is NFP a sin?

[EasterJoy]

Humanae Vitae says this:

If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which We have just explained.

If one looks through Church documents, it becomes very clear that the Magesterium has been careful to avoid being too specific about what it means by “well-grounded reasons.” The Church purposefully both emphasizes the need to see children as a blessing of marriage that is indeed one of its raisons d’être and yet leaves the discernment of what a “well-grounded” reason is for spacing births to the good faith consideration of each married couple.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

“Contraceptive mentality” is a stupid, made up term with no exact meaning that makes sense.

Either way, the Church does teach that it is a sin to avoid children if a couple does not have just reasons to do so, regardless of whether they are using periodic abstinence or condoms or whatever.

So in a way, there still are restrictions to not having sex on the fertile days.

Practicing NFP irresponsibly is sinful but in a different way than contracepted sex is sinful.

Contracepted sex is always grave matter.

Avoiding sex is normally not grave matter, unless it is due to extreme selfishness. The selfishness can be aimed at the spouse or at the potential child.

 

[Rence]

So should couples using NFP with a “contraceptive mentality,” whatever that means to you, be trying to conceive instead? Are people allowed to not have sex during peak fertility, or are they obligated to have sex at that time unless there is a serious reason to avoid?

NFP is not contraception, so how can it be used as though it were? And if couples already have a “contraceptive mentality” - why aren’t they just using contraception? It’s a lot easier and often more effective.

The Church doesn’t require actively trying to have kids, impose a certain number of kids on couples, dictate when a couple should or should not have sex, etc. The Church only restricts using artificial birth control to do so. Period. And I agree with you, those who are using NFP do not have a so-called “contraceptive mentality” otherwise they’d just be contracepting. It’s not worth it to just use NFP if one has a “contraceptive mentality”.

 

[Rence]

Humanae Vitae says this:

If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which We have just explained.

If one looks through Church documents, it becomes very clear that the Magesterium has been careful to avoid being too specific about what it means by “well-grounded reasons.” The Church purposefully both emphasizes the need to see children as a blessing of marriage that is indeed one of its raisons d’être and yet leaves the discernment of what a “well-grounded” reason is for spacing births to the good faith consideration of each married couple.

Thank you very much!!

 

[JackieMom]

“Contraceptive mentality” is a stupid, made up term with no exact meaning that makes sense.

Either way, the Church does teach that it is a sin to avoid children if a couple does not have just reasons to do so, regardless of whether they are using periodic abstinence or condoms or whatever.

So in a way, there still are restrictions to not having sex on the fertile days.

I guess that’s the question. Are we obligated to try for more kids until something serious comes up? Just because we are sick of being pregnant and nursing? Are we obligated to begrudgingly try for a pregnancy we don’t want because we can’t think of a serious reason not to?

 

[Debora123]

I guess that’s the question. Are we obligated to try for more kids until something serious comes up? Just because we are sick of being pregnant and nursing? Are we obligated to begrudgingly try for a pregnancy we don’t want because we can’t think of a serious reason not to?

According to the Church, we need “just” reasons to avoid having children. Even if we avoid having children through periodic abstinence.

To me, this is kind of weird too because one of the argument that is used to separate NFP from contraception is that NFP is nothing but “periodic abstinence”… and there is nothing wrong with periodic abstinence. But then they say periodic abstinence is still wrong if you don’t have just reason to periodically abstain. So yeah… I dunno, it’s weird but it is what it is.

 

[The_Bucket]

I guess that’s the question. Are we obligated to try for more kids until something serious comes up? Just because we are sick of being pregnant and nursing? Are we obligated to begrudgingly try for a pregnancy we don’t want because we can’t think of a serious reason not to?

No, no, and no. Rence and debora are making my point. It’s ridiculous to debate this hypothetical “contraceptive mentality” when it comes to NFP. In a vacuum it might be something about which there could be concern, but I don’t think it can really exist when you consider basic things like love and attraction between spouses.

Anyone who uses NFP will concede that it can be hard. When trying to avoid, my wife and I sometimes had to physically separate in a room during her fertile time. And when Phase III rolled around, sometimes it was tough for her to really even be amorous simply due to the massive contrast in hormones. Especially over the last couple of years, she was quite, err… desiring of physical contact… during Phase II. Then there’s just a steep drop in hormones when that passes and that contrast I imagine can be really draining.

Yes, people can withhold sex for reasons of selfishness or to be hurtful, but that’s really a different matter altogether. I see that as a completely separate issue. If you have a contraceptive mentality, you’re going to use contraception. If you simply struggle with having a properly oriented attitude all the time… welcome to the club! I don’t know that there are people who look at NFP and are super-excited about it. I mean, I’m not. But there’s no circumstance that’s ideal.

There is simply no such thing as "consequence-free sex."

