NFP marketing, is promoting it right?

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Xantippe said:
Being at one’s limit is a serious cause.

If that isn’t, what is?
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Being at one’s limit is so vague that it’s completely undefinable. Is one at their limit because they’re wife has cancer and they can no longer safely have children, or because they want to retire and travel the world?
 
omgriley said:
You want me to site Church teaching which clarifies that God will not give you more than you can handle?

Umm… How about the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church and 95% of the New Testament.
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Wow! Awesome answer! If I could hit the like button on this one 100 times, I would!!!
 
My dear you are judging him incorrectly.

Being “open” to life means each act. Each individual act.

You don’t get to tell a good Catholic man that his motives weren’t sufficient and/or his marriage not valid.

He’s giving a good example of good Catholic marriage.

He’s not promoting contraception.
 
F_Marturana said:
My dear you are judging him incorrectly.

Being “open” to life means each act. Each individual act.

You don’t get to tell a good Catholic man that his motives weren’t sufficient and/or his marriage not valid.

He’s giving a good example of good Catholic marriage.

He’s not promoting contraception.
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  1. Engaging in the act in itself does not mean the couple is open to children.
  2. Go through the thread, I never once claimed his marriage is invalid. That’s nonsense.
  3. Openly sharing you are against having children is not an example of a good Catholic marriage.
  4. It isn’t up to the couple decide for themselves what constitutes just cause. It takes a well-formed Catholic conscience.
 
Thank you all.

As some might have noticed, my wife and I haven’t been fertile for years. No monthly decisions being made.

As for the past - my views are formed by burying our first child after he was born with a terrible birth defect. We faithfully had other children after that.

At a certain point, my wife got sick and we were done. House size, sickness, brokenness. I do not feel guilty at all.
 
PaulinVA said:
Thank you all.

As some might have noticed, my wife and I haven’t been fertile for years. No monthly decisions being made.

As for the past - my views are formed by burying our first child after he was born with a terrible birth defect. We faithfully had other children after that.

At a certain point, my wife got sick and we were done. House size, sickness, brokenness. I do not feel guilty at all.
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Let me be the first to say that I am truly sorry for your loss and your heartbreak, Paul. I cannot imagine the feeling of losing your child. Please do not think otherwise because of our differences on this subject.

With that, I think we’ve come as far as we can. You and your wife will be in my prayers.
 
For what it’s worth, I’ve been a member of CAF for years. I signed up with a new name when the format changed.

I’ve always read your posts on the subject with appreciation.

I’m not going to hide my annoyance at a poster sitting in judgment of you and your marriage.

You’re a good example of Catholic husband.
 
omgriley said:
Why not?

Because it’s God’s life, not yours. He’s in charge. Not you. If you let Him take care of you, He will, and will not give you more than is possible to handle.

Xantippe:

Look, I’m 42, I’m a slow fat mom of three with a bad foot who feels too old for my 5-year-old. I have two children on the autism spectrum (I’m just finishing potty training the 5-year-old), my mom had a mastectomy and chemotherapy when she was a smidge younger than I am today, my third pregnancy ended with the baby dying at 13 weeks gestation and then a long recovery for me, my fourth and last pregnancy was extremely difficult and scary (bleeding and then gestational diabetes) and required my husband to do 90% of kid and housework, our youngest needs therapy that we can’t pay for now, my husband wants me to work soon and make some money for the kids’ school (it is a very good school, but not cheap) and my husband is (naturally) scared to death of me getting pregnant again, as the last two pregnancies taxed us to the limit.

I’m not going to say that I’m done, and I know that 40-something women have babies and do JUST FINE, but I’m not exactly waving my arms and telling God, “PICK ME!!!”

↓↓↓↓

“And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.” --Luke 1:36-37
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I hope the back and forth is clear, who is saying what. Some thoughts:

–If we weren’t avoiding, it wouldn’t be God giving me more than I can handle, but us giving ourselves more than we can handle.
–I’m a grown lady, married nearly 20 years, I’ve been pregnant four times and I have kids 15, 12 and 5. I have a pretty good idea by now what I can and can’t handle.
–In previous discussions, I believe you were a strong wifely submission guy. Why am I supposed to disregard the fact that my husband does not want a larger family?
–My husband wants me to work and make money so our kids can continue to go to a good school. That plan is not consistent with me having yet another high risk pregnancy. Would it be submissive of me to disregard my husband’s wishes?
–As a previous poster noted, I don’t have a lot in common with Elizabeth besides age. I have several children already and my husband has not gotten a visit from an angel telling us that we are having a baby. You’ll notice that there aren’t a lot of angelic visitors in the Bible announcing the arrival of non-firstborn children…
–The way you are using “nothing will be impossible with God” pretty much erodes the whole idea of “serious reasons.”
 
