Traditional Catholic's approach on Natural Family Planning

[otjm]

Of course, but I’m talking about the Church giving more guidance on what constitutes a serious reason.

Your posts continue to insinuate that anyone who wants more guidance on this issue is afraid of thinking for himself, which I hardly consider a fair assessment of the situation. I also think an examination of today’s Catholic population - and its horrendous faith formation - would seriously undermine your argument based on what adults should be able to grasp; the fact is, I think, that many are nowhere close to what they should be able to do.

I think the Church has given guidance on the issue; it has aid that the decision is aa serious opne. I think I have also said that giving specific examples is problematic as too many people take those as limiting when they are not necessarily meant to be. Take graduate school: Is the Church going to say that is a serious issue? There are some that even if the Church did say so, would say that it was wrong; others would start to try to expand beyond where it was meant to go.

I think it is a given that some people are going to misuse freedom. It is also a given that others are going to do their best to avoid freedom, and demand answers that they themselves are responsible to come up with. The rest are going to seek information from the Church (it must be serious), take it in prayer, and do their best, realizing that later they may look at the decision as not what they would later choose to do, but was the best they could come up with at the time.

I agree that people are terribly catechized; I agree whole heartedly. I disagree that in this issue, people need examples. People who don’t get this are people who have no desire to hear about ABC vs NFP; that isn’t an issue about examples but about accepting the guidance of authority.

I wa taught that the issue of spacing children was to be decided in the same light that I would make any of the most serious decisions of my life - vocation: if marriage, spouse; and any decision that would significantly impact the life of my family. As I noted in a previous thread, purchasing a car was not one of them.

None of that came from any document; it cvame from teachers who were true to the Magisterium. and we should be able to figure out by now that if a teacher is not true to the Magisterium, examples may be more than slightly problematic. Given that my teachers were true, it just wasn’t the problem you seem to be making it to be.

Given the level of sacrifice that both parties are required to bring to the table if NFP is going to work, I really don’t worry too much about their decision making. I would worry more about the teachers than the issue of concrete examples. Each situation is unique to the individuals involved; one couple may find that the stress level is the same in their family as another family, but their reaction to and tolerance of stress may be different. and example is not going to suffice in this instance, and may do more harm than good.

Following Christ calls for maturity, because the proper use of the freedom He gave us calls for mature decsions in how to use or respond to that freedom. Defining “serious” is all too much like defining “honesty”. If you have to give examples, there may be a significant problem afoot that the examples will not address.

 

[Sure]

I would like to propose the idea that NFP is used in two ways:

1. Spacing of children
2. Postponement of pregnancy for extended times.

In the case of spacing, NFP seeks to do what Nature sometimes cannot do on her own, namely space children 2-3 years apart. If everything worked as it should the babies come 2-3 years apart which works quite well. For those where the natural spacing does not occur, there is recourse to NFP. In this case, the spacing is not so much done for a “serious” reason as it is done to approximate Nature. This is a good use of NFP

The second use would require more serious reasons, indeed. The second use is not attempting to “remedy” Nature but rather is attempting to avoid pregnancy for a serious reason. I would say the threshhold at which this becomes a moral activity is significantly higher than when NFP is merely used to “space” children. I will say (and please be charitable in your responses) that in the case of a newly married couple, if there is serious reason to avoid pregnancy for an extended period of time at the beginning of a marriage, then perhaps there is reason enough to postpone the marriage itself.

I am not claiming this to be official Church teaching but I think that it is consistent with what the Church teaches and makes sense as moral theology.

I’m interested in hearing what you have to say and further developing this concept.

God bless!

 

[otjm]

I would like to propose the idea that NFP is used in two ways:

1. Spacing of children
2. Postponement of pregnancy for extended times.

In the case of spacing, NFP seeks to do what Nature sometimes cannot do on her own, namely space children 2-3 years apart. If everything worked as it should the babies come 2-3 years apart which works quite well. For those where the natural spacing does not occur, there is recourse to NFP. In this case, the spacing is not so much done for a “serious” reason as it is done to approximate Nature. This is a good use of NFP

The second use would require more serious reasons, indeed. The second use is not attempting to “remedy” Nature but rather is attempting to avoid pregnancy for a serious reason. I would say the threshhold at which this becomes a moral activity is significantly higher than when NFP is merely used to “space” children. I will say (and please be charitable in your responses) that in the case of a newly married couple, if there is serious reason to avoid pregnancy for an extended period of time at the beginning of a marriage, then perhaps there is reason enough to postpone the marriage itself.

