Preparing for first confession after many years, and having an issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm reminded of my time in CCD. Around 7th grade, we had a year that was focused on sex ed. A member of the church who worked as an RN led the class that year. Each week, the first 10 minutes were spent on the Catholic Church's official stance on the topic at hand. The remaining hour and 20 minutes were spent on reality.

We spent a lot of time talking about birth control methods, including all of the reasons you should never trust the Catholic-approved forms of "family planning."

Abortion even came up, although she walked a pretty delicate line that week.

That’s kind of wild.

Although I taught CCD for a few years, and it’s surprising how little instruction you get on what to teach every week.
I’m a psychiatrist and work with chronically suicidal patients who go in and out of the hospital a lot. I did a lot of DBT and was really impressed with how meditation helped my patients. So, I taught the CCD kids to pray the rosary and took them to the adoration chapel. We talked a lot about how to control your mind and how to use prayer to quiet your mind.

Anyway, OP, I am sorry that you had such a difficult confession with your priest. It’s tough to talk about sex with someone who has chosen a life of celibacy. In theory, you and your husband would focus on the children you do have and not on your romantic life with each other. In practice, that doesn’t typically make for a very happy home. Most Catholics I know, even ones who go to mass multiple times a week, have a Mary statue in their garden, and have a van full of kids, end up with some kind of permanent birth control.

What does your husband say about all of this? Did he bring it up in confession as well?

My husband is not Catholic. Yes, I came away feeling a bit ashamed and uncomfortable. I understand the priest is upholding the position of the church (of course) but I didn’t want to go into lots of detail about this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the responses.

I went to confession today. I am glad I went but was essentially told to resolve the birth control issue before having relations with my spouse again. So I'm in a challenging situation now.

Congrats on making it to Confession and welcome home. In terms of resolving issues regarding birth control, I would encourage you to talk with your priest outside Confession (maybe make an appointment to see him) and ask for some guidance/resources on learning about the Church’s teachings on birth control/contraception. I would also encourage you to pray throughout this for understanding. On this forum, you will get a lot of posters who advocate for not following the Church’s teachings. I would suggest disregarding their remarks and work instead on beginning to live your Catholic Faith again within the Church. You are in my prayers. God bless you.

Thank you! That is very kind.

I don’t want to ‘priest shop’, but I am hoping to maybe talk to a different priest than my confessor on this matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm reminded of my time in CCD. Around 7th grade, we had a year that was focused on sex ed. A member of the church who worked as an RN led the class that year. Each week, the first 10 minutes were spent on the Catholic Church's official stance on the topic at hand. The remaining hour and 20 minutes were spent on reality.

We spent a lot of time talking about birth control methods, including all of the reasons you should never trust the Catholic-approved forms of "family planning."

Abortion even came up, although she walked a pretty delicate line that week.

That’s kind of wild.

Although I taught CCD for a few years, and it’s surprising how little instruction you get on what to teach every week.
I’m a psychiatrist and work with chronically suicidal patients who go in and out of the hospital a lot. I did a lot of DBT and was really impressed with how meditation helped my patients. So, I taught the CCD kids to pray the rosary and took them to the adoration chapel. We talked a lot about how to control your mind and how to use prayer to quiet your mind.

I'm not sure why you call that "wild." There was a great deal of support for that in the parish. That year, parents came every week, and one of the nuns was almost always there. Occasionally the priest came in, too. He didn't say much, but he was clearly supportive.

I always appreciated that, on the things that mattered most, the parish tried to do the right thing regardless of what the Vatican might say. That probably is why the priest was later removed by the archbishop, although at least they replaced him with someone with the same philosophy.

This was in a small town in midwest in the 90s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the responses.

I went to confession today. I am glad I went but was essentially told to resolve the birth control issue before having relations with my spouse again. So I'm in a challenging situation now.

Congrats on making it to Confession and welcome home. In terms of resolving issues regarding birth control, I would encourage you to talk with your priest outside Confession (maybe make an appointment to see him) and ask for some guidance/resources on learning about the Church’s teachings on birth control/contraception. I would also encourage you to pray throughout this for understanding. On this forum, you will get a lot of posters who advocate for not following the Church’s teachings. I would suggest disregarding their remarks and work instead on beginning to live your Catholic Faith again within the Church. You are in my prayers. God bless you.

