Morality of NFP?

[Georgea]

Hi,

I have a concern about NFP. I’m hoping someone could put my mind to rest….I’ve started to question the morality of natural family planning. My understanding is that God has a plan for each of us and His plan is for our salvation. We need to trust in that plan. Sometimes His plan may include less children than a couple desires and sometimes it may include more children than a couple thinks they can handle or afford. Still, it’s God’s plan and we should trust in Him.

Practicing NFP would then appear to be saying no in some way to God’s plan – of course it’s a more natural way and less offensive, but it still seems like saying no or in some way saying we don’t trust in God’s plan for us. My husband and I took a class on NFP years ago, and I didn’t have a problem with it then. I’m sure it was explained why the Church approves of NFP. Could someone please remind me of this and explain how it is not really saying no to God?

Thanks,
Georgea

 

[gardenswithkids]

I have a concern about NFP. I’m hoping someone could put my mind to rest….I’ve started to question the morality of natural family planning. My understanding is that God has a plan for each of us and His plan is for our salvation. … why the Church approves of NFP. Could someone please remind me of this and explain how it is not really saying no to God?

Yes, God absolutely has a plan for us and for our salvation. For some couples, God’s plan may include careful monitoring of the woman’s fertility with times of abstinence to avoid pregnancy because they have a serious* reason to avoid pregnancy. (sometimes called “grave” or “just”) Couples who use NFP to avoid pregnancy or children without* a serious* reason misuse both NFP and the marriage act. The Church really hasn’t fully defined for us what such reasons might be; there are old threads here where people have discussed and debated this.

If misused, then the couple is saying “no” to God, as you wrote. But if they prayerfully discern that they have a serious reason to avoid pregnancy, then they aren’t saying “no” to God, but rather saying “yes” to cooperating with Him and how He designed us. NFP can also be used to identify when a woman is fertile, so it can help couples with marginal fertility concieve a child. (After writing all that I will add I think some who use NFP fall into the catagory of misusing it. I wish there were more large families in the Church, especially amoung those faithful enough that they don’t use artificial contraception.)

Here’s a section from Humanae Vitae that I highlighted which pertains to this:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P6HUMANA.HTM

*If, then, there are **serious motives ***to space out births, which derive from the physical or psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from external conditions, the Church teaches that it is then licit to take into account the natural rhythms immanent in the generative functions, for the use of marriage in the infecund periods only, and in this way to regulate birth without offending the moral principles which have been recalled earlier.[20]
The Church is coherent with herself when she considers recourse to the infecund periods to be licit, while at the same time condemning, as being always illicit, the use of means directly contrary to fecundation, even if such use is inspired by reasons which may appear honest and serious. In reality, there are essential differences between the two cases; in the former, the married couple make legitimate use of a natural disposition; in the latter, they impede the development of natural processes. It is true that, in the one and the other case, the married couple are concordant in the positive will of avoiding children for plausible reasons, seeking the certainty that offspring will not arrive; but it is also true that only in the former case are they able to renounce the use of marriage in the fecund periods when, for just motives, procreation is not desirable, while making use of it during infecund periods to manifest their affection and to safeguard their mutual fidelity. By so doing, they give proof of a truly and integrally honest love.

 

[Georgea]

Thanks so much for the response, Gardenswithkids.

I guess the key point to me is what you said about ***prayerfully ***discerning that there is a serious reason to avoid pregnancy. I recall hearing how important prayer is in choosing NFP but I had forgotten it. I’ve heard that it takes three for a marriage - husband, wife and God. I can see how after talking with God about why you are considering NFP, one might decide that God has given an “okay” or an “oh no” to NFP. I guess the hard part is accepting that sometimes God says no when you want a yes.

Thanks again!

 

[LittleDeb]

The emphasis for me is that NFP, the charting side of it, is merely information. The real question, as Gardenswithkids points out, is the prayerful use of that information. Due to health concerns I will chart until I am through menopause. There is never anything immoral about charting. Ecological breast-feeding can be a major component in NFP. It is never immoral either. BUT, if I ever let my charting determine when to have relations with my husband then I could easily fall into sin. Charting does not make the decision to engage in marital relations, we make that decision. Prayerful use of NFP involves a total self-donation, first to God, then our spouse.

EDIT a P.S. As has been well said on these boards, “NFP is not an alternative to contraception. It is an alternative to total abstinence.”

 

[apricot_yogurt]

Are you being called to letting God take complete control here, and by that I mean not intentionally avoiding. I say this as someone who is feeling the pull to let God be in complete control, and terrified at the thought!

 

[1ke]

Keep in mind too that while God has a perfect will for the world and our Salvation, we also have free will individually and are not puppets. We do not subscribe to the Calvinist idea of predestination/Fate.

