Why is "Natural Family Planning" ok when other contraceptive methods are not?

[davidv]

Well, I think everyone recognizes that the act itself is different. If it wasn’t there would be not ABC, as it would do nothing.

And again, in all fairness, your post above did not demonstrate anything. You simply stated “Contracepted intercourse is intrinically disorder and immoral.” That is a statement, nothing more.

And it is backed by natural law and the authorative teaching of the Catholic Church.

I am not Christopher68, and was not defending his line of retorts. I am only pointing out that no one has used any line of logic not based on theology to display how sex is immoral when ABC is involved.

Immorality cannot be based on anything but theology. Without God, no one has any basis to declare anything moral or immoral. And, one can see discussions of this thinking in the Philosophy forum.

 

[PassingThru]

And it is backed by natural law and the authorative teaching of the Catholic Church.

Immorality cannot be based on anything but theology. Without God, no one has any basis to declare anything moral or immoral. And, one can see discussions of this thinking in the Philosophy forum.

Ehhh, OK then. I see you are not to interested in discussions on anything you might disagree with. My bad.

 

[davidv]

Ehhh, OK then. I see you are not to interested in discussions on anything you might disagree with. My bad.

Really? If I would not have wanted to discuss it, I wouldn’t have posted a comment.

 

[Christopher68]

If you read back about a dozen pages, we were discussing the same point, namely, the act itself. This is kind of like a “round 2” of the issue without getting into detail.

My only point would be, in all fairness, we haven’t really shown either way whether it is moral or immoral using any practical logic. Theologically, yes, as that is impossible to refute. As are many other beliefs. In a practical sense, however, it is not clear cut at all.

PassingThru,

You are exactly right about ‘practical logic’.

I tend to have a very ‘questioning’ demeanor - that’s how God made me. I ask a lot of ‘why’ type questions. If something doesn’t make sense to me, I will ask questions and attempt to learn more. However, there is nothing on this thread - or anywhere else that I am aware of - that has changed my opinion of NFP and ABC being essentially the same. On this thread in particular, the discussion seemed to be going in circles, which is why I told another poster that we would have to ‘agree to disagree’. I didn’t want to waste his time or my own.

The notion that there is somehow ‘good sex’ and ‘evil sex’ - within the confines of a loving marriage - is absurd. And let’s look at this in the broader picture. There are a lot of truly evil things in our world - war, famine, poverty, discrimination, racism, theft, violence, rape, etc. Again, the notion that two people who perhaps already have children, are wonderful spouses to each other, good parents to their children, valued employees at work, law-abiding and upstanding citizens, etc. - that wanting to physically pleasure each other is somehow wrong - that is a mentality that defies logic. It comes across not as reasoned or logical - but as micromanagement and behavior control to the Nth degree.

 

[Vico]

…
The notion that there is somehow ‘good sex’ and ‘evil sex’ - within the confines of a loving marriage - is absurd. …

The sacrament of marriage is ordered by its nature to the “… conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring…”. – Latin Cannonical Code (1983) 1061 §1.

The good and evil are expressed as “suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring”. There are pleasurable sexual activities that fall outside this defintion. So, perhaps as you say, a loving marriage has no restrictions, but certainly a sacramental marriage does.

 

[St_Francis]

Hi PassingThru
I realise from your post quoted below that I am using terms in a Catholic way and thus what I am saying is not clear to you. I am sorry about that and will try to be more clear.

OK, but then finish that thought off. After they abstain for those x number of days, they can have sex with no realistic risk of pregnancy, yes? Its like you gloss over that every time. Are we back to the “sacrificial” part of NFP giving you a pass on contraceptive mentalities again?

First of all, there are three things that are troublesome. The first is that the Church teaches that what is sinful is the use of abc to prevent conception.

A couple using NFP *will not *commit a sin because what they are doing to avoid conception is to *not have sex. *

A couple using abc *has *sex.

The *intent *of each couple is to avoid conception; however, the *means *differ. Couple 1 abstains from the marital embrace during the infertile period which God created women with to avoid conception; Couple 2 creates a outside change in the marital embrace to avoid conception.

Now, I am not asking that you understand this as sinful and not sinful, but can you see that the two methods have a fundamental difference?

Fine, I will ammend my statement. For 25 days a month, a couple utilizing NFP can have functionally contraceptive sex.

Sounds more like 21 out of 28 days, but yeah, more or less.

