very common in kids from divorce. There was a lot of struggle for me as I tried to figure out why nothing stayed together.

How has your faith been impacted?

Emma: I would not say the divorce caused me to doubt or abandon my faith, but being 9 years old, I did not know how to use my faith to help me get through it. I have never necessarily struggled with my faith, but there are times, even at my age now, that I still do not know exactly where I stand in my faith.

‍Holli: Divorce destroyed what little unformed, vague faith I possessed as a child. After their divorce, my parents each remarried new spouses, divorced, and remarried yet again. Each new upheaval stripped away a little more of my security, my innocence, my hope. Many years later when I ventured to draw near to God again, I felt defective. How could my faith be so weak? Mercifully, God did not leave me fluttering in the wind longer than necessary.

Many years later when I ventured to draw near to God again, I felt defective. How could my faith be so weak?

Josephine: It has been hard to fully understand what love means when it comes to God, and approaching God as a Father that desires my good. My parents' divorce happened in part because my father cheated and wanted to start a new life with another woman. So it has been hard to come to believe -- really believe -- in God as a Father that loves me, and in the reality of Christ's love and sacrifice for me, just as I am.

‍Sydney: For a while I struggled with my faith because I felt like the divorce was my fault and that no one, including God, would ever be able to handle all of my issues. But once I got older the divorce almost increased my faith. I grew in my love for Christ because He was constant when my life was inconsistent. It was really beautiful for me to be able to grow in His love and see my spiritual growth at my lowest points.

‍Marie: My family used to go to Mass regularly, but after the divorce that stopped completely. I was not confirmed until I made the decision to come back to the Church as a junior in college.

What particular struggles or difficulties have you faced as a child of divorce?

Holli: I suffered from chronic insomnia for years as a child. I never knew this was anything out of the normal until I had my own kids. I know now that it was a manifestation of severe anxiety. I also never understood what marriage was good for, or how to properly define marriage. When my relationship with my now-husband became serious, I told him that I would never marry, that I did not believe in all that.

I also never understood what marriage was good for, or how to properly define marriage.

Josephine: Growing up, it was hard to be in the middle of my parents. I felt that I had to mature very early and mediate between them. It put a lot of pressure on me and made things very confusing...two people that I loved deeply were at odds with each other, and I could not fix it.

Marie: I came back to the Church in college and, when my dad decided to get remarried, that was a point of contention since both he and his fiancée had previously been divorced with no annulment. I tried to explain Church teaching on divorce, remarriage, receiving the Eucharist, etc., and that led to a huge fight. It has been difficult for me to convey that I still love them while also affirming Church teaching.

How has your experience as a child of divorce impacted your vocation?

Emma: Being a child of divorce has presented both opportunities and challenges in terms of my vocation. I feel like the divorce helped me understand what I do not want in a future spouse, but at the same time helped me discover the qualities that I truly value in a partner. One challenge that stands out to me the most is trust. With how my parents' divorce panned out, I learned it was very difficult for me to trust people, especially when it came to romantic relationships. I have learned to overcome these trust issues by being honest with the people I have developed relationships with. I think it is better to be upfront about your experience with divorce because it gives others some perspective on who you are and why you are the way that you are.

I think it is better to be upfront about your experience with divorce because it gives others some perspective on who you are and why you are the way that you are.

Holli: I am still discovering new ways in which my parents’ divorce has impacted my life, particularly as my own children and marriage continue to grow, and as the contrast between my past and present grows increasingly stark. I am hypersensitive to the needs and best interests of my family, as well as my sense of responsibility within it. I am profoundly grateful that God has given me the opportunity to use my past as my guide.

‍Josephine: The divorce created some very deep wounds concerning worthiness, trust, ability to be vulnerable, fear, and cynicism. The biggest thing that has helped me overcome that is, little by little, facing fears in my interactions with others and praying for God's guidance, and taking regular time to thank God for everything He has blessed me with and bask in His love.

‍Sydney: I had a lot of issues believing that someone would stay with me. Then a very kind, loving, and faithful man came into my life and told me that, no matter what I said, it was not going to scare him off; now we are happily married. I think the divorce made me look for the right man and not just go out with anyone. It was absolutely for the better and I would not want my life any other way. There are always challenges, but there are always blessings that follow.Marie: I have learned so much about myself through therapy. I have a desire to get married and have a family, but I do have a fear of getting divorced. I do not have a role model in my own parents as to what marriage should be like, which is hard. I have a close married Catholic friend who I look to as a role model for what a holy marriage can look like.

Would you say that you have become stronger as you have taken stock of your experience?

Emma: Absolutely. Being a child of divorce is part of who I am, and I think owning that has helped facilitate growth and healing in me. While divorce is a terrible thing that I do not wish on anyone, I think children of divorce owe it to ourselves to acknowledge this broken part of us - that though we come from brokenness, we are resilient. That there is a chance for regrowth, for peace of mind and heart, for forgiveness. Personally, I think out of brokenness come the strongest, toughest people. My parents' divorce has only pushed me to one day seek a marriage that is healthy, strong, and faithful. When this time comes, I think my experience has prepared me for the day that my future spouse and I have our own kids; if anything, I will take my experience and use it to strengthen my family and teach them the meaning of resilience.

‍Josephine: Yes. For one thing, I think I am more resilient to negative experiences, even though sometimes I do not think I am. I have also been forced to find the silver lining in situations that are really bad on the surface. Despite all the pain of my parents' divorce, some good things have come out of it. My grandfather, and the way he was there for my mom, is still such an inspiration to me. It is a blessing to be able to see that something good can come out of something bad, even though that was initially very much a challenge to my faith and the Catholic worldview in general.

‍Sydney: Absolutely. There is no doubt in my mind that I am the woman I am today because of what I went through. I think the divorce took its toll on me, but then allowed me to be more compassionate, loving, and understanding. It also strengthened my faith and it was all worth it to be closer to Christ. I am proud of my life and, if I had not needed Christ so much, I am not sure I would have found the relationship with Him that I have now.

I am the woman I am today because of what I went through.

Marie: Yes. I think, as Catholics, we know that suffering is redemptive. I can say that my own experiences have helped me have empathy for others.