We cooperate with God, but God’s foreknowledge of our choices and outcomes is not the same as his “designing” or “choosing for us” our every move and every action.

God created us to be co-creators in this world, to co-operate with our spouse and with Him. There have always been serious reasons for couples to limit their families. In days past they did this through total abstinence in many cases. To draw your conclusion that any avoidance of pregnancy goes against “God’s plan” for us, then we would be obligated to have intercourse with our husband every day-- which of course is not the case at all. We are never obligated to have sex with any specific frequency, but rather when the husband and wife together determine to engage.

 

[mchale]

Hi,

I have a concern about NFP. I’m hoping someone could put my mind to rest….I’ve started to question the morality of natural family planning. My understanding is that God has a plan for each of us and His plan is for our salvation. We need to trust in that plan. Sometimes His plan may include less children than a couple desires and sometimes it may include more children than a couple thinks they can handle or afford. Still, it’s God’s plan and we should trust in Him.

Practicing NFP would then appear to be saying no in some way to God’s plan – of course it’s a more natural way and less offensive, but it still seems like saying no or in some way saying we don’t trust in God’s plan for us. My husband and I took a class on NFP years ago, and I didn’t have a problem with it then. I’m sure it was explained why the Church approves of NFP. Could someone please remind me of this and explain how it is not really saying no to God?

Thanks,
Georgea

One thing to keep in mind here is that people always make a consious decision to have sex. Even a couple who are not using NFP will choose at some times for a variety of reasons not to engage in relations. Now, it is only perfectly right and natural that a couple should choose at times to abstain from relations even if they might really want to. The key difference between NFP and contraception is that in contraception you are holding back part of yourself while in NFP you are giving yourself totally to the other person, including your reproductive potential.

Ultimately, God gave people reason so that they might be active participants in his plan for us. Thus, that reason should be applied to the use of every good; every natural good, if indulged in too freely can lead to excess which is not good. Thus while sex is a good and children are also, it is simply using our reason to understand that a certain level of moderation is necessary in both. After all, if we are truely open to God’s plan for us, then God will find a way of letting us know if he wants us to have more kids .

–
Bill

 

[manualman]

There is a very good reason that Paul VI was so vague about the just reasons for using NFP. It is because it is so very complex and so many factors weigh in on the decision that it just cannot be tabulated into a one size fits all list of reasons.

It is something you must discern. Those who suffer scrupulosity, need to be careful not to allow it to pervade their discernment. Those tempted toward presumption had better watch out as well. Know yourself and your weaknesses and apply that knowledge to your discernment. And pray!

Anybody who tries to simplify it into a black and white list of reasons ought to wonder why Paul VI didn’t do that!

 

[Scottgun]

The NFP=ABC agrument comes up so often, it bears looking at basic moral reasoning again. (I’m paraphrasing CCC 1749-176, btw)

The goodness or badness of an act must be evaluated according to 3 criteria:

1. The objective–this is the rightness or wrongness (or indifference) of an act in and of itself. (Examples: murder is objectively bad, almsgiving is objectively good.)
2. Subjective–this is the intent of the one doing the act (called the agent). Note that a good intention does not make an objectively evil act good, and that an evil intent can render a good act evil. (Such as giving alms in order to fool people into thinking you are pious).
3. Relative–this is all the surrounding circumstances and the actual result of the act or the end achieved. These do not change the objective goodness or badness of the act in and of themselves.

Plugging the above in it becomes abundantly clear that NFP is NOT morally equivalent to ABC and that the Church’s teaching is entirely consistent.
NFP is not really an act, it’s information. Having marital relations is the act. So:

1. Objective–Abstaining from sex is in and of itself morally indifferent. Putting barriers between couples in the marital act or rendering the womb hostile to life with chemicals is objectively wrong. NFP passes gate #1. ABC does not, so it goes down right out of the chute. NFP passes, but is not quite out of the woods yet 'till we get to:
2. The subjective–as stated above, good intentions do not make objectively evil acts good. Here we can see that with an NFP-practicing couple, there is a possibility of evil intent which would render abstinence evil, but obviously it is hard for outsiders to say, because ta-da! it is subjective. (We can have a giant debate about what constitutes bad intent, but here I’m just dismantling the NFP=ABC canard.) Big red note: The intention to not have children in a particular fertile cycle by itself is not immoral.
3. The relative–and here is the cause of much the trouble regarding this teaching. We are living in the age of a widespread mental illness that denies the existence of #1 (objective right and wrongs), that everything is #2 and #3, and says the ends justify the means (consequentialism). So people look at the ends: ABC=no pregnancy, NFP=no pregnancy, and wrongly conclude they are morally equivalent.

So while one can find all kinds of complaints against this teaching, logical inconsistency should not be one of them.