Is it possible that NFP could be sinful?

[Bookcat]

St. Augustine etc of course will have spoken against the misuse of marriage…contraception etc…it is unrealistic to try to pull out quotes about something
else seeking to find what they would say regarding a discovery of later times…but again what I noted is the case…one can find plenty of quotes I would think…pointing to the fact they they would agree with the teachings of the Church…even about things they had yet no knowledge of…

If the Doctor where to go fetch say St. Augustine in the TARDIS and bring him to the 21st century and tell him of the knowledge etc we have and of NFP and asked him–is this moral? He would ask what does the Church teach? What does Peter say?

and having been given the answer…he would say: so say I.

 

[Seatuck]

NFP is not abstaining. The Church teaches that sex must be ‘open to life’. Choosing to have sex only when believing conception is impossible is not open to life.

Open to life refers to not doing something to the marital act to make it infertile. It also refers to not killing a life that has begun.

 

[joclucsylv]

The following writing from St. Thomas Aquinas says to me that NFP is sinful. NFP is done on purpose to prevent pregnancy.
In the Summa Contra Gentiles Thomas Aquinas wrote:
Now though the semen is superfluous for the preservation of the individual, yet it is necessary to him for the propagation of the species … the object in the emission of the semen, is … the profit of generation, to which the union of the sexes is directed … The emission of the semen then ought to be so directed as that both the proper generation may ensue and the education of the offspring be secured.
_Hence it is clear that every emission of the semen is contrary to the good of man, which takes place in a way whereby generation is impossible; and if this is done on purpose, it must be a sin. I mean a way in which generation is impossible in itself as is the case in every emission of the semen without the natural union of male and female: wherefore such sins are called “sins against nature.” But if it is by accident that generation cannot follow from the emission of the semen, the act is not against nature on that account, nor is it sinful; the case of the woman being barren would be a case in point.

This would seem to amount to special pleading. For Aquinas, as an Aristotelian, it was accidental for a woman to be infertile, because infertility was not essential to womanhood! On the one hand he claims that every emission of semen that is frustrated from engendering a child is objectively wrong, and if purposed: subjectively sinful. He then excludes one case on the grounds that the husband neither intends his wife to be barren nor knows for certain that she is so, but just puts up with the reasonable expectation.
In any simple interpretation of Aquinas, the intentional use of “the safe period” is sinful, because it is directly purposed to discharge semen in a way that generation is known to be impossible in itself: “The emission of the semen then ought to be so directed as that both the proper generation may ensue and the education of the offspring be secured.”

 

[StOwen]

Certainly it is. Couples abstain for periods of time.

They abstain when there is a chance they might concieve.

No, that is not what the Church teaches.

Really?! Why have I read so many times that the Church teaches ‘sex must be open to life’? Is this a common misconception or am I on my own in thinkng the Church teaches that sex must be open to life?

The Church teaches that each act of intercourse must be per se ordered to unity and procreation.

Please explain why deliberately choosing to have sex only when it is impossible that conception will occur is ‘procreation’?

Open to life refers to not doing something to the marital act to make it infertile.

Such as consciously choosing not to have sex during ‘fertile periods’ and choosing to have sex only when conception is (supposedly) impossible?

 

[joclucsylv]

staycatholic.com/ecf_contraception.htm
John Chrysostom

[l]n truth, all men know that they who are under the power of this disease [the sin of covetousness] are wearied even of their father’s old age [wishing him to die so they can inherit]; and that which is sweet) and universally desirable, the having of children, they esteem grievous and unwelcome. Many at least with this view have even paid money to be childless, and have mutilated nature, not only killing the newborn, but even acting to prevent their beginning to live [sterilization] (Homilies on Matthew 28:5 [A.D. 391]).

NFP is acting to prevent the beginning of life. The cycle is watched and deliberately not having sex during the fertile period is preventing the life to begin.

Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility [oral contraceptives], where there is murder before birth?. . . Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you condemn the gift of God and Fight with his [natural] laws? (Homilies on Romans 24 [A.D. 391]).

Jerome

In the above quote, Jerome is speaking of ABC and not NFP. It’s a given that ABC is sinful.

But I wonder why he [the heretic Jovinianus] set Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give him pleasure; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother seed. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children? (Against Jovinian 1:19 [A.D. 393]).