Thank you! That is very kind.

I don’t want to ‘priest shop’, but I am hoping to maybe talk to a different priest than my confessor on this matter.

PP here, yes, totally understandable and again, wishing you the best in your journey.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the responses.

I went to confession today. I am glad I went but was essentially told to resolve the birth control issue before having relations with my spouse again. So I'm in a challenging situation now.

Are you and your spouse done having children?

If so, I know many in my parents’ generation that had their tubes tied or spouse had a vasectomy. They went to confession and were absolved but were not required to get a reversal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the responses.

I went to confession today. I am glad I went but was essentially told to resolve the birth control issue before having relations with my spouse again. So I'm in a challenging situation now.

Congrats on making it to Confession and welcome home. In terms of resolving issues regarding birth control, I would encourage you to talk with your priest outside Confession (maybe make an appointment to see him) and ask for some guidance/resources on learning about the Church’s teachings on birth control/contraception. I would also encourage you to pray throughout this for understanding. On this forum, you will get a lot of posters who advocate for not following the Church’s teachings. I would suggest disregarding their remarks and work instead on beginning to live your Catholic Faith again within the Church. You are in my prayers. God bless you.

Thank you! That is very kind.

I don’t want to ‘priest shop’, but I am hoping to maybe talk to a different priest than my confessor on this matter.

I wish I had somebody to recommend but I don’t. There are priests who will say whatever anyone wants to hear and there are priests with extremely rigid opinions that do not take full account of Church teaching.

It is not “priest shopping” to look for someone who is better trained, more experienced, and able to dedicate more time to your question than a busy parish priest can in confession.

What you are looking for is a priest knowledgeable about Church teaching on matters of individual conscience, particularly as they relate to the “full, free and final consent of the will” aspect of the criteria for serious sin.

There is also “the principle of double effect,” wherein an act good in itself can have unintended bad consequences. Sometimes IUD’s are prescribed to treat, e.g., Menorrhagia, and any contraceptive effect may be incidental to that.

Something like this is more likely to involve an office appointment than be handled in the confessional, but you can ask the priest to hear your confession at the same time.

Ask God to send you the right person. As others have observed you can also look into natural methods of monitoring fertility. They are quite science-based regardless what you may hear from detractors on DCUM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the responses.

I went to confession today. I am glad I went but was essentially told to resolve the birth control issue before having relations with my spouse again. So I'm in a challenging situation now.

Are you and your spouse done having children?

If so, I know many in my parents’ generation that had their tubes tied or spouse had a vasectomy. They went to confession and were absolved but were not required to get a reversal.

We do not have children. Ironically, we are planning to start trying for children in the next year or so! But this will be an ongoing issue until I'm not able to have children.

My spouse is not Catholic. So I guess for him, it would be okay to have a vasectomy. But I feel sort of funny bending the rules like that.

The amount of guilt is a lot...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the responses.

I went to confession today. I am glad I went but was essentially told to resolve the birth control issue before having relations with my spouse again. So I'm in a challenging situation now.

Are you and your spouse done having children?

If so, I know many in my parents’ generation that had their tubes tied or spouse had a vasectomy. They went to confession and were absolved but were not required to get a reversal.

We do not have children. Ironically, we are planning to start trying for children in the next year or so! But this will be an ongoing issue until I'm not able to have children.

My spouse is not Catholic. So I guess for him, it would be okay to have a vasectomy. But I feel sort of funny bending the rules like that.

The amount of guilt is a lot...

You might meditate on whether it is “guilt” or rather “shame” at falling short of an ideal as you dedicate yourself to reform of manner. Whoever you settle on to talk these things over with might be able to help you with that.

It might be helpful to read into the reasons why the Church teaches as it does on contraception and related matters. The fundamental doctrine is set forth in an encyclical (Letter from the Pope) called “Humanae Vitae.” It is available online for free. If that’s a bit dense, you can read the relevant portions in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm reminded of my time in CCD. Around 7th grade, we had a year that was focused on sex ed. A member of the church who worked as an RN led the class that year. Each week, the first 10 minutes were spent on the Catholic Church's official stance on the topic at hand. The remaining hour and 20 minutes were spent on reality.

