Washington D.C., Jul 1, 2018 / 04:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- When Maggie* was in high school, she stayed after class to talk to ask a teacher what to do about a very personal concern she felt her physician was not taking seriously.
What she learned led to the discovery of a brain tumor, and treatment for the growth, which had been affecting the teen for years. The tools she needed to find and treat this growth came from an awareness of her fertility and natural cycles.
“It wasn’t so much that I was trying to avoid pregnancy or get pregnant – it’s that there was something legitimately wrong with my body,” Maggie told CNA.
By the time she was in her late teens, Maggie had noticed that her cycles had never regulated, and had no idea what that meant except that it wasn’t normal. While for the first years after a young woman begins to menstruate her cycles are of varying length and heaviness, they typically regulate within a few years. But several years after her own cycles began, Maggie was concerned that they never had settled into a normal pattern – in fact, she sometimes would have as few as one cycle a year. In addition, she also faced rounds of headaches.
One day, Maggie approached her college-level biology teacher, who also happened to be a practicing Catholic, looking for an explanation for her concerns and asking what to do. The teacher told her to ask her pediatrician, but also put her in touch with her church’s fertility instructor to see what could be done.
Maggie said her pediatrician immediately assumed that she was pregnant: an impossibility, because she was not sexually active. When the pregnancy tests came back negative, the doctor responded, “‘I don’t know what your problem is’ and brushed me off,” she recalled.
Meanwhile, the local parish’s natural family planning (NFP) instructor saw the teen’s distress and put her in touch with a Catholic fertility physician who could teach Maggie how to observe and chart the signs of her fertility.
Understanding Fertility
“A sign of health in a woman is a normal, regular cycle,” Dr. Lorna Cvetkovich, a gynecologist and obstetrician at Tepeyac Family Center in Fairfax, Va., explains. “We know what a normal cycle looks like,” she continued, “so at any time the parameters fall outside of those, then that’s a clue that maybe they’re not ovulating, they may have a luteal phase defect, they may have fibroids. It can show you all sorts of things.”
For women whose cycles fall within a normal range, normal bodily processes present themselves in a predictable pattern.
In the first part of a woman’s cycle, called the follicular phase, hormonal signals from the pituitary gland trigger the follicles (egg-containing structures within the ovaries) to prepare an egg for ovulation and to secrete estrogen into the woman’s body. This rise in estrogen levels triggers changes in the kind of fluid the cervix secretes, as well as thickening the uterine lining, making them more able to support the conception process.
After ovulation a woman’s body secretes progesterone, which causes a sharp increase in a woman’s basal, or resting, body temperature, as well as a preparation of the uterine lining for possible implantation. If a pregnancy occurs, the basal body temperature and hormone levels may continue to rise, whereas if pregnancy does not happen, the resulting dip in hormones triggers a drop in temperature, menstruation, and the beginning of a new cycle.
In a healthy woman who is not pregnant, this cycle will repeat every 21-35 days.
These changes can be observed by any woman, and can be used by married couples as a valid method to achieve or delay pregnancy, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, which teaches that it is immoral to disrupt this natural cycle with the use of contraceptive pills, implants, barrier methods, or by having incomplete intercourse. Using these observations to help in the discernment of family size is known as natural family planning.
However, the same observations and data – commonly collected into charts for easier analysis – can be used to help diagnose gynecological issues such as ovarian cysts and growths in the uterus, called fibroids, as well as hormone deficiencies and other abnormalities affecting bodily functions. The information can also be essential in pinpointing issues surrounding pregnancy, such as the exact date of conception, infertility, and miscarriages.
This information is such a valuable insight into a patients health and symptoms – and an invaluable tool for doctors practicing reproductive medicine. “I just think it’s invaluable, and I don’t really know how people practice [gynecology] without having the charting,” said Cvetkovich. “There’s just so many uses, and it adds so much to your evaluation of the patient.”
