"Breezies" from QVC--perfect postponing panties

Via Fumbling Toward Grace, That Married Couple posted a fun “You know you’re a __ when….” list that started on the Facebook NFP group. Good times.

My favorites:

2. Your husband informs you that your period will start in the next two days (based on your temperature, not on your mood).

4. You know what Onan’s sin was.

12. You know Pope Paul VI’s four predictions in Humanae Vitae and consider them prophetic.

13. You have at least one copy of Janet Smith’s Contraception: Why Not?

20. You know that the Pill hurts fish.

29. You have “postponing panties” – baggy and unattractive underwear that only comes out when you’re fertile.

Some additions:

You know you’re an NFP groupie when…

• You or your spouse can tap your index finger and thumb together in a circle of friends, and they know what you’re talking about.
• You’ve given a NFP CD/pamphlet/ brochure/ card to a grocery store clerk.
• Depending on your intentions, 10KL means “go time” or “let’s watch an action movie.”
• You can name at least 5 side effects of contraception.
• You know what the four F’s are.
• You choose your insurance based on what NFP doctor is in your plan.
• An uninformed OB with an attitude has made you cry or at least a little bit angry.
• You want to do the wave when you hear a priest or deacon actually preach on the ills of contraception, Theology of the Body and/ or NFP.
• Your pre-Cana or Marriage Prep program totally sucked because they either skipped the NFP bit or totally misrepresented it. (Except for Madison–shout out, Andy!)
• The Annuale Commercial is at the top of your favorite SNL skits.
• You’ve got “Natural Family Planning” on Google Alert.

Have any to add?

Via my bud Millinerd, a hilarious post commenting on anti-religious bigotry disguised as a rat-poison commercial via Comedy Central. He suggests an alternative, based on actual facts, instead of someone’s Catholic-school-trauma mixed with bad history. So funny, Matthew. Keep it up.

I’m grateful for drugs. I really am. I take them, some as prescription and some over the counter. They’re not my friends, per se, but in a fallen world we sometimes–oftentimes–need them. But guess what? For every action there’s a reaction, for every cause an effect, and it’s not news to us that drugs–pharmaceuticals, prescriptions, our little chemic companions, or whatever you call them–have side effects.

However, our friends at Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals are so concerned about women’s wellness with completely altruistic motives that they have created a birth control, evidently, with no side effects. Amazing, right!? OMG, as the kids say. Why is this not on the front page of every paper and being quoted on every blog? I mean, by the way their product was marketed, it looks like not only will it cure my PMS but it might even stop global warming, create the perfect bra, *and* discover who really killed JFK. Nobel Peace Prize, watch out!

Wait a second…I didn’t read the fine print at the bottom of the page, in light gray. Way to go, marketing professionals at Bayer. Turns out, not only did the FDA read the fine print, they realized Yaz wasn’t FDA approved to cure everything. Not only that, but the FDA in concert with attorneys general of 27 states (um, why not 50?) have required Bayer to run $20 Million worth of new advertising over the next six years correcting the misleading advertisements, explaining that women shouldn’t take Yaz just to correct their acne.

Right. Because Yaz is the first birth control brand to promise things either they couldn’t deliver or that mislead consumers. The only one. How many teens are on the Pill because they’ve got acne or 32 day periods or cramps?

This isn’t the first warning for Bayer. They bought the makers of Yasmin, the predecessor to Yaz, who were warned in 2003 for implying in their advertising that their BC was superior to all other pills, and maximizing the positive side effects while minimizing the potentially dangerous side effects.

Right now I’m thinking of a certain Dr. E in Austin Powers saying, “Twenty meeelllyon dollars,” thinking that the world million will knock us off our rockers. I’m thinking that’s not enough, and somebody else agrees,

Bruce L. Lambert, a professor of pharmacy administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago, lauded the F.D.A. for insisting this time that Bayer run a corrective advertising campaign. But he referred to the corrective $20 million ad campaign for Yaz as “chump change” and “just the cost of doing business.”

“I don’t think it is likely to stop,” he said, “unless there are more significant consequences.” (NY Times Advertising Section, 2/11/09)

What is a more significant consequence? Death perhaps? Probably not, since a number of women have already died as a result of using the patch and other birth controls. Did you know the makers of the patch continue to settle out of court with families? What’s 1.25 million times ten to a multi-billion dollar industry? That’s right, Mr. Lambert. Chump change.

I will close with the great wisdom of  lady doctors. Doctors of comedy, that is.

