Natural Family Prereq
It seems this is NFP Awareness Week. Fresh from vacation, Burkie's writing about it in his Review column today, there've been a flurry of stories about it, and Sam Aquila is making a course in it mandatory for engaged couples in the diocese of Fargo.
I didn't know NFP training was mandatory in Denver, but this is very interesting.... Observant readers will remember that Aquila is currently doing double duty -- besides his permanent gig in Fargo, he's serving as apostolic administrator of Sioux Falls (which currently has openings for bishop and vice-chancellor).
Obviously, the expanded purview hasn't cramped Sam's style.
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"Through my personal experience in preparing couples for marriage and through discussions with priests, I have seen a great need for this instruction to help couples fully live the sacrament of marriage," Bishop Aquila, head of the diocese, said in a news release. "Young adults are bombarded with negative images of sexuality, with attitudes that demean the marital commitment and with lies about the so-called 'freedom' contraception provides. They need to know and they deserve to know the plan that God has for them regarding the sexuality and the conjugal love they will share as husband and wife."
The only other diocese in America requiring such extensive premarital counseling on natural family planning is the archdiocese of Denver, where Aquila spent 25 years as a priest before being named bishop in Fargo three years ago.
I didn't know NFP training was mandatory in Denver, but this is very interesting.... Observant readers will remember that Aquila is currently doing double duty -- besides his permanent gig in Fargo, he's serving as apostolic administrator of Sioux Falls (which currently has openings for bishop and vice-chancellor).
Obviously, the expanded purview hasn't cramped Sam's style.
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posted by Rocco Palmo at 13:38
5 Comments:
Since when is NFP necessary to the sacrament of Matrimony?
Next it will be mandatory "anti-masterbatorial tactics" class to be taught in Catholic High Schools. Puhleeze.
Papabile,
In true agent provocateur style, I am curious to know what you mean when you say "John Paul II had successfully dumbed down the Thomistic and Augustinian approach to human sexuality and blurred it with an approach that did not fully recognize the authority of the Heavenly Father in these matters."
Re: Papabile; Not sounding too Papal...
Refined scholastics? Wow. You have suggested JP2 is Classically deficient and, having not been born before the 13 century is "unrefined". I find that very interesting. I am sure you know that all but 3 or so of his credits toward an STL were fulfilled at the Angelicum. A joke he refered to when they attempted to call him an alumni, he graciously retorted: No, no, I did not finish." The popular story goes: they denied him a license based on his thesis, either way, it was Thomas' loss. It was JP's immersion between Thomism and Phenomenology which made his works, especially TOB, so unique. The Creation account is where the Imago Dei first arrived and the Divine Essence took its hold, transcending itself, committing the root virtue of the divine law. Sexuality does not pre-exist the garden, or wherever you wish to believe Creation took place. God had no need of sex (or sexuality) before giving it as a gift to man toward creation. Sexuality as identity became necessary when man entered the picture. God already knew who he was, having no need of an identifying organ. It was man, confused who needed accidents and incense stirring the penis' on the scene of creation. And if you can't swallow the money I just gave you, any new digression, a "third way", would be an improvement over Thomas' "Summa". To ascribe to Aristotle's categories and ideas of sense perception et al, is an act of ignorance in need of another suggestion. St. Thomas, pray for me as I may have just bashed you.
And the same Ratzinger also condemned Harry Potter, slapped a reporter, needlessly criticized US foreign policy, etc. All opinions (and mistakes). Him now being Benedict no more validates any of that than his opinion of TOB. Personally, I think it easier to communicate Thomas to the "common man" than TOB. Besides, Ratzinger and JP are from very different schools of thought. Jp believed in sticking to his guns, the same ones he wore at Vatican II, whereas Ratzinger decided to join the mainstream, running from his previously more liberal, phenomenological image. Traces are still found in Ratz. works but he better hurry and cover them up!
I never suggested there was anything static about JP's intellectual development...sometimes I wonder the true fruit of these blog discussion.
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