I also have to wonder that if a cheap, simple test were to come out that told a woman with a 100% accuracy level that she was not fertile, making NFP 100% accurate, cheap and easy(while greatly extending the window during which relations would be possible) and if 95% of women started using it like they do with ABC, would the Church still condone it? I highly doubt it.
The “virtue” of NFP is largely based on the extended periods of abstinence and its failure rate with average use. If it were much simpler, much less restrictive and much more effective for the average user, I think the Church would start to have a real problem with it and maybe come out and say that while we can chart mucous, we cannot use OPKS or other scientific tools to predict ovulation. Just speculation on my part though. As the science of this becomes ever more accurate, we will see.
Please, LaSainte. You have shown yourself better than this hurtful, inaccurate argument. I am THE poster child for NFP. If there is a weird problem, or a reason to limit family size and space pregnancies, I have probably dealt with it. (Have I mentioned that I have saintly husband who works very hard and is an amazing father? He is also a chronic and severe sleepwalker. Trying to chase a giant, naked man back into the house at 2 am while nine months pregnant, is no easy task.)
If we never conceive again, we will have lived our marriage very virtuously. No one in their right mind would tell us that we need to be hoping for an “oops” (I hate that term) to be more virtuous. Just because some people are confused on the so-called “failure rates” of NFP, doesn’t make it more virtuous to conceive when you didn’t intend. NFP is about the natural design. There are no “failures” in God’s plan or His design.
That brings me to your other point. Even IF the study you cite is true, one would be a *spontaneous *abortion. The other, a *procured *abortion. HUGE difference. One is by natural design, the other by man’s thwarting of the natural design. And that is even IF an article citing “The Rhythm Method” in 2006 (!) is even accurate.
You make the point of the woman who gives up trying to conceive because it is too “emotional” to keep miscarrying. But you stop your example early, yet again. It doesn’t apply to the chronically infertile. Show me that the couple who keeps trying and keeps miscarrying has sinned. They haven’t. A miscarried baby meets her parents in heaven. An aborted baby is the death that cries out for justice. I am thankful for all those little ones I might have conceived. In heaven I will have the large family that our fallen nature has denied me here on Earth!
Again, St Augustine would have likely (possibly) called us to total celibacy. That would have made him
wrong. While we firmly believe that God has called us to our very small family, He can still lift that burden, any time he wants. I am fertile today. I am also bed-bound, unable to have relations today. If God healed my health problems right now, and said, “Go make a baby!” Nothing would stop me. I would even wake the sleepwalker to accomplish God’s holy will. HIS WILL.
That is what matters. That is the difference. We don’t have fertile relations because
God has not called us to it. If we thwart God’s design how do we hear His voice? With contraception, I could act on *any *urge I felt. I would have no need to check that urge. Is it mine, or is it God calling us? It is the *abstinence *that makes the difference. I admit wholeheartedly, the only difference between the ST method of NFP and the FA method of contraception is the
act of sex that occurs using condoms or a spermicide in FAM. It is an
act of sex where the natural design is purposefully broken. Abstinence is a waiting. Just because you know people who use NFP with a selfish intent, doesn’t mean that the **method **is equal to contraception.
God designed the infertile phase. And He designed it specifically to the female, not the male. Do you believe, like Chrono13 seems to, that the infertile female phase was an oddity on God’s part? Did He design it to make us wonder about our sinfulness? “Oh no! St. Augustine said we can’t have sex that doesn’t beget. What if we aren’t begetting right now? Do we need to go to Confession tomorrow or not?!” (Not as crazy as it sounds, which brings me to Chrono in my next post.)