What’s it like to be a non-Catholic married to a Catholic?

When Laura Frese was three days postpartum, she had to take her newborn back into the hospital to be treated for jaundice. They had been home for only 12 hours, and it was right in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, before vaccinations, and she had to leave her other two children behind with no family to help. At the hospital, she just couldn’t get herself out of the car.

“I’ve seen my wife cry all of three times,” said her husband, Bradford. This was one of those times. Laura was simply overwhelmed.

So Bradford held her hand and started saying Hail Marys. This comforted her and helped her compose and center herself, and she found the strength to drag herself back through that hospital door.

Not an extraordinary story, perhaps, except that Bradford Frese is an atheist. He does not believe in God or intercessory prayer. But he does love his wife.

“I tried to find some way to comfort her in that moment that was specific to her, and not just what I thought. Not telling her what I needed her to hear, but to understand what might bring her strength in that moment,” said Mr. Frese.

He has noticed that prayer is good for his kids, too. It calms them down, helps them regulate their breathing, and aids in teaching them to hold themselves to high moral standards. He believes it has empirical benefits, if not precisely the ones religious people believe in.

The Freses, who live in Washington, D.C., are part of a growing trend in the United States. In the 1950s, only 5 percent of marriages in the United States were between Christians and religiously unaffiliated people, and fewer than 20 percent were between people in different religious groups, according to a 2015 Pew study. But things have changed. At the time of the study, the share of spouses in different religious groups had climbed to 39 percent, and 18 percent of marriages were between a Christian and a “none.”

Such marriages may be more common than they once were, but they are by no means easy. It might feel, in the first, heady days of a couple’s relationship, like love can smooth over any differences, including those between a believer and a non-believer. In reality, there must be open communication, clarity, flexibility and probably compromise on both sides. How to raise children is a frequent point of contention, and so are matters of sexual ethics. As Catholics, it can be illuminating to understand better how these matters land “on the other side”—how it feels to be the non-Catholic married to a Catholic.

No Longer “Doomed”

Religious leaders used to warn that such marriages were “doomed, absolutely doomed,” said Dale McGowan, author of In Faith and In Doubt and several other books on raising kids without religion. “The fact is, that’s less often borne out than it once was.”

As these marriages have become more common, the warnings surrounding them have become less dire—and with good cause. The risks of marrying outside one’s faith are much more intense when such partnerships cause a rift with your familiar social, political and religious communities. But today, the average American moves 11 times, and the insulated, isolated, homogeneous communities of the past are now rare and fragile. We simply encounter more different people than we used to.

“The culture itself has adapted to the idea of being exposed to different influences,” Mr. McGowan said. And that goes both for the believer and for the non-believer in the mixed-belief couple.

In Mr. Frese’s case, growing up in a religiously diverse private high school in Albuquerque, N.M., helped him to respect people with differing beliefs from a young age. Mormons, Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, atheists and agnostics all mixed together and spoke freely about their beliefs and disagreements, in and out of class. He absorbed the idea that diversity is desirable. He could also see that children who took their religion seriously tended to be kind, and that made a good impression on him.

“It was a big deal in their personal lives, and it motivated them, but it wasn’t a divisive factor,” he said. Still, religious practice didn’t draw him personally. “I’m cut off from this way of thinking. It’s not something I’ve ever been motivated to do or to think about,” he said.

Mr. Frese was obliged to think about religion several years into his marriage when his wife, a nominal Catholic when they met, started diving deeper into her faith. They had been married in a vineyard, and for the first few years, she went to Mass only sporadically. But her parish priest encouraged them to get married in the church. Ms. Frese liked the idea, so Mr. Frese agreed, and shortly after the birth of their second child, they had a ceremony in the church with family and friends. She began to be more involved in her faith and in parish life.

The birth of a child is one of three major life events, after the engagement and the marriage itself, that Mr. McGowan calls a “landmark” that “really brings out the issues” in a marriage between a believer and a nonbeliever.

