What's 'natural' about Natural Family Planning

[mercygate]

No equipment? So you do it out in the bushes?

There’s nothing natural, when you interact with it in a planned way.

It’s like talking to a class about gravity and releasing a ball. You may think that you’re demonstrating gravity, but you’ve caused the experiment to be in being by interacting because the ball’s not naturally suspended above the ground in the first place. On this you should reach Chaos by Gleick

Would you be happier if we used a different word than “natural”? How about “incorrupt”. Incorrupt family planning.

I am convinced that you are so truculent on this question in order to dismiss it as “unnatural” as a means of justifying contracepted intercourse.

Hope it makes you feel better.

 

[Philthy]

But it’s not natural if you’re interacting with it in a planned way.

Here again you make your unsubstantiated claim that planning is unnatural. Are you avoiding responding to my request that you justify this claim or did you miss it? Either way you need to support your claim that planning is unnatural. Otherwise this thread is a waste of time and you know it.

 

[Em_in_FL]

I think you’re getting caught up in the semantics of the name “natural family planning” and not really understanding the Church’s reasoning for being against contraception…

Let’s go read the catechism…

2367
Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God.154 "Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of human and Christian responsibility."155

**2368
A particular aspect of this responsibility concerns the regulation of procreation. For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children. It is their duty to make certain that their desire is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood. :**Moreover, they should conform their behavior to the objective criteria of morality

When it is a question of harmonizing married love with the responsible transmission of life, the morality of the behavior does not depend on sincere intention and evaluation of motives alone; but it must be determined by objective criteria, criteria drawn from the nature of the person and his acts, criteria that respect the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love; this is possible only if the virtue of married chastity is practiced with sincerity of heart.156
2369
"By safeguarding both these essential aspects, the unitive and the procreative, the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the sense of true mutual love and its orientation toward man’s exalted vocation to parenthood."157

2370
Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality.158 These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, “every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil:159

Thus the innate LANGUAGE that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory LANGUAGE, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.160

The church isn’t against a married couple “planning” their family… quite the contrary! God gives us the *responsibility *to co-create… and He asks us to trust Him…

 

[Em_in_FL]

Here are the links to the catechism for your further reading on this subject…

usccb.org/catechism/text/pt3sect2chpt2art6.htm
usccb.org/catechism/text/pt2sect2chpt3art7.htm

 

[BeeSweet]

What about all the couples that start taking folic acid to reduce birth defects, or other herbal/medicinal processes in order to help? This is un-natural according to your church and therefore wrong.

You must therefore just allow for God’s planning and if you get a child with a birth defect, so be it.

Folic acid is a naturally occurring vitamin necessary for life. Lack of folic acid causes anemia. Both men and women need folic acid. It is completely natural to need and take folic acid, unlike condoms which are completely unnatural, and for which we have no need whatsoever, and synthetic hormone therapy used to suppress fertility and which in some cases aborts newly conceived life. Both condoms and other forms of contraception are completely unnatural. The Latin church forbids thwarting God’s plan with such things as condoms and other forms of contraception. Natural family planning is a chaste behavior which is completely in obedience to God’s plan.

 

[john_ennis]

Montalban,

The Church’s promotion of NFP and opposition to artificial contraception does not hinge on the quality of one being “natural” and one unnatural.

Let’s clarify: if someone makes the marital act something other than the life-giving and loving act that it was meant to be, that’s wrong. If each engagement in the act does not deny those qualities or seek to thwart them, then it’s not wrong.

The act of closely monitoring temperatures or other body functions or whatever, with the aim of either aiding or avoiding pregnancy, is–YOU"RE RIGHT–hardly natural, in a sense.

So what? All that means is that the name “NFP” is less than accurate. But you see, it’s not the absolute “naturalness” of NFP that makes it licit–it’s the quality of acknowledging that any engaging in the marital act must accept the God-created consequences of that act.

This discussion of naturalness is less important than the effort we’re giving it.

Peace.
John

 

[john_ennis]

I’ll just add that this criticizing anything involving planning as unnatural, and the understanding that true faith is supposed to mean we don’t plan or take precautions if we truly trust God, eventually leads to the realization that …

IF WE TRULY TRUSTED GOD WE WOULD SIT IN FRONT OF OUR PLATES AT THE SUPPER TABLE, AND SIMPLY PRAY THAT HE WILL CUT OUR MEAT INTO SMALL PIECES FOR US!

