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Just do it!
Nicole Syed, who is an accredited Fertility Care Practictioner, provides professional Creighton Model services for those seeking contemporary Natural Fertility Management, helps women with various gynaecological problems, and works alongside a Naprotechnology Consultant giving infertility treatment. She gives talks and workshops. At the centre there are also pamphlets, books and tapes on the various services that are offered.
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A
new series about Catholics, who, instead of waiting for “the Church”
or a well funded institution to tackle a social need or gospel apostolate
have set about tackling the situation themselves|
Nicole Syed, shares how she set up last year the London Fertility Clinic Care Centre in the basement of a central London church to promote the Church’s teaching on sexuality, chastity and fertility. I come from a Catholic family and grew up in Australia. I have a nursing degree and have worked in both health and education sectors, but I always had a yearning for something more, some way that I could combine my nursing, education and health backgrounds and integrate this with my faith as well. Although I was educated at Catholic schools and have always been involved in prayer groups and Catholic mission groups, one of the things that struck me, was that although we were regularly told what the Church teaching was about sex, it wasn’t really explained and we weren’t given any guidelines or formation on how to live out chastity practically. I think it was expected that we’d just learn as we went along! But none of us had a clue. Thus when my Christian and non-Christian friends got into relationships, they usually had no role models to follow, and ended up moving in with boyfriends, having babies without being married, and generally doing what everyone else in the culture was doing, because they couldn’t see what their faith had to say about these things. I think those lay people and clergy who were working in faith formation either didn’t know how to speak about these issues or were afraid if they did it might alienate us. But in doing so, by not even giving us the knowledge and choice, I think we were really short-changed and many have suffered as a result. I struggled to understand these issues myself in relationships, what it meant to be a Christian and how this should effect one’s behaviour. I found I couldn’t defend my position because I didn’t really understand it properly myself and felt very alone and out of step with the culture. Almost all my Catholic friends were sleeping with their girlfriends or boyfriends , so what could I say to mine? I questioned the whole thing. Was what the Church and my faith calling me to do even possible? This is what’s so difficult for young Catholics - being surrounded by peers who seem so sure of what they believe in and who think you are weird for following Catholic teaching. Faced with this your own principles and beliefs can become undermined, unless you have been properly formed, educated and affirmed in this choice. I felt completely on my own At an intuitive level I sensed truth in what the Church taught, but I felt completely on my own and it didn’t seem practical as no one else seemed to be affirming it. Then I came across a charismatic community called the Disciples of Jesus in Perth. For the first time in my life I heard clear and dynamic teaching about what the Church taught about contraception, sex before marriage and chastity. I couldn’t believe it! It was what I had been looking for all my life and it really helped me get back on track with my faith and opened up for me a bigger vision about life and the possibility that everything I had innately sensed was right and possible to live out. For the first time I met people who were truly living their faith out in every area of their lives, including their relationships and sexual lives. I met young people in incredibly healthy relationships with clear boundaries. I could see the fruits in the families of married people, who were embracing the teachings of the Church and using Natural Fertility Management. I became friendly with a doctor from this group. She told me about a Fertility Care Practitioners’ course run by the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction in the USA. It seemed like the answer to my prayers. For the first time I met people who were truly living their faith
Through the content of the course and a lot of my own reading of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, I found the holistic way of life that I had been looking for, integrating every aspect of our lives, physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual. I realised that promoting this message was what I wanted to do to help transform the lives of those around me. It became increasingly clear to me from a health perspective, that the contraceptive industry had manipulated the way people think about fertility, treating it as an illness that needs to be suppressed and controlled at all costs. Because of my nursing background I could see how the pill and most other artificial contraceptives were physically destructive to the body, but as I studied more of the theology, I could also see how contraception was spiritually and relationally damaging to couples on a totally different level – one that was subtle and often undetected. Contraception is spiritually and relationally damaging to couples I could also see through the witness of those around me how Natural Family Planning, was far better on every level, including the emotional and communicative. It meant that wives did not feel they were sexually available all the time and as a result, the quality of the sexual relationship deepened to another level, as the husband came to respect and revere the natural system which God has created, and then co-operate with this rather than over-ride it with artificial means. Although I was invited to go back to Australia and help set up a Fertility Care Centre there, I felt drawn to England and when I was invited to initiate the work in London I decided to come here instead. Unfortunately for various reasons the project I was involved in ran out of funding after nine months and the centre had to close. This left me in a total dilemma. I had problems with work visas no