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Observer3
Guest
Sex with NFP or ABC still is lustful. Simply putting on a piece of latex doesn’t change the desire behind sex. If you want to avoid lust, best to avoid sex all together.
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SummerSmiles
Guest
“lust” is not the same thing as “arousal” or “sexual desire”
Lust is **inordinate **sinful sexual desires, sought for personal gratification.
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Whitacre_Girl
Guest
Observer: you state that you are a christian. Wouldn’t you agree that God’s knowledge is higher than ours? Are you going to disobey God just because he asks something of you that you don’t understand? Imagine if Mary had done that. God was asking something of her that was not only illogical, but dangerous. Imagine if Abraham had done that? And God was asking something and detailing something FAR more illogical than anything you or I are likely to encounter. How is a post menopausal woman supposed to conceive?
God asks faith from us, not full understanding.
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SonCatcher
Guest
Something I said in another thread on one benefit of periodic abstinence:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=7330506&postcount=38
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=7330506&postcount=38
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slywakka250
Guest
How is nfp like condoms, not also about getting sexual pleasure without the possibility of having kids?
When you have sex at the known “infertile times,” and specifically have sex at only those times in order to prevent pregnancy, how is your sex act still both unitive and pro creative, as every sex act is supposed to be???
when the couple has specifically sought to push the procreation aspect away from their sex. it seems no different than a condom.
When you have sex at the known “infertile times,” and specifically have sex at only those times in order to prevent pregnancy, how is your sex act still both unitive and pro creative, as every sex act is supposed to be???
when the couple has specifically sought to push the procreation aspect away from their sex. it seems no different than a condom.
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SummerSmiles
Guest
To put it in slightly more mechanical terms:
Even if engaging in sex during a time when you know the woman is infertile, the sex itself has not changed. Everything is still being deposited in the proper place. The woman’s body has not been altered in any way.
The act is still exactly the same as if the couple had chosen to engage in sex during the fertile time.
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jilly4ski
Guest
Sigh, because when you are actually able to conceive a child you are not having sex.
What if a couple didn’t know your fertile and infertile times but ended up having sex only during the infertile times, because of schedules, stress, etc.? Is that procreative sex? The church’s answer is yes, because the marital act is being completed the way it is supposed to be completed. Therefore the marital act is “ordered towards procreation.”
Now suppose a couple knows their infertile and fertile periods, but are trying to get pregnant. Can they licitly have sex during the infertile period even though they know they are infertile? Again the church’s answer is yes, because the way they define ordered towards procreation means that the marital act is completed the way it is supposed to be completed. The knowledge of fertility or infertility doesn’t automatically make sex during the infertile period non procreative.
The church does stipulate that one must have a grave/serious/just reason to actually use this knowledge to avoid pregnancy. A condom on the other hand fundamentally alters the marital act whether during the infertile or fertile times.
(My own conclusions are that NFP can be used sinfully, for selfish reasons, without consent from the spouse, withholding the marital duty, etc., but is not the same sin as using ABC. Using ABC is always grave matter, but using NFP may be not sinful, sinful but not grave, or grave sin depending the circumstances).
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slywakka250
Guest
What makes a condom wrong, I thought, was the fact that it reduces the probability of new life in the marriage.
having sex at a known infertile time does exactly the same thing, reduces the probability of new life in the marriage
I don’t see how nfp is anything more than a “natural condom,” using time instead of latex to control procreation.
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slywakka250
Guest
why not?
how is the sex “ordered toward procreation” if the couple has sure knowledge that procreation has little chance of happening?? It seems the sex is less and less ordered to procreation the more certain the knowledge. If you only had sex on the most infertile day of the month, could you nearly guarantee you would never have kids?? that doesn’t seem ordered to procreation at all.
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jilly4ski
Guest
Yes you could do this, (but if you are doing it to purposefully avoid children then you would need a serious/grave/just reason, and your spouse would have to agree. Oh and also you could not enter the marriage with this purpose, or it might invalidate the marriage).
