Ahh, thank you. I read it three times and missed that.
Three issues here:
- Honest communication between spouses.
- Moral implications of #1
- “Tricking” husband into conceiving a child
If the intention is to decieve one’s spouse, no, it is not morally permissible.
Now the question may arise, what if we were having a surprise 50th birthday party, and I told him we were going out alone but we were really going to his surprise party? Sure, the intent here is to deceive, albeit for a mutually good end. But the gravity of the “little white lie” to get hubby to be surprised at his party pales in comparison to lying to him in order to conceive.
We must remember that the end never justifies the means. In the case of the OP, the husband is privilaged to know this information and if it is kept from him, he has been morally wronged.
I would suggest employing the services of a reputable Catholic marriage councelor and a priest. There’s more going on here than meets the eye.
I appreciate all the feedback on my original post, and I’m not surprised by the general consensus that a lie by omission isn’t right. I suppose I was hoping that there was another way of looking at this situation which I hadn’t already considered during my many months of thinking and praying and consulting with others. My husband and I have actually been in separate individual counseling for several months (one attempt for my husband and I to try marital counseling was a terrible failure…he seemed reasonable within the confines of the office but seemed unable to use the communication tools in our day to day interactions, and so I became withdrawn and depressed).
I agree that there are those three issues mentioned above, but beyond hoping for a miracle or resigning myself to a limping marriage, I don’t know how to proceed at this point. This situation is deeply troubling to me, since I waited until around 40 to get married soas NOT to make a mistake, and took discernment very very seriously. My husband and I talked about family and children before marriage, but then afterward he has taken the reins and changed our course, believing that he has our best interests at heart. This wasn’t something I could have known would hapen during our courtship or engagement.
If it is wrong to deceive my husband by not giving him knowlege of my state of fertility during my cycle, it is also wrong for him to use that information to behave in a contraceptive manner by using NFP to block us from having children. On some level it seemed to me that it was like taking the keys away from a drunk driver whose judgment was impaired. I am responsible for my husband’s soul, and to some degree responsible for getting him to heaven. What can I do to help him see that his thinking about God’s plan for marriage is wrong? He either doesn’t know or understand that a sacramental Catholic marriage is ordered toward procreation and education of children (ie: you are supposed to actually
try to have them and not merely be open to the idea in some future scenario) and the mutual assistance of the spouses. He seems to persist in the culturally prevalent idea that children are the optional “icing on the cake.” He went to Catholic grade school, college, and graduate school (albeit not for theology), so I thought that this would have been discussed many times during his education. But somehow he never seemed to learn this. And, because he doesn’t
know that using NFP to avoid conceiving any children without *grave reasons *is morally wrong, he is not technically committing a mortal sin. So what he is doing is not as wrong as my omitting information to prevent a contraceptive marriage.
Asking him to read the catechism or Humanae Vitae would probably be seen as “lecturing” and me as “talking down” to him. I really don’t want to do that, just help him to reach a full understanding of Church teaching…what I thought he had before we were married. I really do want us to be on the same page (not his page of “waiting until he decides he is ready” but the page of “trusting God”). I want this to knit us closer together instead of being a wedge to drive us further apart. Consulting a good priest is also difficult, because there are very few priests who seem to be aligned with Church teaching on this issue. My fear is that by forcing the issue and begging my husband to go talk to a priest it would just make him angry and even more resistive (most people don’t want to do what they are pushed into agreeing to…me included). Plus, I’m worried that if I do take this final step and ask for a priest to mediate, and my husband rejects what the priest says (and thus Catholic teaching), I will be left with a terrible choice: a) to stay within a marriage where the vows have been broken and where I will face the prospect of never having a family with my spouse, or b) to leave the marriage and seek annulment. In the latter case there is almost no chance I would ever have a family, given my age. If my husband and I “lose track” of the keys to my cycle and God blesses us with a child, my gut feeling is that my husband would be a wonderful father and open to life in the future. But…there would always be that sad feeling that he wasn’t actively embracing life, and the question of whether he would have chosen self-gift by himself. I don’t know if I could bear that, and my culpability. When weighing all this, I don’t know if I have the faith and the moral strength to keep handing those keys over to my husband, knowing he might keep driving us right over a cliff. But if I don’t, we might still end up in a terrible situation. Please, please, please pray for us!