Again, those using NFP are also having intercouse with the intent of not procreating children. In that case, NFP is sinful.

You may see a number of women who are widows before they are wives. Others, indeed, will drink sterility [oral contraceptives] and murder a man not yet born, [and some commit abortion] (Letters 22:13 [A.D. 396]).

Augustine

The above quote is once again not about NFP.

This proves that you [Manicheans] approve of having a wife, not for the procreation of children, but for the gratification of passion. In marriage, as the marriage law declares, the man and woman come together for the procreation of children. Therefore, whoever makes the procreation of children a greater sin than copulation, forbids marriage and makes the woman not a wife but a mistress, who for some gifts presented to her, is joined to the man to gratify his passion (The Morals of the Manichees 18:65 [A.D. 388]).

You [Manicheans] make your auditors adulterers of their wives when they take care lest the women with whom they copulate conceive. They take wives according to the laws of matrimony by tablets announcing that the marriage is contracted to procreate children; and then, fearing because of your [religious] law [against childbearing] . . . they copulate in a shameful union only to satisfy lust for their wives. They are unwilling to have children, on whose account alone marriages are made. How is it, then, that you are not those prohibiting marriage, as the apostle predicted of you so long ago *, when you try to take from marriage what marriage is? When this is taken away, husbands are shameful lovers, wives are harlots, bridal chambers are brothels, fathers-in-law are pimps (Against Faustus 15:7 [A.D. 400]).

For thus the eternal law, that is, the will of God creator of all creatures, taking counsel for the conservation of natural order, not to serve lust, but to see to the preservation of the race, permits the delight of mortal flesh to be released from the control of reason in copulation only to propagate progeny (ibid. 22:30).*

 

[1ke]

The following writing from St. Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas, brilliant as he was, did not speak with the authority of the Magesterium.

He was, for example, wrong about the Immaculate Conception. Since the Immaculate Conception had not been definitively defined, he was not making heretical statements but rather a theological opinion.

Same here. In the centuries since, the Church has give a more full and more definitive treatment to the topic. And, St. Thomas is out of step with that.

 

[1ke]

They abstain when there is a chance they might concieve.

Yes, as I said, abtaining for a period of time.

Really?! Why have I read so many times that the Church teaches ‘sex must be open to life’?

Because many people say it. That doesn’t make it true.

Is this a common misconception or am I on my own in thinkng the Church teaches that sex must be open to life?

What the Church actually teaches is what I stated. Each marital act must be per se ordered to both unity and procreation.

Please explain why deliberately choosing to have sex only when it is impossible that conception will occur is ‘procreation’?

It is per se ordered to procreation because it is a completed act of unaltered intercourse.

Such as consciously choosing not to have sex during ‘fertile periods’ and choosing to have sex only when conception is (supposedly) impossible?

So, does the Church teach post menopausal couples sin when they have sexual intercourse?

No. It doesn’t. Because every unaltered, completed act of intercourse is per se ordered to procreation.

 

[Bookcat]

Aquinas, brilliant as he was, did not speak with the authority of the Magesterium.

He was, for example, wrong about the Immaculate Conception. Since the Immaculate Conception had not been definitively defined, he was not making heretical statements but rather a theological opinion.

Same here. In the centuries since, the Church has give a more full and more definitive treatment to the topic. And, St. Thomas is out of step with that.

And (without commenting on the reading quoted by the OP) St. Thomas too …after his ride in the TARDIS through time would happily agree with the Church…with Peter…in regards to these new things that have come about.

 

[John_oxios]

They abstain when there is a chance they might concieve.
Really?! Why have I read so many times that the Church teaches ‘sex must be open to life’? Is this a common misconception or am I on my own in thinkng the Church teaches that sex must be open to life?
Please explain why deliberately choosing to have sex only when it is impossible that conception will occur is ‘procreation’?Such as consciously choosing not to have sex during ‘fertile periods’ and choosing to have sex only when conception is (supposedly) impossible?

Hello,
All this discussion of NFP, has left out the God given intimacy between Husband and wife, "the two become one flesh"In Hebrew tradition it is said, ‘from infancy we spend the rest of our days looking for our other half’
And Adam said:
“This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh, She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

Commentary: *Adam recognized that though he and Eve were one, she was not the same as him. He understood that two different people were becoming one. *

God created us physical beings, sexual beings, spiritual beings… not just to procreate alone but to procreate and experience family Love.

