NFP Hipocracy

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La_Devota

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Please clarify this for me. If artifical contraception is wrong because it attempts to manipulate nature and create an obstacle that prevents the creation of life as God intends, isn’t NFP also a means of manipulating nature?
Honestly, if God wanted to create a new life between someone and his or her spouse, no amount of chemicals or degree of science could stop Him. Furthermore, taking one’s temperature and measuring one’s vaginal mucus is about as scientific as it gets. As a matter of fact, it’s an even more conscious and deliberate attempt to avoid pregnancy considering all of the extreme measures one must go through to make sure it works!
In either case, the motivation and intention to prevent conception is present. Therefore, instead of pointing the finger at artificial contraception as the EVIL element at work here, it seems that the evil might exist in the motivation and intention behind it. If I, as a married, faithful woman use artifical contraception with the same motivation and intention as someone using NFP - to Plan for my Family - What is the difference? Why is one method sinful and the other method just fine?
 
The NFP’s effectiveness is based on abstinence. There’s nothing wrong with not having sex.

Contraception’s effectiveness is based on having sex *and *making sex something it’s not.

The difference between NFP and contraception is the difference between earning money and robbing a bank. The ends do not justify the means.
 
La Devota:
Please clarify this for me. If artifical contraception is wrong because it attempts to manipulate nature and create an obstacle that prevents the creation of life as God intends, isn’t NFP also a means of manipulating nature?
Honestly, if God wanted to create a new life between someone and his or her spouse, no amount of chemicals or degree of science could stop Him. Furthermore, taking one’s temperature and measuring one’s vaginal mucus is about as scientific as it gets. As a matter of fact, it’s an even more conscious and deliberate attempt to avoid pregnancy considering all of the extreme measures one must go through to make sure it works!
In either case, the motivation and intention to prevent conception is present. Therefore, instead of pointing the finger at artificial contraception as the EVIL element at work here, it seems that the evil might exist in the motivation and intention behind it. If I, as a married, faithful woman use artifical contraception with the same motivation and intention as someone using NFP - to Plan for my Family - What is the difference? Why is one method sinful and the other method just fine?
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There are many ways to explain the difference between artificial contraception and NFP. The most straightforward explanation goes like this: (a) there is nothing wrong with wanting, for good reasons, to limit one’s family size and (b) there is nothing wrong with married couples either having sex or not having sex; thus, since it is not wrong to want to limit your family size and there is nothing wrong with not having sex, it follows quite smoothly that there is nothing wrong with not having sex because you want to limit your family size. (pirated from CERC)
 
Another point: NFP works WITH the body and is an effective way of ACHIEVEING pregnancy. This is a big difference. Nobody wears a condom in order to GET pregnant!

My personal observation: When one abstains from conjugal privileges during a fertile period because of a need to limit the size of one’s family, one poignantly comprehends the divine relationship between the divine gift of sexual pleasure and procreation.
 
First of all, you hit the nail on the head.

Artificial Birth Control (ABC) is manipulating what God created. NFP is working WITH God’s creation.

ABC is wrong, not because it is birth control, but because it is Artificial

And there’s a bit more to it even than that.

With ABC, the marital act carries with it a rejection of your partner, their fertility, during an act with is supposed to be the deepest sign of unity and acceptance that mortal can obtain.

In other words, ABC denies the very thing which sex is supposed to be, a full and complete gift of oneself and a full and complete acceptance of your spouse. ABC is saying that you don’t really don’t want to accept your spouse as the person God made them.

That is a HUGE contradiction and a complete corruption of God’s Plan for marital union.
 
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Brendan:
ABC is wrong, not because it is birth control, but because it is Artificial
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Well…

Dr. Janet Smith writes,
“They claim that the Church condemns contraception because it is artificial, and that natural family planning is morally acceptable because it is not artificial. In truth, the artificiality of contraception figures not at all in the Church’s condemnation of contraception. Certainly, the Church teaches that contraceptives commonly known as ‘artificial birth control’ are morally impermissible, but it is not because of their artificiality that they are condemned.”
 

Artificial Birth Control (ABC) is manipulating what God created. NFP is working WITH God’s creation​

Like ABC vaccines, antibiotics, and medications to lower high blood pressure manipulate what God created, so are those evil as well?
 
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Brendan:
ABC is wrong, not because it is birth control, but because it is Artificial
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Artificiality isn’t the crux. Your assertion about deflecting the purpose of the marital act carries more of the truth. Even “natural” means of avoiding pregnancy, such as coitus interruptus, are impermissible because they thwart the natural human act of intercourse.
 
What’s the big difference between a miscarriage and an abortion? End result’s the same thing. One is an act of God. In the other, man takes the powers of life into his own hands and tries to make himself like God.

I took this quote from an article on here. Its a good read.

catholic.com/thisrock/2003/0311fea3.asp
 
La Devota,

This is an issue I struggled with. There are lots of arguments using Natural Law theories, etc. I read and listened a lot and this is what I came up with:
  1. If I use NFP, I think about having another child. Once I month, I (and my husband, ideally) have to conciously consider/dicern adding to our family. That’s pretty open to life, even if in any given month we discern that the time is not right.
With chemical contraception, especially with the pill, there is no such regular examination of our situation and motives.
  1. With many chemical contraceptives, if the couple decide to have another child, they have to wait some period of time after ending the use of the chemical before trying to conceive. This also does not seem open to life.
These are not theological reasons, they are rationales that helped me. Maybe they can help you too.
 