Cycles and Diagnosis
Disorders in other bodily systems – such as the endocrine system – can manifest in a woman’s menstrual cycle and her chart. “Thyroid plays a role in almost every function of the body, so it may show up as a sign in the cycle,” explained Cvetkovich.
For Christine, charting her bodily signs helped her to catch an issue with her thyroid that might otherwise have been missed. After charting for four years, she started noticing that some months there was no ovulation that could be detected by temperature or with chemical tests for the hormones that trigger ovulation.
“I had what looked like a really long cycle, and then eventually, what to the uninformed observer would look to be a light period. But because I knew I hadn’t peaked, I was able to identify it as estrogen breakthrough bleeding and not a real cycle,” she explained.
“It seemed like my body was trying to ovulate, and not really getting there.”
She approached her doctor, explaining she was not ovulating and that she would like to find the cause for something that was out of the ordinary. The doctor then ordered comprehensive blood tests, and found that some of her thyroid-stimulating hormone levels were elevated beyond normal – in fact, her levels were twice as high s they had been a year ago.
After receiving treatment, her cycles returned to their normal pattern.
“I didn’t have a lot of signs or symptoms of hypothyroidism, aside from missing ovulation,” Christine noted, saying she wouldn’t have picked up on the disorder had she not been charting. “ I wouldn’t have realized there was an issue,” Christine she added, reflecting on the fact that she probably would not have even received the treatment she needed.
“Whenever I’m sharing my experience with NFP with somebody, I’m always quick to point out not only all of the standard benefits, but that it enabled me to know my body and know there’s a problem that so many people wouldn’t be aware of.”
How Fertility Awareness Helped to Find a Tumor
After a local NFP instructor put Maggie in touch with physicians familiar with fertility awareness, she became more aware of what was going on in her own body. She learned to observe her basal body temperature and cervical fluid signs – and noticed that while sometimes she had a more typical menstrual cycle and her chart showed the usual peaks and dips of a healthy young woman, at other times her cycle was irregular and her temperature was more elevated.
Even though she was not sexually active, “my body was acting like it was pregnant,” Maggie said. The doctors at the Catholic fertility clinic sent Maggie out for blood work, which showed a high level of prolactin – a hormone present during pregnancy and breastfeeding. She took this information back to her pediatrician, and then to an endocrinologist, who ordered an MRI scan of her brain.
“There was a tumor pressing into my pituitary, pressing into my frontal cortex,” Maggie explained.
“When I first heard the word ‘tumor’ I freaked out,” she related, but thankfully, “it wasn’t cancerous,” but a benign growth which explained both her irregular cycles and some of her headaches.
Maggie received the treatment she needed to shrink the tumor, and told CNA that “things are pretty much normal now.” While the tumor is still there – “it’ll never really go away, unless I get surgery,” she related; “what’s happened at this point is that it’s checked.”
While since receiving treatment she has no need to monitor as rigorously all of her signs and symptoms, knowledge of her fertility and its signs has given Maggie tools she can use use if the tumor starts to grow again.
“I have this, and I know these are indicators to know [if] something is wrong with my prolactin.”
Fertility – ‘A Public Health Issue’
Cvetkovich suggested this level of awareness can be useful for any woman looking to take care of their health.
“I think that anytime you put someone more in tune with your body, they’re just going to know that things are wrong earlier. I think that’s what it’s all about, knowing what’s normal for you, and being in tune with it.”
She commented that many of her fellow physicians, as well as the general public, have grown accustomed to relying on hormonal contraceptives to address disorders, a practice she said “makes people very distant from their bodies and from their cycles.”
“We’ve lost the idea that having a normal monthly cycle is health – that’s normal. Being fertile is normal. I think that’s where NFP brings us back to, really: to reality.”
Maggie agrees, saying that some of her initial struggle in receiving treatment was a result of people “missing the point that fertility isn’t sort of an accessory to being a human woman – it’s an integral part of how our bodies work.” Awareness of how women’s bodies work, and how to tell when they’re not working correctly, is important for everyone.
“It’s a public health issue.”