As the church defines “ordered towards procreation” has nothing to do with actually being able to conceive. (A completely infertile couple’s marital relations are considered ordered towards procreation, because if they weren’t infertile there would be nothing prohibiting conception). God tied babies to sex, it is the way he designed sex. So ordered towards procreation means that each individual marital act must be completed the way God designed. If we cannot accept children at a particular time, then we must abstain from sex, we cannot change the marital act (by introducing barriers to fertility). But you will notice that a woman’s natural infertility is not introducing a barrier to fertility.
Thus abstaining from sex is objectively not a sin (unless your spouse reasonably asks for the marital debt), but you might have sinful motives for avoiding children, but there are non sinful motives for avoiding children.
However, ABC is always objectively sinful, because it changes God’s design for the sex (regardless of the individual couples actual infertility). One might have non sinful motives for avoiding children, but using ABC to accomplish this goal is sinful.
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SummerSmiles
Guest
The condom isn’t wrong simply because it reduces the probability of new life, it’s wrong because of the way it does this. Specifically, (and hopefully not too graphically) it prevents sperm from even entering the woman’s body. It’s not simply a “natural condom” to only engage in sex during the infertile period. There’s little chance of a pregnancy occurring during an infertile time, but if God wills it, a pregnancy can still occur, because all the necessary elements are present. (sperm, egg in the same place) This is not the case with the condom because the condom attempts to remove one of the necessary elements from the sex act.
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faithfully
Guest
Yeah but…
You are not required to have sex everyday. And abstaining from sex when you’d rather have it is a sacrafice as well. And even though you KNOW your fertile or not, you COULD be wrong. You accept the possibility of getting PG.
Regardless, a condom is a physical barrier to going ahead and having sex anyway. Abstaining… well, you miss out on the big O too! You are making a sacrafice. Which for MOST woman happens to be their most DESIRED time to have sex… A sacrafice within your marriage, and by your person. And it seems reasonable that if you can make this sacrafice for a day or two or whatever your window is, then God is fine (as were taught) with the idea that you will accept whether or not it was REALLY your window of opportunity or not.
Keep in mind, many use NFP to GET PG! Why not ask why is it ok to test your cervical mucus and such and NOT engage in various infertility treatment.
Why not ask, how come I can eat a decadent treat now and then but NOT everyday non stop in a gluttonous fashion… Or eat non stop and puke every hour. The difference is interferring in a fashion that is actual INTERFERANCE… stopping the play from going through. Not having sex is not interferring with the natural course of sperm and egg. Blocking the sperm interferres…
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Abu
Guest
The remedy is to get the facts.
The difference in using NBR versus condomistic intercourse is simply:
- God has provided the infertile periods in His wisdom without commanding us NOT to use them. So, we CAN use them virtuously.
- As the natural marital act will be open to procreation as normal, by deliberately placing a barrier to conception in the act the perpetrator has personally thwarted the procreative end of the act and therefore acted against his nature created by God. This is against the natural moral law which law even pagans like Cicero and others acknowledged.
- Obviously, if only the infertile periods are used, this is thwarting the nature created by God for procreation and is very wrong – unless in rare circumstances that indicate the virtual certainty of grave (life-threatening) harm to the wife through conception. Otherwise, as provided by God, the infertile periods may be virtuously used for grave reasons. Hence NBR – in which the couple can cooperate with God ‘s Plan as created in the wife, without choosing to deliberately place a barrier regardless of His created nature.
- Since God has redeemed us through the Passion, Death and Resurrection of His Son, who established His Church to teach us His truths so that by living them we can be saved and achieve Heaven, it is the height of folly to feel that we can disregard or reject what His Church teaches with His authority – infallibly.
- Christ’s Church teaches us definitively and infallibly that contraception is a grave sin and intrinsically wrong.