Mr. McGowan said it is vital for a couple to talk about expectations ahead of time, so that no one ends up feeling duped. And he says when shifts in belief do occur, both parties should strive to be as flexible and open to other points of view as possible.

Mr. Frese and his wife did have open discussions about family size before they were married and decided it made sense to have two children, and that a girl and a boy would be ideal. If they had two children of the same sex, perhaps they would try for a third or even adopt (Laura is an adoptee herself).

They had a boy and a girl.

“I was like, ‘Great, I’m gonna have a vasectomy,’” Mr. Frese said.

He was shocked when his wife asked him to wait, because she might want a third child ….
Read the rest of my feature story in America Magazine

In which I get interviewed about sex and stuff again!

This was neat! InDepth NH has launched a new feature called The First Line, where author and speaker Bev Stoddard interviews NH authors. I was honored to be the subject of the inaugural interview, which you can watch here. Bev did a great job and I really enjoyed the conversation, which ranged far and wide.

I especially appreciated the opportunity to step outside my comfy bubble a little bit and talk to a secular audience about my book, The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning [affiliate link], and about natural family planning, and sexuality and marriage in general. I am finding that a Catholic point of view is making more and more sense to people who don’t have any particular theological beliefs, but are looking around at the cultural and biological wasteland of 2022 and not liking what they see.

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Speaking of my book, this is hard for me to believe, but it’s been almost nine years since it was published, and I’m still getting nice reviews! Here’s one someone just published on Amazon just a few weeks ago:

The book is available in paperback, as an ebook, and also as an audiobook read by yours truly. (And you know what, I insisted the paperback will always be priced less than $10, because I remember when that was the magic number of whether or not I could afford something.) If I were smart, I’d be publishing this after Christmas, when people have gift cards burning a hole in their pocket, but if I were smart, well, where’s the fun in that. 

Introducing The Catholic Card Game NFP expansion pack!

I’m delighted to announce that the makers of The Catholic Card Game asked for my collaboration, and you can now order the official NFP Expansion Pack of 54 new cards, including an untold but filthy number of the jokes my husband and I came up with while two sheets to the wind. 

The Catholic Card Game is a simple party game along the lines of Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity, where you must use the hand you’re dealt to finish the sentence. I’ve played the unexpanded version with my kids a few times and they not only enjoyed themselves, they admitted they enjoyed themselves, so that’s pretty hot stuff right there.

The NFP Expansion Pack is not for kids, though. I mean the NFP game is not for kids. If you intend to include kids when you’re playing with NFP– I mean, NFP is just about expanding your– you know what, just buy the game. It’s fun, and we all know you have no other plans for the evening, ha ha ha *sob*.

They also just came out with The Consecrated Expansion, written by nuns and priests, and you can get a discount if you buy both packs. 

In conclusion: I have a weird life, but I’m not complaining. 

 

Various essays on sex and NFP and glop monsters

It’s NFP Week! I’ll assume you have already read my most excellent book, The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning, and are desperate for more. So here is a little round-up of some of the essays that aren’t in the book. If you’ve read something good on the topic and think other people should read it, too, please leave a link in the comments. 

The Contraceptive mentality is real, but it’s probably not what you think

The Contraceptive Mentality, Part 2: Grave reasons and obedience

Asking couples to use NFP is asking a lot. Can’t the Church help more?

If NFP works, why does she have ten kids?

Help! Help! Humanae Vitae isn’t a rigorous logical treatise!

Please stop saying ‘my cycle’ when you mean ‘my period.’ It matters.

8 Things we need our NFP teachers to know

The privilege of saying ‘no thanks’ to NFP

Sunshine, Buttercups, and Rainbow Flags

and not specifically about NFP, but still relevant:

Don’t be a sex sponge

I’m sorry about the glop monsters. The one and only time I feel sympathy toward the USCCB is once a year when they have to come up with a graphic depicting NFP in a way that doesn’t make people point and snicker. I’m having a Jenna Maroney “Fart So Loud” moment, I guess. A triumph.

Asking couples to use NFP is asking a lot. Can’t the Church help more?