*Name has been changed to protect privacy.
This article was originally published July 31, 2015.
[…]
Another clarifying media pose for James Martin, as he continues to publish his gay-enabling networking site under the letterhead of the USCCB. Or, maybe Courage (couragerc.org) is now linked (not yet as the alternative, but as “inclusive”)? And what, exactly, is a “relationship.”
Exactly, Peter!
And how exactly was Weakman’s (malapropism intended) “relationship” with the seminarian “sexual”?
Males inseminating one another’s intestines may be characterized in many ways, but it is in no way, sense or respect “sexual”.
Spot on! The vile genital gymnastics does not deserve the term sexual.
We’ve just been told that monkey pox is essentially a vinereal disease among men who have sex with men. It seems we have not learned the lesson of AIDS.
I gave of my “time, talent and treasure” to the archdiocese and I expected that my effort and gifts would be used to advance the Kingdom of God and proclaim the hope of salvation. How discouraging to learn I was abused, lied to and deceived into supporting sodomites. May God forgive us all.
Truth establishes courage, they are concomitant as we walk God’s path.
Proverbs 12:22 Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight.
1 John 3:18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Psalm 145:18 The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
Psalm 25:5 Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.
Thanks and God’s rich blessings.
Maybe James Martin SCH should consider another perspective, that one about removing the beam in one’s own eye before pulling the speck of sawdust out of his brother’s. Martin’s own teaching and position creates, supports, and protects people like Weakland, so it’s a situation where the pot is calling the kettle black. Does anyone actually take this guy seriously?
It would be music to the ears of those who wish to destroy the church.
Leviticus 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
Romans 1:26-27 For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Jude 1:7 Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Soldier on my brother and thank you.
Leviticus 20:10 says to execute adulterers. Deuteronomy 22 says to stone non-virgins. Fortunately, we don’t follow the Bible’s verses on heterosexuals. 99% fornicate, not due to immorality, but due to the fact that in Bible days couples got married as young teens while today the average first-time groom is 29 and bride 27. A record number opt out of marriage altogether and those who do wed do so later and later in life. Let’s not have one set of standards for heterosexuals and another for LGBT folks.
Mr Rusty,
There’s the New Testament. Please check it out. Thanks!
🙂
A sodomite has no business being a bishop in the Catholic Church. What more can be said other than I pray for the immortal soul of all sodomites who have died whether they are clergy or layperson. I pray, too, for those who keep sodomites in their sin by defending the sinfulness of their act.
I agree but would add a sodomite has no business being a deacon, priest, or pope in the Catholic Church.
If I defend the sinfulness of something it means that I insist on its sinful quality. Surely what is objected to is speaking and writing in defence of the sinlessness of the activity under consideration? I offer this suggestion only tentatively; it may be that this is another example of British and Americans being separated by a common language.
“I just wanted to be loved. Is that so wrong?” I couldn’t pass on the Jon Lovitz/SNL sketch. Then of course there is the infamous radical Bill Ayers’ paen to American justice. “Guilty as sin. Free as a bird. Is America a great country or what?”. Not a day in jail for misuse of Church funds; covering up for predators, or his own predation. He did get a book contract. Francesco “Mercy” avant la lettre.
Did Weakland ever repent of his acts of sodomy and homosexual behavior? Or, did he try to normalize his behavior?
Listened to an Eastern Orthodox priest on the subject and he was very clear. He said: We are not given the knowledge or wisdom on how to judge the soul of another human being. Eternal Judgement is left to our Lord. Our Lord does give us the knowledge and wisdom to judge the behaviors of another human being so that we may make decisions that will lead to our own salvation, and that of our families, for which we are responsible. If the behavior of another person is sinful, then we must admonish the sinner, and disassociate with that person if necessary to protect our own souls, by “avoiding the near occasion of sin.”
Also, the same Orthodox priest said: Christ doesn’t change, rather it is us who must change by repenting our own sinful behaviors. Christ doesn’t teach that sin is not sin, rather Our Lord calls us to repent of our sins, for without repentance, we cannot receive the merciful judgement of God.
