NFP with a non-Catholic spouse - how does that work?

[HomeschoolDad]

Thank you for your reply. But why so interested in others’ sexual morals? Why not other sins?

Because sexual sins are the grave sins (mortal sins if the three conditions are fulfilled) that cause the most problems for the most people, and threaten to drag the most people into hell, at least in our culture

Also, they are the sins that the modern world largely refuses to acknowledge — evangelical Christians stand with Catholics in condemning premarital and extramarital sex as well as pornography, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses oppose self-pleasure, and Orthodox Jewish practice (Hasidic et al) largely parallels traditional Catholic morality, but the Catholic Church stands alone, pretty much, in condemning contraception as an intrinsic moral evil.

Is there any other category of grave/mortal sin that gives Catholics any more difficulties, than sexual sins? To ask the question is to answer it.

Ours just happens to be a culture where people insist on sexual freedom. Other cultures may have other challenges and “pet sins”. For instance, there is a small subculture in this country where some — not all — of its members travel throughout the country, swindling unsuspecting people with shoddy labor, and even outright stealing from them. For these people, stealing and dishonesty in business are their “pet sins”. There is a tragic swath of mountain country in the Eastern United States where prescription drug abuse, as well as illegal drugs (homemade methamphetamines and illicit marijuana), are very common, and the people engaged in this trade either see nothing wrong with it, or realize it is sinful but do it anyway, out of desperation or just plain greed. In many cultures throughout the world, “honor killings” are just accepted as the way their societies work. And so on. Every culture has its issues.

Can’t speak from personal experience but we’ve noticed that it’s more common for a Catholic wife to say “we’re using NFP” than a non-Catholic wife with a Catholic husband.

It seems that way. I have reflected back over 40+ years of being Catholic, and I have never heard of a non-Catholic wife with a Catholic husband agreeing to use NFP for the entire duration of their childbearing years. I’m sure it happens, I certainly hope it happens, but I’ve never heard of it.

 

[phil19034]

How, then, does it work when a faithful Catholic marries a non-Catholic and asks the spouse to use NFP, and only NFP, for the duration of the marriage? How common is this? Does the non-Catholic accept this state of affairs, even though they see nothing wrong with ABC, and everything just goes merrily along? Do couples have this conversation before the marriage, or after? (I would certainly hope they wouldn’t wait until after they’re married to come to terms with this!) And do engagements ever get broken over this issue? Is there a gender difference at play here — does it differ depending on whether the non-Catholic spouse is the husband or the wife?

I am a faithful Catholic married to a non-Catholic. From what I’m told, if the Catholic does not intend on using ABC, then the Catholic is covered.

HOWEVER, for me, I’m a little “lucky” (if you can call it that) because my wife needs birth control pills for medical reasons to control what would otherwise be a hormonal imbalance.

 

[rosejmj]

While sex in a relationship is more common it certainly is not that difficult to find someone who is willing to wait at least until the relationship is more serious. A long as you find a decent Christian, I think many would be willing to wait even if perhaps they would rather not .

I’ve met and dated some non Catholic men who were open to NFP because they knew little about the female body and figured since I said so and I was the woman. However, men I have known who were more educated in matters of science and the human body, even if they were more religious have seen it as a deal breaker to use no form of contraception due to there being little evidence NFP is effective and more evidence pointing towards high failure rates

It is entirely possible to find Catholic or Christian people on other dating apps and for younger people there are few options on the Catholic dating apps I’ve seen.

Love and attraction is an important motive when seeking a spouse and I would never choose someone or settle for someone just because they are Catholic.

 

[rosejmj]

Well if it requires the three conditions I honestly doubt most people, including many Catholics, meet those conditions and therefore would not be committing mortal sins. Even telling people that the Catholic Church says it’s a mortal sin won’t convince people it’s actually bad

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I am a faithful Catholic married to a non-Catholic. From what I’m told, if the Catholic does not intend on using ABC, then the Catholic is covered.

