It’s also important to remember that the Church, in Her wisdom, doesn’t have any hard-and-fast rules for scenarios for which a couple must either avoid or achieve. She leaves it to the individual couple and their discernment.
Basically, the exact same scenario could happen to two different couples, and they could still be called to do two different things. It’s a between-them-and-God thing.
For that matter, a couple could be called to do one thing at one point and another down the road.
For example, let’s take Couple A and B. Both Wife A and Wife B have been told that another pregnancy is likely to involve certain medical complications, complications which are quite serious and could potentially, though far from certainly, lead to either death or loss of significant bodily function.
Objectively, that’s serious. Yup.
However, Wife A’s particular path in life might well be, as she and her husband discern after a lot of prayer, to say, “Okay, God, I think you’re calling us to have another baby,” and go on to do exactly that, while Wife B, after similar time in prayer with hubby, may well say, “Hmm, I have a very strong feeling that God wants us to avoid, at least for now, thanks to these medical reasons. I guess that’s what we’ll do.” And if they make these decisions in good faith and after prayerful, listening discernment, neither will have been “wrong.”
I would also like to toss this out there for both the posters and the lurkers: a lot of people have been badly formed in the Catholic faith for one reason or another, or have been hurt by something pertaining to the faith and still bear those scars. It’s not a bad idea to bear them, especially those struggling with matters of faith and scrupulosity, in mind when posting on here.
I can tell you personally that these threads are part of the reason I’ve toned down my time on CAF: even though I know objectively that what DH and I are doing* is the right thing for us at this particular time, seeing even one poster who makes disparaging comments about people who use NFP “unnecessarily,” or about those with small families, etc (thank goodness, haven’t seen that on here yet, though I did about larger ones…sigh…) are enough to grip this particular poster’s heart and wrench it yet again with the feeling that I’m so flawed that I can never really be a part of the Church, that there doesn’t seem to be anything but judgment in it for those who aren’t Exactly Like Other People. We wanted a big family. Turns out that’s not an option. Yet I not infrequently seem to encounter the mindset, here and elsewhere, that Good Catholic Women ™ don’t have health issues relating to childbearing, or if they do, they ignore them and the problems never really materialize. The opinions and actions of others should, of course, have nothing to do with whether or not a person remains in the Church, but speaking in kindness, rather than nastily with a Catholic veneer to excuse the nastiness, will do no harm and much good. Those are real people behind the screen, real people with hearts and souls that can be wounded.
*NFP due to life-threatening medical reasons on my part
That’s just part of it.
I guess God saw that we were getting along better financially and sent us another blessing. That, and we decided to throw caution to the wind one night…