I am really suprised that nobody has mentioned the book “Good News about Sex and Marriage” by Christopher West. It was on these forums that I first heard about it and am in the middle of reading it now.

It sounds like you are honestly seeking the true answer to your question… I think you will really find this book helpful.

Here is an example from the book:

It is in response to the question:" I still don’t see the big difference between NFP and contraception." pg. 114

"suppose there were a religious person, a nonreligious person, and an antireligious person walking past a church. What might each do?

Let’s say the religious person goes inside and prays, the nonreligious person walks by and does nothing, and the antireligious person goes inside the church and desecrates it. (I’m framing an analogy, of course, but these are reasonable behaviors to expect.) Which of these three persons did something that is always, under every circumstance, wrong? The last of course.

Husbands and wives are called to be procreative. If they have a good reason to avoid pregnancy, they are free to be non-procreative. But it’s a contradiction of the deepest essence of the sacrament of marriage to be anti-procreative."

I am only half way through this book, but it has done more in one night to open my eyes to *why *the Church teaches what She does than everything else I have heard combined!

If you are serious about finding the answer to your question, and others you may have…please read this book. The worst that could happen is you waste a few hours of your life…the best that could happen is that it will open your eyes to the beauty of sex and it’s true purpose.

I wish you well!

Finella
 
La Devota:
Honestly, if God wanted to create a new life between someone and his or her spouse, no amount of chemicals or degree of science could stop Him.
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While the other posts here have very nicely covered the “why is NFP different from contraception” portion of your post, no one has responded to this particular part of your post.

While it is true that the Divine Will will always be accomplished in the end, our Free Will allows us choices. God respects our free will and the consequences that flow from them. While God could in fact miraculously create a life, God works within the create world through the natural order. So, for example, while God COULD have prevented Hitler from being born, or he COULD have prevented Hurricane Ivan, he did not choose to supernaturally intervene … rather he works through and in the natural world. That is why uniting our free will to God’s divine will is so important to transform the world.

So, while your argument is technically true, it is not the way in which God works and it certainly is not an argument for Contraception-- Scripture says “thou shalt not tempt the Lord they God”… for the same reason Jesus did not throw himself down from the Temple or turn stones into bread, we cannot contracept and expect God to bless us or circumvent our bad decisions or save us from our free will to sin.
 
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1ke:
While the other posts here have very nicely covered the “why is NFP different from contraception” portion of your post, no one has responded to this particular part of your post.
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Good point 1ke! Glad you picked up on that and addressed it:)

Finella
 
Hello Vincent,
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Vincent:
The NFP’s effectiveness is based on abstinence. There’s nothing wrong with not having sex.

Contraception’s effectiveness is based on having sex *and *making sex something it’s not.
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Very well said!

:blessyou:
 
La Devota:
In either case, the motivation and intention to prevent conception is present. Therefore, instead of pointing the finger at artificial contraception as the EVIL element at work here, it seems that the evil might exist in the motivation and intention behind it. If I, as a married, faithful woman use artifical contraception with the same motivation and intention as someone using NFP - to Plan for my Family - What is the difference? Why is one method sinful and the other method just fine?
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Dear La Devota,

You are astute in your observations. NFP isn’t “just fine” just like artificial conception as a means to prevent conception. It is only considered licit for “serious” reasons. Surprisingly to me, one of those reasons is financial. Not having enough money is a valid excuse not to have a baby whereas without an excuse you are just being selfish and not cooperating with God. (Now I wonder whether wealthy Catholics, on the average, have more babies than poor ones.)
Humanae Vitae:
With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time.
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Alan
 
NFP actually respects God’s design of the body while artificial birth control thwarts God’s design.

The only way you could make the comparison between NFP and ABC is if you believe “not having sex” is sinful, because that is the essential component of NFP- “abstinence”!

There is no hipocracy!
 
From personal experience, sex is just better and cheaper. 😃 No costs beyond educating yourself, you have all your hormones. It is determined prior to snuggling in bed if you are fertile or not so there distruption in the love making. As for the Pill, unlike vitamins or vaccines they don’t improve the human sexual/reproduction system. the Pill shuts down your sexuality completely.

It is like treating a heart disease symptom by stopping your heart from pumping. Women joke around that the Pill is so effective because you have no desire to have sex.
 
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Vincent:
Well…

Dr. Janet Smith writes,
“They claim that the Church condemns contraception because it is artificial, and that natural family planning is morally acceptable because it is not artificial. In truth, the artificiality of contraception figures not at all in the Church’s condemnation of contraception. Certainly, the Church teaches that contraceptives commonly known as ‘artificial birth control’ are morally impermissible, but it is not because of their artificiality that they are condemned.”
Click to expand...
If you note, that was a secondary point to my main point about how ABC’s are a denial of the unitive aspect of marital relations (which I learned from Dr. Smith, she was my Moral Theology Prof. at Sacred Heart 😉 )
 
gladwell.com/2000/2000_03_10_a_rock.htm

This link was provided by a poster on another thread. It gives a history of “the pill”, the inventor and his true reasons for inventing what he viewed as “natural” birth control and why. It is very thought provoking and gives and entirely different perspective.

Definitely food for thought. Worth the read.
 
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