TPJCatholic:
I am 48 years old, my wife is 39 years old. We have five children, with a 7 month old son. Is it morally acceptable (from a Catholic point of view) for us to cease having children using NFP? Or, should we (as Catholics) continue to be fruitful and mutiply?
You ask a tough question, my friend. I, too, have been trying to discern under which circumstances it would be morally acceptable to use NFP. It seems as though it is too much to ask of our spiritual leaders for concrete guidance on this issue unless, of course, you ask certain NFP counselors, such as EWTN’s NFP rep, Fr. Hogan. It seems to him that Catholics have absolute freedom, nay, absolute responsibility to employ NFP at the slightest apprehension one may experience toward pregnancy. He goes so far as to remind inquisitors that they may be committing a sin (under unspecified circumstances) if they do not immediately begin practicing NFP. I think it is safe to say that both of us are looking for a “guidance” different than his.
We are all familiar with Paul VI’s statement:
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.
…that they are not free to act as they choose in the service of transmitting life, as if it were wholly up to them to decide what is the right course to follow. On the contrary, they are bound to ensure that what they do corresponds to the will of God the Creator.
The highlighted fragments are the ones weighing heavy on our hearts and for which we beg clarification. But, alas, the Church is very reluctant to provide any other but vague guidelines regarding the appropriate situations to use NFP. I suppose they do not want to “get into the business of” determining when a couple is allowed to defer pregnancy or, even more so, when a couple is allowed to incur pregnancy. Could you imagine having to ask permission from the Church to have a child? I believe the Church, in this situation, is following the rule of St. Thomas - that each must follow his own conscience. Unfortunately, in this day and age (and country), most of us have a malformed conscience toward family life. For instance, do you remember the conversation you had with your spouse that began: “How many children do you
want to have”? What kind of a question is that!? Should we always get what we
want? This implies that if you want 4 children, then the fifth child that may happen along will be unwanted… the poor kid. It seems that Americans have an inbred entitlement to whatever they want.
It also seems that the US Bishops and Priests believe that the Catholic Church revolves around them. Take, for instance, Fr. Hogan. He states:
Fr. Hogan said:
John Paul II encouraged the use of NFP for all married couples and that it should be taught to the engaged and even earlier.
See his Apostolic Exhortation on the Family, Familiaris Consortio, nos. 32-33.
I have read the entire document and cannot come to Fr. Hogan’s conclusion, that
ALL married couples should use NFP. It seems that Fr. Hogan has taken the words of JPII totally of context. One must keep in mind that JPII is speaking to the entire world when he composed the document, not just the United States. Actually, I believe Fr. Hogan overlooked the words of JPII that were directed squarely between the eyes of “faithful” Americans. To stage a context for NFP, JPII states:
quote=Familiaris Consortio … At the root of these negative phenomena there frequently lies a corruption of the idea and the experience of freedom, conceived not as a capacity for realizing the truth of God’s plan for marriage and the family, but as an autonomous power of self-affirmation, often against others, for one’s own selfish well-being.
Worthy of our attention also is the fact that, in the countries of the so-called Third World, families often lack both the means necessary for survival, such as food, work, housing and medicine, and the most elementary freedoms.
In the richer countries, on the contrary, excessive prosperity and the consumer mentality, paradoxically joined to a certain anguish and uncertainty about the future, deprive married couples of the generosity and courage needed for raising up new human life: thus life is often perceived not as a blessing, but as a danger from which to defend oneself.
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continued…
I tried to mention all the possibilities. In that case, the couple would have to be guided by grace to judge whether or not it is currently too much of a burden.