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Corki
Guest
Nope. NFP is a way of trying to avoid the conception of another child by NOT engaging in sex. Totally different.
- Status
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Blacksword
Guest
And so does sex involving a different form of BC, as many people walking aroung today can attest. We’re just going in circles.
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Blacksword
Guest
No, lol! It’s a way of trying to avoid conception by choosing when you have sex. Trying to avoid conception by NOT having sex would be total abstinence. That form of BC has a name already.
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Nate13
Guest
@Blacksword
your comparing apples and oranges here.
Compare any act of sex while using NFP to an act of sex while using contraception. NFP=doing nothing IN THE ACT to prevent conception which is the definition of contraception. Contraception is definitely doing something during the act to prevent conception. Think of it this way:
Using contraception you jumped on an altar in front of God and had sex. You had the audacity to jump on the altar in front of God and deny the nature of how he made us. Now think of the same situation for NFP. Everytime that couple jumps on that altar and gets busy they give themselves completely to each other and show appreciation for the way God made them. In times of abstinence they don’t even get on the altar. This is how they show respect for God, because they realize that they shouldn’t get on the altar unless they are prepared to give themselves completely. YOU are the one that is trying to say that God requires us to get on the altar in front of him when we are most fertile. No where does the Church require this.
your comparing apples and oranges here.
Compare any act of sex while using NFP to an act of sex while using contraception. NFP=doing nothing IN THE ACT to prevent conception which is the definition of contraception. Contraception is definitely doing something during the act to prevent conception. Think of it this way:
Using contraception you jumped on an altar in front of God and had sex. You had the audacity to jump on the altar in front of God and deny the nature of how he made us. Now think of the same situation for NFP. Everytime that couple jumps on that altar and gets busy they give themselves completely to each other and show appreciation for the way God made them. In times of abstinence they don’t even get on the altar. This is how they show respect for God, because they realize that they shouldn’t get on the altar unless they are prepared to give themselves completely. YOU are the one that is trying to say that God requires us to get on the altar in front of him when we are most fertile. No where does the Church require this.
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Corki
Guest
You are trying to play a word game. The decision to not have sex is based on a given day. On a fertile day, if you have a good reason not to want to conceive, you abstain. Abstain = not having sex. The Church term for NFP is periodic abstinence. It’s the abstinence that delays the conception of the child. It isn’t the days when you have sexual relations. NFP isn’t deciding when to have sex, it’s deciding when not to have sex. NFP doesn’t care what you do on the non-fertile days. It’s only based on abstinence on the fertile days. (reverse this if you are using NFP to conceive)No, lol! It’s a way of trying to avoid conception by choosing when you have sex. Trying to avoid conception by NOT having sex would be total abstinence. That form of BC has a name already.
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Bookcat
Guest
bumpHot off the press…
from a day or so ago… I know…but I just saw it
From ArchBishop Timothy Dolan (who is also Pres. of the US Confer. of Bishops)
blog.archny.org/?p=1473
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sw85
Guest
That is objectively not the case.
As I said before, contraception has as its end the subversion of the sexual faculty. If conception results from it, it is because it failed in its purpose. It is therefore explicitly contrary to the *telos *of the human sexual faculty and its use is always therefore an intrinsic evil.
Again, you are looking at things as a consequentialist would. But the Church is not a consequentialist institution and its teachings are not based in consequentialist evaluation of outcomes. What is important here is the act itself and the end which it serves.
Mary_Gail_36
New member
I wanted to touch on that…having sex on a non-fertile day isn’t how conception is avoided.
Conception is avoided by not having sex on fertile days when conception could occur.
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Blacksword
Guest
This contains at least the kernel of something worth thinking on in the start of the post, and I shall. But the rest of it is more than a little odd. Having sex on an altar?! That’s a VERY strange scenario to make your point.
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Blacksword
Guest
Except NFP (and Church teaching) decidedly DOES care a very great deal what you do on non-fertile days! And its a little ironic that you say I’m trying to play a word game, I was thinking the same thing about you
.NFP is deciding when to have sex, that’s the whole point of the method! No point in going on with this, I’m not seeing it. Sorry, I’ll do my best to follow the Church inasmuch as my fallible and flawed conscience can allow, and that will, I pray, be sufficient for the Lord in his infinite mercy.
