A couple questions about NFP that are somewhat interrelated:
1- What did people do before modern NFP and ABC? For example, back in biblical times how did married couples postpone/space having children? Maybe it’s obvious, but was abstinence the only choice and was that really what people practised?
My husband loves history, so what I share is mostly what I’ve heard from him or from audio history lectures he’s had playing while he was cleaning. What did people do? Well, first, it needs to be noted that NFP did exist. St. Augustine criticized a group of Manichaeans for using periodic abstainence. If they had any accurate knowledge of women’s fertility patterns, it died with them until scientific discoveries in the 19th century. What people did also depends on where they lived and what time period they lived in. But aside from periodic abstainence they: 1. used animal intestines as condoms 2. Engaged in homosexual activities when they were trying to abstain from contact with their spouses. 3. Less safe methods of abortion 4. Infancide primarily through exposure. Its why we have so many myths about people being raised by animals, being found by other people who took them in, etc. 5. Alternative methods of climaxing. 6. Abstainence from your spouse through hiring a prostitute.
Factors not in their control or that they didn’t understand: 1. Malnutrition. A woman can fail to ovulate if she is malnurished. 2. In the last century, the age a girl gets her period has gone down. Throughout the world, the age is not consistant even today, but it is possible for girls to have not gotten their periods till they were 16. 3. Breastfeeding. There were no pumps and formula. In fact, between pregnancy and breastfeeding, and malnutrition, women actually did not have to deal with their periods as regularly as we do.
People still did have many children, though. Typically most of their children did not survive to adulthood which was primarily the reason why the average life expectancy was so low. If an infant had latch on difficulties, that infant would die. If the mother did not produce enough milk, her only hope would be to hire a wetnurse. We also didn’t have vaccinations to protect children from all the childhood illnesses that used to take the lives of children. Most children simply did not survive to adulthood. If you had 14 children, probably 6 of them would make it to adulthood. If you made it to adulthood, you would indeed probably make it to your 80’s.
That said, no one would have dreamed in the past that people would only want two children.
2- Modern NFP seems very reliable with many benefits, but it’s based on recent science and I wonder how that fits into God’s plan. In other words, was it God’s plan that for 1000’s of years of human history that married couples either abstain or “take a chance”, and then suddenly in the 20th century we have NFP? I guess I’m just not sure how to make sense of that.
There is nothing wrong with science. Its good that we’ve developed immunizations. Its good that we have a better understanding of nutrition than we used to. Medical advancements are a good thing. The Church simply teaches that procreation isn’t a disease. NFP is more like our better understanding of nutrition. Contraceptives are like people who rely on Slimfast milkshakes, diet pills, bolemia, etc. They may be thinner, but they are not truly healthy. They’re still trying to give satisfaction to their gluttony while attempting to avoid the more severe negative temporal effects of it.
I think what people need to understand is that the thinking minds of the world who support contraceptives believe that the Church’s insistance on not using contraceptives is based on the thoughts of moral thinkers who were talking about far more unhealthy and degrading means of prevention. I mean, can you imagine using some dead animals intestine or bladder as a condom? Can you imagine the risk of infection in using such a thing? The Manichaeans motivation to use periodic abstainence was based on the belief that creating children was immoral because it trapped souls into bodies, not out of a desire to practice responsible parenthood.
I mean they have a point that the situations that the great thinking minds who’ve influenced Catholic thought were dealing with behaviors that had much greater temporal effects than contraceptives.
All we can do is trust the Church to continually discern these things with the guidence of the Holy Spirit and she has affirmed that contraceptives are immoral and that NFP is fine. But you will always find the traditionalist Catholic who sees St. Augustine’s condemnation and say “No no no…NFP is immoral.”
