February 7, 2005
A Brief Thought on NFP
Ales Rarus is looking for posts about lent so send them to Funky!
What does this have to do with NFP? The comment box discussion turned to NFP and the conversation interested me but that post isn’t about NFP so I thought I’d write about it here so as not to clutter the comments box.
Steve, who regularly contributes and comments over at Ales Rarus, says that he has a hard time with the Church’s teachings about contraception/NFP/etc and wrote the following:
…contraception is (by my understanding) a grave sin. The problem is that NFP (its allowance in principle) makes it (i.e., contraception) a very difficult sin to detect, since NFP can be used for contraception and that would be a sin. The church’s teaching (by my understanding) is to have as many children as you can rightly raise and afford. NFP is supposed to be practiced ONLY (this is my understanding) for “natural spacing” of children or for cases of serious medical conditions or for serious poverty. This is just too open ended. Either the faithful are “free to choose” (gawd, that phrase grates on me somef’n bad…) when and how many children they should have (with obviously a strong bias in favor of many… say 3 or more) or they aren’t.
and then goes on to say
And, this is really the point, even if I WAS willing and did do so (i.e., practice NFP), I’d have no assurance, according to RCC teaching, that I was doing so for the “right reasons” and might very well be sinning anyway…
I very respectfully disagree with Steve’s reasoning. True, there is a lot of gray when it comes to the whys and hows of postponing pregnancy while using NFP. Mr. B. and I struggle with it monthly. Right now, we feel that it is in our family’s best interest to postpone having a child until Mr. B. can find work using his degree, but every month we discuss it and pray about it. So far, for us, his lack of employment has been a grave enough reason for waiting. We may at some point change our minds about it. This is a space where the Church really emphasizes “talk, pray, follow your heart/conscience.” Grave reason for postponing can be different for every couple and we have no place to judge… only God can do that. Which makes it hard, sometimes, to know for ourselves if our reasons really are “serious enough.” Steve is right that we might very well be sinning, whether intentionally or unintentionally. If unintentionally, we are only held accountable for sins we knowingly and willfully commit… If we sin intentionally and later realize the error of our ways and are truly sorry and want to try to not make the same mistake again, then we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the assurance of God’s forgiveness and love.
The thing that separates using NFP from using artificial contraception (whether chemical or barrier) is that using artificial contraception is always a sin because it takes away from at least one, if not both, of God’s intended purposes for intercourse.
Posted in
Catholicism,Family,Marriage | By Amy at 5:23 pm |
Comments(7)
Amy (and Matt),
Thanks for the post of NFP. Believe me, we have considered it a lot. I am flattered that you considered my blatherings worthy of a response over here. Most Evangelicals blindly and uncritically accept contraception as a given. This is absolutely wrong, and something I fight against in our uniquely depraved (i.e., Evangelical) subculture. Just to be absolutely clear, for us, the issue has always been that a human life (however small and precarious) should not be ended by our actions or intentions. This rules out any type of abortion or anti-implantation mechanism, which would include hormonal treatments.
Now you conclude:
“The thing that separates using NFP from using artificial contraception (whether chemical or barrier) is that using artificial contraception is always a sin because it takes away from at least one, if not both, of God’s intended purposes for intercourse.“
And this is precisely the distinction I utterly fail to see. Barriers to conception take away one intended purpose of intercourse (if indeed it is even intercourse that we’re talking about) in the exact same way (and at about the same “effectiveness” levels) as NFP. I mean look at the literature (I’m sure you have). It positively gushes with claims about the “effectiveness” of NFP at preventing pregnancy.
It is in this one area (that of sexuality) where I fear the RCC (which you must understand I love and respect… even Humana Vitae) has been unduly influenced by early Maniechiest (dualistic) thought, and lacked the corrective persuasion that might have been provided by a predominantly married clergy.
Best regards,
Steve N
Lemme give this a whirl…
NFP isn’t supposed to prevent pregnancy exactly. What you are doing is learning to recognise the signs of the natural cycle God has created. It in no way prevents a pregnancy that would normally occur. When a woman is fertile, she will always remain fertile. Contraceptives themselves will render a fertile time infertile, and that goes against the natural cycle.