I wish Roman Catholic priests were clearer in their teachings by simply saying we don’t know the fate of Weakland’s eternal soul as that has not been revealed to any of us, only Our Lord and Savior knows. We do know he committed mortal sins that would have kept him out of eternal paradise with our Lord, and we must also avoid these same mortal sins to preserve our own souls and advise others to avoid these same mortal sins.
The man is dead and may God have mercy on his soul.
Just have a Mass offered for him and move on – the subject is closed.
Amen.
Amen. Lot’s of folks ready to cast the first stone.
Weakland and his defenders used plenty of metaphorical stones to crush the skulls of the unborn without apology. Yes, there is reason to be frustrated that his defenders never learn, which reflects the ongoing crisis in the Church, which recrucifies Our Lord every day. Nonetheless, we pray for mercy on his soul.
James Martin,
Jesus’ friendship with sinners is not scandalous. After all, that is what the God who seeks the return of the lost do. There is nothing scandalous about that because He is always exhorting them to metanoia. The sinners are told that they will be thrown in hell where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth if they don’t repent. He tells them that the road to hell is wide and the road to life, narrow.
What is scandalous is your enabling of sin. What is scandalous is your promotion of sin and not calling it what it is – a grave transgression against our All Holy God – so that people will repent.
What is scandalous is that you who have been ordained to be a priest of God so terribly promotes what is the opposite of what God teaches we should do.
You’d rather people remain in the muck and the filth rather than seeking the painful (excruciating) path to freedom and to the Lord.
Thank you!
James Martin correctly states, “The heart of Jesus’s message is that no one is beyond God’s infinite mercy.” He didn’t add, however, that one must repent, confess and accept absolution for that mercy to be effective. Unfortunately, Martin fails in teaching, but succeeds miraculously in misleading.
I concluded a couple of years ago that prudence demands I completely ignore Fr. James Martin, SJ. I would no more read anything he writes or listen to anything he says than I would drink poison. That said, I have no objection to CWR reporting on his escapades in the interest of exposing dysfunction and corruption in the Church.
The Hypocritical Pharisees still roam about us today. As a ‘Straight-male’ I have friends who are homosexual, both men and women. Why they have this way of life is beyond my understanding. Quoting Jesus in Jn 8:7; “Let the man among you who has no sin be the first to cast a stone…,” I can’t imagine what went through their minds as the mob drifted away as John notes, “beginning with the elders.” Each of us has enough to atone for before a loving and forgiving God so, if your consider your self a good Catholic Christian act like the one you profess to believe in. Allow your brothers and sisters the freedom to live as sons and daughters of the Father you call your own. Don’t be like the older brother in the parable of the ‘Prodigal Son’ and refuse to accept your brother or sister as your Father does. Pray that they may find peace and acceptance in a world that is full of hate and intolerance for those who are “not like me.” Remember you are unique, a one-time creation and loved by God. so, remember my Pharisaical ‘brothers and sisters’ so are they.
Mr. Fargo, we are to love one another as Christians & meet them where they are but it doesn’t mean leaving them there. Christ has something better to offer them.
Let’s review scripture as it appears as if we may have read different versions. In the Catholic tradition, not that according to James Martin, God detests sin. Have you heard or read the scripture which teaches that principle?
Re the parable. The Father allowed his son the freedom, but the Father does not follow his son to the foreign land. Does the Father approve of his son’s action? No. Only when the son/sinner ‘returns to his Father’s house’ (otherwise known as repentance), the Father then forgives the son and welcomes him back home.
Jesus told the sinner to “Sin no more.” Jesus did not tell the sinner: “Carry on.”
God’s love is for everyone, but God shares His beatitude and His eternal glory only with those who love Him. John 14:21 has Jesus saying: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” If we love Him, we keep His commandments.