We spent a lot of time talking about birth control methods, including all of the reasons you should never trust the Catholic-approved forms of "family planning."

Abortion even came up, although she walked a pretty delicate line that week.

That’s kind of wild.

Although I taught CCD for a few years, and it’s surprising how little instruction you get on what to teach every week.
I’m a psychiatrist and work with chronically suicidal patients who go in and out of the hospital a lot. I did a lot of DBT and was really impressed with how meditation helped my patients. So, I taught the CCD kids to pray the rosary and took them to the adoration chapel. We talked a lot about how to control your mind and how to use prayer to quiet your mind.

I'm not sure why you call that "wild." There was a great deal of support for that in the parish. That year, parents came every week, and one of the nuns was almost always there. Occasionally the priest came in, too. He didn't say much, but he was clearly supportive.

I always appreciated that, on the things that mattered most, the parish tried to do the right thing regardless of what the Vatican might say. That probably is why the priest was later removed by the archbishop, although at least they replaced him with someone with the same philosophy.

This was in a small town in midwest in the 90s.

I think you might be remembering something that happened a couple of times as something that happened every week for a year.

I’ve never met a priest who didn’t say much and let other people have the mic . He sounds like an interesting man!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the responses.

I went to confession today. I am glad I went but was essentially told to resolve the birth control issue before having relations with my spouse again. So I'm in a challenging situation now.

Are you and your spouse done having children?

If so, I know many in my parents’ generation that had their tubes tied or spouse had a vasectomy. They went to confession and were absolved but were not required to get a reversal.

We do not have children. Ironically, we are planning to start trying for children in the next year or so! But this will be an ongoing issue until I'm not able to have children.

My spouse is not Catholic. So I guess for him, it would be okay to have a vasectomy. But I feel sort of funny bending the rules like that.

The amount of guilt is a lot...

Interesting. I assumed from your OP that you converted because of your husband. Why did you choose to convert to Catholicism?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm reminded of my time in CCD. Around 7th grade, we had a year that was focused on sex ed. A member of the church who worked as an RN led the class that year. Each week, the first 10 minutes were spent on the Catholic Church's official stance on the topic at hand. The remaining hour and 20 minutes were spent on reality.

We spent a lot of time talking about birth control methods, including all of the reasons you should never trust the Catholic-approved forms of "family planning."

Abortion even came up, although she walked a pretty delicate line that week.

That’s kind of wild.

Although I taught CCD for a few years, and it’s surprising how little instruction you get on what to teach every week.
I’m a psychiatrist and work with chronically suicidal patients who go in and out of the hospital a lot. I did a lot of DBT and was really impressed with how meditation helped my patients. So, I taught the CCD kids to pray the rosary and took them to the adoration chapel. We talked a lot about how to control your mind and how to use prayer to quiet your mind.

I'm not sure why you call that "wild." There was a great deal of support for that in the parish. That year, parents came every week, and one of the nuns was almost always there. Occasionally the priest came in, too. He didn't say much, but he was clearly supportive.

I always appreciated that, on the things that mattered most, the parish tried to do the right thing regardless of what the Vatican might say. That probably is why the priest was later removed by the archbishop, although at least they replaced him with someone with the same philosophy.

This was in a small town in midwest in the 90s.

I think you might be remembering something that happened a couple of times as something that happened every week for a year.

I’ve never met a priest who didn’t say much and let other people have the mic . He sounds like an interesting man!

It was a very memorable experience, mostly because it wasn't at all what any of us expected.

While there's probably been a selection effect based on who has chosen to remain active in the Catholic church, there are obviously significant variations between what people believe in the church. At all levels in the church, as we've seen in recent years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the responses.

I went to confession today. I am glad I went but was essentially told to resolve the birth control issue before having relations with my spouse again. So I'm in a challenging situation now.

Are you and your spouse done having children?

If so, I know many in my parents’ generation that had their tubes tied or spouse had a vasectomy. They went to confession and were absolved but were not required to get a reversal.

We do not have children. Ironically, we are planning to start trying for children in the next year or so! But this will be an ongoing issue until I'm not able to have children.

