I had reviewed the new book by Abby Johnson yesterday and at the end I had a couple questions about her spiritual journey and how she now regarded contraception since they were unanswered in the book.
Turns out the Ignatius Press edition has extra material the edition of the book I bought did and includes a forward by Fr. Frank Pavone. I was very glad to learn the following:
Johnson and her husband have grown in their faith during the past year, and are now preparing to enter the Catholic Church in the near future. She said that one of the final obstacles, in the course of her Catholic conversion, had been the Church’s teaching on the immorality of all artificial methods of birth control.
Planned Parenthood’s mentality toward contraception, as she explained, stuck with her for a period of time even after she rejected abortion. Even as she became interested in the Catholic Church, she clung to the notion that artificial birth control was an advance for women and society. But she kept an open mind, studying Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” and other sources of Church teaching.
Abby Johnson’s final decision to reject contraception, like her change of mind on abortion, occurred suddenly, and because of something she saw.
This time, however, the sight that changed her mind was not a child’s death within the clinic walls, but quite the opposite. An experience in a Catholic church, she said, finally made her understand the fullness of the Church’s teaching on sexuality.
This time, the vision of a child was not shocking, but profoundly life-affirming.
“One day, we were sitting in Mass … I was sitting behind this woman, who I don’t know, and this little infant.” Gazing at that child, she finally understood the Church’s insistence on marriages remaining open to new life.
“It was just clear to me, like a switch had gone off, that we had to stop contracepting.” [Source]
Welcome home Doug and Abby Johnson!
The version of the book I downloaded from Amazon was from SaltRiver a which is part of Tynedale House Publishers a Protestant publishing firm. Too bad they did not include her change of heart about contraception since the book left the topic hanging. Again too bad Ignatius Press did not have an eBook version on day one.
5 comments
So glad to hear about this completion on the journey. HOW RIGHT SHE IS! We do need to stop contracepting.
Please keep Abby and Doug in your prayers. I am doing RCIA with them on a one-on-two basis (because of her schedule, she is unable to do traditional classes). They will be Catholic and the entire Church should rejoice.
PRAISE GOD!!!
I still consider myself a convert even though it has been 20+ years (converts rock)
So how was the book?
Every heterosexual Catholic couple I know, even the ones with several children, use birth control a good deal of the time. Most don’t stop until the woman begins menopause. There may be couples that don’t use birth control buy I don’t know any.
I think contraception is a good thing. I ended up having two families, one here and one in Vietnam, total of eleven kids and I wasn’t trying that hard. Could have easily been 20 or 30.