HOWEVER, for me, I’m a little “lucky” (if you can call it that) because my wife needs birth control pills for medical reasons to control what would otherwise be a hormonal imbalance.

Using BCPs for medical reasons without contraceptive intent is, in and of itself, morally acceptable, and could even be obligatory, in that we are bound to take care of our bodies and do whatever is necessary to preserve our health. Whether BCPs are abortifacient or not, is something that has been debated back and forth for decades. If they do, in fact, suppress ovulation, and only suppress ovulation, then they cannot be abortifacient, because you can’t have conception without ovulation. (I suppose there could be some rare exceptions to this.) A safer option might be to abstain during what could normally be foreseen as the fertile period. I’m not even going to attempt to have the last word on that.

It is true that a faithful Catholic spouse cannot be held responsible for what their spouse does to make themselves infertile (or, in the case of the male, unable to fertilize). In all such cases, the faithful spouse should describe the matter to their confessor, and follow his guidance. However, I hate to think that a couple would enter marriage, one opposed to contraception, and the other intent upon contracepting within the marriage. It might be time for the faithful spouse-to-be to consider walking away from the situation before it’s too late. Even if I were a secular relationships counselor, I couldn’t recommend this sort of mismatch. Marriage is hard enough without borrowing trouble like this.

I’ve met and dated some non Catholic men who were open to NFP because they knew little about the female body and figured since I said so and I was the woman. However, men I have known who were more educated in matters of science and the human body, even if they were more religious have seen it as a deal breaker to use no form of contraception due to there being little evidence NFP is effective and more evidence pointing towards high failure rates

Ditto. Again, even from a secular standpoint, a failure to have a “meeting of the minds” on such a key issue in marriage, is just asking for trouble. Without even taking a position on whether contraception is right or wrong, this should be easy to see. I’d have to advise against such a marriage.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

It is entirely possible to find Catholic or Christian people on other dating apps and for younger people there are few options on the Catholic dating apps I’ve seen.

Not sure what you mean by this. I can’t imagine a better way for a single Catholic, in search of a spouse faithful to the magisterium, to find such a spouse, than a specifically Catholic dating app. Going to a magisterially loyal college, such as Christendom or Ave Maria, would also be a good bet, but not all that many college students anymore are keen to get married immediately after graduation. Not to sound sexist, but the “MRS” degree is not the “thing” it once was.

Love and attraction is an important motive when seeking a spouse and I would never choose someone or settle for someone just because they are Catholic.

I am all in favor of love and attraction, and I agree, choosing or “settling for” someone just because they are Catholic — and for no other reason — is not the best thing to do. That said, I cannot imagine any more ideal marriage than for both partners to embrace the Catholic Faith in its fullness. If I were on the “marriage market”, one thing I’d have in mind, is whether my wife would teach our children the Catholic Faith, with the conviction of believing in it, and not merely imparting information, if I were no longer around to do this. People contemplating marriage need to think about such things.

Well if it requires the three conditions I honestly doubt most people, including many Catholics, meet those conditions and therefore would not be committing mortal sins. Even telling people that the Catholic Church says it’s a mortal sin won’t convince people it’s actually bad

No, Catholics in the United States (and in most, if not all, affluent Western cultures) are past the point where everybody (or near enough) simply accepted the Church’s teachings because they were the Church’s teachings, case closed. People are not afraid of offending God by ignoring the magisterium of His Church. This is far worse than if we had suffered nuclear war or mass casualties due to plague or natural disaster. This is one reason why those who still believe, must speak up, and continue to speak up, without ceasing — to try to restore the relationship of the faithful to the Church, even if just in a small way, to what it used to be, to what it should be. It’s not our task to leave the ignorant in good conscience, it’s our task to tell them the truth, and to put them in bad conscience, for lack of a more delicate way to put it, if that’s what it takes. I’d rather be taught, and put under conviction, and reform my life, than to be left in ignorance and keep doing things that offend Almighty God, even if He does not hold it to my charge because I’m ignorant of it. Does a catechist skip the part of the catechism that tells their students about the malice of “Sin X” that they are all committing? Not hardly.

