My father had a vasectomy before he converted to Catholicism which he did when I was 10 and I strongly disagree with your opinion. I feel that I am a lot better off as a child of a father who had a sterilisation then a child from a divorced marriage. My parents had some marriage after the sterilisation. If parents are separated then they have no marriage at all as I’ve already said. A separated couples’ marriage is fruitless in the same way as a sterilised couple. However a sterilised couple may also remain faithful towards each other, care for each other as husband and wife and care for their children as I’ve already said. I feel I’m a lot better off that my parents are still together. Although the sterilisation was harmful for their marriage it did not destroy it and in the end my dad converted to the Catholic faith.
Budgie, I think you may be misunderstanding what I mean to say.
You said that NFP is impractical for women who are in abusive situations, and that these couples should use condoms. I replied that these women should not use condoms (nor NFP) because they should leave their abusive relationships. Certainly divorce is only an option of last resort. Certainly it hurts kids. It doesn’t dissolve a valid marriage, and the spouses are still required to practice chastity. But if a woman is in abusive relationship, she needs to get out of there, and fast. A child will be harmed more by watching his father abuse his mother than he will be by having them separate. An abusive marriage is
not better than no relationship at all.
I would venture to guess that your parents were not in an abusive relationship. So of course it’s better that they never divorced. I’m glad that they didn’t. And it’s true that a sterilized couple may continue to be faithful to each other. But the fact remains that sterilization is wrong. And so it would have been better had your father elected to use NFP.
A couple who use condoms are not having sex with somebody else or breaking the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery” although they are preventing a child being conceived. They are not making love to each other fully in the same way as a couple who are not using condoms.
The Church has interpreted the sixth commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery” to be a prohibition against all sins of marital inchastity, even though it doesn’t explicitly say so. For example, the Church also says that premarital sex is wrong. Do you agree? There is no commandment that says, “Thou shalt not have sex with your boyfriend,” but we understand that premarital sex is also against the sixth commandment. Same goes for contraception. Moses didn’t come down and hand us the commandment, “Thou shalt not use condoms” but we understand that it is a violation against marital chastity because it separates the unitive aspect from the procreative aspect from sex, which is what sex was designed to be. A couple who uses a condom does not make love to each other fully. They are holding something very important back - their fertility!
I also think there’s a lot of hypocrisy in this Church regarding abstinence in relationships. Some people teach that abstinence is a moral good. However, I and the Catechism do not. A person is abstaining from making love to their husband or wife. The reason married couples are abstaining from making love to each other is because they currently see having children as a bad thing. I do not think this is something we should look up to in the Church and is a sign of weakness in marriage. Everybody can suffer from weakness in marriage and sometimes couples abstain due to physical incapacity which is not a sin, marital problems or financial problems, or inability to cope with more children. A couple could abstain for exactly the same reason as another couple use condoms and vasectomy.
A couple using NFP and a couple using condoms may have similar reasons for doing so. But their motives are only one important aspect of the decision to space children, it’s also important to consider the means. Consider, for example, two fathers who want to provide for their families. One father gets a job and works hard to earn enough to support his kids. The other father robs a bank. Their intentions were the same, and so was the outcome. But the means of achieving their goals were very different.
Bottom line, the Church teaches that a marriage images Christ’s love for the Church. Sex is one of the primary ways that husband and wife express love to each other. Thus, sex must be like God’s love: total, free, faithful, and fruitful. Contraceptive sex is neither total (because the couples are holding back their fertility) nor fruitful (because they are frustrating the procreative aspect) and so it falls short of genuine love.