OK, good. Both can be used and viewed as contraception. ABC has properties that make it easier to fall into this mind set. So, these unspecified differences are enough to make one acceptable and one not? Hmmmmm.

I think that part of the problem you have been having with what I have been saying is that I do not think that each couple who uses abc has a contraceptive mentality either. But more on that later.

So you say this, above, and I assume you are somehow placing this as a consequence of ABC, yes?

I totally believe that the rise in “unplanned” pregnancies, etc., is due to the availability of abc, yes.

So after assigning the breakdown of the family in America on ABC and by direct association its users, you say I am putting words in your mouth when I say you are unfairly judging the mindset of ABC users? Ummmm, you just contradicted yourself in the span of 2 sentences.

As I mentioned above, I do not believe that each user as of abc has a contraceptive mentality, so, no, I do not think that I am “unfairly judging” those who use abc as individuals; I do not think to myself if I meet someone who mentions that she is using abc, Oh, how nasty, this is a person with a contraceptive mentality.

continued below

 

[St_Francis]

Continued from above

No, you really haven’t. You have brought in lots of other issues, but failed to address your first point. Ill repeat it here: *Using artificial birth control to frustrate the ends of the marital act while enjoying its pleasures is wrong. The pleasure is secondary, a gift to help unify the married couple. To take advantage of the pleasure without accepting the demands of the act is like stealing: taking something without paying for it.

The difference between using NFP and abc is that the former requires abstaining from the act when there is a serious reason to postpone children. It is moral to abstain from sexual activity because then you are also refraining from the pleasure.

Preventing procreation is not evil; taking the pleasure while avoiding conception is, because sexual activity and procreation need to be kept together.*

You haven’t shown how NFP doesn’t allow a couple to “take advantage of the pleasure without accepting the demands of the act”.

You are considering an overall look at the matter, whereas each act must be taken into account individually when considering sinfulness. Take a fire fighter who sets fires on various occasions: 1. during a training; 2. as a fire break in a forest fire; and 3. for his uncle who wants to collect the insurance on his business.

Only *one *of these is wrong; *however, *the fact that the other two occasions were all right does not mitigate the wrongness of the last fire-setting, does it?

In the same way, the *use *of abc to prevent conception is the wrong or sinful act, which of course cannot occur without actually having sex, because if the person using the abc were not at least having the intention of having sex, there would be no need for the abc, would there?

With NFP, there is no act of using abc, and there is no sex act to be frustrated because sex is abstained from during the period of fertility.

In other words, it is perfectly all right for a married couple to engage in the marital embrace at any time. And it is perfectly all right for the two to decide together to abstain at any time. Their having sex during the period of non-fertility is not wrong, nor is their abstaining during the fertile period wrong.

You haven’t shown how abstaining one night leads you to not “take pleasure while avoiding conception.”

You are considering this as an overall thing, whereas it is the individual acts as individual acts which are what need to be taken into account.

It is not wrong to want to avoid conception for a time, and it is not the desire or intention to avoid conception which is the problem. Where the problem lies is in *frustrating *the end or goal of the individual act as opposed to *avoiding *the act.

It seems you are drawing some very fine and predetermined lines to make a definition fit. “Preventing procreating is not evil; taking the pleasure while avoiding conception is.” Come on. NFP is basically DEFINED in the second half of that statement.

Not at all. NFP is the avoiding of the pleasure when conception might occur rather than the taking of the pleasure when conception might occur but using some artificial means to prevent it.

Look at it this way: say the average woman has 21 days of non-fertility and 7 days of quite possible fertility. The contraceptive mentality whines, but I don’t wanna take 7 days off! The NFP mentality says, we will abstain for 7 days. (By which I do not mean to imply that every abc user is whining that, nor that every NFP user is saying that… just talking about the mentality.)

I don’t think this will go anywhere.

I think that you are saying that you do not see the sin in the use of abc on an individual basis, and I will agree that that can be difficult to understand. I think that you might be able to understand the issue of the contraceptive mentality, but that you do not understand it, and I think that not every user of abc has that mentality.

I think you disagree with ABC because it is an artificial way to prevent pregnancy, it interferes with correctly ordered union, and the Catholic Church has taught against it since its inception.

I believe that all these things are true, yes.

That is absolutely fine with me.

But you do not believe that they are true, do you?

But stop trying to tell others what is in their own head. Or blaming them for the breakdown of society. Or whatever other things you think you know about them.