Peace.
John

 

[Montalban]

Here again you make your unsubstantiated claim that planning is unnatural. Are you avoiding responding to my request that you justify this claim or did you miss it? Either way you need to support your claim that planning is unnatural. Otherwise this thread is a waste of time and you know it.

Well I’ve been told here that the part of Natural Planning is to allow nature to take its course.

The ‘taking of its course’ means without interference.

If you ‘plan’ then you interfere.

It’s as ‘natural’ as if you stand in a forest with a hunting rifle and take advantage of the ‘natural’ way an animal acts, and then you shoot it.

There was nothing natural about its death, although there was a natural element there - and you planned around it.

I like your final comment though

 

[Montalban]

I’ll just add that this criticizing anything involving planning as unnatural, and the understanding that true faith is supposed to mean we don’t plan or take precautions if we truly trust God, eventually leads to the realization that …

IF WE TRULY TRUSTED GOD WE WOULD SIT IN FRONT OF OUR PLATES AT THE SUPPER TABLE, AND SIMPLY PRAY THAT HE WILL CUT OUR MEAT INTO SMALL PIECES FOR US!

Peace.
John

That just shows you that God gave us a brain and we go out into nature (which was created for us).

There’s nothing wrong with us interacting with it - except that Catholic Moral theology wants to pretend that one particular act somehow removes us from it, and it’s all natural

 

[Montalban]

Montalban,

The Church’s promotion of NFP and opposition to artificial contraception does not hinge on the quality of one being “natural” and one unnatural.

Yes, it does. It’s called Natural Law morality

Let’s clarify: if someone makes the marital act something other than the life-giving and loving act that it was meant to be, that’s wrong. If each engagement in the act does not deny those qualities or seek to thwart them, then it’s not wrong.

So you’re against people having sex whilst the wife’s pregnant, or either are infertile.

The act of closely monitoring temperatures or other body functions or whatever, with the aim of either aiding or avoiding pregnancy, is–YOU"RE RIGHT–hardly natural, in a sense.

So what? All that means is that the name “NFP” is less than accurate. But you see, it’s not the absolute “naturalness” of NFP that makes it licit–it’s the quality of acknowledging that any engaging in the marital act must accept the God-created consequences of that act.

This discussion of naturalness is less important than the effort we’re giving it.

Peace.
John

See above re: Natural Law.

The church says that God established certain laws and that when we go against these laws, that it’s not natural, and therefore immoral. The natural outcome of sex is a conception. Anything that interferes with that is therefore immoral.

That’s the church’s reasoning.

 

[john_ennis]

Well I’ve been told here that the part of Natural Planning is to allow nature to take its course.

The ‘taking of its course’ means without interference.

If you ‘plan’ then you interfere.

It’s as ‘natural’ as if you stand in a forest with a hunting rifle and take advantage of the ‘natural’ way an animal acts, and then you shoot it.

There was nothing natural about its death, although there was a natural element there - and you planned around it.

I like your final comment though

You’ve been told wrong. It’s not the “taking of its course” that determines the rightness or wrongness of one’s sexual behavior. If planning, as it takes place in NFP, makes NFP not actually “natural”, that’s okay.

Your characterization of Catholic moral theology is misinformed–despite what you may have heard from individuals–it is not the naturalness–as in nonplanning–which makes particular sexual behavior acceptable or not.

Where did you get that idea? I don’t think it’s in the catechism.

Peace.
John

 

[BeeSweet]

The church says that God established certain laws and that when we go against these laws, that it’s not natural, and therefore immoral. The natural outcome of sex is a conception. Anything that interferes with that is therefore immoral.

That’s the church’s reasoning.

That is not the Latin rite’s reasoning, that’s what you misunderstand to be the Latin rite’s reasoning. The natural outcome of sex between a fertile man and a fertile woman is conception. By your reasoning, you would have the Latin rite forbid sex between infertile couples, which it most certainly does not.

 

[john_ennis]

So you’re against people having sex whilst the wife’s pregnant, or either are infertile

.

Reread the way I phrased it. Having sex during an infertile period: has the couple made the act different, or has God allowed the procreative nature to manifest itself–or not–as He wills. Montalban, the fact that the couple knows that God has likely caused pregnancy to be impossible at a particular time, doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination mean that they are making the act something it isn’t.