Those who use contraception will concede that it’s not a cure-all. The Pill can cause weight gain, moodiness, future struggles with fertility and even severe medical consequences like strokes. Sterilization can have a terrible emotional impact even on non-believing people. IUDs can have major complications and a pregnancy that happens when using an IUD can be very, very dangerous for all parties involved.

All things considered, I think the Church’s position is well thought out and it’s society at large that keeps grasping for straws. I think there needs to be more people out there that say up front NFP is hard and then stress that it’s also moral, has no long-term consequences and point out that consequence-free sex is an invention with no place in reality.

 

[thewanderer]

According to the Church, we need “just” reasons to avoid having children. Even if we avoid having children through periodic abstinence.

To me, this is kind of weird too because one of the argument that is used to separate NFP from contraception is that NFP is nothing but “periodic abstinence”… and there is nothing wrong with periodic abstinence. But then they say periodic abstinence is still wrong if you don’t have just reason to periodically abstain. So yeah… I dunno, it’s weird but it is what it is.

Its not that you have to be constantly trying to have kids, but that if you are trying to avoid, and doing so for selfish reasons, then you are being selfish which is wrong. So there is no positive rule to be constantly trying to have kids, but rather just a rule that if you decide to try to avoid them you need to make sure you are not being selfish in making that decision.

There is nothing wrong with not having sex on your fertile days (the means) what can make it immoral is the intention. If one does decide to refrain from sex on those days because of a selfish intention then the sin here is that they are being selfish. How grave it is would then depend on how selfish they are being. So its not the periodic abstinance itself that is problematic, but the selfish intention behind it.

At least, thats how I understand it.

 

[The_Bucket]

According to the Church, we need “just” reasons to avoid having children. Even if we avoid having children through periodic abstinence.

Well that’s because one of the chief parts of the marital vocation is the birthing and rearing of children. It’s part and parcel of the deal. Priests have to say Mass every so often and we have to take care of our kids.

To me, this is kind of weird too because one of the argument that is used to separate NFP from contraception is that NFP is nothing but “periodic abstinence”… and there is nothing wrong with periodic abstinence. But then they say periodic abstinence is still wrong if you don’t have just reason to periodically abstain. So yeah… I dunno, it’s weird but it is what it is.

Well it’s not too complicated if you think about the fact that the Church is stressing that marriage must always and in every respect be life-affirming, procreative, unitive and self-sacrificial. If you have no reason whatsoever to avoid having children except that you want more material possessions, that’s being selfish. It’s not the same sin as contraception, but it’s still selfishness and we are to avoid that at all times.

It’s not confusing when you think about the fact that the Church teaches that we are to always be thinking of others, doing good for others and giving of our own lives for our neighbors. Her teaching on contraception and openness to life is merely applying that principle of unselfishness to the sexual parts of our lives.

 

[Em_in_FL]

I guess that’s the question. Are we obligated to try for more kids until something serious comes up? Just because we are sick of being pregnant and nursing? Are we obligated to begrudgingly try for a pregnancy we don’t want because we can’t think of a serious reason not to?

NO!!! Of course not! The point isn’t to just keep trying and trying and trying for more children. The point is the other way around… in the “denial” of one another.
The only reasons we should deny one another should be just… but if ya’ll aren’t feeling like dancing you don’t have to force yourself to get up and dance, kwim?

 

[EasterJoy]

According to the Church, we need “just” reasons to avoid having children. Even if we avoid having children through periodic abstinence.

To me, this is kind of weird too because one of the argument that is used to separate NFP from contraception is that NFP is nothing but “periodic abstinence”… and there is nothing wrong with periodic abstinence. But then they say periodic abstinence is still wrong if you don’t have just reason to periodically abstain. So yeah… I dunno, it’s weird but it is what it is.

At any particular time you are also free to eat or not to eat. Nevertheless,* the overall pattern* of when you eat or do not eat ought to be guided by reasons that aim you at Heaven and help others to Heaven, rather than reasons that perhaps fulfill one otherwise legitimate desire at the expense of another legitimate duty. The reason you have for abstaining or not abstaining will itself put its mark on you and on your family, that is the idea, just as it will put a different mark on you if you get less than the optimal amount of nourishment in order to give food to your children instead or to conform to a fashion or to exact an overly-severe penance on yourself. The reasons for your actions form you and form the world, just as your actions themselves do.

 

[Debora123]

No, no, and no. Rence and debora are making my point. It’s ridiculous to debate this hypothetical “contraceptive mentality” when it comes to NFP. In a vacuum it might be something about which there could be concern, but I don’t think it can really exist when you consider basic things like love and attraction between spouses.

I think we should just not use the imaginary term “contraceptive mentality” for the remainder of the thread lol.

How does that sound, everyone? If someone is using contraception, they are contracepting. If someone is using NFP, they are not. There is no such thing as “contraceptive mentality.”