♦♦♦

The impact of divorce on children can be - and often is - widespread; it may affect our friendships, romantic relationships, familial relationships, and even how we view the world. It might make us question our worth and wonder what we did wrong, or what is wrong with us. At the same time, we can become stronger and more resilient through our experiences, and even grow in our faith through them. Divorce’s impact manifests itself differently from person to person; this is why listening to individual stories is so crucial (when we are privileged to hear them). Thank you for listening to the stories described here.

Keep reading part three of this series: a letter to our fellow Catholics and children of divorce.

*Some names have been changed for those who wished to remain anonymous.

The importance of chastity is without question, but the way we talk about chastity is crucial.

Despite our good intentions, the language we use and how we communicate the message of chastity can seriously distract from and weaken the points we’re trying to make.

As Catholics, we need to do a better job of communicating the truth with love. I believe there are six things we need to stop doing in order to more effectively and lovingly share the truth about chastity.

Overemphasizing Virginity

Before you start typing up an angry comment, I am 100% pro-abstinence-outside-of-marriage, but there are a number of problems with having laser-sharp focus on virginity.

The first is that virginity is potentially a temporary state while chastity is a lifelong virtue. Chastity doesn’t start and end at virginity. A virgin may struggle with unchaste thoughts, using pornography, or do other unchaste things. A woman who has lost her virginity outside of marriage but has repented may be living a very chaste life. As Catholics, we know that sin does not define us, so we shouldn’t use language that focuses on a sin rather than the overall virtue.

Chastity doesn’t start and end at virginity.

The second is it can be hurtful to women whose virginity was taken from them. I have seen several pieces from women who really struggle with this focus on virginity because despite their chaste living, an event beyond their control took their virginity away. [**Please go to the end of the post for a very important clarification on virginity.]

Finally, if we focus too much on virginity and not enough on chastity, it can cause a lot of confusion after marriage. A married person will spend much more of their life not as a virgin than as a virgin. We need a strong foundation of the virtue of chastity so they can express their sexuality appropriately within the context of marriage.

Gendering Chastity Topics

Chastity is a virtue for everyone. While I personally believe we should separate chastity talks out by gender, the discussion topics themselves shouldn’t be gendered.

Pornography use and masturbation aren’t just male issues.

We shouldn’t make young women feel like the burden of maintaining a chaste relationship falls on their shoulders.

Men aren’t standing guard to protect a women’s virtue.

Women aren’t immune to sexual desires.

Men and women are different and may struggle with chastity in slightly different ways, but to assume that only one sex struggles with a certain topic does a huge disservice to the opposite sex.

Within the Catholic sphere, I have seen a positive shift in not gendering components of chastity, but this is still something as Christians we must be conscientious of.

Telling people who acted unchastely that they are “broken” or have “given a piece of themselves away”

I completely understand where this language comes from: when we sin, we damage our relationship with God; it has negative impacts on our souls. However, this is not the full truth. We know that no matter how much we have sinned, we are still children of God. We are still humans with dignity. Telling someone they are broken may describe the impact of sin, but it probably isn’t going to be all that effective in calling to people to conversion. In many cases, it can be hurtful.

On a related note, analogies like a crumpled flower, tape getting less sticky, and used chewing gum need to get thrown out of our chastity talks. Beyond being dehumanizing, they also aren’t accurate from a Catholic perspective. Everyone can be made new through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Analogies like a crumpled flower, tape getting less sticky, and used chewing gum need to get thrown out of our chastity talks.

Focusing on Spouse Over Self

A lot of times, chastity is presented as a virtue based on how it impacts the future spouse. We say things like “Do you really want to be making out with another woman’s future husband?” or  “How would your husband feel if he knew you did xyz with another man?”

Yes, sin affects a community and unchaste behavior may affect future relationships, but that shouldn’t be the focus. The focus should be living chastely to pursue holiness out of love for ourselves and God. To be clear, I am not trying to say that people who live unchastely don’t love themselves. What I am saying is that when we love God, it shifts our perspectives on us as body AND soul, recognizing the beautiful connection between the two. We shouldn’t just be chaste because we don’t want to hurt our future spouse’s feelings; we should pursue chastity because it is something God calls us to practice because it is the best thing for us.

Shying away from Secular Sources

I know we believe that “because God says so” should be a good enough reason, the reality is that we need to meet people where they’re at. And where a lot of our culture is “at” is a passion for science.

The reality is that we need to meet people where they’re at. And where a lot of our culture is “at” is a passion for science.

As Christians, we should know that God is the author of all truth. Just because a source doesn’t directly mention God doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have something helpful for supporting a Christian perspective.

Let’s use scientific, psychological, and sociological studies to support our chastity talks. Let’s talk about the bonding hormones released during sexual intercourse. Let’s talk about the ways men and women view sex differently. Let’s talk about how porn rewires the brain.

Let’s say “here’s what God says, and here’s why science also supports it.”

Death over Loss of Virtue (tw: sexual assault)

One of the most disturbing implications I’ve heard is that we should die rather than “lose our virtue.” You are not responsible for someone’s sin against you. One of the three conditions for mortal sin is consent, and if someone forces you to do something unchaste, that is entirely on them. You are not obligated to put your life at risk to stop this imaginary concept of “loss of virtue.”

I think Simcha Fisher articulates this misconception well in her piece “Maria Goretti didn’t die for her virginity.” She says “Over and over, I’ve heard [St. Maria Goretti] praised as a holy girl who prized her virginity so highly that she was willing to die to defend it...But when her would-be rapist attacked her, she pleaded with him to stop because he would be committing a mortal sin, and he would go to hell. She didn’t say ‘Please, please, spare my virginity!’ She begged him to spare himself.”

That being said, it is important to remember that this act is heroically virtuous. She went beyond what could be expected of a person in that terrifying situation. Though we are all called to be saints, and we can admire what she did, we must also remember that we are not necessarily called to repeat that. Though it is morally permissible to use self-defense, someone doing something against your will, whether you fight back or not, does not apply the sin to your soul.

Chastity is an important virtue, and we desperately need conversations about it in our current society. As with all things, however, we must proclaim the truth with love. By avoiding the habits mentioned in this article, we can have much more meaningful conversations about this beautiful virtue.