It is a relationship with the right conditions: committed love, demonstrated by the marriage commitment, and a pursuit of true intimacy.

Gen 2:18 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

Commentary: For the first time, God saw something that was not good - the aloneness of man. God never intended for man to be alone, either in the marital or social sense.

the desire of man toward his wife alone is solely by God’s grace and not by nature.”
Sin brings conflict between the two.

Also remember that until 20th century most families had many children because their survival rate was low.

Gen 1:28, 9:1,7 And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. are blessings from God.

Gen 4:1, Now Adam knew Eve his wife" This is the first specific mention of sex in the Bible
knowing implies an intimacy.

Children are blessings from God, maybe a man and a woman have not reached the level of intimacy to accept these blessings, NFP might help awaken a need/ want for something more in their marriage.

God bless,
John

 

[StOwen]

Thank you, I think I understand now.

 

[DAAVEED1590]

Certainly it is. Couples abstain for periods of time.

No, that is not what the Church teaches.

The Church teaches that each act of intercourse must be per se ordered to unity and procreation.

Each act of intercourse is per se ordered to unity and procreation.

Actualy, you to are misquoting the Chatichism, or at least misrepresenting it by taking it out of its context. The full paragraph states

"Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which is "on the side of life,“151 teaches that "it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life.”

Which is just a wordy way of saying all sexual acts must be open to life. I second what that guy said. If a couple has relations when they know conception is impossible or at least highly unlikely, they are not being open to life.

 

[Nate13]

Actualy, you to are misquoting the Chatichism, or at least misrepresenting it by taking it out of its context. The full paragraph states

"Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which is "on the side of life,“151 teaches that "it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life.”

Which is just a wordy way of saying all sexual acts must be open to life. I second what that guy said. If a couple has relations when they know conception is impossible or at least highly unlikely, they are not being open to life.

It appears you are debating what the Church means by the word’s “open to life”. I don’t understand why there is a debate over what the Church means since as 1ke pointed out the Church doesn’t tell older couples they can no longer have sex. I’d also point out two obvious instances where an older couple conceived in the bible through the natural act of sex i.e Sarah in the Old Testament and Elizabeth in the New Testament. God apparently didn’t see them having sex as not being ordered toward being procreative so why are you? Also note that the phrase you quoted from the catechism says the “act” must be procreative not the intent of the couple.

 

[EasterJoy]

From Humanae Vitae, boldface mine:

Responsible Parenthood

1. Married love, therefore, requires of husband and wife the full awareness of their obligations in the matter of responsible parenthood, which today, rightly enough, is much insisted upon, but which at the same time should be rightly understood. Thus, we do well to consider responsible parenthood in the light of its varied legitimate and interrelated aspects.

With regard to the biological processes, responsible parenthood means an awareness of, and respect for, their proper functions. In the procreative faculty the human mind discerns biological laws that apply to the human person. (9)

With regard to man’s innate drives and emotions, responsible parenthood means that man’s reason and will must exert control over them.

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.

Responsible parenthood, as we use the term here, has one further essential aspect of paramount importance. It concerns the objective moral order which was established by God, and of which a right conscience is the true interpreter. In a word, the exercise of responsible parenthood requires that husband and wife, keeping a right order of priorities, recognize their own duties toward God, themselves, their families and human society.

From this it follows that they are not free to act as they choose in the service of transmitting life, as if it were wholly up to them to decide what is the right course to follow. On the contrary, they are bound to ensure that what they do corresponds to the will of God the Creator. The very nature of marriage and its use makes His will clear, while the constant teaching of the Church spells it out. (10)

Observing the Natural Law

1. The sexual activity, in which husband and wife are intimately and chastely united with one another, through which human life is transmitted, is, as the recent Council recalled, "noble and worthy.’’ (11) It does not, moreover, cease to be legitimate even when, for reasons independent of their will, it is foreseen to be infertile. For its natural adaptation to the expression and strengthening of the union of husband and wife is not thereby suppressed. The fact is, as experience shows, that new life is not the result of each and every act of sexual intercourse. God has wisely ordered laws of nature and the incidence of fertility in such a way that successive births are already naturally spaced through the inherent operation of these laws. The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. (12)

Union and Procreation

1. This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.

The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason.

