no you do not have to get fertility tests.
No, struggling with infertility and refraining from seeking medical treatment is not a sin.
I don’t doubt your sincere desire to have children. It is a great sadness when this expected part of marriage and life is unfulfilled. The point I was making was that while you are not required to undergo fertility treatment, you need to continue to desire (again if it is God’s will) and take the less radical step of praying / NFP. I understand that you have tried NFP, but keep praying and hoping, nothing is impossible to God.
Why is this necessarily a great sadness? I can understand that couples that desire children but cannot have them would experience such emotions, but what of the couple that happily accepts what God gives them? If a couple is open to life, leaves it to God’s will but God does not provide a child, can that couple not be happy with what God has given them? Must they suffer sadness with the knowledge that God has left their marriage “unfulfilled”? If you are truly leaving things up to God, then any one outcome is not better or worse, happier or sadder – they are all as good and fulfilling as any other outcome.
I don’t think that is the case at all. We are called to submit to God’s will, certainly, but that does not mean that we need to like equally all outcomes. If we get cancer, we should accept this as best we can, but we don’t need to be equally happy about it as if we had good health. Likewise when a part of our body e.g. our fertility is not working as it should this is a sadness. One of the proper hopes of the married life, as we pray again in the marriage rite, is that the couple be blessed with children. As children are a blessing of marriage then a lack of them in marriage is by definition a sadness, one of course to be endured with hope and joy.
I’m not saying that we should be equally happy with all outcomes, but that the outcome itself is not inherently “happy” or “sad”. Many people do desire children and would find infertility to be a “sadness”. I would not disagree with this, nor would I suggest that they are wrong for not being happy with God’s will. This is an appropriate reaction, but it is not a property inherent to the infertility. What I am saying is that embracing the infertility and using it as an opportunity to help others instead of focusing only on your own family can be a positive outcome. People are allowed to be happy with less than ideal situations. It is not a sadness to that couple, nor should one imply that the happily infertile couple is wrong for being satisfied with the hand that was dealt to them.
I imply no such thing. I am not suggesting that those who are infertile should go around living miserable lives as a result. But, the absence of children in a marriage is always the privation of one of the blessings of marriage, it is therefore (as I said) by definition (i.e. the opposite of blessing) a sadness. No doubt most couples who find themselves in this situation are still happy, but married couples should always desire children if it is possible, and as we should all know “nothing is impossible to God”.
Sorry, I don’t want to make you feel as though people are ganging up on you, but I was very curious about your statement that if a couple does not conceive it is a moral responsibility to practice NFP to conceive. I am curious as to your reasoning behind this. It makes it sound as though it is not enough to desire any and all children which God chooses to send but that couples are required to actively desire and attempt to achieve pregnancy. I find this especially perplexing as the Church allows for such a thing as a josephite marriage in which no children are possible.