**Note on virginity in cases of rape and assault

After this article was posted, Sophia Swinford brought up an important point to us. She shared a quote from "My Peace I Give You" by Dawn Eden. Dawn Eden writes "I found that the Church Fathers and Doctors ("Doctor" being a title given to saints of the highest wisdom) said many powerful things in defense of victims of sexual abuse. St. Augustine, writing about the virgin martyrs of the early Church, lashed out at pagans who claimed that virgins who had been raped were no longer virgins: "What sane man can suppose that, if his body be seized and forcibly made use of to satisfy the lust of another, he thereby loses his purity?"

In modern times, women who were sexually assaulted are still able to become Consecrated Virgins. For the purpose of that particular Vocation, they are still virgins.

Though there isn't a definitive teaching on this in the Catechism, I see no reason why this wouldn't apply to any person who was sexually assaulted, especially when we consider the wisdom from St. Augustine.

I got married at 26. I thought I knew everything. At the time, I was unable to see how insecure and emotionally needy I was.

Seven months after getting married I was admitted to a club that I think is every woman’s worst nightmare; discovering your husband is addicted to pornography.

Looking back I see how naive I was, how badly I wanted to “be married.” I realize how many blarring red flags there were and I how I should’ve have asked very direct questions.

I was blindsided and felt as the rug had been pulled out from under me. I felt completely numb as I tried to even begin to wonder what my next steps were as a wife and a woman.

Sexual addiction is a growing epidemic in our culture today. And while the science behind pornography addiction continues to grow, it is still normalized in the culture. Worse yet, it is barely addressed or spoken about in the Church.  

I remember when I began to learn the nature of my former husband’s sexual addictive behaviors, I felt unsupported by the Church. I had no idea where to turn to find counselors, books to read, recovery groups for wives, etc.

I wanted the Church to speak up and speak out for a painful reality myself and many other women have lived or still are living.

I wanted the Church to speak up and speak out for a painful reality myself and many other women have lived or still are living.

Sexual addictive behaviors are destructive to healthy relationships in marriage. It utterly destroys healthy sexual intimacy and how men view and treat women. It plays off of lies and deception, and those will destroy the critical foundation of trust in a strong marriage.

When a woman learns this painful reality in a relationship with her boyfriend or husband, she has to make choices. Sometimes that choice is to stay in the relationship, do the hard healing work, and God willing see restoration. But sometimes it doesn’t play out that way. Sometimes the only choice is to leave, and that is okay too.

In my own situation, that was what I had to do.

It has now been just over two years since my divorce and a year and half since I received a declaration of nullity (annulment). I have done a lot of intensive counseling and healing work. And as I continue on that journey, there is a growing desire and passion in my heart to support women who were in the same situation I was.

I am starting to write, speak, and share my experience. A friend and I have started a workshop in our diocese called “Whispered in the Dark.” It is offered to men/women who find themselves in a serious relationship with another person who is sexually addicted. We connect people with local trained CSAT (certified sex addiction therapists) counselors, relevant presentations, and resources to learn more. It is amazing to see how God is opening doors for this ministry in our local community.

I never want another Catholic woman to feel as alone, lost, or frustrated what to do next as I once did.

I never want another Catholic woman to feel as alone, lost, or frustrated what to do next as I once did.

For the workshop, one of my jobs was to create a resource list for people first of all to educate themselves on sexual addiction. And the second, was to offer resources to women whose dating and married relationships are gravely impacted by this.

I want to get this information into the hands of as many men and women as possible. All of the books and workbooks I recommend I have personally read and worked through in my own recovery journey.

Even if you are not in a relationship with a man addicted to pornography, I would highly encourage you to read through several titles. The reality is even if it doesn’t affect your relationship with a man, I guarantee there is a woman in your life who is facing this. And she desperately needs someone safe to talk about it with.

Knowing your children will grow up in a hyper-sexualized culture is another reason to educate yourself. Because the scary reality is that the majority of men view pornography regularly today.

The following are some of the best things I have come across:

Books

Understanding Sexual Addiction

Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction by Dr. Patrick Carnes

Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction by Dr. Patrick Carnes

The Pornography Trap by Ralph H. Earle, Jr. and Mark R. Laaser

Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain by William M. Struthers

The Porn Myth: Exposing the Reality Behind the Fantasy of Pornography by Matt Fradd

For the Partner

Boundaries: When To Say Yes, How To Say No to Take Control of Your Life by Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend

Facing Heartbreak: Steps to Recovery for Partners of Sex Addicts by Stefanie Carnes (workbook)

What Can I Do About Me? Healing from the Trauma of My Husband’s Pornography and Sexual Addiction by Rhyll Anne Croshaw

Moving Beyond Betrayal: The 5-Step Boundary Solution for Partners of Sex Addicts by Vicki Tidwell Palmer

Mending a Shattered Heart: A Guide for Partners of Sex Addicts by Stefanie Carnes

Your Sexually Addicted Spouse by Barabra Steffens and Marsha Means

Shattered Vows by Debra Laaser

Intimate Treason: Healing the Trauma for Partners Confronting Sex Addiction by CLaudia Black

For the Addict

Facing the Shadow: Starting Sexual & Relationship Recovery by Dr. Patrick Carnes (workbook)

Contrary to Love: Helping the Sex Addict by Dr. Patrick Carnes

In the Shadows of the Net by Dr. Patrick Carnes

Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction by Mark R. Laaser

Clean: A Proven Plan for Men Committed to Sexual Integrity by Dr. Doug Weiss

For Children

Good Pictures Bad Pictures: Porn-Proofing Today’s Young Kids by Kristen A. Jenson

Counseling/Therapy

Dr. Doug Weiss (Intensives and Phone groups)

Heart to Heart Counseling Center

Colorado Springs, CO 80918

(719) 278-3788

www.drdougweiss.com

‍

Bethseda Workshops (intensives and healing workshops)

1035 Acorn Dr. Nashville, TN 37210

info@bethesdaworkshops.org

(615) 467-5612

‍

Dr. Milton Magness

Sexual Addiction Intensives

https://www.hopeandfreedom.com

Recovery Groups

Sexacholics Anonymous www.sa.org

Sex Addicts Anonymous www.saa.org

Recovering Couples Anonymous www.recovering-couples.org

Websites

Dr. Doug Weiss http://drdougweiss.com

Peter Kleponis http://www.peterkleponis.com/

For teens and young adults http://theporneffect.com/ and  http://fightthenewdrug.org/

L.I.F.E. Ministries www.freedomeveryday.org

(800) 408-LIFE

My House Initiative www.loveisfaithful.com

(913) 647-0387

Accountability Service

Covenant Eyes http://www.covenanteyes.com/

Safe Eyes www.internetsafety.com

Whether you’re surprised or not— the facts below are true. A lot of the history surrounding the women’s movement and the sexual revolution has been erased or skewed by the media, by historians, and by the people most intricately involved in the two movements. In her book Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement, Sue Ellen Browder lays out in painstaking detail the truths behind the fusion of the women’s movement with the sexual revolution, from both a first-hand and a historical perspective.