 

[phil19034]

Using BCPs for medical reasons without contraceptive intent is, in and of itself, morally acceptable, and could even be obligatory, in that we are bound to take care of our bodies and do whatever is necessary to preserve our health. Whether BCPs are abortifacient or not, is something that has been debated back and forth for decades. If they do, in fact, suppress ovulation, and only suppress ovulation, then they cannot be abortifacient, because you can’t have conception without ovulation. (I suppose there could be some rare exceptions to this.) A safer option might be to abstain during what could normally be foreseen as the fertile period. I’m not even going to attempt to have the last word on that.

It is true that a faithful Catholic spouse cannot be held responsible for what their spouse does to make themselves infertile (or, in the case of the male, unable to fertilize). In all such cases, the faithful spouse should describe the matter to their confessor, and follow his guidance. However, I hate to think that a couple would enter marriage, one opposed to contraception, and the other intent upon contracepting within the marriage. It might be time for the faithful spouse-to-be to consider walking away from the situation before it’s too late. Even if I were a secular relationships counselor, I couldn’t recommend this sort of mismatch. Marriage is hard enough without borrowing trouble like this.

I’m a little confused. If you know the answers, why did you post the question?

What are you hoping to learn?

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Well if it requires the three conditions I honestly doubt most people, including many Catholics, meet those conditions and therefore would not be committing mortal sins.

Actually, there is only one condition — sufficient reflection (i.e., sufficient knowledge that the sin is a sin, and knowledge of the gravity of it) — that could possibly be deficient. Aside from those hideous cases where an innocent spouse is forced to contracept (“you either go on the pill or I’ll leave you”, or have an affair, or, God forbid, physically abuse you), contraception is not a sin that can be committed with impaired volition, or in a fog of passion or irrationality. You have to make a conscious choice to go to the doctor or to the pharmacy, and that’s not something that people do in zombie mode. (A spontaneous, last-second impulse to practice coitus interruptus could be an instance of impaired will, but that is a very crude, disgusting, and unreliable method of birth control that is a relic of an earlier era.)

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

Using BCPs for medical reasons without contraceptive intent is, in and of itself, morally acceptable, and could even be obligatory, in that we are bound to take care of our bodies and do whatever is necessary to preserve our health…

I’m a little confused. If you know the answers, why did you post the question?

What are you hoping to learn?

I have a pretty good idea of what the “answers” are, but I want to get a discussion started, and get everyone’s ideas and perspectives.

I’m not “hoping to learn” anything. If someone can relate a happy story of how their non-Catholic spouse agreed to NFP and practices it joyfully (as we saw above with the Catholic wife/Buddhist husband) then glory be, glad to know it. If someone wants to share the fact that it doesn’t work so well, then that, too, serves a purpose — to warn others against entering into such a situation, and to highlight the very real problems that can come from one spouse wanting to practice NFP and the other spouse being opposed to it. Raising consciousness of issues that matter is never a bad thing.

 

[phil19034]

HomeschoolDad:

HomeschoolDad:

Using BCPs for medical reasons without contraceptive intent is, in and of itself, morally acceptable, and could even be obligatory, in that we are bound to take care of our bodies and do whatever is necessary to preserve our health…

I’m a little confused. If you know the answers, why did you post the question?

What are you hoping to learn?

I have a pretty good idea of what the “answers” are, but I want to get a discussion started, and get everyone’s ideas and perspectives.

I’m not “hoping to learn” anything. If someone can relate a happy story of how their non-Catholic spouse agreed to NFP and practices it joyfully (as we saw above with the Catholic wife/Buddhist husband) then glory be, glad to know it. If someone wants to share the fact that it doesn’t work so well, then that, too, serves a purpose — to warn others against entering into such a situation, and to highlight the very real problems that can come from one spouse wanting to practice NFP and the other spouse being opposed to it. Raising consciousness of issues that matter is never a bad thing.

