How can I get family planning advice from people who take oaths of celibacy and believe in a virgin birth?

I always wondered that myself. With no experience...that would be like me telling a doctor, no that isn't the liver, it's the kidney.How can I get family planning advice from people who take oaths of celibacy and believe in a virgin birth?
I guess the safest way to do that would be to call first and arrange an appointment.





Yeah, the celibate has little or no experience with sex (so far as we know), and religious belief can be an obstacle to giving the very best advice around family planning.





I get it. I really do.





However, to give the devil his due, today many priests are trained in counseling techniques and how family planning can be successful within the limitations of their beliefs.





I know a lot of protestants who believe in the virgin birth, but don't think it has anything to do with your or my sexual preference or behavior. I agree. Even if I don't buy the virgin birth thing.





If you want family planning advice, go to Planned Parenthood. They're good; they don't hit you on the head with their agenda (except that they will probably insist that what you personally believe should be your guide, no matter how much you might lack confidence in your own judgment -- but then, nobody's perfect), and best of all, they have a sliding scale. They basically have one mission: give the facts so that every pregnancy can be planned and desired.How can I get family planning advice from people who take oaths of celibacy and believe in a virgin birth?
I'm not celibate, but I almost became one. The Christian way should be the rhythm method, and it takes some level of discipline. Speaking of discipline, the Buddhists would know a practical philosophy around self-restraint. The basic idea is to study our emotions objectively, as if they are but entities trying to possess us. Libido usually disappears when you begin to analyze it from the spiritual, mental and physical points of view. One can further avoid getting carried away by thinking about the social, economic or even mathematical implications. One might even forget the days and fail to take advantage of the rhythm.
As a Catholic, that is something I really struggle with too. I think you can take seriously what they have to say about the spiritual side of things. But it is true that it is (or should be!) out of their realm of earthly experience. That is for sure.
Exactly!!!





Last winter, my parents went into assisted living and asked us kids to clean out their house. We found an instruction manual, written by a PRIEST, on how a wife is to behave on the wedding night. HOW the heck would HE KNOW????





It was very graphic...again.........how would he know? Very funny too!!





Yes, they are both hard core Catholics.





edit: I'm not slamming their church, it is just things like this is why I left the Catholic church...
not VIRGIN birth immaculate CONCEPTION there is a HUGE difference, and you should NOT seek out any family planning from anyone other than your family doctor!
take thier advice as something NOT to do.





rule thier suggestions out as a viable option.
nuns and stuff... i read that most of them nowadays get their bachelor's degree, so they're not completely ignorant about sexnosity.
Hang out around the schools, of course. You know where such people spend their time.
Well, excellent question - one I don't have an answer for, but I'm highly interesting in whatever justifications come of this.
well... you have to get your advice from somewhere :)





seriously though, the couple that teaches the NFP at my church is a doctor.. so he does have a medical degree!
That's something I've always wondered about.
The advice you will get is to have children, because some butts are going to be needed to fill those pews!
This would never be my choice..Ask a doctor..
You just take what they say and...... do the exact opposite.
The best definition of celibacy, I think, is the definition of Thomas Aquinas. Thomas calls celibacy a vacancy for God. To be a celibate means to be empty for God, to be free and open for his presence, to be available for his service. This view on celibacy, however, has often led to the false idea that being empty for God is a special privilege of celibates, while other people involved in all sorts of interpersonal relationships are not empty but full, occupied as well as preoccupied. If we look at celibacy as a state of life that upholds the importance of God's presence in our lives in contrast with other states of life that lead to entanglement in worldly affairs, we quickly slip into a dangerous elitism considering celibates as domes rising up amid the many low houses of the city.





I think that celibacy can never be considered as a special prerogative of a few members of the people of God. Celibacy, in its deepest sense of creating and protecting emptiness for God, is an essential part of all forms of Christian life: marriage, friendship, single life, and community life. We will never fully understand what it means to be celibate unless we recognize that celibacy is, first of all, an element, and even an essential element in the life of all Christians. Let me illustrate how this is true in marriage and friendship.