Basically, the book both blew my mind and confirmed what I’d always suspected: Catholicism and the fight for the equal dignity of women naturally go hand-in-hand. Thanks to a few key players on both sides, we’ve been told that’s impossible. But here are ten truths surrounding the women’s movement and the sexual revolution that suggest otherwise.

If you’re interested in learning more, I cannot suggest Browder’s book enough (and FemCatholic is reading it as part of our virtual Summer Book Club!)

With that, here we go:

1) The women’s movement and the sexual revolution were two different things.

While modern day, secular feminism often fails to differentiate between the equal dignity of men and women (goals of the women’s movement) and legalized access to contraception and abortion (goals of the sexual revolution), this was not always the case. The women’s movement and the sexual revolution were two different social movements, one begun by women and one begun by men.

The women’s movement and the sexual revolution were two different social movements, one begun by women and one begun by men.

Initially, the women’s movement was not interested in teaming up with the sexual revolution. Rather, it was the men behind the sexual revolution, who were primarily concerned with legalizing abortion for population control purposes, that badgered the women’s movement for their support, until the women’s movement finally relented.

2) The women’s movement was pro-family.

Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique, founder of the National Organization of Women (NOW), and often credited with starting Second Wave Feminism, was originally against legalized access to abortion. She asserted that the women’s movement must be pro-family, and considered herself a defender of women’s right to be a mother.  

Friedan’s original goal was to win rights for women to be able to be mothers and have careers. The first draft of The Feminine Mystique made no mention of access to contraceptives or abortion.

In a 1992 interview for Playboy magazine, Friedan stated: “Women are the people who give birth to children, and that is a necessary value in society. . . . Feminism was not opposed to marriage and motherhood. It wanted women to be able to define themselves as people and not just as servants to the family. You want a feminism that includes women who have children and want children because that’s the majority of women.” Discussing sex in that same interview, Friedan said, “Maybe some people still haven’t caught on, but the best sex requires a deeper, more profound knowledge of oneself and the other person. In the Bible, sexual love was to know. It suggests something deeper.”

Friedan understood that empowering women meant reconciling a woman’s career with her family. It didn’t have to be a choice. In response to Gloria Steinem’s claim that marriage was a form of prostitution, Friedan replied, “That extreme form of thinking tends to come from women who hate having to deal with the complexities of juggling a career and a family and so, almost literally, they want to throw the baby out with the bath water. It’s just unrealistic to be a feminist who is anti-family.”

Looking back on the abortion rights movement, Friedan lamented in 1980 that “in cities like Boston, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, where feminist consciousness was supposedly at the cutting edge, women of childbearing years were dividing into bitter antagonistic camps as they were forced into no-win, either-or choices, motherhood vs. career.”  

This was not what Friedan had wanted when she wrote The Feminine Mystique. But by strong-arming the women’s movement to promote legalized access to abortion, Friedan unintentionally strengthened the patriarchy and weakened the family.

3) Betty Friedan and NOW disapproved of Cosmopolitan.

Cosmopolitan magazine, one of the most notorious promoters of sexual promiscuity as a means to women’s liberation, was founded by Helen Gurley Brown, author of Sex and the Single Girl, published one year before The Feminine Mystique. However, Cosmo did not have the support of the women’s movement.

Betty Friedan called Cosmo “an immature teenage-level sexual fantasy,” promoting “the idea that woman is nothing but a sex object, that [she] is nothing without a man, and there is nothing in life but bed, bed, bed.” She described the magazine as “quite obscene and quite horrible.”

Friedan recognized that women’s equality was more than consequence-free sex-capades. Even after adopting legalized access to abortion as part of the NOW platform, NOW admonished women to boycott products with advertising that was degrading to the image of women and named Cosmo as one of the worst offenders.

4) The “Cosmo Girl” was fictional.

The anecdotal stories of sexually liberated women in Cosmo were primarily made up by the magazine’s writers. Browder, hired by Cosmo in 1970, explains, “Many of the alleged ‘real people’ we wrote about in the magazine were entirely fictitious. . . . The Cosmo Girl was not a real person but a persona, a mask the single girl lonely and alone in the world could put on to turn herself into the object of a man’s sexual fantasies.”

Brown provided guidelines for the writers to follow when making up their fictional anecdotes, including suggesting that it was acceptable for the writers to make up “experts” to quote if they could not find a real person.

The typical made-up Cosmo Girl: she “had a glamour job, traveled a lot, and spent her hard-earned cash on pricey commodities to support her self-centered lifestyle."

Browder describes the typical made-up Cosmo Girl: she “had a glamour job, traveled a lot, and spent her hard-earned cash on pricey commodities to support her self-centered lifestyle.” The book provides two examples of Browder’s made-up tales. In one, the female protagonist is a twenty-four-year-old fashion model who complains about her once-passionate Italian lover’s recently inhibited sexual desire. In the other, we learn about a twenty-five-year-old corporate attorney who meets a thirty-eight-year-old documentary filmmaker in Paris and sleeps with him a few hours later. Both these stories were published by Cosmo and held out not only to be true, but to be imitated by readers.

5) The abortion rights movement and NARAL were started by two white, affluent men concerned about overpopulation.

As mentioned earlier, the sexual revolution and the women’s movement were two completely different causes. Larry Lader, Margaret Sanger’s biographer, began promoting legalized access to abortion as a means of population control.

Before beginning NARAL, Lader was the executive director of the Hugh Moore Fund, which gave millions of dollars to the population control movement in the 1960s. In Hugh Moore’s biography, Lader writes, “It is now recognized that we must reduce birth rates or await the inevitable disaster. We are on our way to breeding ourselves to death” (emphasis in original).