Here I am not telling others what is in their heads, because I am not saying that every user of abc has a contraceptive mentality. And along with that, I am not blaming each individual user of abc for the breakdown of society. I believe that there are many people who use abc who do not have a contraceptive mentality; but at the same time, I see that there is a contraceptive mentality in many people in our society, what I think used to be called a Playboy (referring to the magasine) mentality: that people “should be freeee to have sex…” which really means, that they should be able to have sex, under any circumstances, without concern wrt the possibility of creating a new human being. There are plenty of abc users who *do *have a contraceptive mentality, and I imagine that there are people who do not use abc who also have that mentality.

I think I have covered (and please excuse any reptitiousness) all your points except one, which was not in this post, and so I will look for it later and reply to it.

 

[PassingThru]

Holy Cow, I don’t think I have ever seen a post diced up this much before! Ill try and be brief.

Hi PassingThru
The first is that the Church teaches that what is sinful is the use of abc to prevent conception.
A couple using NFP *will not *commit a sin because what they are doing to avoid conception is to *not have sex. *
A couple using abc *has *sex.
The *intent *of each couple is to avoid conception; however, the *means *differ. Couple 1 abstains from the marital embrace during the infertile period which God created women with to avoid conception; Couple 2 creates a outside change in the marital embrace to avoid conception.
Now, I am not asking that you understand this as sinful and not sinful, but can you see that the two methods have a fundamental difference?

Yes, I see the difference quite plainly. I have said as much many times. This is a definition. My only contention is your phrase “…during the infertile period which God created women with to avoid conception.” This is an opinion at best. I could just as easily say “take advantage of the infertile period to have sex with the comfort of knowing there is no chance of pregnancy.” I feel this is deliberate wording.

You are considering an overall look at the matter, whereas each act must be taken into account individually when considering sinfulness.
In the same way, the use of abc to prevent conception is the wrong or sinful act, which of course cannot occur without actually having sex, because if the person using the abc were not at least having the intention of having sex, there would be no need for the abc, would there?
With NFP, there is no act of using abc, and there is no sex act to be frustrated because sex is abstained from during the period of fertility.
In other words, it is perfectly all right for a married couple to engage in the marital embrace at any time. And it is perfectly all right for the two to decide together to abstain at any time. Their having sex during the period of non-fertility is not wrong, nor is their abstaining during the fertile period wrong.

I can summarize all this down. If you are only looking at the act itself, and you believe any ABC will violate that act, then of course ABC is therefore wrong. Above you detailed that sex with ABC is wrong. You have defended this with the fact that ABC is wrong. Do you see how this doesn’t work to explain to someone why ABC is wrong? Also, you posted this in response to explain how a couple using NFP can not “take advantage of the pleasure without accepting the demands of the act” as you originally asserted. You still have not done so. Read above and tell me how this is addressed…?

Not at all. NFP is the avoiding of the pleasure when conception might occur rather than the taking of the pleasure when conception might occur but using some artificial means to prevent it.

Sigh. Agree. It is also a specific, scientific program designed to allow you to take pleasure when you are almost certain to not get pregnant. I love that you skip this EVERY TIME. I absolutely concede that ABC allows you to have sex during fertility. I have no disagreement that you say this is a sin. I do NOT understand how you can make assertions like “take advantage of the pleasure without accepting the demands of the act” is what makes ABC bad, but completely ignore when the *program *of NFP is designed to do exactly what you just said is forbidden. I see you making further definition gymnastics to somehow give logic to this position. I still fail to see it.

Also, I just want to say, you are the third person that does not want to look at NFP as a whole, but only as a series of distinct, individual decisions (which NFP most specifically is NOT). I can only assume because if you take NFP as a whole it starts to fail in almost all the same ways as ABC does. I find it interesting that Catholic teaching always seems to focus things like intent, or larger moral or spiritual reasonings, but in this case is does a 180 the other way. Hmmmmm.

Look at it this way: say the average woman has 21 days of non-fertility and 7 days of quite possible fertility. The contraceptive mentality whines, but I don’t wanna take 7 days off! The NFP mentality says, we will abstain for 7 days. (By which I do not mean to imply that every abc user is whining that, nor that every NFP user is saying that… just talking about the mentality.)

That is not the point. It is also speculation. It is also back to mentality which we both agree is irrelevant as it is not a distinguishing characteristic.