I was trying to find some video of a dynamic Natural Family Planning, contra-contraception, or Humanae Vitae talk on YouTube, and I couldn’t find anything! (Yes, I know, the seminarians are there, but the novelty is wearing off.) There were a couple of decent homilies, but they weren’t the speed I was looking for for the blog.

So you know what I found instead? This jazzy cartoon:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3y18QpOy4]

Are you just so *sold* on World Contraception Day? Well, naturally, I was curious and checked out their web site, YOUR-LIFE.COM (note to self: future Humanae Vitae site will be HIS-LIFE.COM). There was the usual mis-information about natural methods of family planning , although it wasn’t as ridiculously incorrect as it usually is, and there weren’t any cartoons making fun of it. Overall, though, it was an all-around cool site, anti-fertility, anti-family messages notwithstanding. I really liked the FAMILY/TEACHERS/PRESS bars on the side, giving information to parents on how to talk to their kids about said travesty (“Listen Son, you’re beginning to have special feelings, so I want to teach you about something that has divided your mom and I so that you, too, can objectify and poison that special someone.”) teachers about how to give workshops (“Hey kids! Here’s women’s lib’s gift to you: poisoned relationships between the sexes, higher STI rates and a massive correlation to the world’s highest divorce rate. C’mon!”), and press all sorts of media-related goodies–videos, photos, press releases, etc.

WHAT A GREAT RESOURCE if you don’t believe that contraception is the greatest societal cancer to women, children and families, the fallout of which we’re just now experiencing!

But seriously, folks. This is great media presence here, particularly for the youth/ young adults and their parents/ mentors. The million dollar question (or mostly likely the ten thousand dollar question) here is: WHY DON’T WE HAVE THIS KIND OF MEDIA PRESENCE FOR HUMANAE VITAE, THEOLOGY OF THE BODY AND NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING!? Now, to give credit where it’s due, there is good web presence for Theology of the Body & Chastity (but it could be better) and a few good sites for Natural Family Planning and at least one fair site for Humanae Vitae. (I won’t name my personal taste here because there will be a firestorm of comments from such-and-such a group/NFP method/diocese/whomever complaining that I’m being unfair and they’ve gotten really good feedback from their favorite techie. Good for you, but sometimes, “Hey, it’s a great web site compared to all the lame churchy web sites” is not a qualifying statement for the great web site awards. As you know, the artistic bar in the Church is not set too high in most places.

Back to the question: Why does our media suck–especially for such vital evangelization efforts as marriage and sexuality–and what can we do about it? Do you know of an off-the-hook web site, brochure or media campaign? Let me know!

I now interrupt this NFP blog to report in local news:
I found a great motivational poster today (h/t to Mark Shea):

In an unrelated story, there’s a group of people in Madison headed to California, but found on flight to Rome.

UPDATE: In a related unrelated story, support Bishop Morlino.

Well, I normally wouldn’t use my religion card on the blog with such flare, but you know what? The 40th Anniversary of Humanae Vitae’s release is this Friday, I just read a rockin’ article by Mary Eberstadt, and I’m very caffeinated. I can’t contain myself.

Eberstadt journalistically gelds the ridiculous glee of Humanae Vitae critics. Frankly, she packs a politically incorrect punch as well, so gird your loins. Her brief opening ends with a restrained,

“ He that sittethin the heavens shall laugh,” the Psalmist promises, specifically in a passage about enjoying vindication over one’s adversaries. If that is so, then the racket on this fortiethanniversary must be prodigious. Four decades later, not only have the document’s signature predictions been ratified in empirical force, but they have been ratified as few predictions ever are: in ways its authors could not possibly have foreseen, including by information that did not exist when the document was written, by scholars and others with no interest whatever in its teaching, and indeed even inadvertently, and in more ways than one, by many proud public adversaries of the Church.
Forty years later, there are more than enough ironies, both secular and religious, to make one swear there’s a humorist in heaven. “

In her six part article (homage to Pope Paul the Sixth?), she breaks it down. All the natural law aside (and that’s like saying to house builder, “The foundation aside…”), she focuses on section 17, which warned that if contraception became widely accepted, four things would result: “…a general lowering of moral standards throughout society; a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; and the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments.” Hmm…some of those things–four fourths to be exact–sound familiar.

Sociologists, demographers, anthropologists, economists, and other academics in the fields related to or working withsocial science have darkly vindicated Pope Paul VI and his predictions. And not so fast! Before you accuse the scientists of some sort of Catholic Conspiracy of concocting data, the irony is that most of these scientists (though truth be told, not all) are not Catholic, and in some cases, could care less about HMC (Holy Mother Church) and the teachings of the LJC (Lord Jesus Christ). A well-known sociologist says,

“The leading scholars who have tackled these topics are not Christians, and most of them are not political or social conservatives. They are, rather, honest social scientists willing to follow the data wherever it may lead.”