Basically you are sharing your love and joining together, while remaining open to the possibility of pregnancy. Even though you might only be having intercourse on days the signs show as infertile, you are maintaining the natural and Holy order of things. It is only when you are selfishly doing this because you just don’t want children, even though you are mentally, physically, and financially able to support children that you’d be sinning.
Keep in mind also that NFP will be used to help in determining fertile times for when a couple decides that they are able to support a family/more family members. A lot of what goes into NFP is faith. You can have faith that God will approve of your decisions if you are responsible with them.
Matt:
Pleased to meet you. In case it isn’t clear your readers, let me clarify that I am a father of 5 born children (ages 13 thru 2), plus 2 whose lives ended quite prematurely in utero, and who I hope might welcome me to glory some day.
Now this notion that NFP “isn’t supposed to prevent pregnancy exactly” is pretty hard to reconcile with the fact that it does exactly this, and does so very well.
As to contraceptives rendering “a fertile time infertile,” it’s far from clear what you mean. Hormonal contraceptives, yes, have the intent of doing so with a non-zero “failure” rate. But since these are clearly abortaficient, they are no more an option for us than they are for you. Nor ought they be an option (save medical necessity) for any Christian believer. But what of simple barriers, or quite frankly male sexual climax outside of intercourse? Do such practices render a fertile time infertile? No.
Now a subject that I’ve not heard addressed is the fact that generally a woman’s sexual desire is highest around the time of ovulation, i.e., during epochs of highest fertility. By intentionally avoiding sexual gratification during this epoch, do we not risk robbing our wives of the fullest enjoyment of the sexual act. Now of course, my understanding that Church teaching does not forbid a variety of alternative techniques (unitive but short of intercourse) for female stimulation, which may even include climax (for her strictly). But since such acts should not be fully removed from the general context of intercourse (again only my understanding of Church teaching), I suppose such activities would be disallowed to the couple “abstaining” in accordance with NFP. So it seems we are stuck with abstaining during the epoch of greatest desire for the woman.
So how ’bout this? A couple practices NFP (for all the right reasons, let’s say). But during high probability of fertility epochs, they apply “barrier” methods (barriers proper, or simply by allowing male climax outside of intercourse). What is the difference between this hypothetical practice and NFP properly understood and implemented? In one case the couple obtains sexual gratification during a time of fertility, whereas in the other case they ought to have abstained. So the difference is simply between abstaining and not abstaining. Well, while there is no doubt a value to abstaining and not seeking pleasure any ol’ time we “feel” like it, I don’t see there is anything inherently wrong with pursuing the pleasurable experience. And in this case it seems not inherently different, by my accounting at least, than choosing to pursue the pleasurable experience only during times of low fertility.
Hope that made sense.
Cheers!
Steve N
And this is EXACTLY why I stopped being catholic and deconverted.
Steve,
I know we’re probably not going to persuade you on this, but I had another thought for you.
The difference between ABC and NFP is that even during “infertile” times there might still be a slight chance of fertility so even if you abstain during the regularly fertile time, you’re always open to the possibility of life with NFP but with ABC the intent is to prevent life… if that makes sense… I don’t think I expressed that as well as I could have.
Also, you mention that women enjoy intercourse more when they are most likely to be fertile and reference that as a reason that ABC would be OK so as not to deprive the woman of that feeling… personally, I’d think the barrier would take away from it. Just my two cents, though.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts with us!
The Church does not say it is a sin to avoid pregnancy if there is a genuine need to do so. The Church says it is a sin to intentionally render a sexual act infertile. The couple using NFP is not sterilizing the act. The couple using barrier methods, withdrawal, etc. is sterilizing the act.
NFP is not *doing* anything to prevent pregnancy. If it were a sin to avoid pregnancy by not having sex, then we would only be allowed to have sex when all signs indicated fertility.
Hi – I stumbled over here from Mothering With Grace :-) I know this post is old, but I wanted to add, for Steve, you might really benefit from Christopher West’s works – Good News About Sex and Marriage (very readable, thoroughly Catholic), and also the Naked Without Shame tape set, which breaks down the Holy Father’s Theology of the Body and sheds amazing light on the subject of sex, contraception, climax, etc. It’s also very long. lol
Carol