Quite the contrary–they are going right along with things.

The church says that God established certain laws and that when we go against these laws, that it’s not natural, and therefore immoral. The natural outcome of sex is a conception. Anything that interferes with that is therefore immoral.

That’s the church’s reasoning.

Sorry. You’ll have to show me where the Church says something’s “not natural–therefore, it’s immoral.”

All of your argument has depended on this, and I assert that it’s a very faulty understanding.

If you can’t show this, let’s just call it quits.

Peace.
John

 

[Montalban]

.

Reread the way I phrased it. Having sex during an infertile period: has the couple made the act different, or has God allowed the procreative nature to manifest itself–or not–as He wills. Montalban, the fact that the couple knows that God has likely caused pregnancy to be impossible at a particular time, doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination mean that they are making the act something it isn’t.

Quite the contrary–they are going right along with things.

We’ll get back to this once you accept the Church’s teaching on Natural Law

.
Sorry. You’ll have to show me where the Church says something’s “not natural–therefore, it’s immoral.”

All of your argument has depended on this, and I assert that it’s a very faulty understanding.

If you can’t show this, let’s just call it quits.

Peace.
John

The amount of times I have to teach Catholics Catholicism!

Start here.
newadvent.org/cathen/09076a.htm

Note things such as
According to St. Thomas, the natural law is “nothing else than the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law” (I-II, Q. xciv). The eternal law is God’s wisdom…

From the catechism…
1955 The “divine and natural” law shows man the way to follow so as to practice the good and attain his end. The natural law states the first and essential precepts which govern the moral life. It hinges upon the desire for God and submission to him, who is the source and judge of all that is good, as well as upon the sense that the other is one’s equal. Its principal precepts are expressed in the Decalogue. This law is called “natural,” not in reference to the nature of irrational beings, but because reason which decrees it properly belongs to human nature: Where then are these rules written, if not in the book of that light we call the truth? In it is written every just law; from it the law passes into the heart of the man who does justice, not that it migrates into it, but that it places its imprint on it, like a seal on a ring that passes onto wax, without leaving the ring. The natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding placed in us by God; through it we know what we must do and what we must avoid. God has given this light or law at the creation.
scborromeo.org/ccc/para/1955.htm

Thus divorce is seen to be ‘immoral’ because of its relation to natural law…
2384 Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death. Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which sacramental marriage is the sign. Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture: the remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery: If a husband, separated from his wife, approaches another woman, he is an adulterer because he makes that woman commit adultery, and the woman who lives with him is an adulteress, because she has drawn another’s husband to herself.
scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2384.htm

In relation to contraception…
Deut. 23:1 - whoever has crushed testicles or is castrated cannot enter the assembly. Contraception is objectively sinful and contrary, not only to God’s Revelation, but the moral and natural law.
(et al)
scripturecatholic.com/contraception.html

Sexual intercourse is naturally ordered to procreation. This order, like the way leaves are ordered to produce food by undergoing photosynthetic activity in the presence of sunlight, exemplifies the natural law.

catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Faith/11-12-98/Morality2.html

It’s such a basic of Catholic Morality!

 

[Montalban]

That is not the Latin rite’s reasoning, that’s what you misunderstand to be the Latin rite’s reasoning. The natural outcome of sex between a fertile man and a fertile woman is conception. By your reasoning, you would have the Latin rite forbid sex between infertile couples, which it most certainly does not.

see post above with evidence from Catholic teaching

 

[BeeSweet]

Sexual intercourse is naturally ordered to procreation. This order, like the way leaves are ordered to produce food by undergoing photosynthetic activity in the presence of sunlight, exemplifies the natural law.

catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Faith/11-12-98/Morality2.html

This quote in context goes on to say:

In the Latin text of Humanae Vitae (Latin is the official language of the Church), the expression “per se destinatus” (in itself ordered) is used to indicate the natural relationship that exists between intercourse and procreation. What Church teaching opposes is the violation of the natural ordination between intercourse and the initiation of new life that God, Himself, has established. The Church does not oblige people to have as many children as possible, or to engage in sexual intercourse every time the wife appears to be fertile. She teaches that if the married spouses do have sexual union, that they do not deliberately attempt to negate the natural order that God established between the marital act and His power to create new life.