The list of researchers affirming the statistical data pointing to lowering of morality and the breakup of the family (and resulting societal challenges and ills) includes Nobel Prize winning George Akerlof, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Judith Wallerstein, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Sara McLanahan, Gary Sandefur, David Blankenhorn, James Q. Wilson, Linda Waite, Maggie Gallagher, Kay Hymowitz, Elizabeth Marquardt, W. Bradford Wilcox, Charles Murray, Francis Fukuyama, and more… The sexual revolution has not paid off, and they know it.

Further,

“Consider the work of maverick sociobiologist Lionel Tiger. Hardly a cat’s-paw of the pope—he describes religion as “a toxic issue”—Tiger has repeatedly emphasized the centrality of the sexual revolution to today’s unique problems. The Decline of Males, his 1999 book, was particularly controversial among feminists for its argument that female contraceptives had altered the balance between the sexes in disturbing new ways (especially by taking from men any say in whether they could have children).

Equally eyebrow-raising is his linking of contraception to the breakdown of families, female impoverishment, trouble in the relationship between the sexes, and single motherhood. Tiger has further argued—as Humanae Vitae did not explicitly, though other works of Catholic theology have—for a causal link between contraception and abortion, stating outright that ‘with effective contraception controlled by women, there are still more abortions than ever. . . . Contraception causes abortion.’”

Grrr…He is Tiger, hear him research! For more on Tiger’s research listen for free online to Janet Smith’s Contraception: Why Notor order a free copy of the CD. All I can say to his work is Reowww (vicious feline meow-roar)! Check it out.

This entry is getting long, and I realize I’m quote-poaching and just re-presenting Eberstadt’swork. I have to close with one of my favorite topics: feminism. I consider myself a feminist, though not your mother or grandmother’s feminist–a kinder, complimentarity minded, more authentic feminist. I looked under Wikipedia (wince, I know) for “feminist,” and I couldn’t even find my type of feminist. And there were a lot of them listed. I digress…of all people to witness to the cultural discontent of the sexual revolution, the most ironic testimonies come from…the feminists, many of them advocates of contraceptives and the mid-late 20th century sexual revolution. Here’s reflection on what Eberstadt aptly calls the Pill’s bastard child–ubiquitous pornography,

“‘The onslaught of porn,’ one social observer wrote, ‘is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as ‘porn-worthy.’’ Further, ‘sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed foods, super size portions, and obesity. . . . If your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor-quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up. People are not closer because of porn but further apart; people are not more turned on in their daily lives but less so.’ And perhaps most shocking of all, this—which with just a little tweaking could easily have appeared in Humanae Vitae itself: ‘The power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time.’”

WHAT? Where did she find that quote? Somebody’s old-fashioned Grandma or a riled-up Ann Coulter? I doubt it. And No. It’s Naomi Wolf, third-wave feminist and promiscuous sex advocate, apparently, and unwitting witness to the failure of contraception to make women happier and society better. Pornography has never been more rampant, and there are more and more studies to indicate the damage this is doing not only to marriages, but to men’s brains and ability to function normally, let alone optimally. Just ask Dr. Phil Mango, who specializes in this type of research and work.

After all is said and done, the Church is a sign of contradiction. The Lord was, and His followers will continue to be. If his followers are not a sign of contradiction, one has to wonder who they are actually following. There is always mercy and healing for those who stray (we all do), but we must be accountable to the Truth and following the teachings of Humanae Vitae, no matter what the challenge, the difficulty. Remember the words of Gamaliel in Acts, “If this plan or undertaking [in our time, the contraceptive mentality] is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them!” However, also remember that however impressive the statistics, glorifying the reviews, or redeeming the reports of the sociological vindication of HumanaeVitae, many will still reject the truth of the message, and the Sender of the message. While we can give thanks for writers like Eberstadt, sociologists and economists like Akerlof, we should not put all of our hope in men (for you lingual-inclusive feminists, that’s men, as in humankind), but in God.

UPDATE: Dig Paul VI and truth? Sign the Layperson’s pledge of assent.

UPDATE: Humanae Vitae on WordPress.

UPDATE for HV lovers: Feel free to comment back to a jaded jingoist who is so anti-Catholic that he’s probably an embittered ex-Catholic.