It is no secret: Natural family planning has its discontents. A number of studies have shown that few Catholics use it, and it is not hard to see why. N.F.P. can be difficult, it can be frustrating, and occasionally it is impossible. I am a discontent myself, albeit a stubbornly faithful one, which is why I wrote a whole book about how ordinary, non-saintly couples can learn to navigate the spiritual, emotional and marital problems that N.F.P. sometimes brings into sharp focus.

N.F.P. is worth learning well and sticking with, despite all the trials it can bring. When we were first married, my husband and I did not know how to communicate well. We did not understand what sex was really about. We had no clue about how God’s will actually works in our lives. Sacrificial patience, generosity and transformative suffering were mysteries to us. They are not mysteries now but are daily practices, thanks in part to the rigors of N.F.P. I wrote my book to let other struggling couples know they are not alone, and that their suffering does not have to be in vain.

But one thing my book did not cover was the logistical obstacles to using fertility awareness based methods of family planning successfully. (Most now shy away from the more colloquial label N.F.P.) These obstacles are not negligible. It was not long ago that we desperately wanted to switch to another fertility awareness based method that would work better with my body, but we simply did not have the money; so we were stuck with an unsuitable method that caused frustration and confusion. Some struggling is inevitable and can bring about growth; but some is avoidable and causes only pain. A small cash grant would have made a world of difference for our family.

I wondered how common our experience was; so I designed some surveys and shared them on social media and on my personal website, targeting women who use or have used a wide range of different forms of fertility awareness methods. Nearly 700 women responded. Here is what I learned.

Some women love N.F.P. Some of them find it cheap and simple and empowering. Some of them find it pricey and labor intensive, but well worth the cost. Some of them say it healed their bodies, enriched their marriages and drew them closer to God.

But for others, N.F.P. brought one trial after another. The church teaches us to forgo birth control, and so they did, whether out of obedience, love of spouse or a desire to understand their own health better. But even if they were willing to take on the spiritual and psychological challenges of N.F.P., they found themselves stymied by logistical problems beyond their control—things that could easily be solved with something as mundane as money, or better marketing, or better organization or even something as simple as a babysitter.

Oddly enough, even as the church struggles to interest its flock in fertility awareness based methods for spiritual reasons, fertility awareness is having a moment in the secular world. Cosmopolitan gave N.F.P. some positive press, and so did The New York Times. The interest is fuelled partly by a slow but growing disenchantment with artificial contraception among women of a variety of backgrounds and faiths. There are now countless fertility awareness based methods (usually paired with targeted condom use in secular circles) on the market; and women, religious or not, are snapping them up. You can buy bluetooth-enabled super-thermometers for $300 and compact fertility monitors straight out of Star Trek that smile at you when you are fertile. It is a far cry from the days of a scrap of graph paper, a thermometer and crossed fingers.

There are dozens of slick fertility apps, many free, some with millions of downloads. Women who have no idea that the church pioneered fertility awareness are turning to fertility awareness methods because they cannot seem to get pregnant or because they are thoroughly sick of birth control side-effects like migraines, blood clots or mood swings and wandering I.U.D.s; and they are ready for something else, something natural.

Here is the frustrating part. The church has something natural and effective to offer, and it is not some antiquated calendar system. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has approved a number of fertility awareness based methods: MarquetteCreightonBillingsSympto-Thermal, Boston Cross Check and N.F.P.I. The church is, in theory, delighted when a couple want to manage their fertility naturally. And many of these methods offer some level of personal instruction, which greatly increases their effectiveness. But because they can also come with some psychological, cultural and logistical baggage, women who have powered through the judgment of the secular world find themselves facing obstacles from within the church itself.

What Women Want

Given the church’s desire for couples to practice fertility awareness based methods, you might think every parish and diocese would offer numerous, easily accessible and affordable ways to learn these methods in order to use them consistently and reliably. You would be wrong.

It is a long history, and it would be funny if it were not so maddening. Back in 1932, Leo Latz, M.D., of Loyola University Chicago wrote his slim volume The Rhythm of Fertility and Sterility, outlining the basic principles of calendar-based family planning, so couples could learn to chart their fertility cycles quickly, easily and cheaply. It sold 600,000 copies to a readership ravenous for information.