It was Lader who decided that feminist support was necessary to achieving legalized abortion. When planning with NARAL co-founder Bernard Nathanson, Lader explained, “If we’re going to move abortion out of the books and into the streets, we’re going to have to recruit the feminists. Friedan has got to put her troops into this thing—while she still has control of them.”

NARAL co-founder Bernard Nathanson, Lader explained, “If we’re going to move abortion out of the books and into the streets, we’re going to have to recruit the feminists. Friedan has got to put her troops into this thing—while she still has control of them.”

In fact, before targeting feminists as an ally, the majority of abortion advocates were white, upper-middle-class men, employed as doctors and lawyers. It was Lader’s foresight to bring “the feminists” into the sexual revolution that melded the two movements together.

6) Larry Lader specifically chose the Catholic Church to be the “villain” of the abortion movement.

Again, while planning the future of the abortion movement with Bernard Nathanson, Lader explained the need to pick an “enemy” of the abortion movement: “Historically, every revolution has to have its villain. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a king, a dictator, or a tsar, but it has to be someone, a person, to rebel against.” And, calling them “[t]he biggest single obstacle to peace and decency throughout all of history,” Lader chose the Catholic Church to be public enemy number one.

Though Lader recognized that he couldn’t denounce all Catholics: “First of all, that’s too large a group, and for us to vilify them all would diffuse our focus. Secondly, we have to convince liberal Catholics to join us, a popular front as it were, and if we tar them all with the same brush, we’ll just antagonize a few who might otherwise have joined us and be valuable showpieces for us. No, it’s got to be the Catholic hierarchy. That’s a small enough group to come down on, and anonymous enough so that no names every have to be mentioned, but everybody will have a fairly good idea whom we are talking about.”

Even when Nathanson, himself a self-described Jewish atheist, asked Lader whether he thought there were any others opposed to abortion, Lader responded no.

Lader’s obsession of uniting the abortion rights movement and the women’s movement, while simultaneously making Catholics the enemy of the abortion rights movement, sealed the Catholic woman’s exclusion from mainstream feminism as we understand it today.

Lader’s obsession of uniting the abortion rights movement and the women’s movement, while simultaneously making Catholics the enemy of the abortion rights movement, sealed the Catholic woman’s exclusion from mainstream feminism as we understand it today.

7) NOW’s decision to adopt abortion legalization as part of its platform was made by only 57 members.

NOW didn’t always support abortion. And when it did, it wasn’t decided by the majority of members. It wasn’t even decided by an overwhelming majority of the board. It was decided by 57 members, in an upscale D.C. hotel on November 18, 1967.

Who was at this NOW Conference? According to Pauli Murray, a black civil rights and labor activist who was the first black American to graduate from Yale Law School, the conference was “not broadly representative of women in the same sense” that the 1966 NOW Conference had been. Looking around the room, Murray saw “no Catholic sisters, no women of ethnic minorities (other than about five black women), [and] no women who represented the poor.”

Betty Friedan, who had by now been convinced by Lader that abortion was a necessary cause for feminists, saved the vote on adopting the issue as part of NOW’s platform until the end of the meeting. At that point in the evening, of the reported one hundred and five people who attended the Conference, only seventy-one members were counted in the vote to adopt abortion. After hours of intense battle, the abortion issue won, 57-14.

Afterwards, Friedan received a letter from NOW’s Director of Women’s Activities, TV broadcaster Paige Palmer. In the letter, Palmer accused Friedan of railroading the discussion, showing her support for or animosity towards speakers on the floor while she was presiding over the meeting, and refusing to let the only M.D. present speak while allowing women who knew nothing about abortion, but supported it, to voice their opinions freely. Palmer told Friedan she wished she “had never heard of N.O.W.”

Of course, the Conference and the ensuring battle to adopt legalization of abortion was not disclosed to the public. The following Monday, Friedan held a press conference announcing NOW’s position, claiming that she was speaking for “28 million American working women, the millions of women emerging from our colleges each year who are intent on full participation in the mainstream of our society, and mothers who are emerging from their homes to go back to school or work.” The next day, the Washington Post published that “NOW supports the furthering of the sexual revolution of our century by pressing for widespread sex education and provision of birth control information and contraceptives, and by urging that all laws penalizing abortion be repealed.”

And just like that, the women’s movement and the sexual revolution were fused into one. As Browder writes, “the women’s movement was sharply scissored into two irreconcilable factions: women for legal abortion on demand, and women who opposed it. In the hours before midnight on November 18, 1967, NOW simultaneously became both the national organization for women and the national organization against motherhood, a living contradiction” (emphasis in original).

8) Pro-life feminists never stayed silent.

One-third of members left NOW after the “Mere 57” decided to support legalized abortion. But they didn’t leave their convictions about the equality of women behind.

One-third of members left NOW after the “Mere 57” decided to support legalized abortion.

Just one example: After the abortion vote, Elizabeth “Betty” Boyer, an attorney from Cleveland, resigned from NOW’s Board of Directors and founded the Women’s Equity Action League. Though you’ve probably never heard of it, WEAL made significant strides in the fight for women’s equality, including abolishing “Help wanted (male)” and “Help wanted (female)” classified ads in newspapers and ending overt sex discrimination in colleges and universities. WEAL was also instrumental in passing the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 which gave married women the ability to apply for credit under their own names (because that wasn’t a thing until 1974).

9) Justice Blackmun’s Roe v. Wade opinion cited to Lader’s faulty science as justification to legalize abortion.

Roe v. Wade is the 1973 landmark decision holding that women have a right to abortion. Justice Blackmun, assigned to write the opinion, was unsatisfied with the oral arguments presented to the court and decided to do some of his own research on the abortion issue, with the help of his law clerk, George Frampton Jr.

Frampton, in researching the issue, came across a book written by Larry Lader, Abortion: The first authoritative and documented report on the laws and practices governing abortion in the U.S. and around the world, and how—for the sake of women everywhere—they can and must be reformed. It was this same book that persuaded Friedan to push NOW to support the abortion issue.

Yet, there are a few problems with this book.

