{"id":8012,"date":"2004-02-01T12:05:04","date_gmt":"2004-02-01T12:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/the_pope_on_fertility.html"},"modified":"2004-02-01T12:05:04","modified_gmt":"2004-02-01T12:05:04","slug":"the_pope_on_fertility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/the_pope_on_fertility.html","title":{"rendered":"The Pope on Fertility"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Zenit story here.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Holy Father explained this in a message addressed to the participants of an international congress held in Rome on the theme “Natural Regulation of Fertility and the Culture of Life.” The Vatican press office published the text today.<\/p>\n

“It is clear,” the Pope wrote, “that when one speaks of ‘natural’ regulation, we are not referring only to respecting biological rhythms. It is a question of responding to the truth about the human person in their intimate unity of spirit, psyche and body, a unity that can never be merely reduced to an overall question of biological mechanisms.” <\/p>\n

“Only in the context of the spouses’ reciprocal love, total and without reserve, can the moment of generating life, to which the future of mankind is tied, be lived in all its dignity,” he stated. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My Smartest Reader comments:<\/p>\n

\nIt’s about more than doing “IT”. It’s about more than “tab A, slot B” biology, epidemiology stats, doctrine and pat moral imperatives. That’s the easy part, and can be covered in a 2, maybe 3 hour presentation by a dynamic speaker.<\/p>\n

The rest is an ongoing conversation — from parents, parishioners, priests, catechists, bishops — all of us.<\/p>\n

We go through all kinds of mental gymnastics, get hyped up over “sex education” programs. Continue the conversation of when to teach the plumbing as a sidebar, please.<\/p>\n

The centrality of that argument misses the bigger point:<\/p>\n

“Mutual self-giving” means more than giving of oneself from navel to knees. It’s all of you, every fiber of your being, every corner of your soul.<\/p>\n

Need a model? May I introduce you to the Ultimate Gift of Self?<\/p>\n

His name is Christ.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Zenit story here. The Holy Father explained this in a message addressed to the participants of an international congress held in Rome on the theme “Natural Regulation of Fertility and the Culture of Life.” The Vatican press office published the text today. “It is clear,” the Pope wrote, “that when one speaks of ‘natural’…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pope on Fertility - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/the_pope_on_fertility.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Pope on Fertility - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Zenit story here. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}