Marriage is not a lifelong attraction of two individuals to each other, but a call for two people to witness together to God's love. The basis of marriage is not mutual affection, or feelings, or emotions and passions that we associate with love, but a vocation, a being elected to build together a house for God in this world, to be like the two cherubs whose outstretched wings sheltered the Ark of the Covenant and created a space where Yahweh could be present (Ex. 25:10-12, i Ki. 8:6-7). Marriage is a relationship in which a man and a woman protect and nurture the inner sanctum within and between them and witness to that by the way in which they love each other. Marriage, too, is therefore a vacare Deo. Celibacy is part of marriage not simply because married couples may have to be able to live separated from each other for long periods of time, because they may need to abstain from sexual relations for physical, mental, or spiritual reasons, but also because the intimacy of marriage itself is an intimacy that is based on the common participation in a love greater than the love two people can offer each other. The real mystery of marriage is not that husband and wife love each other so much that they can find God in each other's lives, but that God loves them so much that they , can discover each other more and more as living reminders ; of his divine presence. They are brought together, indeed, as 鈥?two prayerful hands extended toward God and forming in this way a home for him in this world.





The same thing is true for friendship. Deep and mature friendship does not mean that we keep looking each other in the eyes and are constantly impressed or enraptured by each other's beauty, talents, and gifts, but it means that together we look at him who calls us to his service.





Thus marriage and friendship carry within their center a holy vacancy, a space that is for God and God alone. Without that holy center, marriage as well as friendship become like a city without domes, a city forgetting the meaning and direction of its own activities.





We can now see that celibacy has a very important place in our world. The celibate makes his life into a visible witness for the priority of God in our lives, a sign to remind all people that without the inner sanctum our lives lose contact with their source and goal. We belong to God. All people do. Celibates are people who, by not attaching themselves to any one particular person, remind us that the relationship with God is the beginning, the source, and the goal of all human relationships.


By his or her life of nonattachment, the celibate lifts up an aspect of the Christian life of which we all need to be reminded. The celibate is like the clown in the circus who, between the scary acts of the trapeze artists and lion tamers, fumbles and falls, reminding us that all human activities are ultimately not so important as the virtuosi make us believe. Celibates live out the holy emptiness in their lives by not marrying, by not trying to build for themselves, a house or a fortune, by not trying to wield as much influence as possible, and by not filling their lives with events, people, or creations for which they will be remembered. They hope that by their empty lives God will be recognized as the source of all human thoughts and actions. Especially by not marrying and by abstaining fro^ the most intimate expression of human love, the celibate becomes a living sign of the limits of interpersonal relationships and of the centrality of the inner sanctum that no human being may violate.





To whom, then, is this witness directed? I dare to say that celibacy is, first of all, a witness to all those who are married.





I wonder if we have explored enough the very important relationship between marriage and celibacy. Lately we have become aware of this intern-elatedness in a very painful way. The crisis of celibacy and the crisis of married life appeared together. At the same time that many priests and religious persons move away from the celibate life, we see many couples questioning the value of their commitment to each other. These two phenomena, although they are not connected with each other as cause and effect, are closely related because marriage and celibacy are two ways of living within the Christian community that support each other. Celibacy is a support to married people in their commitment to each other.





The celibate reminds those who live together in marriage of their own celibate center, which they need to protect and nurture in order to live a life that does not depend simply upon the stability of emotions and affections, but also on their common love for God, who called them together. On the other hand, married people also witness to


those who have chosen the celibate life, reminding them that it is the love of God that indeed makes rich and creative human relationships possible and that the value of the celibate life becomes manifest in a generous, affectionate, and faithful care for those in need. Married people remind celibates that celibates also live in covenant and are brides and grooms. Thus celibacy and marriage need each other.


Celibates can indeed have a very good understanding of married life and married people of celibate life.





Remarks such as: ';You don't know what you are talking about because you are not married (or celibate)'; can be very misleading. Precisely because marriage and celibacy are in each other's service and bound together by their common witness to God's love as the love from which all human relationships originate, celibate and married people can be of invaluable help to each other by supporting their different life-styles.





Celibacy not only witnesses to the inner sanctum to married people, but also, together with marriage, celibacy speaks of the presence of God in the world *to* anyone* who* is* there* to listen*. In a world so congested and so entangled in conflict and pain, celibates by their dedication to God in a single life-style, and married people by their dedication to God in a life together, are signs of God's presence in this world. They both ask us in different ways to turn to God as the source of all human relationships. They both say in


different ways that without giving God his rightful place in the midst of the city, we all die in the hopeless attempt to fabricate peace and love by ourselves.





The celibate speaks of the need to respect the inner sanctum at all cost; the married Christian speaks of the need to base human relationships on the intimacy with God himself. But both speak for God and his Lordship in the world, and together they give form to the Christian community and stand out as signs of hope.





Thus, in a world torn by loneliness and conflict and trying so hard to create better human relationships, celibacy is a very important witness. It encourages us to create space for him who sent his son, thus revealing to us that we can only love each other because he has loved us first.