Secondly, isnt NFP and contraceptives nearly the same thing, I mean you are avoiding conception in both cases, what difference does it make where one is used without a contraceptive, and the other is used with a contraceptive?
Many people have difficulty understanding this and I have honestly come to the conclusion that some are so enormored by biased by sin that they are completely in the dark as to what the difference is.
The difference is simple. In one, you deny yourself sex when you want it. In the other, you take steps to make each other artifically infertile in order to avoid self denial. This self denial has value and the difference and it is the self denial which the Catholic Church embrasses not just in sexuality but in its practices such as its lenten fasts. The Church understands that self denial helps cultivate virtue.
I’ll give you this story since Christ works with stories so much.
There are two men who deep down like food.
The one man eats a balanced diet. He denies himself that extra bit of cake. He makes himself eat foods that he doesn’t generally care for. He works out regardless that it is painful or he’s not in the mood. He comes out fit and healthy.
The second guy refuses to deny himself. He tries eating low fat cake, but eats about two of them at once and eats the same amount of calories. He tries vomiting up his food after he’s eaten too big of a meal. He takes diet pills to speed up his motabolism. He tries even putting food in his mouth and chewing it and spitting it out before it goes down his throat because he knows he needs to be concerned about his weight. He gets overweight and has a lyposcution. Heck, he even has plastic surgury to give him the allusion of having well defined muscles even though he hasn’t made the effort to develop them.
This isn’t an analogy of procreation. This is an analogy of the value of sacrifice. The first man is physically more healthy than the second man, even if the second man has found a way to have an outward appearence of health.
The same is true spiritually. To deny ourselves sex for good reason is like denying ourselves that chocolate cake that may taste good but at that moment isn’t good for us. A couple who practices NFP have the great oppertunity to cultivate the virtue of chastity. They become spiritually more healthy than the couple who uses contraceptives.
The Church believes that contraceptives encourage lust, encourage selfishness and makes that individuals blind to such faults. It gives them a lack of prudence. They easily rationalizing denying the begetting of more children than they need to deny for any reasonable reason. Moreover it hurts the martial act in the same way that vomiting after a meal hurts our throats and erodes our teeth.
It is not enough that the couple merely learn NFP and avoid contraceptives. A couple will have poor results spiritually if they refuse to surcomb to the pressures to open their hearts more. It is GOOD that a couple who originally thought they could only handle two kids decides one day because the desire to have sex is so strong, that that their reasoning to postpone pregnancy was selfish, that they can stretch themselves more and be open to another child. That’s why couples who practice NFP and LIKE NFP also tend to have larger families. Its not because the method fails to prevent the bearing of children, its that the method promotes an openness to life and an openness of heart to what the sexual act truly is supposed to be, the complete self donation of self to the other.