money and nowhere to live. It was a real test of faith. However, I knew the work was critical, if we were going to transform the way people understand the whole area of sexuality, the gift of their fertility and help them strengthen their relationships. This holistic way of looking at life is something the Church has to offer the whole of society not just practising Catholics. I had such a vision for this work and felt really called, yet there seemed to be no financial resources or support from the Church to promote or develop this key area of work. I prayed for many months and although everything was against me, I had a deep sense that I should stay in London and prayed for God to show me a way forward. Shortly afterwards, I met Fr Alex Sherbrooke from St Patrick’s in Soho Square and approached him with the proposal to start a Fertility Care Centre in the basement of the presbytery. He agreed, but as he had no funds, he said I would have to take responsibility for the renovation work needed. It was a mammoth task. The plaster was coming off the walls and it was completely derelict. I wondered how I was going to manage. “Lord this seems impossible! I’m on my own, a foreigner. If you want me here, if you want me to do this work, you have to open all the doors necessary for me and provide everything I need.” God provides in amazing ways It’s amazing the way God comes to your help when you are most in need. At St Patrick’s there was a homeless man, Tony, who used to come to Open House every Tuesday evening. He had been a plumber and one of my friends suggested I get some advice from him about sorting out the downstairs toilet. By coincidence, he turned up that very morning I decided to start painting, to drop something off and asked what I was doing. I gave him a run down of my plans. “You can’t do this on your own,” he said. “You need a whole team of people. I’ll help you if you want.” And he did. For the next 5 weeks, the two of us, with the occasional bit of help from friends, worked 14-16 hours a day doing the place up. As well as being a plumber Tony was also a very gifted painter and decorator and he did an absolutely fantastic job. I would never have been able to get it done, if it hadn’t been for him. The Centre opened in February 2003. It’s been a struggle financially because of all the overheads and unpaid hours to run, develop and promote the work. Particularly as the only thing that brings in money, are the couples who come for NFP and Naprotechnology fertility services, but this is only part of my vision for the work. I feel a special call to educate and evangelise in this area. In the United States many dioceses have a fully staffed Fertility Care Centres to promote the Church’s understanding of fertility and sexuality and provide practical services. It’s seems crazy to me to expect people to follow this fundamental Church teaching without giving them the support, resources and understanding to do it. Difficult for young couples to find out about NFP now Many young couples who are interested in NFP, tell me it’s really difficult to find out about it now, because most priests are too embarrassed or afraid to mention it, and it seems it is rarely talked about on marriage preparation courses any more. It’s just assumed that if people are interested they will find out about it themselves, but often they don’t know where to look, so they just end up using artificial means because that’s all they know about and no one has explained to them what the Church teaches and why. The contraceptive industry is a massive money making industry and its propoganda has really formed the way our whole society thinks about this issue, so if we are going to challenge this, the Church really needs to get its act together. I have couples learning the Creighton method from as far away as Germany, Norway and South Africa. For those suffering from infertility, doctors tend to immediately recommend IVF treatment, but through Naprotechnology, a new reproductive science, we can work co-operatively with a woman’s procreative cycle, and assist men with sub-fertility, by pinpointing and treating underlying problems, which have frequently gone undetected. By providing specific targeted treatment we can enable couples to conceive naturally through an act of love-making rather than resort to laboratory reproduction, which the Church doesn’t approve of. This form of infertility treatment is actually more effective, and we have 40-60% success rate, compared with IVF, which is only about 10% to 25% effective. Likewise with the Creighton Model System, we teach women and couples whatever their age about their reproductive cycle and help them to understand how their bodies were designed to work. Experience has shown that when teenage girls begin to understand their fertility, they can also appreciate the importance of chastity and how it fits in with their emotional, physical and spiritual development. As well as speaking to parish groups, I also give talks to clergy and seminarians, helping them to understand what the Church teaches and the realities of the different contraceptive methods and artificial reproductive technologies such as IVF. I find there is huge ignorance in this area. A friend of mine gave me some great advice at the beginning, when I was complaining about the problem. “Don’t wait for the Church to get round to doing something”. He said “If you really have this vision – just do it yourself.” This was a catalyst for me. I realised, it was true. I am the Church too and I should just go ahead and start it, trusting that God will provide all that’s necessary along the way.
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I
didn’t realise what an incredible course it was going to be. Students
came from all over the world, from different backgrounds and age groups
but we were surprisingly like minded. Most of us were from medical,
nursing, teaching or allied health backgrounds and there was an incredible
sense of excitement about what we were learning. The 13 month course
became a door that opened up a whole new world for me and a new way
of looking at life. Many of the nurses and doctors had come from backgrounds
of prescribing contraception or referring people for terminations and
now they were finding there was a better way forward, a God-given way
which they hadn’t explored before. It was really exciting!