Now, with that being said, let’s clear something up here because I’m having a hard time understanding where you stand on this:

How would you feel about a couple who make the consensual decision to use NFP to avoid having any children at all?

 

[The_Bucket]

If one does decide to refrain from sex on those days because of a selfish intention then the sin here is that they are being selfish. How grave it is would then depend on how selfish they are being. So its not the periodic abstinance itself that is problematic, but the selfish intention behind it.

Exactly. This is a case where the intent is what is sinful, not the act. Contraception is objectively sinful. Abstaining from sex is not. Engaging in sex is not objectively sinful… doing so outside of marriage is. Context matters for sure, but keep in mind that contraception is all about intent from the start!

Women can use the pill for medicinal purposes. They just can’t use them for contraceptive purposes. If they are using it for medicinal purposes, they can still engage in marital relations because there is no intent to contracept.

Sometimes it seems like the Church is being too cute by half, but it’s really all about whether our sexual faculties are being exercised in unitive and procreative fashions or whether we are taking action to remove one of those aspects. If we contracept, we remove the procreative nature of our sexual faculties. If we go down the surrogacy or IVF routes to bring in new life, we remove the unitive nature of our sexual faculties.

When someone is intentionally not engaging in marital relations (especially if the other spouse is desirous of relations) due to selfishness, it’s a sin of a different nature because we’re not stripping away our unitive and procreative natures of our sexual faculties. We’re simply choosing not to exercise those faculties at all for shallow and material reasons.

We’re being jerks, but we’re not distorting God’s gift of sexuality in the process by hacking away at its nature.

 

[Debora123]

I think we should just not use the imaginary term “contraceptive mentality” for the remainder of the thread lol.

How does that sound, everyone? If someone is using contraception, they are contracepting. If someone is using NFP, they are not. There is no such thing as “contraceptive mentality.”

Now, with that being said, let’s clear something up here because I’m having a hard time understanding where you stand on this:

How would you feel about a couple who make the consensual decision to use NFP to avoid having any children at all?

Oh never mind, I see you’ve answered this already.

 

[The_Bucket]

How would you feel about a couple who make the consensual decision to use NFP to avoid having any children at all?

If you mean they made a decision before they got married to use NFP very conservatively so they would end up with no children at the end of their lives, I’d say they have a serious reason to re-evaluate why they got married in the first place.

Why would you go into a marriage like that? What are the reasons they are using to avoid any children? If there are serious medical and/or psychological concerns that will last forever, then absolutely it’s OK. If they are in serious poverty with no way out, I’d probably agree there as well.

If the timeline is more “we’re indefinitely postponing children but we’ll pray about it and re-think later” then again, that’s fine provided that there are reasons that make sense.

If they are using NFP to avoid having any children because they want to accumulate wealth and see kids as an obstacle to their material goals… well that’s probably a situation where it’s quite wrong.

But seriously, when is that going to happen? Are there really people who abide by the Church’s teaching on sexuality and will use NFP like that but are also so closed-off to children and want to accumulate material? That doesn’t really make any sense. Most people who use NFP are pretty good Catholics. Or at least trying hard to be pretty good Catholics. I find it very implausible that they would be receptive to the Church’s message regarding contraception but totally disregard it when it comes to a) actually procreating and b) being attached to material possessions in such a fanatical way.

 

[JackieMom]

If you mean they made a decision before they got married to use NFP very conservatively so they would end up with no children at the end of their lives, I’d say they have a serious reason to re-evaluate why they got married in the first place.

Why would you go into a marriage like that? What are the reasons they are using to avoid any children? If there are serious medical and/or psychological concerns that will last forever, then absolutely it’s OK. If they are in serious poverty with no way out, I’d probably agree there as well.

If the timeline is more “we’re indefinitely postponing children but we’ll pray about it and re-think later” then again, that’s fine provided that there are reasons that make sense.

If they are using NFP to avoid having any children because they want to accumulate wealth and see kids as an obstacle to their material goals… well that’s probably a situation where it’s quite wrong.

But seriously, when is that going to happen? Are there really people who abide by the Church’s teaching on sexuality and will use NFP like that but are also so closed-off to children and want to accumulate material? That doesn’t really make any sense. Most people who use NFP are pretty good Catholics. Or at least trying hard to be pretty good Catholics. I find it very implausible that they would be receptive to the Church’s message regarding contraception but totally disregard it when it comes to a) actually procreating and b) being attached to material possessions in such a fanatical way.

I know a couple that found, after they married, that both careied the gene for SMA. SMA is a hideous and fatal degenerative disease that kills most children who have it by the age of 3 or 4. That kind of couple may decide never to conceive because their chances of having a baby with SMA are 50%. As it was, this couple was Protestant so felt good about a sterilization.