Dr. Latz, for his trouble, was booted out of the university, a decision some historians attribute to his attempt to put dangerous information in the hot hands of so many married Catholics who might make decisions without the blessing of a priest.

Read the rest of my article for America Magazine

 Photo via Good Free Photos (Public Domain)

The financial cost of NFP and FAM. Please take my survey!

Everyone knows that barely any Catholics use NFP, because it’s hard and it’s counter-cultural. But even among those who are ready and willing, there can be obstacles. One of those obstacles is money. I’ve put together a survey to get an idea of how much of a problem money is for people who use or want to use NFP. The survey is anonymous, and I will use the information in an article I’m writing. 

It’s not a scientific survey, but I’m hoping to get enough responses to give me an idea of what is common around the country and the world. You don’t need to be Catholic to take the survey! It has seven questions, is anonymous, and should take about two minutes to complete. I’d be very grateful if you could take the survey and share it on social media or with anyone who might be interested. Here’s the link, or you can use the embedded widget below.

Follow-up question: What other obstacles might prevent you from using or trying NFP, besides money? Distance? Opportunity? Childcare? Cultural attitudes? What else? 

 

 
Create your own user feedback survey

Image Love for money (Free photobank torange.biz) / ©torange.biz Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

NFP Awareness Week: Clearblue Fertility Monitor Giveaway #1 and #2

Here we are again! NFP Awareness Week. Here’s the deal: We love the Marquette method of NFP. It’s made NFP so much easier and has given us so much more confidence. And, like, Corrie is almost three-and-a-half and she is still the youngest, so.

But the monitor costs more than $100, and you have to buy a box of test strips every few months, too. For many years, we just couldn’t afford it, and I know plenty of people are in the same boat.

Happily, I have many generous friends, and ten of them have offered to sponsor a total of eleven monitors to give away, plus several boxes of test strips, plus instruction with one or possibly two instructors!

 

Today, we have two sponsors, each sponsoring a monitor and box of test strips to give away. One is my friend Tanya Cleary, and the other is an anonymous donor. Thanks so very much to them!

For my part, I will try to post a new, terrible graphic each day this week. It’s not easy, but I’m willing.

Today’s raffle is open only to US residents. There will be one prize for UK residents and one for Australia residents in the coming days.

The raffle details:

How do I enter? Use the Rafflecopter form below. It gives you several ways to enter. If the form doesn’t show up, click on the link that says “a Rafflecopter giveaway” at the bottom of the post. Only one prize per household.

How often can I enter? You may enter once per day, using as many ways of entering as you like (see form below for details). Two winners will be chosen per day. Each day is a separate raffle. Each raffle runs from midnight to midnight, eastern time.

Can I win if I live outside the US? Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are open only to US residents. On Thursday, there will be one prize for a US resident and one for a UK resident; and on Friday, there will be one prize for a US resident and one for an Australia resident.

When will winners be announced? I’ll choose two winners each day on Monday through Friday. I’ll announce all the winners on Friday, or possibly on Saturday if I am a terrible person.
If you are a winner, I will notify you using the address you provided to Rafflecopter.

Do I have to provide my actual email address, even though I worry that you will use it to steal my soul and then go on a shopping spree at Forever 21? Yes, please use an actual email address. I don’t even want your soul. Your valid email is the only way I have of getting in touch with you if you win, so please make sure that when you sign up for Rafflecopter, you use an active address! If I can’t get in touch with you, I’ll pick a different winner.

 

If the Rafflecopter form doesn’t show up below, here’s the link to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

If You Haven’t Read Humanae Vitae, What Are You Waiting For?

You may imagine it’s a stern and solemn doctrinal harangue, fusty with misogyny, larded with theological jargon, cluttered with impractical, abstract ideals. In short, something you’d write if you’ve never had sex and have no idea what marriage is really like.

But Humanae Vitae is not like that.