My spouse is not Catholic. So I guess for him, it would be okay to have a vasectomy. But I feel sort of funny bending the rules like that.

The amount of guilt is a lot...

Interesting. I assumed from your OP that you converted because of your husband. Why did you choose to convert to Catholicism?

Kind of a long story. I was raised in the evangelical church, but had a lot of Catholic family members so went to mass and other Catholic events periodically. I always loved the beauty of the liturgy and the traditions. I fell away from any kind of organized religion for a while. As an adult, I began to reconnect with my faith and didn't resonate with the church I'd grown up in, so I became Catholic. I was young and will fully admit I was not as educated as I should have been on this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the responses.

I went to confession today. I am glad I went but was essentially told to resolve the birth control issue before having relations with my spouse again. So I'm in a challenging situation now.

Are you and your spouse done having children?

If so, I know many in my parents’ generation that had their tubes tied or spouse had a vasectomy. They went to confession and were absolved but were not required to get a reversal.

We do not have children. Ironically, we are planning to start trying for children in the next year or so! But this will be an ongoing issue until I'm not able to have children.

My spouse is not Catholic. So I guess for him, it would be okay to have a vasectomy. But I feel sort of funny bending the rules like that.

The amount of guilt is a lot...

Interesting. I assumed from your OP that you converted because of your husband. Why did you choose to convert to Catholicism?

Kind of a long story. I was raised in the evangelical church, but had a lot of Catholic family members so went to mass and other Catholic events periodically. I always loved the beauty of the liturgy and the traditions. I fell away from any kind of organized religion for a while. As an adult, I began to reconnect with my faith and didn't resonate with the church I'd grown up in, so I became Catholic. I was young and will fully admit I was not as educated as I should have been on this.

So why not find a new church?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the responses.

I went to confession today. I am glad I went but was essentially told to resolve the birth control issue before having relations with my spouse again. So I'm in a challenging situation now.

Are you and your spouse done having children?

If so, I know many in my parents’ generation that had their tubes tied or spouse had a vasectomy. They went to confession and were absolved but were not required to get a reversal.

We do not have children. Ironically, we are planning to start trying for children in the next year or so! But this will be an ongoing issue until I'm not able to have children.

My spouse is not Catholic. So I guess for him, it would be okay to have a vasectomy. But I feel sort of funny bending the rules like that.

The amount of guilt is a lot...

Interesting. I assumed from your OP that you converted because of your husband. Why did you choose to convert to Catholicism?

Kind of a long story. I was raised in the evangelical church, but had a lot of Catholic family members so went to mass and other Catholic events periodically. I always loved the beauty of the liturgy and the traditions. I fell away from any kind of organized religion for a while. As an adult, I began to reconnect with my faith and didn't resonate with the church I'd grown up in, so I became Catholic. I was young and will fully admit I was not as educated as I should have been on this.

So why not find a new church?

Why not respect OP’s decision to return to the Catholic Church?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the responses.

I went to confession today. I am glad I went but was essentially told to resolve the birth control issue before having relations with my spouse again. So I'm in a challenging situation now.

Are you and your spouse done having children?

If so, I know many in my parents’ generation that had their tubes tied or spouse had a vasectomy. They went to confession and were absolved but were not required to get a reversal.

We do not have children. Ironically, we are planning to start trying for children in the next year or so! But this will be an ongoing issue until I'm not able to have children.

My spouse is not Catholic. So I guess for him, it would be okay to have a vasectomy. But I feel sort of funny bending the rules like that.

The amount of guilt is a lot...

Interesting. I assumed from your OP that you converted because of your husband. Why did you choose to convert to Catholicism?

Kind of a long story. I was raised in the evangelical church, but had a lot of Catholic family members so went to mass and other Catholic events periodically. I always loved the beauty of the liturgy and the traditions. I fell away from any kind of organized religion for a while. As an adult, I began to reconnect with my faith and didn't resonate with the church I'd grown up in, so I became Catholic. I was young and will fully admit I was not as educated as I should have been on this.

So why not find a new church?

Why not respect OP’s decision to return to the Catholic Church?

It's not a matter of not respecting OP's decision. It's just making a suggestion.