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Thank you, F_Marturana, for your kind words.

It’s interesting to go all the way through an experience (fertility) and then reflect on it. It was never really easy. But, periodic abstinence is better than total abstinence!

I’ve always been a little peeved about the NFP threads that degenerate into judgement (it seems like most of them do) about the motives of individual posters.

Something like 1% of Catholics use NFP instead of permanent or temporary sterilization. Focusing on the motives of that 1% seems to be a waste of time to me.
 
Ive noticed something just now. I haven’t seen where anyone has come on this thread to say nfp has no place in Catholic marriages. Those here that feel uncomfortable with the promotion of nfp for any reason at all are not being judgmental of those that actually have serious reasons to use it. But, there seems to be those that are using nfp for serious reasons that are coming on this thread and being very defensive of nfp for any reason and even seem to be saying those who disagree are examples of irresponsible Catholics. Is there anyone out there who is using nfp for serious reasons who agrees that that is all it should be used for??? Or are all nfp users, just a group of die hard apologist for the method?
 
Something that’s been stated already, but I feel needs repeating, is nobody is going to stick with NFP if they don’t have a good enough reason, because it’s hard. I’m one of those lucky few who has a 5 day fertile window in a 30 day cycle, it doesn’t get much easier than that as far as NFP goes, and it’s still hard. Just keeping track of everything is a pain. So people can sit back and talk about informed conscience, just reasons, grave reasons all you they want, but the fact of the matter is if you’re sticking with it, it’s pretty safe to say you’re reason is good enough.
 
ByWhatAuthority said:
I haven’t seen where anyone has come on this thread to say nfp has no place in Catholic marriages.
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Well, some people give lip service to the idea of “serious reasons,” but somehow in practice, no reasons are ever quite serious enough.

I once mentioned on a CAF NFP thread that one of my reasons was that I was getting close to the age my mom was when she had breast cancer. One of the more providentialist posters replied that it’s fine for the baby to have chemotherapy during pregnancy, so it wouldn’t be a big deal to be pregnant with breast cancer.

!!!

I probably didn’t go into my mental process at the time, but the issue wasn’t just chemotherapy and pregnancy (although the combination sounds terrible). What I’ve thought about the last few years is the fact that when my mom was sick, she couldn’t do anything around the house and basically disappeared for a year. I was 15 at the time and did a lot of stuff at home, but I now fear that my 6-year-old brother was probably terribly neglected while I bustled with laundry and cooking and dishes. But at least he was big enough not to need to be watched all the time. I naturally think about this from time to time–if I were to get sick, how would things work at home if I couldn’t do anything? I think we’re almost to the point where our youngest would be OK, but it would be difficult even with a 5-year-old, let alone an infant, a 1-year-old, or a 2-year-old.
 
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Xantippe said:
I hope the back and forth is clear, who is saying what. Some thoughts:

–If we weren’t avoiding, it wouldn’t be God giving me more than I can handle, but us giving ourselves more than we can handle.

–I’m a grown lady, married nearly 20 years, I’ve been pregnant four times and I have kids 15, 12 and 5. I have a pretty good idea by now what I can and can’t handle.

–In previous discussions, I believe you were a strong wifely submission guy. Why am I supposed to disregard the fact that my husband does not want a larger family?

–My husband wants me to work and make money so our kids can continue to go to a good school. That plan is not consistent with me having yet another high risk pregnancy. Would it be submissive of me to disregard my husband’s wishes?