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lovemysix
Guest
Just wanted to apologize for being part of a thread hijack—I honestly came in mid-thread and showed very poor posting etiquette by not really paying attention to the original post, just responding to the posts immediately preceding mine.
I virtually never get into NFP discussions online and am not really sure why I did last night. In my 40s now and reflecting upon a lot of what I am seeing in fellow conservative Catholic marriages at the 15 and 20 year marks, I just know that something is very wrong with how people are living out their marriages. I honestly do believe that NFP is contributing to the problems, but I feel it’s not so much the method as the tactics used in trying to convince people to use it, much of which seems to be fear-mongering (will burn in hell if you don’t—and you and your spouse will do nothing but treat each other as objects and have a deservedly hellish marriage if you choose anything but NFP). This whole notion that your spouse is just one condom away from treating you like an object in a porn magazine is not a healthy one. And it doesn’t jibe what so many people actually experience. Human nature being what it is, most people base their decisions on their own experiences and those experiences they observe in the people around them, for better or worse. When the Church quits speaking to the real human experience, her message does not resonate with the masses.
This is why I think the statistic of 90+% of Catholics using contraceptives isn’t going to change any time too soon, but rather than really delve into the reasons for this, it is easier to just say these people are either plain ignorant or selfish nymphomaniacs who view their spouses as sex objects and will get the unhappy marriages they deserve. No real conversations seem to be happening and nobody seems to be all that willing to at least consider that perhaps the reason it’s not resonating is because the Church was actually quite wise all those centuries she taught that NFP (back then it was the rhythm method, of course) was only to be used in really grave situations, wise in that She recognized how damaging it can be at least to some couples to practice it over the course of 20-30 childbearing years.
But what do I know, I am just a regular person strugging through life the best way I can, making the best decisions I can for my family given my own limitations and realities and hoping that God will forgive me for my weaknesses and inability to live some of the cold, hard realities of Church teaching.
I virtually never get into NFP discussions online and am not really sure why I did last night. In my 40s now and reflecting upon a lot of what I am seeing in fellow conservative Catholic marriages at the 15 and 20 year marks, I just know that something is very wrong with how people are living out their marriages. I honestly do believe that NFP is contributing to the problems, but I feel it’s not so much the method as the tactics used in trying to convince people to use it, much of which seems to be fear-mongering (will burn in hell if you don’t—and you and your spouse will do nothing but treat each other as objects and have a deservedly hellish marriage if you choose anything but NFP). This whole notion that your spouse is just one condom away from treating you like an object in a porn magazine is not a healthy one. And it doesn’t jibe what so many people actually experience. Human nature being what it is, most people base their decisions on their own experiences and those experiences they observe in the people around them, for better or worse. When the Church quits speaking to the real human experience, her message does not resonate with the masses.
This is why I think the statistic of 90+% of Catholics using contraceptives isn’t going to change any time too soon, but rather than really delve into the reasons for this, it is easier to just say these people are either plain ignorant or selfish nymphomaniacs who view their spouses as sex objects and will get the unhappy marriages they deserve. No real conversations seem to be happening and nobody seems to be all that willing to at least consider that perhaps the reason it’s not resonating is because the Church was actually quite wise all those centuries she taught that NFP (back then it was the rhythm method, of course) was only to be used in really grave situations, wise in that She recognized how damaging it can be at least to some couples to practice it over the course of 20-30 childbearing years.
But what do I know, I am just a regular person strugging through life the best way I can, making the best decisions I can for my family given my own limitations and realities and hoping that God will forgive me for my weaknesses and inability to live some of the cold, hard realities of Church teaching.
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Blacksword
Guest
I’m not looking at consequences, that’s not my focus. I’m looking at intent, as the intent of the persons in their actions MATTERS. And the intent of the couple practicing NFP for avoidance of conception is the same: to avoid conception. To that couple, if NFP is practiced but pregnancy results, they’ll be the first to say NFP has failed.
