Is it allowable to use NFP in order to have no child?

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I have heard that joke, and I am old enough to say that NFP was alive and well 30 years ago. So it was reliable back then. I don’t know when it first really came to be so, though, but 30 year ago it was already a solid method with credible studies proving it to be so. Not that every local GP knew that if you asked him or her…

So you need to go back further than 30 years.
 
Seeking freedom must always be recalibrated to “seeking the highest good” (God’s will, the good of others most near us, etc.).

It’s a life long task, that can often get disordered and convoluted, and turned back toward selfish reasons.

Yes, a person who is married - when they decide to marry - MUST accept all the gifts and demands of marriage which includes having children.

The purpose of marriage is children, not self consolation. Its very nature is toward children. It’s designed to protect children.

A marriage closed in on itself - not open to the full fruits of it - is a disordered marriage.

Love must always seek to “diffuse” outside of itself (St Thomas Aquinas).

A greater love always goes beyond itself.

The Church speaks of “procreative and unitive” functions or purposes of marriage.

And most Catholics don’t get these points very deeply…they nod…and they think that they are sort of parallel…and they tend to focus on the unitive…the pleasurable.

But unitive first serves the procreative purposes of marriage…and then in a marvelous way…divine invention…the procreative demands that come with children CREATE new ways to serve the unitive function…unitive in a far more deep way…unity of bodies is really just a small part of true unity that God is hoping to see in every marriage.

So unitive serves the procreative…and then procreative serves the unitive…and that deeper unity (bodies, desires, intellect, heart, purpose, wills) continues until one of the spouses dies.
 
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This is not true. What Humanae Vitae says is:
" With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time."

Prudently and generously are not adjectives to compliment those who have more children. Having another child must be rooted in the virtue of prudence and out of the generosity of our hearts. And those with serious moments may decide not to have children for a certain or indefinite period of time.

What NFP does is give us a greater ability to understand the moral weight of our sexual choices in marriage. Our consent to pregnancy must include an awareness of the chance of pregnancy.

As such, if I’m having sex after my period but before my fertile window, I know my chances of pregnancy are unlikely but not impossible. If I have sex during my fertile window, I know my chances are very high (unless we have infertility problems), and if I have sex during the period after ovulation and before my period,I know that the chance of getting pregnant is near non-existent.

This doesn’t mean NFP is always this straight forward. The postpartum period is one huge pain in the butt that is under researched. The overall probability of pregnancy over the course of one year is higher than when a woman is cycling because couples are more likely to use the fertile time due to prolonged periods of abstinence caused by false fertile signs you have to abstain through anyone because you might ovulate and might not. In the meantime, the research on NFP in general is all moderate to low quality. There was just a report on this recently. We need higher quality studies to gain a clearer picture of our actual risk.

But the more information we have, the more we are able to practice prudence. And this is contrasted with the unchaste nature of non-hormonal contraceptives, and the disrupting of healthy bodily functions to enable greater freedom with sexual activity without the consequences.

What the Pope rejected from the comissions recommendation was only one part. He rejected abstinence as an immoral means to prevent pregnancy. As such, the proposal to argue that because NFP was approved, contraceptives should be because abstinence in marriage was a negative. It was almost a proposal for something like a just war theory for contraception.
 
There is NOTHING superior about a ordained man’s theological opinions!! That ISN’T Catholic theology in the LEAST!! Priests used to be the ONLY EDUCATED, LITERATE people. As such, it was appropriate for laity to refer to their judgment DUE TO their ignorance.

Only the Church’s ACTUAL TEACHINGS are held as infallible. No individuals ever are, even in their interpretations of doctrines. It is possible to misunderstand doctrine and priests, deacons, and laity are all capable of that. It is for THAT reason that the Church teach’s the primacy of conscience. The primacy of conscience is not a denial of the authority of the Church, but a recognition that we all hold imperfect knowledge and that the formation of conscience is a LIFELONG task.
 
Catholics are asked if they will accept children lovingly from God. The wording is distinct.
 
To quote St Teresa of Calcutta, that is like saying there are too many flowers.

This is a very anti-Christian thought.
 
No it’s not. Even pope Francis said Catholics shouldn’t breed like rabbits. It’s not prudent to have too many children if you can’t afford to feed them or house them. I believe in having large families but after a certain point enough is enough.
 
Pope Francis can say things that are wrong, his speech is not impeccable.

Every single child is a gift from God, even poor children!

The thought that the poor should not have children is the beginnings of the horror called Eugenics.
 
I never said the poor shouldn’t have children. I’m saying if a family can’t afford to have 13 children maybe they should stop having sex
 
May have been a misunderstanding. You seemed to be disagreeing with me. You were responding to my clarification on the teaching, and seemed to be saying that even if I made good points, your deacon was a deacon and thus whatever he said about the Church’s teaching holds more authority than any sound argument. I apoligise if I misunderstood.
 
I believe (but could be wrong) the “just cause” is from CCC 2368 “For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children”.

Humanae Vitae, with similar lines, sections 10 & 16, are translated either “serious” or “well-grounded”.

“If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births”
and
“by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time”.
 
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It would probably be better for such a person who doesn’t want a child to never marry
 
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