Again to recap where I think we are with this. You say ABC is wrong. Here are reasons that, to me, make sense, or are acceptable:
Biblical references: I won’t list them as I don’t have them memorized.
Catholic teaching: Absolutely nothing I can say to steer you away from your Church teaching.
Tradition: Pretty obvious.
Theology in general: Anything that is not observable or objective to us here and now.

What I do not accept is any of the logic that can be seen/observed/personal to us right now. All of the logic that has been used here in this thread fails to distinguish between NFP and ABC. Things surrounding: Open to children, Unitive, Natural, your “pleasure” argument. All of these thing boil down to relying on the “act” of ABC being predetermined to be immoral or otherwise unacceptable. Well, if that is what you are trying to prove, you can’t use it in its own proof.

 

[Vico]

PassingThru, we posted on this issue before and I think I may understand your position. Does this represent your thinking?

Definition:
NFP: avoiding most fertile times to minimize chance of conception.
ABC: devices, hormones, poisons, or sterilization, to minimize chance of conception.
Assume:

1. sinful to frustrate the natural power and purpose of the conjugal act
2. conjugal act includes avoidance behavior so therefore includes abstinance
3. period of consideration covers all days in a typical female reproductive cycle
   Conclusion: ABC and NFP are both sinful because or 1 for ABC and 2 for NFP.
   Corrolary: abstinance to avoid conception, at any time, is sinful because there is always a small chance of conception.
   Analysis: abstinance due to mutual lack of interest, prayer or fasting, poor health, danger to life, bad environment, is not sinful. (Generally, situations other than avoiding conception.)

 

[fix]

They’re the ‘same’ acts! The ‘intent’ is the same, and the ‘desired end result’ is the same - i.e. to enjoy sex with your partner without getting pregnant.

They are very different acts. The intent may be the same, yet the means are very different.

 

[fix]

If you read back about a dozen pages, we were discussing the same point, namely, the act itself. This is kind of like a “round 2” of the issue without getting into detail.

My only point would be, in all fairness, we haven’t really shown either way whether it is moral or immoral using any practical logic. Theologically, yes, as that is impossible to refute. As are many other beliefs. In a practical sense, however, it is not clear cut at all.

What do you mean by "practical’? The truth of the moral teaching has many proofs. What type of proof do you seek?

 

[PassingThru]

What do you mean by "practical’? The truth of the moral teaching has many proofs. What type of proof do you seek?

Hey fix, Ill respond to you first as your question is faster!

By practical, I mean not requiring any specific religious dogma, if you will. For example, I don’t need any specific Catholic or Lutheran teaching to know I shouldn’t kill my neighbor for not mowing his lawn. Or beat a child, or lie in a store to get free goods, etc. I don’t want to dive in to a theological debate on the genesis of these social standards. At this point it is a given that most sane people follow these guidelines without needing any one specific religious authority to derive these behaviors. Call it common sense if you will.

More specifically, if you believe that ABC wrong, you can say it is because of the bible, or tradition, or even Catholic teaching. “The Catholic Church teaches that artificially contracepted sex is forbidden” is not something I could argue against you for believing. However, if you say “ABC is forbidden because of X”, this is something different. Now X is on the table, and needs to be clearly applicable to ABC, but not to NFP (assuming NFP is being held as acceptable practice). This is why St Francis’ argument, to me, holds no water. The “X” here is that ABC allows you to “take advantage of the pleasure without accepting the demands of the act”. Well that may be true. But I think it is plain as day that NFP also allows this to occur. Therefore it is NOT a distinguishing characteristic. Most of these types of statements rely on the assumption that contracepted sex is wrong. You can not make that assumption if that is question we are trying to answer. The same goes for many other X’s that are brought up. I don’t want to list them all, but many have come up in this thread. So to answer your question, the practical part of my statement is the “X” that is used to establish a position. If it is something we can observe here and now, it needs to be clearly true. I haven’t seen one yet that is.

Does that help explain my thinking at all?

 

[St_Francis]

Holy Cow, I don’t think I have ever seen a post diced up this much before! Ill try and be brief.

Yes, I see the difference quite plainly. I have said as much many times. This is a definition. My only contention is your phrase “…during the infertile period which God created women with to avoid conception.”

Let me clarify quickly that I did not intend to imply that God created that period *in order that *people might avoid conception; my intention was to write: people avoid conception by avoiding having relations during the time created by God when fertility does not occur.

This is an opinion at best. I could just as easily say “take advantage of the infertile period to have sex with the comfort of knowing there is no chance of pregnancy.” I feel this is deliberate wording.