First, he claims that the Catholic Church has always been confused about ensoulment of a fetus and therefore, a fetus probably doesn’t have a soul. But if a fetus does have a soul, it probably isn’t until the mother feels the fetus kick for the first time. Claiming to speak for the Catholic Church which he so despised, Lader ignored thousands of years of Church teaching in order to confuse Catholics, his biggest perceived adversary.

Claiming to speak for the Catholic Church which he so despised, Lader ignored thousands of years of Church teaching in order to confuse Catholics, his biggest perceived adversary.

Second, much of the “legal history” in the book was fabricated by Cyril Chestnut Means Jr., a New York Law School professor who later became a NARAL attorney. Specifically, Villanova University law-history professor Joseph Dellapenna writes in his 1,283-page book Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History: “Means propounded two hitherto unsuspected historical ‘facts’: First, that abortion was not criminal in England or America before the nineteenth century; and second, that abortion was criminalized during the nineteenth century solely to protect the life or health of mothers, and not to protect the lives of health of unborn children. Regardless of how many times these claims are repeated, however, they are not facts; they are myths.”

Third, many of the statistics in the book were completely made-up. Bernard Nathanson, NARAL co-founder, later admitted, “Knowing that if a true poll were taken we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls.” Lader also made up the number of illegal abortions performed annually in the United States, inflating it from around one thousand to one million. Also inflated was the number of women dying from illegal abortions, reported by Lader to be around ten thousand per year rather than the real number of about two hundred to two hundred and fifty.

Consequently, it’s a bit concerning that Lader’s book was cited seven times in the Roe v. Wade decision, while Means is cited as a historian another seven times. Writes Browder, “We don’t know when or even if the history section in Blackmun’s abortion opinions was ever cite-checked. But we do know that if it happened, the fact-checking was faulty. For when Blackmun accepted Larry Lader, a mere magazine writer, as a reliable authority on history, philosophy, and theology, he became as a blind man following a blind guide. Despite his best efforts, [Blackmun] failed to see he had embraced a well-crafted verbal mirage, mistaking it for the truth.”  

10) NARAL co-founder Bernard Nathanson and Betty Friedan both regretted merging the sexual revolution with the women’s movement.

It’s amazing how little we hear about the conversion of abortion advocates.

Betty Friedan, although she never stated that she did not support abortion, did have regrets. In 1981, she published a book The Second Stage. In it, she called for the women’s movement to “set aside its divisive anger, stop overemphasizing abortion rights, and reaffirm the importance of the family.” While promoting the book, she told a reporter that saying you’re for abortion is “like being for mastectomy. We are for the choice to have children, for affirming the generative roots of women in families. . . . The women’s movement . . . has come to a dead end. . . . Our failure was our blind spot about the family.”

Our failure was our blind spot about the family.”

Bernard Nathanson’s conversion was even more dramatic. In the late 1970s, after having presided over what he claimed to be about sixty thousand abortions, he saw a living fetus on an ultrasound monitor. After years of soul searching, he quit the abortion business.

In 1996, he published the story of his conversion from a self-described “Jewish atheist” to Catholicism entitled The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind.

Additionally, while not included in the book, Friedan and Nathanson weren’t the only faces of the sexual revolution to later regret their involvement. Norma McCorvey, “Jane Roe” in Roe v. Wade, converted to Christianity and later to Catholicism, and lived the remainder of her life as a pro-life advocate. Additionally, Sandra Cano, “Mary Doe” in the Roe v. Wade companion case Doe v. Bolton, claimed she “did not seek an abortion nor . . . believe in abortion” at the time her case was brought (she never had an abortion), but was tricked into the case by her attorneys.

♦♦♦

Are you mad? While learning about feminism’s twisted history, I was mad. I’m still a little mad. So, what can you do about it? First, I highly recommend reading Sue Ellen Browder’s Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement to get the whole story. [We’re reading it together as part of FemCatholic’s virtual book club this summer!]

Second, let’s get people informed! Catholics who are leery of feminism and feminists who are leery of Catholics both have a lot to learn from our shared history

NOTE: Version with historical references annotated available upon request, as this blog template doesn't allow annotation capabilities.

For the past few months, the #MeToo movement has shocked the country with a revelation that should not have been shocking at all: Our society—more than fifty years after a sexual revolution meant to free women—still views them as objects of sexual conquest. As commentators have scrambled to explain the systemic, pervasive problem of sexual abuse and harassment, some have pinned it to another obvious, but often-overlooked fact: men and women view and experience sex very, very differently.

In one of the more though-provoking examples, an opinion piece for The Week, culture critic Lili Loofbourow discusses how our culture has aligned our notions of “good sex” with men’s perceptions (shaped by his biology) and ignored or marginalized women’s perceptions (shaped by her biology).

“The old implied social bargain between women and men,” she writes, “…is that one side will endure a great deal of discomfort and pain for the other's pleasure and delight. And we've all agreed to act like that's normal, and just how the world works.”

It’s time, she argues, to bring female biology into the discussion and adjust our sexual norms accordingly. This is true, of course, and begins to ask the right questions, but stops short. It is then easy (and disappointing) to anticipate the ‘mainstream’ feminist response to this challenge: Women need to be more empowered to assert their sexual needs, and men need to be more attentive to and respectful of those needs. This is also true, but the outdated feminist narrative argues a woman achieves empowerment by having casual sex—just like a man. Laurie Penny typifies this response in a Longreads essay when she writes, “We have not even begun to have a real conversation about creating the conditions for meaningful sexual liberty that works for most human beings. If you want sexual liberation, make contraception, reproductive health care, and pregnancy termination easy to access and free at the point of use.”

No, in fact, we have not yet begun the conversation about real sexual liberation when the standard feminist answer is to further encourage the exploitation of women’s bodies. The women of the #MeToo movement are brave. The #MeToo movement is a good thing, bringing long-overdue attention to the fact that sexual violence and harassment are not acceptable and are all too common. They are signs of a patriarchic and misogynistic society that must be changed. But the standard feminist response lets us all down because it is not radical enough. The solution doesn’t lie in doubling down on a decades old sexual revolution that has only served to further a woman’s status as the plaything of men.

No, in fact, we have not yet begun the conversation about real sexual liberation when the standard feminist answer is to further encourage the exploitation of women’s bodies.