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Vico
Guest
I believe the logic of why using a condom is wrong is this. Each and every conjugal act must embody the intention of complete “self-donation,” otherwise one is withholding from one’s partner something natural to the conjugal act, which deprives it of the unitive significance, thereby making it morally illicit. Deposition of semen in the vagina is a necessary condition for the conjugal act to retain its unitive significance.
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Debora123
Guest
Ok, so I can understand this from a logical point of view.
Buuuuuuuuut, it just seems SO petty, to the point where it just makes no sense for it to be wrong. I mean, seriously? A condom is wrong because semen didn’t go into the vagina while having sex? (Excuse the graphic language, but at least we’re all adults here
)
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Debora123
Guest
I do appreciate all the responses though. Every little bit is something to consider and think about, and that always helps.
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Abu
Guest
We do know for certain that God is against contraception. God killed Onan for contraception (Gen 38:8-10), as the answer by a renowned Catholic biblical scholar affirms:
ONAN
Answer by Fr. John Echert on May, 3, 2008 (EWTN):
The sin is NOT that of adultery, which is to take the wife of another man. In fact, it was expected and eventually required that if a man died without a son to continue his posterity, his brother was to take his wife after his death as his own and raise up a family by her. So the sin was not in taking his deceased brothers wife but in spilling his seed on the ground. This action is explicit in the text–spilled his seed on the ground–and is the most obvious cause for which he was put to death by God Himself. This is an important text which supports the moral teaching of the Church–and nature–that contraception is mortally sinful.
Why shouldn’t everyone believe that God has given us all the answers when His only Son, Jesus of Nazareth, gave us His Catholic Church – “He that hears you hears Me.” (See Mt 18:15-17), and “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations….teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you…” (Mt 28:18-20)? Her dogma and doctrine, in faith and morals, reveal His requirements for our salvation.
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SonCatcher
Guest
God gave us sex so we could “be fruitful and multiply.” He made it fun so we would actually remember to get around to it once in a while.Ok, so I can understand this from a logical point of view.
Buuuuuuuuut, it just seems SO petty, to the point where it just makes no sense for it to be wrong. I mean, seriously? A condom is wrong because semen didn’t go into the vagina while having sex? (Excuse the graphic language, but at least we’re all adults here
Seeking the “fun” for its own sake is where we start getting into trouble. That “petty” thing is the very reason you exist. It is the very reason your husband exists.
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Seatuck
Guest
The marital act has a sacramental/theological meaning to it also. "The two become one flesh " . The spousal couple , in marriage and in the marital act reflect the total giving of the Trinity as well as the total giving of Christ to his bride , the church. When you put a barrier in there you block that total giving.Ok, so I can understand this from a logical point of view.
Buuuuuuuuut, it just seems SO petty, to the point where it just makes no sense for it to be wrong. I mean, seriously? A condom is wrong because semen didn’t go into the vagina while having sex? (Excuse the graphic language, but at least we’re all adults here
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Vico
Guest
I am sorry I included the last sentence because that is what you focused on, rather than on the complete gift which is unitive. This complete gift is in accord with divine law not something that can be modified at whim. (You see this is why fertility samples are taken with a perforated condom.) It is not trivial as all things sexual are grave matter. One can also say, and people do, that masturbation is a trival matter, contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium.Ok, so I can understand this from a logical point of view.
Buuuuuuuuut, it just seems SO petty, to the point where it just makes no sense for it to be wrong. I mean, seriously? A condom is wrong because semen didn’t go into the vagina while having sex? (Excuse the graphic language, but at least we’re all adults here
When canon law was modified in 1983 the wording of the canons was changed to reflect some Vatican II teachings, which are key to understanding this issue:
Can. 1061 §1. A valid marriage between the baptized is called ratum tantum if it has not been consummated; it is called* ratum et consummatum* if the spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion a conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh.
vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P3V.HTM
The condom use is contrary to what makes spouses one flesh, through which marriage is consummated. For marriage, there cannot be impotence, but fertility is not an impediment.
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