 

[The_Bucket]

While I can’t agree with a sterilization, I think that’s an excellent situation in which a married Catholic couple could agree to use very conservative NFP to avoid pregnancy altogether.

 

[Debora123]

I don’t know if it’s semantics or the lack of depth in the English language that makes it hard to describe what I mean by a “selfish act” when there is no selfish intent. But I’ll try this analogy…

Say someone freely chooses to become an “actor/actress” in pornographic films. That person was not abused, is not in financial dire straits, is not on drugs, etc. Just makes the choice to do it and does not feel exploited in the least. Grew up thinking porn was OK and always wanted to be in such films because he/she thought it was exciting and cool.

Does that person’s personal feelings about the issue change the fact that he or she is indeed being exploited? I don’t even mean does it change the fact that it’s wrong, I’m saying does it change the fact that there is degradation even when the person does not feel exploited. The answer of course is no. How we feel does not always correspond with reality. Someone who works in porn may not feel exploited, but he or she is still indeed being exploited and degraded.

I don’t really see the 2 as parallel analogies because being degraded is something that happens outside of oneself. While selfishness is a sinful intent inside our hearts. Selfishness is to put ourselves above someone else, correct? The hypothetical Protestants in my example may be doing something wrong, but I wouldn’t say they are doing something selfish. Either way, perhaps it’s just semantics and doesn’t even matter in the grand scheme of things anyway.

As a side note, I also wouldn’t compare your porn scenario above to my protestant scenario. Porn is something that I think everyone knows is dirty and inappropriate. They may not believe it is morally wrong, but they obviously know there is something inappropriate about it. On the other hand, using a condom with your spouse when you NEED to avoid pregnancy is something that is very likely never to have crossed someone’s mind as being inappropriate or controversial in any way unless they are Catholic.

…Not that any of this really matter or anything, I’m just sayin.

 

[lifeisbeautiful]

NO!!! Of course not! The point isn’t to just keep trying and trying and trying for more children. The point is the other way around… in the “denial” of one another.
The only reasons we should deny one another should be just… but if ya’ll aren’t feeling like dancing you don’t have to force yourself to get up and dance, kwim?

This is kinda tricky, though… Of course you don’t have to find out when is the best time to dance (to produce kiddos) and then dance that day, but you cannot purposefully, with the intentions of avoiding kiddos, watch your fertility and then choose to only dance on days when there are pretty much 0 chances of having kiddos, and then purposefully avoid dancing any days when kiddos could come, unless you have a good reason (serious, just, grave, unselfish…different terms different places… but you get the idea).

So no, you don’t have to zero down on the days that dancing would produce kiddos just because you don’t have unselfish reasons to postpone, but you can’t use NFP to avoid without having serious/just/grave/unselfish reasons to do so.

 

[lifeisbeautiful]

I think if people stop seeing NFP as an alternative to ABC, to have the control of not having kids when they don’t want to have them, and more as a solution to the problem of having to abstain 100% to avoid children because of a situation, then they may see how NFP is just a beautiful tool to allow couples to participate in the pure marital act that is so valuable to marriage (and a marital act that is thwarted by ABC is not pure) instead of having to abstain from the marital act until their situation gets resolved, if it ever does.

Also, sexual pleasure is something good God put in the marital act, and it is exclusively for the marital act. The Church is very clear about what the marital act should be, it must have the unitive and procreative aspects. It should be pretty clear that if you are seeking sexual pleasure without the unitive and procreative aspects, then you are trying to cheat the system to get the pleasure without the reason God put that pleasure there. I dunno, without that pleasure, if sex was a chore and annoying, and something no one wanted to do, there is a good chance we would be extinct by now.

Going back to NFP… although we do have a duty to transmit life

2371 “Let all be convinced that human life and the duty of transmitting it are not limited by the horizons of this life only: their true evaluation and full significance can be understood only in reference to man’s eternal destiny.”

the unitive aspect of sex is important as well, and this is why we can participate in the marital act even if children are not expected to come from the act. Even if a couple does not have good reasons to avoid, they don’t have to chart and limit their sex to days of high fertility. They can enjoy the act any day. The only thing the Church tells us is that if we don’t have reasons to avoid, then we cannot purposefully use periodic abstinence to avoid children. The use of periodic abstinence is for couples that have unselfish reasons that they really need to avoid for the moment (or for however long they prayerfully discern), but since they are married they can still participate in unadultered marital acts. Thanks to God’s design, there are days in the woman’s cycle in which a pregnancy would not be expected to be the result of the act and so a married couple that have prayerfully discerned the need to avoid can participate in the act on these days… and this is very different from a couple saying I want to participate now, but I don’t want to give myself completely because it could end in a pregnancy, so let me take away the procreative aspect of the act, and enjoy the pleasure anyway.