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Below is Part 2 of last month’s column with Pope Francis’ message to the participants of the WOOMB International Congress for the 70th anniversary of the Billings Ovulation Method® April 28–29, 2023 at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome.
As I pointed out in Amoris Laetitia, it demands concrete, creative and courageous responses in sexual education: “The language of the body calls for a patient apprenticeship in learning to interpret and channel desires in view of authentic self-giving. When we presume to give everything all at once, it may well be that we give nothing. It is one thing to understand how fragile and bewildered young people can be, but another thing entirely to encourage them to prolong their immaturity in the way they show love. But who speaks of these things today? Who is capable of taking young people seriously? Who helps them to prepare seriously for a great and generous love?” (#284).
In the aftermath of the so-called sexual revolution and the breakdown of taboos, we need a new revolution in our way of thinking. We need to discover the beauty of human sexuality by once again turning to the great book of nature, learning to respect the value of the body and the generation of life, with a view to authentic experiences of conjugal love.
Another dimension of sexuality, no less challenging in our time, is precisely its relationship with procreation. Knowledge of fertility, while having a general importance for education, becomes even more important when a couple chooses to be open to accepting children.
The Billings Method, together with others like it, represents one of the most suitable means for realising responsibly the desire to be parents. Today, the ideological and practical separation of the sexual relationship from its generative potential has resulted in the quest for alternative forms of having a child, no longer through marital relations but using artificial processes. However, while it is appropriate to assist and support a legitimate desire to conceive with the most advanced scientific knowledge and technologies that can enhance fertility, it is wrong to create test tube embryos and then suppress them, to trade in gametes and resort to the practice of surrogate parenthood.
At the root of the current demographic crisis is, along with various social and cultural factors, an imbalance in the view of sexuality. Hence, the Billings Method also serves as a resource for dealing naturally with infertility problems and for helping spouses become parents by identifying the most fertile periods. In this field, a greater understanding of the processes of procreation, using modern scientific findings, could help many couples make informed and ethically sound decisions that are more respectful of the person and his or her dignity.
This is a task for Catholic universities, and Faculties of Medicine in particular, to take up with renewed commitment. It was essential that John and Evelyn Billings were able to work in the School of Medicine of the University of Melbourne.
It is likewise important that the Study and Research Centre for the Natural Regulation of Fertility, present since 1976 in the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, be part of one of the most prestigious Italian academic institutions and thus benefit from the most advanced scientific knowledge as it carries out its mission of research and training.
The scientific approach of this International Congress is coupled with a recognition of the importance of paying attention to the uniqueness of each couple and each person, and women in particular.
A “personalised medicine” reminds us precisely that each person is unique and unrepeatable and that, prior to being the object of treatment for dysfunctions and diseases, he or she must be helped to express his or her potential in the best way possible, with a view to that well-being which is above all the fruit of a harmonious life.
The final part of this letter will be shared in the November column.
BOMA-TT Tel/WhatsApp: 384-1659, Email: naturalfertility@catholictt.org Website: www.billingstt.com
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