You can take anything you want out of context and twist its meaning to whatever distortions you want to make. I’m not falling for it, and neither will anyone who knows and accepts the truth.

There is absolutely nothing unnatural about having sex unless you are deliberately averting the natural consequences of having sex. When you have sex during infertility, it’s totally natural to not conceive a child. Using the knowledge of a woman’s fertility cycle to plan sexual relations to either have children or not is completely compatible with natural law, and completely compatible with God’s plan. Contraception is against God’s law and natural law. Timing sexual relations is well within acceptable practice according to both God’s law and natural law. You do not harm any testicles, or any other body part in planning your sexual relations according to your fertility cycles. Natural family planning is an excellent example of how:

The natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding placed in us by God; through it we know what we must do and what we must avoid. God has given this light or law at the creation.
scborromeo.org/ccc/para/1955.htm

I’m really at a loss for what you can’t understand here. It’s so blatantly clear.

 

[reganq]

Yes, it does. It’s called Natural Law morality

So you’re against people having sex whilst the wife’s pregnant, or either are infertile.

See above re: Natural Law.

The church says that God established certain laws and that when we go against these laws, that it’s not natural, and therefore immoral. The natural outcome of sex is a conception. Anything that interferes with that is therefore immoral.

That’s the church’s reasoning.

Not to take the bait or anything… Before I begin my real response. OP, please give your source for this statement. If I am truly doing something immoral by charting when I am fertile, I want to know.

Isn’t there also the aspect of bonding in intercourse? It seems that the op has taken that element out of the marital embrace and reduced it to just sex, just the motions of the act.

Keep in mind that the very act is also meant to unite husband and wife. Coming from someone who used to reject Church teaching, intercourse was not a bonding experience until we stopped using contraception.

Once we began charting our fertility, the marital act took on a whole new perspective. We know exactly when we are most likely to conceive. There is absolutely NOTHING unnatural about deciding to have intercourse when we are fertile, is there? Just as there is NOTHING unnatural about deciding to have intercourse when we do not appear to be fertile.

Natural Family Planning is selective, not necessarily spontaneous. Just as PP’s mentioned, farmers select the proper seasons to plant, grow and harvest crops. If the world went without farmers, we’d all be playing Survivorman.

Next time you sit down for a meal, be thankful that people are out there using common sense and planning things the way the Good Lord meant for us to do. Next time you see a baby, be thankful that his or her parents had the decency to listen to God’s call to be open to life and not abort it.

 

[Corki]

Quote:
Originally Posted by john ennis
Montalban,

The Church’s promotion of NFP and opposition to artificial contraception does not hinge on the quality of one being “natural” and one unnatural.

 

[JFonseka]

No equipment? So you do it out in the bushes?

There’s nothing natural, when you interact with it in a planned way.

It’s like talking to a class about gravity and releasing a ball. You may think that you’re demonstrating gravity, but you’ve caused the experiment to be in being by interacting because the ball’s not naturally suspended above the ground in the first place. On this you should reach Chaos by Gleick

Firstly, that’s a stupid theory, Newton’s laws of motion say otherwise, and currently that’s what is accepted, not GLEICK’s.
What is ‘naturally suspended’? Looking at newton’s first law of motion, if the ball is at rest whilst held up in the air, and then released with NO additional force acted on the ball by the hand and then the ball falls, there is an EXTERNAL FORCE, F= ma, mass of the ball x acceleration, acceleration due to gravity = 9.81 m/s^2, hence there is a gravitational force acting on the ball.

This is basic physics. Yes Newton’s 1st law of motion is standard and is applicable in daily life and not proven wrong unless at speeds close to the speed of light, so that analogy is horrible, because it’s all wrong. It IS demonstrating gravity by the principle of Newton’s 1st law of motion. It is the basis of classical mechanics even at 1st year physics in university.

Secondly stop being obstinate, just because it’s planned doesn’t mean it’s not natural.

Consider:

A lion ‘plans’ before he hunts down a gazelle, it’s not natural hunting because he planned?

Similarly, it’s not natural family planning because the mother and father ‘planned’?

Please use common sense.

 

[JFonseka]

Just Because It’s Planned Doesn’t Mean It’s Not Natural, There Are Millions Of Everyday Examples To Support This Without Having To Go Into Philosophy