If a couple is taking advantage of the infertile period to *not *conceive… then they are *not *having sex, and you cannot say that they are *having *sex with the comfort of knowing there is no chance of pregnancy, because they are *not *having sex—which is the difference between abc and NFP.

I can summarize all this down. If you are only looking at the act itself, and you believe any ABC will violate that act, then of course ABC is therefore wrong. Above you detailed that sex with ABC is wrong. You have defended this with the fact that ABC is wrong. Do you see how this doesn’t work to explain to someone why ABC is wrong? Also, you posted this in response to explain how a couple using NFP can not “take advantage of the pleasure without accepting the demands of the act” as you originally asserted. You still have not done so. Read above and tell me how this is addressed…?

This is a little bit tricky because there is more than one way to use abc: one could use a condom or one could take the Pill.

If the act of intercourse is in and of itself not sinful (ie, between two people married to each other), then the use of abc would so render it, because simply putting on a condom with no expectation of sexual activity is not in and of itself wrong. Even taking the Pill without expectation of having sex would not be wrong (ie, for an unmarried girl to take for her acne [which may have its own problems aside from that, but they are not relevant here]). What causes the problem is that the people are doing two things at once for the purpose of frustrating the end of the marital act.

Look at it this way: if a surgeon mistakenly cut the tubes of a man rendering him otherwise healthy but unable to conceive (I think this is physically possible but am not great at anatomy ), that man would be considered *mutilated. *Why? Because part of him would not be fulfilling its function–it would be broken. And this would be true whether or not he was married.

In the same way, the function of the marital act is broken or mutilated when abc is used, because two otherwise innocuous actions come together to prevent the function of the marital act.

Sigh. Agree. It is also a specific, scientific program designed to allow you to take pleasure when you are almost certain to not get pregnant. I love that you skip this EVERY TIME. I absolutely concede that ABC allows you to have sex during fertility. I have no disagreement that you say this is a sin. I do NOT understand how you can make assertions like “take advantage of the pleasure without accepting the demands of the act” is what makes ABC bad, but completely ignore when the *program *of NFP is designed to do exactly what you just said is forbidden. I see you making further definition gymnastics to somehow give logic to this position. I still fail to see it.

Supposing a kid walked into my (imaginary) store and I gave him three candy bars. Would he then be able to justify taking another candy bar on that grounds?

So the fact that God gave us 3 weeks to have sexual relations without the potential of conception doesn’t mean that we get to turn around and frustrate the end of the marital act for the fourth week, does it?

So, from a theoretical standpoint, the couple which uses NFP has 3/4 of the pleasure–they abstain from the last quarter because they have a need to avoid conception. The couple which uses abc does not abstain, choosing instead to frustrate the end of the act in which they are engaging in order to get that last 1/4.

Also, I just want to say, you are the third person that does not want to look at NFP as a whole, but only as a series of distinct, individual decisions (which NFP most specifically is NOT).

The issue is complicated by the point I made above in which I pointed out that abc comes in different means, which causes difficulties in considering it wrt time.

Let’s look at it with just using condoms. Now, obviously, using condoms as they are meant to be used involves having sex with them, right? So every time a married couple has sex using a condom is committing a sin, because they are frustrating the end of the sexual act. Having sex is not the sin; the use of the condom while doing so is.

Now, if a couple uses a condom 28 times a month, they have sinned 28 times, even tho the wife is fertile only 7 of those times.

*continued below *

 

[St_Francis]

continued from above

I can only assume because if you take NFP as a whole it starts to fail in almost all the same ways as ABC does.

Now here you get into the issue of the Pill. The Pill is kind of like a program: you do it for the whole month. NFP is a program; you do it for the whole month.

However, the Pill frustrates the end of each act of marital intercourse, whereas the act of *abstaining *is not frustrating anything, because the act is not engaged in.

(This is the point I was hoping to clarify yesterday, but was too sick to do.) Remember that there are three aspects to every act: the intent, the means, and the end. Using abc is sinful *means; *using NFP is a means which is not sinful. Even tho both couples have the same *intent, *to avoid conception, that is not in and of itself sinful. The *end *of both “programs” is to avoid conception, but as this is not sinful, it is all right to use NFP.

I find it interesting that Catholic teaching always seems to focus things like intent, or larger moral or spiritual reasonings, but in this case is does a 180 the other way. Hmmmmm.