Humanae Vitae, which is Latin for “On Human Life,” doesn’t bring the authoritarian fist of the Church crashing down on individual, authentic human lives. Instead, it invites us to recall two things . . .

Read the rest of my latest for Parable Magazine.

 

Image via Pixabay (Creative Commons)

The privilege of saying “no thanks” to NFP

One Catholic blogger says she doesn’t use NFP because, for her, it’s just easier to go ahead and have babies. (This was years ago, but I only saw it recently.)
 
Most of the response was cheers, congratulations, and admiration. Only a single reader pointed out that it’s easy to feel that way when you’re rich, you have a huge house, your husband supports you easily on his secure, lucrative job, and you have daily hired help (none of which she had mentioned in her essay).
 
The blogger responded, “I would happily give up absolutely any comfort or convenience to have my children. I’d eat beans and rice in a trailer with them in a heartbeat.”
 

More hosannas. And that’s where I stopped reading neutrally and started breathing heavily. Ain’t no privilege like the privilege of ignorance.

First, nobody’s talking about trading in any of your kids in exchange for a cushy lifestyle. That’s not how it works. When you decide to use NFP to avoid pregnancy, you’re not saying, “I have kids, but they’re not so great; so now I choose to devote my life to a pursuit of filet mignon.”

Second: oh my dear. Poverty isn’t beans and rice and and a sweet little hut.
Poverty is dirty needles in your kid’s play space. It’s lead poisoning and cockroach-induced asthma. It’s windows you never open, even though it’s sweltering hot and you can’t afford AC, because your drunk neighbors are screaming obscenities at each other and you don’t want that to be your children’s lullaby at night. Poverty means you never have silence, ever, because someone’s always blasting their bass so hard your walls shake, shrieking, endlessly revving their engines, or beating the crap out of each other. 
Poverty means you’d like to bake your own bread, but the oven doesn’t work, the landlord doesn’t care, and the corner bodega doesn’t sell yeast anyway; so you end up getting the dollar loaf of white bread, because you do have a dollar. Poverty means you’d like to sew your own clothes, but you can’t afford a sewing machine, and you don’t have an extra six hours to throw together a simple sundress for the baby because you’re working at Taco Bell; so your kids wear pilled t-shirts from the free pile. Poverty means you’d like to grow your own fresh herbs and vegetables, but the tiny patch of green in front of your apartment is full of broken glass and used condoms, and the meth head who lives upstairs let his rottweiler poop there anyway.

Poverty means everything takes longer, works out worse, has less margin for error, and doesn’t ever give you a break. Poverty means that you build your day around trying to assemble paperwork for some government office to prove that you really are poor, only to find that they arbitrarily changed the guidelines, and you’ve now already missed the deadline and are back on the bottom of the list, and the person who denied your claim doesn’t work there anymore and you have no recourse, because you’re just another poor person, and there forty more on hold ahead of you.

Poverty is endlessly telling your children “no,” you can’t have extras, you can’t have treats, you can’t have lessons, you can’t have trips, you can’t have musical instruments, you can’t have art supplies, you can’t have pets, you can’t have a ride on the merry-go-round. Very soon, kids stop even asking.
Everything you own is rickety; everything you own is ugly. Nothing you own is what you would have chosen.
Poverty is hard on marriage, hard on your kids, and hard on your mental health. Poverty is not sweet. Not simple. Not beautiful. Just ugly and grinding and unjust. Not beans and rice. Bedlam and ashes and mold.

We deserve no credit for saying we’re willing to live a life we don’t even halfway understand. It’s not wrong to be rich or secure; but it is wildly offensive to assume that poverty is just like wealth, minus some perks, as if you could continue to live inside the walls of your privilege, but just shop at Pottery Barn less. That poverty is something you can take in stride if you just love your kids enough. 

No, poverty (especially generational poverty) invades every corner of your life, physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual, and it invades every corner of your children’s lives. If you think it would be different with you, I only pray you never find out how wrong you are.

I’ll stop now, because I know poverty is my particular bugbear. But I’ll tell you something else about NFP and privilege.