As Loofbourow astutely noted, sex is different for women than it is for men. Our bodies are different, our expectations are different, our needs are different—our consequences are different. But the changes the outdated feminist seeks are merely incremental improvements within the same paradigm. What we deserve—and what we must demand—is a complete paradigm shift to a new social construct that works with the realities of female biology, instead of one that works to suppress what makes us unique and strong and wonderful. The ‘liberated, empowered’ casual sex promised by the sexual revolution was never the right answer for women—it was the easy answer for men.

In this construct, it is not men but women that must pump artificial hormones into our bodies, sometimes with troubling physical and emotional side effects.

Is it not men but women who, according to the CDC, disproportionately bear the long-term consequences of sexually transmitted diseases.

It is not men but women who, as a ‘fail safe’ to contraception, must undergo a medical procedure to surgically remove something from our bodies.

What risks do men assume in this transaction? None. We have mistakenly assumed these risks in the name of liberation, yet have instead only objectified and endangered ourselves further.

It is here that Loofbourow is most insightful when she says, “Women have spent decades politely ignoring their own discomfort and pain to give men maximal pleasure.” Even Penny says, “We have been socialized to think . . . that our bodies are for men to desire and own.” Yes, we have. And now is the time to say, ‘ENOUGH.’

The standard feminist response lets us all down because it is not radical enough.

Let me stop here and be very clear, lest someone misunderstand and think I am somehow implying victims of sexual harassment or violence somehow have themselves to blame. I absolutely am not. No one ever deserves to be abused for any reason, period. This not just a women’s problem. But it’s not just a men’s problem, either. This is a problem created by an entire cultural way of being, and harassment and violence are not the only byproducts.

So what can we do? Teach our children — daughters and sons — that sex is not a right that follows from a few casual encounters. It is not a badge to be worn or a prize to be collected. That how we talk about women and their bodies matters. Teach them that sex is different for women than it is for men, and women have the right to a sex life that respects her biological and emotional needs. Teach them it is not a woman’s responsibility to alter her body so men can use it as they please, without fear of consequences.

It is not a woman’s responsibility to alter her body so men can use it as they please, without fear of consequences.

Let us also not restrict this message to religious circles. This is an answer for all women. All women have the right to pursue their lives free from pressure to engage in sexual practices that have more serious consequences for them than for their male partner. All women have the right to a sexual partner that respects her body for what it needs, what it can do and what it can’t do. Yes, for many women of faith this is ultimately found with one lifelong partner in the bonds of marriage, and these convictions flow from a scriptural foundation. But we don’t need to convert someone to the faith to explain why a culture that promotes casual sex is destructive and dangerous. After all, female biology, and much of the female experience, is the same whether you believe in God or not. And we all deserve better.

A peek inside one of the Pro-Woman Organizations changing the Pro-Life movement

Recently I met with Elena Murdock, the Development and Marketing Manager at Options United, to talk about what her organization does. Often when we hear about the pro-life movement and our minds might go immediately to the stories we’ve heard about guilting, shaming, etc that happens to women who may be considering abortion. Pro-life feminists do not condone that kind of response.

Fortunately, Options United is working to collaborate with pro-life ministries to give them tools to best serve the women and men they encounter. They are a pro-life non-profit pregnancy helpline that supports the needs of women and men by providing free referrals to free centers and clinics.

They also have a free app called the Options United App for Life. With over 180+ centers and clinics in their network (which extends throughout California), they seek to provide resources that take into account the care, health, and safety of their callers.

I interviewed Elena about the organization to get a clearer sense of the way these needs are met.

Jessica: So, how many responders do you have and what kind of training do they receive to be prepared to deal with such sensitive and personal issues as unplanned or crisis pregnancies?

Elena: We have a team of ten Call Responders who receive a minimum of 30 hours of training before going live on the Call Center as well as continued quality control, assessments and training during their shifts.  The Management training team has over 15 years of working in pro-life ministries, centers and clinics. They focus on phone techniques that encompass not only providing critical information needed to be well informed, but also ensuring the calls are being handled in a compassionate, non judgmental and caring spirit.  The Responders are provided the opportunity to reach out to Management throughout their shifts if needed and have quarterly in person training's and reviews.

Jessica: So if a person calls the call center, how would a typical response go?

Elena: Call Responders are trained to handle any type of call and provide the opportunity for the client to go into a free referral for a consultation on their options, to go over any questions they may have and to receive lab quality testing at no cost.  The client's LMP (first day of her last menstrual cycle) is obtained to better guide the client in receiving accurate information on the options she is seeking. Responders also provide critical information on the importance of the ultrasound. This test is important to confirm how far along the client is, confirm if the pregnancy is viable, due to the risk of miscarriage and also to confirm the location of the pregnancy. A healthy pregnancy is located in the uterus, outside of the uterus, is an ectopic pregnancy.  Without an ultrasound this can go undetected and can be life threatening. A woman deserves the right to be well informed and receive critical testing. The Responder also lets the client know that a follow up call can be offered to ensure they were provided with the testing and consultation they were referred for and had a good experience at the referral.

Jessica: So if a woman were to go to a clinic that provides an abortion, how would that be different from a patient going in for another kind of surgical procedure?

Elena: A woman should be respected and trusted to make a well informed decision on any medical procedure she may be looking at.  Whether it be a surgery for a broken leg, cancer treatments or an abortion. This can only be done if she is provided with the opportunity to talk to someone about the surgery or procedures, given all the options available to her, have accurate testing that she can not only view, but have time to go over and also meet the anesthesiologist or surgeon that will be performing the surgery or procedure.  She should also be provided with the short and long term risks/effects and given the opportunity to know exactly what will happen. In comparison to what happens when a women goes into an abortion clinic vs a non pregnancy medical surgery/procedure, testimonies are clear that a majority of women going into an abortion clinic are actually not provided with options or clear and non bias information and testing.  When the ultrasound is offered, this is only used to determine by the abortion clinic the type of abortion that will take place, not an opportunity for the client to see or hear her baby because of their fear that she may change her mind. This is not trusting or respecting a women's right to choose, but guiding her to one option.

When the ultrasound is offered, this is only used to determine by the abortion clinic the type of abortion that will take place, not an opportunity for the client to see or hear her baby because of their fear that she may change her mind.

Jessica: Do you bring God or faith into it at all?