Raising consciousness of issues that matter is never a bad thing.

Oh I agree. It was just that your OP was not very clear regarding your intent and your reply to me was a little confusing.

As someone married to a non-Catholic (we married when I was NOT practicing my faith), it can be pretty hard. ESP if you have a conversion (re-version) after marriage.

Religious & value based differences are especially hard when the subject of children is involved. Whether it’s how many to have, how to raise them, how to space them, how to avoid having more, etc.; religious & values based differences are EXTREMELY difficult in these situations.

It’s a LOT easier for two sterile people from different religious backgrounds to marry & have a marriage without issue than it is for a interfaith couple with kids & before menopause.

My suggestion to couples is to avoid interfaith marriages.

NOW - with that said, it can also be difficult when you have two nominal Catholics marry and one later becomes devout while the other still wants to contracept.

When truth comes to shove, anytime a devout Catholic is married to someone who is not a devout Catholic (whether Catholic or not), things are going to be tough. But ESP during the childbearing & child rearing years.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Religious & value based differences are especially hard when the subject of children is involved. Whether it’s how many to have, how to raise them, how to space them, how to avoid having more, etc.; religious & values based differences are EXTREMELY difficult in these situations.

It’s a LOT easier for two sterile people from different religious backgrounds to marry & have a marriage without issue than it is for a interfaith couple with kids & before menopause.

My suggestion to couples is to avoid interfaith marriages.

NOW - with that said, it can also be difficult when you have two nominal Catholics marry and one later becomes devout while the other still wants to contracept.

When truth comes to shove, anytime a devout Catholic is married to someone who is not a devout Catholic (whether Catholic or not), things are going to be tough. But ESP during the childbearing & child rearing years.

I don’t disagree with a word you say. You sum up the situation perfectly.

Again, I would have to recommend against entering into an NFP-vs-contraception marriage, even if I were a totally secular counselor. It’s hard to imagine an issue that strikes closer to the core of a marriage.

 

[phil19034]

I don’t disagree with a word you say. You sum up the situation perfectly.

Again, I would have to recommend against entering into an NFP-vs-contraception marriage, even if I were a totally secular counselor. It’s hard to imagine an issue that strikes closer to the core of a marriage.

The way I see it is this:

Today’s, society fails to understand the purpose for marriage. It’s not primarily about companionship, happiness , or even love.

It’s primarily about child procreation & child rearing (aka “family building”).

Yes, the other things I listed are VERY important, but they are secondary purposes.

However, today’s society has flipped the purposes. They place companionship, happiness, & love as the primary purposes and family building as the secondary (and optional) purpose. Heck, society doesn’t even think marriage is necessary for child rearing anymore.

As long as family building is considered a secondary & optional part of marriage, we will continue to be screwed up as a society.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

I don’t disagree with a word you say. You sum up the situation perfectly.

Again, I would have to recommend against entering into an NFP-vs-contraception marriage, even if I were a totally secular counselor. It’s hard to imagine an issue that strikes closer to the core of a marriage.

The way I see it is this:

Today’s, society fails to understand the purpose for marriage. It’s not primarily about companionship, happiness , or even love.

It’s primarily about child procreation & child rearing (aka “family building”).

Yes, the other things I listed are VERY important, but they are secondary purposes.

However, today’s society has flipped the purposes. They place companionship, happiness, & love as the primary purposes and family building as the secondary (and optional) purpose. Heck, society doesn’t even think marriage is necessary for child rearing anymore.

As long as family building is considered a secondary & optional part of marriage, we will continue to be screwed up as a society.

Again, I don’t disagree with a word you say. Catholic Answers needs to put you on the payroll!

 

[mrsdizzyd]

I’ve met a lot of women who aren’t religious at all (or are into “spiritual but not religious”, New Age, wicca, yoga etc) but do not want to take any kind of pharmaceutical, including BCP. Many men also don’t like the feeling of sex with a condom and flat out refuse to use them. Many people of both genders also don’t want to undergo surgery.