In numerous places in his Epistles, Paul proclaims that fornicators and sodomites, thieves, robbers, and adulterers will not inherit God’s kingdom. Just as Jim Martin SJ is free to describe Weakland as he does, so are we free to apply any of St. Paul’s labels as we see fit and appropriate to the homosexual bishop that Weakland proclaimed himself to be.
John Fargo,
Is this desire to misread and misinterpret the Lord wilful or just ignorant?
This loving and forgiving God loves us and forgives us precisely because there is something TO FORGIVE. This SOMETHING TO FOGIVE is sin. Just because we have an inclination to a particular sin does not give us a free pass. Each of us is told to repent. Forgiveness and repentance go together.
The same loving and forgiving God also said that death comes like a thief in the night at the time you do not know so be prepared or you’ll be cast out. This same merciful God tells us that we should tell sinners to repent and if we don’t then not only is their sin on them, but their sin is on us who fail to teach them.
Why would you not exhort your LGBT friends to repentance? It’s like a “friend” seeing someone ODying on heroine or recklessly driving towards a cliff saying: keep going my friend that seems to be your pleasure so go ahead.
We have so corrupted the meaning of love and compassion that we think affirming people in the depth of their depravity is compassion and mercy.
Christ did not die an excruciating death for us so that we can that think we can go on living a depraved life because he’ll forgive me anyway.
Grace is not cheap!
I hope you will have the courage (yes courage)to tell your friends like it is and in so doing truly love them and desire their good. At the moment you are affirming them in their sin.
Unless of course like so many people you don’t really think sin is a big deal.
Loading up my portfolio with the stocks of millstone manufacturers.
🤑 This emoji sports dollar-sign eyes.
I, a Mass going every Sunday all my life, Cradle Catholic, was rejected by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee seminary in the mid 1980s. My parish priest said that it was odd that the seminary gave no reason for the rejection. Later in life, a fellow Catholic from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, told me that the seminary had a problem. The straight seminarians had been complaining about the noise from homosexual sex going on in the next dorm room while they were trying to pray. So the seminary director simply stopped accepting straight candidates for the priesthood to solve the problem. She said this was Archbishop Weakland’s preference. Another friend told me that his parish priest in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee referred to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, St. Francis seminary as St. Francis Sexinary. I am sure the Church lost a great number of good priest vocations by the evil acts of Bishop Weakland, and other liberal Bishops around the world, in their diabolical plan to build the ‘Gay Lobby’ in the Vatican, by grooming seminaries with only gay men.
More posturing and gaslighting by Martin. Weakland never repented his practice and promotion of sodomy. To be appalled by such a man is not contrary to the example of Christ eating with sinners. Christ always had a message for sinners: “Repent.” And Martin always has a message for sinners: “Relax.”
Mr. Olson;
I have a question – why does it seem to me that every uttering, every opinion, and now every apology from this sad little man merits being reported on by CWR? Surely you have reached the saturation point, as many of US have.
Enough is enough.
As a lifelong Traditionalist Catholic and a minor seminarians during the years before the full Modernist impact of Vatican II took control of the Church, I’ve maintained a conscious awareness of Fr. Martin’s reputation as the “resident heretic” of Notre Dame. I believe that his religious beliefs are distorted by Modernism and I take whatever he publishes and supports as opposite to the tried and true Traditionalist views that I have studied and believed in for all of my Catholic life. For the good of the Church he should have retired many years ago and gone into religious seclusion to examine fully where he has failed to follow the teachings of Christ, the Fathers of the Church and the Saints and Blesseds of the Church.
I think you give him to much credit for having a philosophical bent.
Keep in mind this guy has a degree from the Wharton School. He worked as a financial analyst at GE in the Jack Welch days.
Just as companies pander to the alphabet, Martin does. He’s created a personal brand and a cottage industry by staying focused on talking about the alphabet all the time.
In short, this is all about the Benjamins
🤑 This emoji sports dollar-sign eyes.