Elena: The Call Center is not faith based and the Call Responders are trained to guide callers in a non judgmental, compassionate and professional way, which does not include bringing in any type of faith or religious beliefs into the call. Our goal is to provide that foundation and support that otherwise wouldn't exist.

Jessica: Yeah, you hear a lot about pro-life clinics that have a reputation for shaming women, using religious manipulation and things like that.

Elena: Yes, that is unfortunate and is not effective in providing a woman with the time and opportunity to talk about her feelings, get her questions answered and be well informed on all her options.  We have offered trainings to Center and Clinical staff on how to guide an abortion minded client and the best techniques to use without using shame/guilt and judgment that can be detrimental for the client as well as the Pregnancy Resource Center's reputation.  

Jessica: So, you mentioned earlier that you weren’t always active in the pro-life movement before. Why not?

Elena: I was working in youth ministry and would take my teens to pray outside abortion clinics during things like the 40 Days for Life movement, and women and men would be outside shouting at people going into the clinics, calling them murderers. It was awful. I didn’t want my teens to be part of that. If I were ever in a tough situation like those women going to that clinic, I wouldn’t want to be guilted and shamed. So I wasn’t a part of the pro-life movement at the time. We would talk about pro-life stuff at youth group, and do baby bottle campaigns, where we’d collect money for pregnancy resource centers. That’s why I love Options United; we address the cause of why a woman would choose abortion.  Yes, the baby is important, and yes it’s important for the baby to be born because it’s a life, it’s a gift, but Options United focuses on the women. We’re there for them no matter what. We hope that when women go to one of our clinics, they change their mind about abortion, but even if they do go to an abortion clinic and call back and say they had the abortion, we refer them to post-abortion counseling.

We hope that when women go to one of our clinics, they change their mind about abortion, but even if they do go to an abortion clinic and call back and say they had the abortion, we refer them to post-abortion counseling.

There aren’t a lot of pro-life organizations that offer that. Many focus just on the baby being born, but they don’t give post-birth or post-abortion resources. But you can’t focus just on the baby being born. You need to create that support network. You need to address the root problems. I believe that Options United is doing that.

Jessica: What kind of language do you use when referring to the unborn or to the woman who is thinking about or has chosen abortion?

Elena: Surprisingly the abortion minded or decided woman refers to her pregnancy as a baby. There is no question what she is choosing and she will call and state clearly that "I can not have another baby, its not the best time to have this child, I already have 3 kids and I can not have another baby."  Options United speaks truthfully and uses correct terms and verbiage, so the client is not confused or mislead, so "pregnancy," "baby" and "fetus" are terms that can be used on a call. A prayer request is also sent out for every abortion minded or vulnerable women on our App for Life. The well being of the woman is of utmost importance, that is why she is guided to a safe referral for a consultation and testing.  

Jessica: What other kinds of services do you offer?

Elena: We offer referrals for STD/STI testing for men and women, referrals to maternity homes that help support mothers in getting a college education, finding a job, paying for costs of living, child care, and prenatal care, all for free.

Jessica: What do you do if someone calls from a city that is outside your network?

Elena: We own a website called Options for Pregnancy, which allows Responders to locate Resource Centers Nationwide, as well as using referral sources for International clients as well.

Jessica: Do you provide resources for women who choose not to terminate their pregnancy? Like post-birth?

Elena: Yes, recently a call came in that confirmed that a mother who had gone in for an ultrasound, decided to keep her baby, and the center threw her a baby shower. They helped her with parenting information on what to do when the baby is born. They gave her baby clothes and diapers.

There’s a great center in Northern California that has a boutique that’s free (all donations), and the parents of the baby can choose a whole wardrobe for their baby and can come back for more clothes if they need them. Diapers are expensive for new parents too, and many of our centers provide them and many more resources as needed. Parenting classes are offered as well.

Jessica: Are there any other initiatives or programs that Options United is running?

Elena: We re-launched Adoptions United through our helpline!  So we’re starting to ask in our calls if we think that the woman might be open to it, “have you ever thought about adoption?” Adoptions United is about educating women and the public about what adoption is. There are a lot of misconceptions. Right now about only 2% of women in crisis pregnancy choose adoption. Adoption rates used to be much higher, but now women choose abortion more often than adoption. The idea for Adoptions United is to help provide accessible adoption. Right now adoption costs anywhere from $40-60,000 for one child. The way we’re revolutionizing that is by working with a family attorney called Family Building, and they waive a lot of their fees, so if a woman chooses to give her child up for adoption the couple who’s adopting pays what they can afford. They might make monthly donations, but instead of that going back to Family Building, it goes back to Adoptions United to keep it going. They keep the rates based on what the family can afford and try to make adoption accessible for families who want to adopt but aren’t as wealthy.

There are hundreds of women who call our helpline every week, and when a woman is abortion-minded, we send out a prayer request for her on the App for Life, too. Our users have sent out over 2.5 million prayers and saved over 3,000 lives! This app is a virtual abortion clinic sidewalk and a great way to get involved without leaving the house.

Jessica: Is there anything else you’d like to share with our FemCatholic readers to know about you and Options United?

Elena: I’d like to share about how I ended up working for Options United. I had been self-employed living in Austin after being involved in youth ministry working for the Archdiocese of Miami. I moved back to Miami when Hurricane Irma was headed towards Florida. At the time, it was ranked a Category 5 storm; I decided to travel to stay with a friend in Sacramento. I got connected to an Executive Director of a center there who referred me to the job opening at Options United. On October 1st, the Feast Day of Therese of Lisieux, I applied and finished praying a Therese novena. Soon after, I interviewed with Thomas Rudkins, the founder of Options United, and another board member. Later that day I visited with the Carmelites where I saw roses, the ones I had asked to see upon the completion of my St. Therese novena. I realized that this was the sign I had been looking for and I accepted the position. This is my dream job, being able to work for an organization that makes an actual difference in the lives of thousands of women. God is good!

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It was great to learn so much about how Options United focuses their work on the needs of women. Because to be a pro-life feminist is to be pro-woman equally as much as defending the life of the unborn child. I’m grateful to know that feminist pro-life resources are out there! If you have more questions, you can learn more about them and their network of resources at http://www.optionsunited.com, appforlife.org and to support them go to bit.ly/savethebabyhumans