It is always a privilege to be able to say “no thanks” to NFP. Yes, even if you’ve made some sacrifices in making that choice. 

It is a privilege that comes from having wealth, having security, having a supportive, cooperative, patient husband — or from having enough stability and peace of mind that the sacrifices you make don’t wreck your life.

It is a privilege that comes from having enough physical and emotional and mental wherewithal to care for your other children sufficiently while you are pregnant.

It is a privilege that comes from having a healthy body that produces healthy babies. Some people can’t say “no thanks” to NFP because they desperately want a huge family, but then the babies they conceive so easily keep dying, no matter how much progesterone their NaPro doc crams up in there.

And I could go on. There are more kinds of poverty than financial poverty. Some couples endure poverties you, with your privilege, cannot imagine, and that’s why they use NFP to avoid pregnancy. Not because they refuse to make sacrifices, but because they simply cannot have what you take for granted.
 

When we talk about NFP, it’s important only to talk about our own choices, and to avoid making judgments about other people. But if we allows ourselves to be seen as a role model, even keeping it personal isn’t really good enough. We must include the context of our choices. We must acknowledge the privilege that makes those choices possible. If we choose to use our lives as an illustration, we can’t crop out the details.

 

Hear me, public Catholics: If you’re in a position to say “no thanks” to NFP, then get on your knees and thank God for your dozens of life-changing privileges. They, and not your virtue, your generosity, or your free spirit, are what makes it possible to say “no thanks” so blithely. Yes, even if you’ve made sacrifices to say “no thanks.”

Acknowledge those privileges, be grateful for them, and confirm that not everyone is as lucky as you. Believe me, it’s important. So many women accuse themselves so harshly for things that are beyond their control. If you don’t acknowledge your privilege, you are telling a dangerous lie.

How to set the new style Clearblue fertility monitor ahead five days for Marquette NFP

As new Marquette NFP users, we decided to buy the new style fertility monitor, which came out in January of this year. We figured it would be the standard eventually, and that sooner or later there would be no tech support for the old style monitor. Plus, it’s cheaper than the old one — although the old one occasionally goes on sale at Rite Aid. 

clearblue monitor

the new one

In postpartum cycles before menses return, you’re supposed to create artificial cycles by setting the monitor ahead five days; but the new style monitor will only allow you to advance four days, which would give you an extra day of abstinence. Boo!

We read about a workaround, and my husband finally figured it out. I asked him to write up directions, and here is what he gave me.  And for the record, the last time I was crying in the bathroom, it was about how bad the house smells, so there.

***

So you’ve decided to get a fertility monitor. There are worse ways to spend money, and maybe you finally decided that crying in the bathroom is not the best way to sort out your fertility signs.

The new touchscreen Clear Blue Easy Monitor is meant to be used by couples to achieve pregnancy, and the company seems to be annoyed by people who use it for NFP. For example, it locks users out of being able to change the time more than one hour.

Right now, with the post-partum but not yet in cycles protocol, you can’t skip ahead to day five with the new monitor when you start a new 10 or 20-day cycle. I think this is another example of the Clear Blue people trying to discourage NFPers.

How to skip ahead to Day 5, sort of, with the new Touch Screen Clear Blue Easy monitor:

  1. If you have already set up a cycle, you will have to reprogram the monitor to do this. You just do. I even called the company. There is no way to change the time more than an hour once it is programmed without reprogramming it. When you reprogram the monitor, do it as close to noon in real time as you can. Also, because you are reprogramming, you need to get the data on you last cycle and put it on a paper chart or a chart app.
  2. From the home screen, touch the wheeley gears things and follow the directions to reprogram.
  3. Set the time on the monitor to 11:50 p.m.
  4. Start a new cycle. Set the date of the new cycle back as far as you can go, which should be four days.
  5. Set the time of the start of the new cycle to 12 a.m.
  6. Set the testing window for 6 p.m. to 12 a.m.
  7. Go into the bathroom and cry.

***

I also recommend not getting pet mice, if you’re trying to reduce the amount of bathroom crying.