Tea at Trianon: Should NFP Be Taught in Marriage Prep?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Should NFP Be Taught in Marriage Prep?

All I know is that it should not be discussed when children are present. I once watched a young couple inform the congregation of the biological details of NFP as parents had to cover the ears of their small children. Just because something is natural does not mean it's for little ones to hear. From Catholic Answers:

Marriage is a natural institution that predates Christianity, but to the modern world, Christian marriage is a strange curiosity—like the Amish, or cars with stick shifts. That makes it, from our perspective, it’s an instrument of rebellion. So engaged couples should be trained as revolutionaries.

That means putting them in a mindset of being distinct from the world. Where the world pursues relationships based on sexual gratification and personal fulfilment, we offer the self-emptying model of Christ and the Church his bride. Where the world says we can redefine marriage or dissolve it at will, we say, “One man, one woman, for life.”

And when the world sterilizes sex, using pills and barriers to subordinate fecundity to pleasure, we insist on the inseparable connection between marriage and children. Underscoring this connection, education in natural family planning breeds revolutionary thinking—arguably even more than the “providentialist” approach that would have us simply tell couples not to use contraception and leave it at that. (Read more.)