–As a previous poster noted, I don’t have a lot in common with Elizabeth besides age. I have several children already and my husband has not gotten a visit from an angel telling us that we are having a baby. You’ll notice that there aren’t a lot of angelic visitors in the Bible announcing the arrival of non-firstborn children…

–The way you are using “nothing will be impossible with God” pretty much erodes the whole idea of “serious reasons.”
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I’m convinced half of these thoughts are your attempt to stoke flames, so I will not respond to them.
  1. There is a difference between “avoiding” pregnancy and outright refusing pregnancy. One can avoid pregnancy because of a serious illness, yet still be open to it and accept it if it happened. This is different than saying “I am no longer open to having children for xyz reasons.”
  2. The way I am employing Luke 1:37 is to point out that God will help you through any obstacle in life. Someone in your position may benefit from practicing NFP, i.e., you might do well to avoid new pregnancies. But you must not refuse them if they happen. One does not run into any moral issues until they have consciously refused to be open to God granting new life.
  3. We have already discussed the issue of wifely submission. This is not the appropriate thread for that conversation. If you have read that thread, then you already know my (the Church’s) position.
 
My last was significantly premature. So following him we avoided. I just was diagnosed by chance with a partially septate uterus. They found that during a cat scan for something else. That condition increases both the chances of miscarriage and of premature birth.
 
In DH’s position, he has the possibility of expat assignments all over the world. In one country where there was a possibility of his being posted, the maternal mortality rate is one in ten. One in ten women will die in childbirth there. Think about that.

There is exactly one hospital in the entire country capable of handling the most basic obstetric care, and you still couldn’t pay me to go there because of the high HIV rates and shoddy-to-nonexistent sterilization of medical equipment.

If DH were posted there, our options would be a) go with him, or b) the kids and I stay in the US, and see him perhaps twice a year.

His company compound has an on-site clinic capable of handling many emergencies, though not all and certainly nothing obstetric, and the company offers medical evacuation coverage as needed to another country. However, in the case of uterine rupture or a compromised umbilical cord, you have 4-6 minutes before the baby is dead. That’s not even enough time to call for an evac.

If I were there and pregnant and something went wrong, they might be able to save baby–if they did a C-section on me with no anesthesia, on the understanding that I would die on the table, and if they managed to remember to sterilize the scissors used to cut baby’s umbilical cord so he or she wouldn’t die of neonatal tetanus, as thousands of babies there do every year, and if they didn’t use a dirty needle on baby at some point, thereby giving him or her HIV…

So if we were posted there, we’d go, because that would be much better for our family than the kids seeing their daddy once or twice a year for 3-5 years, but there is no way I could be pregnant while there. Bear in mind that while this country is bad, it isn’t the worst out there.

To clarify: you seriously think that in the case of a country where the medical system is this messed up, the solution is an untrained attendant even further from the most basic of medical care? I mean, at least in this (extremely hypothetical) example, baby has a chance to survive. In a home birth, we’d both be dead.
 
Re your 1 and 2: At no point whatsoever did Xantippe say that she’d have an abortion if she did get pregnant right now, which is what “outright refusing pregnancy” is. She is saying that she and her husband have discerned that they should use NFP to avoid for sundry reasons. There is a huge difference between the two. By using NFP vs a more permanent and reliable, if morally unacceptable, method, they are saying that they’d accept a baby if one came along unexpectedly, just that they think that’s not what God wants of them right now. That’s what avoiding via NFP, in the Catholic understanding, means.
 
My OB, who is both openly prolife and a professor at one of the larger medical schools in the US, would disagree with you. Traveling increases the likelihood of blood clots, as does pregnancy. It can, though of course not necessarily, mean exposure to various bacteria and viruses that are dangerous to mom or baby. If something goes wrong with mom or baby and you’re in a country with limited medical resources, that increases the morbidity/mortality risks for both mom and baby.

I’m currently pregnant. DH and I had previously rather loosely planned on taking a hiking/backpacking trip for our anniversary to a place which has high levels of Zika virus right now, a limited medical infrastructure, and sometimes questionable food hygiene. Following a chat with the OB, we decided against it for all of those reasons. We didn’t avoid pregnancy because of the possibility of the trip, but if it had been a more important trip (work?), or we’d gotten to the point of acquiring the tickets, then we would, yes, have likely avoided in order to reduce the risk to baby and me. Those are rather a lot of risks.

I’m also thinking of a friend of a friend who had a micropreemie due to unforeseen and unpredictable premature labor while traveling. Now she lucked out (well, as much as one can in that scenario…) by only being across the country from home when she had her 24-weeker, and by being near a world-class NICU. If she were in most of Africa, or the Middle East, the Caribbean, or certain areas of Europe, baby wouldn’t have made it.
 
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