Faithfulness to God’s Design

1. Men rightly observe that a conjugal act imposed on one’s partner without regard to his or her condition or personal and reasonable wishes in the matter, is no true act of love, and therefore offends the moral order in its particular application to the intimate relationship of husband and wife. If they further reflect, they must also recognize that an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life. Hence to use this divine gift while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will. But to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source. “Human life is sacred—all men must recognize that fact,” Our predecessor Pope John XXIII recalled. “From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God.” (13)

 

[Good_Daughter]

If a couple has relations when they know conception is impossible or at least highly unlikely, they are not being open to life.

So why does Catholicism allow married couples to have intercourse during pregnancy?

 

[John_oxios]

"

Which is just a wordy way of saying all sexual acts must be open to life. I second what that guy said. If a couple has relations when they know conception is impossible or at least highly unlikely, they are not being open to life.

Hi,
seems obvious you’re not married, God created us sexual beings, He gave man and woman intimacy, the two become one flesh, Even Paul states that the man ought not keep himself from the woman or the woman keep herself from the man, UNLESS they do so for a time!! Your better off being married than lust for another,

seems everybody is looking at this in one minuscule perspective, you’d like to point the finger, blame! You’d like to think marriage is just about procreation, children are a gift from God, and not everuone need get pregnant on their wedding night.

1Cr 7:1 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. It is well for a man not to touch a woman.

1Cr 7:2 But because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

1Cr 7:3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.

1Cr 7:4 For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does.

1Cr 7:5 Do not refuse one another except perhaps by agreement for a season, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control.

Abstinence even for a a week or two a month is an exercise of self control, and believe me IT IS NOT easy abstaining from relations from your spouse.
and if it is done in agreement and prayer, well that’s well within the teaching of the Church.
Contraception however leads to unlimited sex with no responsibility, and then again abortion becomes the backdrop to failed contraception, and that is why the Church teaches it as wrong and immoral.
Does a husband and wife need to stop having relations after menopause? Is life over? Not at all! are they in sin? not at all, ought the husband divorce the wife because she is no longer able to conceive? No! There is more to marriage than just trying to have babies, and God knows it , the Church knows it.

God bless,
John

 

[John_oxios]

So why does Catholicism allow married couples to have intercourse during pregnancy?

Hello Good daughter,
Because it doesn’t make any sense not too! In fact the woman during pregnancy is in her most vulnerable state, ‘feeling fat’ she needs the attention of her spouse all the more.

   God bless,
             John

 

[HannahBroussard]

NFP is not abstaining. The Church teaches that sex must be ‘open to life’. Choosing to have sex only when believing conception is impossible is not open to life.

This does not make sense. NFP does require abstaining, how can you say it doesn’t? By using NFP, couples are open to life when they have sex.

 

[HannahBroussard]

I wonder what our church fathers would have thought about NFP. Obviously ABC is wrong, but I have to wonder if they would have thought that NFP was also slamming the door in God’s face. I would think NFP only started being used when science started to understand the menstural cycle of a woman. Any thoughts??

This quote comes from the book, “The Fathers Know Best” by Jimmy Akin (who is a Catholic Answers apologist). Most of the quotes in his book on this topic speak more about the seriousness and immorality of contraception and sterilization. This was the only quote I found that spoke about periodic abstinence within marriage.

From our Church Father Lactantius, "But truly parricides complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children… If anyone shall be unable to bring up children on account of poverty, it is better to abstain from marriage than with the wicked hands to mar the work of God [Divine Institutes 6:20 (c. A.D. 307)].

I believe the Fathers would have supported NFP, as it is a natural method that does not interfere with the sexual union as God intended it to be.

Please read this blog post by Jimmy Akin about NFP. Although he does not state how the church fathers would feel about NFP, I don’t think many people have studied them like he has. He knows them well and I think if he felt that the church fathers would have opposed NFP, I believe he would definitely speak out on that. I trust his views and his facts are very concrete.

jimmyakin.org/2004/11/nfp_vs_contrace.html