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FiberZilla
Guest
If the objective of natural family planning is to allow married couples have sex while preventing pregnancy, why is it acceptable?
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hellopeople
Guest
I have yet to understand a logical reason for this. To be honest, logically, the only reason it is acceptable is because the church says it is acceptable. That is the best explanation there is, because any other explanation using logic makes little sense.
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kage_ar
Guest
It is simply observing what God designed the female body to do - only be fertile a few days each month for a few years of her life.
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KostyaJMJ
Guest
You’re attacking a straw man. The Church doesn’t object to a married couple having sex while preventing pregnancy as long as they don’t resort to immoral means.
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1ke
Guest
Natural Family Planning can be used to avoid pregnancy or to achieve pregnancy.
Neither of these is immoral ends. That is why it is acceptable. The Church teaches that we may space/avoid for a time or indefinitely for a just reason in conformity with objective moral criteria.
Spacing/avoiding/postponing is not an end that is against God’s law. It is using contraception as the *means *to achieve this end that is against God’s law. Abstaining is a means of achieving that end that is not against God’s law.
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1ke
Guest
The premise is flawed. The premise assumes that the Church teaches it is wrong/immoral to prevent/space/plan pregnancies. The Church does not teach this.
What the Church does teach is that there are moral and immoral means of doing so. Contraception is an immoral means. Abstaining is not.
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1ke
Guest
Yes, I stated “for a just reason in conformity with objective moral criteria.”
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Corki
Guest
Well, if that were the only objective, it wouldn’t be acceptable. NFP is nothing more than applied education to help a married couple regulate the size of thier family and spacing of their children.
No one (or hardly anyone
) has sex every day of his/her married life. Neither does each act of sex result in pregnancy. And almost every couple has a good reason at some point in their married life to plan when the next pregnancy will best occur (finances, health, physically/mentally recover from most recent pregnancy, etc). NFP just puts those elements together in a responsible way.
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laomath
Guest
Abstaining from marital relations is not a sin. In fact, I’m doing it right now!!
Here is an analogy I like to use:
3 people walk down the road and pass a church:
1 person stops, walks in and says a prayer. (this would be like the couple having marital relations, open to life)
The second is on his way to work. He cannot stop to pray today, but might come by a different day. (This would be the couple using NFP to space babies)
The third goes into the the church and desecrates it. (This would be the couple using ABC)
Now, obviously, the person stopping to pray commits no sin. The second person who cannot stop is also not committing a sin. He is not avoiding the church all together, just not stopping at the moment. And the third does commit a sin.
Not having sex is not a sin. The church requires it of all single and consecrated. There are serious reasons for married couples not to have sex. I don’t have sex with my husband at a restaurant or other public places. I don’t have relations with him in front of my children, etc. I know that you understand what I mean when I say that there are sometimes when marital relations are not possible. Sometimes we abstain for the good of the other ie, sickness, recovering from childbirth, etc.
The question is not “is abstaining a sin?” The question that every couple that uses NFP should ask every cycle is “do we have a serious reason to abstain?” And its true - this question must not be taken lightly. If the reasons are selfish, then, yes, it could be a sin to use NFP to avoid pregnancy. Sometimes the reasons are life or death, sometimes not that serious, but still serious enough to postpone marital relations using God’s plan.
Does this help at all?
Here is an analogy I like to use:
3 people walk down the road and pass a church:
1 person stops, walks in and says a prayer. (this would be like the couple having marital relations, open to life)
The second is on his way to work. He cannot stop to pray today, but might come by a different day. (This would be the couple using NFP to space babies)
The third goes into the the church and desecrates it. (This would be the couple using ABC)
Now, obviously, the person stopping to pray commits no sin. The second person who cannot stop is also not committing a sin. He is not avoiding the church all together, just not stopping at the moment. And the third does commit a sin.
Not having sex is not a sin. The church requires it of all single and consecrated. There are serious reasons for married couples not to have sex. I don’t have sex with my husband at a restaurant or other public places. I don’t have relations with him in front of my children, etc. I know that you understand what I mean when I say that there are sometimes when marital relations are not possible. Sometimes we abstain for the good of the other ie, sickness, recovering from childbirth, etc.