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Nate13
Guest
Haha! The fact that you find it strange is EXACTLY why you can’t see the difference. Think of it like this: God is present when a new life is created correct? A man provides a sperm, a woman provides an egg, and God provides the soul. Is God slinging those souls around from up in a tower through the closed doors of our houses, into our bedrooms and finally into the child? No! If there is any act where he is present it is during sex! After all, it is during sex that we show ourselves to be created in the likeness of God i.e the Trinity. God so loves the Son that this love in and of itself is a new person, the Holy Spirit. A man loves his wife, and God willingly this love forms a new person! Our marriage beds are altars before the Lord, where we come to show him the ultimate act of Love that we are capable of! When you view sex and marriage through the eyes of God, you can then see where the difference lies between contraception and NFP.
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Bookcat
Guest
As they say statistics lie.
A poll…is well…a poll. And they do quite often error (the way they are constructed…who they poll…how they ask etc)
Not that such would matter even if such a US poll reflected somewhat the reality.
If one took a poll of the number of Americans who have had an abortion…
with the horrendous number done just in the US each year (over a million as I recall!) there will be high number who will say they have had one.
But such a large number …does not make it good…does not make it ok for others to do so.
Yes… they say statistics lie.
God though does not
Let us live in Christ. Walk in him as children of light.
A poll…is well…a poll. And they do quite often error (the way they are constructed…who they poll…how they ask etc)
Not that such would matter even if such a US poll reflected somewhat the reality.
If one took a poll of the number of Americans who have had an abortion…
with the horrendous number done just in the US each year (over a million as I recall!) there will be high number who will say they have had one.
But such a large number …does not make it good…does not make it ok for others to do so.
Yes… they say statistics lie.
God though does not
Let us live in Christ. Walk in him as children of light.
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Blacksword
Guest
Sure, I just find the idea of having sex on an altar strangely pagan. And, I fail to see why this reasoning, intriguing though it is, means that every act of sex must therefore be fully creative, end the same way, etc. God’s love for the Son is the being of one member of the Trinity, not a continuing production/emanating of endless persons of the Trinity! The analogy in the end falls flat.
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sw85
Guest
There is no harm in “avoiding conception” provided the reason for doing so and the means for achieving that end is legitimate. Contraception is illegitimate because it is contrary to the telos of the sexual faculty; NFP is not because it isn’t. In the latter case, the sexual faculty is still being used in a manner consistent with its end; in the former, a barrier is (in some cases literally) placed between the faculty and its end.
This is why I said previously that NFP can still rise to the level of a sin when the will is disordered (e.g., one wishes to avoid having a child not for legitimate financial or health reasons but because, say, one resents the impingement on personal autonomy that having children represents). Any intrinsically licit act can still be implicated in sin if the person willing it does so for illicit reasons; this hardly means the act itself is illicit.
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Bookcat
Guest
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Bookcat
Guest
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Nate13
Guest
You have seen at altar at Church right? What do we do on that altar? We offer a sacrifice and worship God. We are called to imitate Christ in how he gave himself completely and selflessly on the cross. On our marriage beds we reciprocate this and offer ourselves completely to our spouses and to God (hopefully). What makes an altar pagan is the content of the sacrifice you are offering and the who or who’s you are offering it to. If you believe your sex acts are unworthy to God maybe that’s where your problem is. In the marriage act we become “one flesh” and get as close as we can on this Earth to God. When you can understand that your marriage bed is an altar before God, you will then understand the difference between NFP and contraception.
There is no greater act of worshiping God for a couple than to engage in the sexual act in the way he intended for it to be.
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Blacksword
Guest
There is not one telos to the sexual activity, but two. Sex in marriage is for the good of the spouses, and the unitive purpose of sexual union is still served in sex employing other hypothetical forms of BC. These specifics are where natural law begins to show it’s problems, and why philosophy of ethics has moved on in the 700 years or so since Aquinas. There isn’t one single purpose for sex, there is the procreative, and the unitive. HV says these, officially, can NEVER be separated. I’m saying I can’t philosophically see why they must always and at every instance be together. It’s not a realistic model of how married, real life actually works. Now, I really must go, my wife awaits and, GASP, we actually ARE in the process of trying to serve the very procreative purpose of sexual union that you seem to think I’m railing against! (Not, mind you, while I type this, but rather meaning over the last few months!)
. Blessings to you.- Status