Agreed.

I’m in a mixed marriage now that I have converted to Catholicism. My husband is fine with NFP. All it took was a couple conversation about the merits of the approach. Neither of us are hostile to having a large family, so that doesn’t scare us. :woman_shrugging:t4:

As to the assumption that every Catholic with a small family is running around contracepting or having discreet abortions… There are millions of Americans who have fertility challenges. Self-included. I’m never going to have a van full of children. I’m blessed to have the couple I have.

 

[rosejmj]

, Catholics in the United States (and in most, if not all, affluent Western cultures) are past the point where everybody (or near enough) simply accepted the Church’s teachings because they were the Church’s teachings, case closed.

That’s what I was saying. We are beyond the times when people just accept what their religion teaches. People are much more educated now and more people know how to think critically. Of course there are those who do not and just go along with what they are told, whether that is religious or secular. It’s no surprise that people will begin to disagree with religion’s teachings when they educate themselves on different matters. And people often will come to different conclusions. I don’t find that something to lament and if that’s punished by God because potentially people may disagree with Church teachings then I’m surprised because he did give us an intellillect and people think differently and don’t all come to the same conclusions

 

[HomeschoolDad]

As to the assumption that every Catholic with a small family is running around contracepting or having discreet abortions… There are millions of Americans who have fertility challenges. Self-included. I’m never going to have a van full of children. I’m blessed to have the couple I have.

I make no such assumption about “every Catholic with a small family”. I do know that Catholics, in the main, tend to have families of the same size as non-Catholics, and I do know that roughly 90 percent of Catholics, in this country at least, disagree with the Church’s teaching on ABC. It would be horribly naive to think that a very large portion of this 90 percent, of childbearing age, do not act in accord with this disagreement. (To say that they disagree, but obey the Church anyway, is always possible, but I have my doubts that this ever actually happens, unless it would be rare, isolated instances.) Many people do have fertility challenges. If they want children but cannot have them, my heart goes out to them. My own mother had severe gynecological problems and had to have a hysterectomy before she was 40. I would really, really like to think that no Catholic woman would ever have a discreet abortion if she found herself in marriage with an unwanted pregnancy, but I can’t say that never happens. Again, I hope not.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

That’s what I was saying. We are beyond the times when people just accept what their religion teaches. People are much more educated now and more people know how to think critically. Of course there are those who do not and just go along with what they are told, whether that is religious or secular. It’s no surprise that people will begin to disagree with religion’s teachings when they educate themselves on different matters. And people often will come to different conclusions. I don’t find that something to lament and if that’s punished by God because potentially people may disagree with Church teachings then I’m surprised because he did give us an intellillect and people think differently and don’t all come to the same conclusions

Keep in mind that the people who make up the magisterium are also very well-educated and experts in their fields. We are not given intellects by Almighty God to go buck-wild with them and believe whatever we want to, or whatever we, by our own lights, see as true or false. Our Lord did not say at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, “okay, that’s what I have to say, if your intelligence tells you something different, well, then, go with that, not with what I say”. I like to think of myself as a reasonably intelligent, well-educated man, but (for instance) I don’t understand the Church’s teaching on usury, neither the past nor the present teaching — why can you rent a backhoe or a candelabrum for a wedding, but you can’t rent money, but on the other hand, how was usury once condemned and now condoned? Yet I accept the Church’s teaching. I don’t find Paul VI’s appeal to natural law the most convincing argument against contraception — I would put the onus more on its being a sin of the flesh. Yet I accept his interpretation. I don’t understand how non-Catholic Christians can confect a valid sacrament of matrimony, when they say that matrimony, at least in the abstract, can be dissolved by earthly powers — “to do what the Church does”. Yet Rome says these marriages are valid sacraments, and I go with that. And so on. Where my intellect does not line up 100% with what the Church teaches, I put my intellect on the altar and accept the Church’s teaching. St Ignatius Loyola said as much:

If we wish to proceed securely in all things, we must hold fast to the following principle: What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines.

