didymus:
I hope you’ll excuse me – I was reacting to posts by NFP advocates I’ve seen on other threads boasting that it is “effective as the Pill” (or condoms or whatever) while simultaneously claiming that they are"open to life". Huh? Call me a thick-skulled Mick, but I don’t get that one.
I would agree that periodic abstinence is good – though kids, job and simple fatigue offer plenty of opportunity for abstinence
As for “recreational sex” if you mean w/in marriage, I’m not sure I get you unless you mean one partner is exploiting the other w/o regard for their feelings or needs.
Dear didymus,
I think I can help a bit with your first point. After hundreds of posts on this exact topic when I first started the forums last year, I finally eked out what seemed to be an answer.
Practically ever article I read about NFP – including in our own diocesan newspaper – does, in fact, boast about its rate of effectiveness at preventing pregnancy. In the same article, it claims superiority over contraception because of effectiveness at preventing pregnancy, but simultaneously denounces contraception because it isn’t open to life!
It seems we have over-zealous marketing attitudes, that are trying to use – unwittingly perhaps – bait-and-switch tactics to reel in those who are looking for “Catholic contraception.” Methinks the writings in this direction are so prevalent that either those people writing the articles don’t really understand it themselves, or they are sufficiently illiterate that they repeatedly fail to write a coherent article. Sometimes I think NFP is a religion all by itself, with people all zealous about it (perhaps with good reason) and don’t really know why to the extent that they should quit trying to convince others into using it. They aren’t helping.
I used to have similar problems when marketing would twist my engineering specifications for a product to put on their ads because they “sounded good.” These were highly technical products, for use in assembly lines. Unfortunately, the customers had engineers of their own with a bullsh*t detector, and could read through that stuff. Maybe marketing people are needed to give a pretty package to things, but sometimes that can lead to false customer expectations.
Also one thing I was not aware of is that the Church does not teach NFP is always OK at all times. You must have “serious” reasons to use NFP for the purpose of spacing babies, for example. Surprisingly to me, financial hardship is one of those valid reasons!
I’d better not go into that; it’s probably fodder enough for a thread on its own.
Alan