I am not claiming this to be official Church teaching but I think that it is consistent with what the Church teaches and makes sense as moral theology.

I’m interested in hearing what you have to say and further developing this concept.

God bless!

In Janet Smith’ s talk Contraception - Why Not?, she notes how a child can act to stablalize a marriage; I beleive it is in there that she talks of the incidence of divorce among couples who have children right away, as opposed to those who don’t.

Whether or not postponing a child for a couple of years is reason to postpone the marriage may be a matter of the individual circumstances of the parties, and may not of necessity be a reason to postpone children. I suspect however, that in the larger majority of situations, especially given the fact that in them ABC is likely to be an 80% to 90% likelyhood or better, that the whole idea of marriage is skewed by the parties.

Part of the divorce rate - a very large portion of it - is due to the overall immaturity of the couples and the secular ideas and images that people have nowadays. That is due in combination to societal images they are bombarded with daily from the time of toddlers, and parental raising. The Church - meaning the priests, bishops, religious educators and youth leaders - is only indirectly able to impact this; the vast majority of it comes from the parents, who, sadly, were raised that way. We are two generations into that sewer and the third one heading that direction. Blaming the Pope for not putting something in an encyclical, or the bishop for not putting it in a pastoral letter, or the priest for not putting it into a homily is begging the question. The parents are not reading or listening; don’t confuse them with the facts, as they already have their mind made up.

It is a hard fact to acknoledge, but people have been failing to follow God’s ways since the time of Adam; the likelyhood of them all changing and doing so has to do with cold stuff in hot places. If we are to get better at doing so; if a greater number of people will seek to do so, is going pretty much to be a one on one issue. And it is becoming more and more difficult as media becomes more and more secular.

My solution was simply to ban television. We read books and listened to music, and did not watch anything but an occasional movie. And we had a lesson in modesty when we went to the gorcery store and passed through the checkout line.

 

[Paradox2080]

WOW, thank you to everyone who has expressed their views on this matter. There is some fantastic advice in here!

 

[browser1]

from the outset NFP sounds like a form of contraception, and looking into it, it is exactly that. Pope Pius XI was against it. Having said that, I can see why couples would want to use it. They would like to believe that it is a legitimate, that is, ‘moral’ way of avoiding pregnancy

www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/refuting_NFP.html
This article is not the only one of its kind out there

 

[Red_Meg]

from the outset NFP sounds like a form of contraception, and looking into it, it is exactly that. Pope Pius XI was against it. Having said that, I can see why couples would want to use it. They would like to believe that it is a legitimate, that is, ‘moral’ way of avoiding pregnancy

mostholyfamilymonastery.c…uting_NFP.html
This article is not the only one of its kind out there

Umm, no offense, but referencing a tiny group of fringe sedevacantists isn’t going to get you very far here.

This whole question has been beaten to death on other threads several times already, as has the (selective!) interpretation of Pius XI used in the article you cited.

If there’s something specific in the article you find to be a very compelling argument, perhaps you could address that part, concretely, here? Otherwise, I think you’ll just create a lot of heat and very little light by asserting that NFP is a form of contraception, without backing up the claim in any substantive way.

Margaret

 

[Sure]

from the outset NFP sounds like a form of contraception, and looking into it, it is exactly that. Pope Pius XI was against it. Having said that, I can see why couples would want to use it. They would like to believe that it is a legitimate, that is, ‘moral’ way of avoiding pregnancy

www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/refuting_NFP.html
This article is not the only one of its kind out there

Go search the last thread on NFP in this forum when we had a couple of “visitors” from the MHFM group. Their argument was thoroughly dismantled.

It was published by the Vatican as advice to priests from the Penitentiary in the mid 1800’s and was probably a common teaching from before that.