When I was in graduate school, I had a fellow student, very bright guy, Italian American, presumably Catholic somewhere in his upbringing, whose mantra on many subjects was “that’s out of date”. If he didn’t like something, he would chime in “that’s out of date”, and that was supposed to be a thought-stopper. Finally I had all I could take, and I took him to task on this in seminar. I said “you keep saying this is ‘out of date’, that’s ‘out of date’, and so on — are you saying that truth changes with the times?”. He didn’t have a good answer for me. He finally dropped out of school and we never heard from him again.

 

[Anicette]

You already known the anwser

You should not be married someone that you know that he or she will pressure you on contraception.
It would be a disaster and unhappiness guarantee.

A woman can “impose” NFP to her husband, she would just have to impose abstinence. (unless he choose to get sterilized or withdraw against her wishes). He may be reluctant, but may have no choice.

A man cannot “impose” NFP to her relunctant wife. She can always supress her fertility, and he cannot know her fertility because it needed observation. He can made speculation on her cycles thanks to her period, and try to act or refuse on this calendar, but it is unlikely that the woman would use nothing or pressure him to use something to prevent pregnancy.

That’s probably why you seen these large family with a Catholic mother but no with a Catholic father only.

But equallly I am sure that many Catholic women have sex outside marriage or use contraception because of the wishes or the pressure of their man that don’t want to wait or want to have any other child or accept the risk to have a child. I am sure that in many cases men want less children than women.

 

[losh14]

I want to pull back up to the core of our teachings, that sex in marriage should be mutual and mutally-beneficial. Spouses should agree on these things. FWIW, I’ve seen this in successful and happy marriages regardless of faith (and I’ve a non-Catholic friend with a large family … when he’s asked “oh, are you a good Catholic” he just says “no, but a deeply in-love Evangelical”).

The questions are bigger than NFP, but NFP is the lens through Catholics are taught to handle these questions. For newlyweds, it’s to plan when to start a family; for new parents, it’s to space births for the good of the family; for older parents (like us) it’s to determine when our family is complete. I would love for NFP to work perfectly - it helped us plan 2 of my wife’s 5 pregnancies, though to avoid pregnancy on perhaps scores of other occasions. We’re probably making some mistakes in charting, or reading the thermometer, and my wife’s cycle has some irregularities despite her being in very good health, but still it isn’t a perfect method.

That brings me back to the question. If a Catholic spouse wants a non-Catholic spouse to agree to NFP, it has to be a true agreement. You have to be able to say “not tonight” when you probably feel most like having sex. I’ve joked with my wife that I can tell she’s fertile because she seems to like me most during those days - and we should only have sex when we’ve been arguing, just to be safe.

I think it’s easier to agree to NFP early-on; most married couples want to start a family and if it happens sooner rather than later, they’re probably okay with. Once the family is at the desired size, the question is tougher - does that mean mutually-enforced abstinence for a longer time? With religious conviction and especially the backing of the community, it’s easier to walk that road.

In my heart of hearts, the teaching on NFP alone is a tough one for me, and I struggle with it even as we obey it. I’d honestly be quite relieved if the Church declared that vasectomies were allowed after a certain age, or after a certain number of kids; I know that’s facetious, but it would help us know more of what our life will be like. But this is futile thinking; the Lord has His Plan, and I trust in Him. Had I gone that path after our desired family size, we wouldn’t have this amazing, sweet, bright little 5-year-old who gives us so much joy, and we wouldn’t be looking forward to a new baby this year. One of my favorite parts of the day is that first hug my (currently) youngest child gives me when I carry her in for breakfast.

I’ll pray for all married couples to center their lives around the Lord.

 

[TheLittleLady]

Because sexual sins are the grave sins (mortal sins if the three conditions are fulfilled) that cause the most problems for the most people, and threaten to drag the most people into hell, at least in our culture

Again, bit assumption.

I would think that envy, sloth and hate are far more common that sexual sins.