“It is quite human for the sinner to acknowledge his weakness and to ask mercy for his failings; what is unacceptable is the attitude of one who makes his own weakness the criterion of the truth about the good, so that he can feel self-justified, without the need to have recourse to God and His mercy” — Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor. –
(Quoted by John Likoudis, writing at Catholic Culture.)
Edit please: Paul Likoudis, not John
Any man, homosexual or heterosexual, who seeks the priesthood, MUST embrace the teachings of the church – believe, support, teach and live those teachings clearly, fully and faithfully. If a priest or bishop (or, God forbid, a cardinal) finds he cannot do this, he should have the integrity to resign the priesthood. Ordinary people, like myself, look to priests for spiritual and moral guidance. How can a priest give such guidance if he is living a double life? If you don’t believe what the church believes, you should not be a priest.
Speaking of Weakland, the Library at Catholic Culture has an article describing Weakland’s role in post VCII liturgical reform. Seems we owe Weakland our thanks for the banally insipid ‘music’ in many NO liturgies today.
Weakland’s dissent from and distortion of VCII’s Sacrosanctum concilium (particularly regarding sacred music) is detailed at https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=9038
Thanks, Meiron, for the tip-off to Weakland’s musical “contribution”.
Note Martin’s words; Weakland’s “sins and crimes” were cover-up of sex abuse and blowing $600K of embezzled money. Nothing about engaging in sodomy and breaking his vow of chastity. In Martin’s sick mind, the sodomy aint a big deal.
Religion, politics and all other walks of life have good, honest people and lowlifes. Religion has always been about power and always will be, same with politics. Many religious coverups abound the higher up the ladder you go. Plus there are many more we will never know about.
As much as I wish for the Mercy of God for him for his sins and his repentence,, Father Martin should say as little as possible sbout this man. Instead he should constantly and earnestly pray for his soul rather than clairify his position or seek to repair the reputation he calls a friend.. This would be the best Father Martin could do for his friend and himself.
If you can’t let someone die without criticizing their eulogy, get your rotten heart checked for worms.
Catholics don’t have eulogies though, at least not in the same way as others do And this all illustrates why.
We pray in charity for the soul of the departed. Period.
Martin is in many ways a fitting eulogist for Weakland. Both of them epitomize the difficulties driving the disintegration of the cadre of priests.
More: “When the tawdry truth was going to come out, he ‘paid,’ to use McFadd’” ‘misappropriated,’ or just plain ‘stole’ would be more like it.”
https://www.crisismagazine.com/2022/archbishop-weakland-stole-more-than-money-he-stole-the-faith?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=archbishop-weakland-stole-more-than-money-he-stole-the-faith
Weakland is a modern version of the Fall of the House of Eli. Eli’s worthless sons were adulterers and treated the offerings to God with contempt.
Homosexualist Martin should have been laicized and excommunicated years ago.
Judgement does come by Our Lord who is THE JUST JUDGE, we as the baptized should enforce to others HIS teachings. That is what is expected as we carry our cross. A unmarried woman sleeping with a married man is the same as a man sleeping with another man.. it equally is a SIN. No stone is cast if the brethren is in charity explaining the SIN and trying to bring salvation to that soul. Unfortunately, it is misleading not enforce the sacrament of confession. Not to enforce SIN. And what happens when one is in SIN, the Holy Spirit must leave.. HE CAN’T STAY…GOD is not sin… but the enemy sure is and likes to fill the minds with lies and convince it’s not so bad…As the woman who had many husbands and with another man who was not her husband, Jesus told her to SIN NO MORE.
I would love to sit next to Jesus and listen to what he said to the tax collectors and those in sin. HE would’ve been graceful and caring enough to tell them to stop.
Adultery and sodomy are both alike in being grave sins but they do differ significantly in other ways.
It’s within the realm of possibility that a man and woman who have committed adultery could later marry following Confession and the death of a spouse. That’s never going to be the case for a SSA relationship.
But I hear what you are saying about counseling others to sin no more. That’s a priest’s job and if he fails in that he will be held accountable to a higher standard.