The question is not “is abstaining a sin?” The question that every couple that uses NFP should ask every cycle is “do we have a serious reason to abstain?” And its true - this question must not be taken lightly. If the reasons are selfish, then, yes, it could be a sin to use NFP to avoid pregnancy. Sometimes the reasons are life or death, sometimes not that serious, but still serious enough to postpone marital relations using God’s plan.
Does this help at all?
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Vincent
Guest
Know thyself.
NFP helps a woman to know more about her body.Not only is there nothing wrong with that, but more self-awareness is a good thing.
NFP helps a woman to know more about her body.Not only is there nothing wrong with that, but more self-awareness is a good thing.
- A woman who knows her body will know when to have conjugal relations to conceive a child.
- A woman who knows her body will know when not to have conjugal relations to not conceive a child.
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PassingThru
Guest
Hey Fiber,
We went round and round on this specific topic a few weeks ago. Here is a link with my first post at the top, and what follows is about 5 or 10 pages of back and forth on just the specific topic of what makes NFP acceptable. Never really reached any conclusion, but then again, these treads never do!
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=413198&page=5
Good Luck. Ignore if you already saw all of this.
We went round and round on this specific topic a few weeks ago. Here is a link with my first post at the top, and what follows is about 5 or 10 pages of back and forth on just the specific topic of what makes NFP acceptable. Never really reached any conclusion, but then again, these treads never do!
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=413198&page=5
Good Luck. Ignore if you already saw all of this.
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mark_a
Guest
If NFP were unacceptable, would you agree that contraceptive forms of “family planning”, “birth control”, or “Planned Parenthood”, would be unacceptable also?
Contraception doesn’t prevent pregnancy, it is designed to prevent abstinence.
For a historical Christian (including original Protestant Reformers) view of contraception, try this link:
touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=20-04-020-f
For historical Jewish, Orthodox, and Catholic teaching try this one:
ccli.org/nfp/morality/bible.php
While you may disagree with the articles, you will come to understand that the Catholic Church does make a valid, traditional, historical point.
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michaeldaniels
Guest
But it isn’t preventing pregnancy, because you are not trying to artificially prevent pregnancy or using a barrier to prevent…therefore the ability to create new life is there…and does happen at times…In NFP, life is not prevented.
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Pug
Guest
The naturally infertile married couples of the world are allowed to have relations. Knowledge or suspicion that they currently cannot conceive is no barrier to marital relations. 60 year old women may have relations. Pregnant people too. Also, couples have been allowed to chose not to have relations for a time. Otherwise men could never have gone to sea or served in the military.
The objective of NFP is to be aware of your fertility signs. Then the couple chooses to have relations at whatever is their natural fertility at the moment. Or, they choose not to. The Church allows married couples to refrain from intercourse if they deem that to be the correct course of action. The Church allows married couples to have lots of intercourse so long as the moment is appropriate.
What the Church is not into is having married couples choose to reduce the fertility of any particular act, among other things. A spermicide, for example, is designed to reduce the natural fecundity of the act in progress.
Couples are allowed to have sex at times when they think they probably or surely can’t conceive.
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FiberZilla
Guest
Sexual intercourse during non-fertile days is not open to new life. Abstaining during fertile days is a calculated act which allows sex to occur when the door to life is closed. Those sperm cells have no chance of finding a suitable, receptive ovum. This is biological contraception. The teaching doesn’t seem consistent.
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FiberZilla
Guest
Sexual immorality existed long before the condom. Blaming artificial birth control for the sexual revolution and decline of morals in modern times is like blaming guns for the epidemic of violence.
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mark_a
Guest
Interesting you should bring that up. The epidemic of violence, along with most of society’s ills, are due to the destruction of the family (in the opinion of more than one pope), which is the most basic unit of society.
In your opinion, what is the reason for the epidemic of violence in our culture?
Anyway, is the abortificient effect of the pill ok too?
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hellopeople
Guest
Even if popes are saying that, there is no evidence to back it up. Anyone that says birth control is causing sexual immorality doesn’t know much about statistics. Even if a study showed that pre marital sex has gone up a lot since the introduction of condoms it doesn’t prove anything.
Statistically you could make an equally convincing argument for sliced bread (if that came out at the same time as condoms) being the cause of sexual immorality.
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