Not at all. Catholic moral teaching looks at all three. In other actions, the intent is what is sinful, and in still other cases, the end is what is sinful. This happens to be a case where the means is what is sinful, as in the end does not justify the means.

That is not the point. It is also speculation. It is also back to mentality which we both agree is irrelevant as it is not a distinguishing characteristic.

OK, the issue of the contraceptive mentality is different from the issue of the sinfulness of the use of artificial contraceptives but is of course related due to the fact that both issues center around abc. It is neither speculative nor unimportant, but I will set it aside for the moment so we can perhaps discuss it separately.

…What I do not accept is any of the logic that can be seen/observed/personal to us right now. All of the logic that has been used here in this thread fails to distinguish between NFP and ABC. Things surrounding: Open to children, Unitive, Natural, your “pleasure” argument. All of these thing boil down to relying on the “act” of ABC being predetermined to be immoral or otherwise unacceptable. Well, if that is what you are trying to prove, you can’t use it in its own proof.

IOW, you are saying that we are saying that using abc is wrong because using abc is wrong. I see what you are saying, and I hope that I have clarified this above so that you see what I am saying.

 

[PassingThru]

I will only quote one thing in your response to correct. I said:
“I could just as easily say “take advantage of the infertile period to have sex with the comfort of knowing there is no chance of pregnancy.” I feel this is deliberate wording.”
You responded with:

If a couple is taking advantage of the infertile period to *not *conceive… then they are *not *having sex, and you cannot say that they are *having *sex with the comfort of knowing there is no chance of pregnancy, because they are *not *having sex—which is the difference between abc and NFP.

I assume you just have this backwards? I said they are taking advantage of the infertile period, meaning they can and do have sex. What do you mean not have sex during the infertile period? You lost me here.

For the rest, I think you summed it up with your last line. Everything you are saying is relying on the fact that ABC is already an agreed upon wrong or immoral act. You need to reset to a point where neither ABC or NFP is right or wrong, and start your decision from there. If you go back and read what your response, I think you will see that nothing actually says WHY any of this is right or wrong. Just that it is. Your only statement that attempts to say why, is your first line of thought around “pleasure”. After repeating myself too many times already, I hope you can start to see how this line of thinking falls completely flat without the assumption that ABC is wrong. It just does. Period. Period. Period. I don’t mean to sound so blunt about it, but the fault in your logic is so large I don’t know how else to say it.

I think it is important to point out at this stage I am NOT making a case for any outcome. Nothing I have said has to do with ABC being right, or better, or in any way moral. I am only looking at the logic used to separate NFP from ABC, things I have not originally contended are true or false. If a contention is made, it needs to be supported on its own, independent of any preconceived assumption on ABCs morality.

 

[Rico_S]

. Now X is on the table, and needs to be clearly applicable to ABC, but not to NFP (assuming NFP is being held as acceptable practice). This is why St Francis’ argument, to me, holds no water. The “X” here is that ABC allows you to “take advantage of the pleasure without accepting the demands of the act”. Well that may be true. But I think it is plain as day that NFP also allows this to occur. Therefore it is NOT a distinguishing characteristic. Most of these types of statements rely on the assumption that contracepted sex is wrong. You can not make that assumption if that is question we are trying to answer.

Perhaps I can explain things that may make sense to you.

According to Church teaching, the marital act must be both procreative and unitive. Procreative does not mean “open to life” and so ignore any argument that includes that. Procreative, as defined/intended/interpreted by the church means ordered toward life. I had saved a link to a nice article about this concept, but it is a dead link now and I can’t find it. Essentially, a sexual act that is procreative looks, in every aspect, like baby making sex. Whether or not a baby is a possibility is not at issue at all (infertile couples, menopause, etc). The “why” can get pretty theological…but I know you aren’t interested in going there, as one can argue a theological basis for pretty much anything.

Based on this definition contracepted sex is not procreative b/c intercouse with a condom, with intentionally suppressed ovulation, or with withdrawing etc. is not baby making sex (none of these things would be present in baby making sex). But sex while avoiding with NFP is still ok by this definition b/c it is essentially baby making sex. If you were trying to get pregant the act would be the same…only the timing would be different.

 

[hellopeople]

Perhaps I can explain things that may make sense to you.

According to Church teaching, the marital act must be both procreative and unitive. Procreative does not mean “open to life” and so ignore any argument that includes that. Procreative, as defined/intended/interpreted by the church means ordered toward life. I had saved a link to a nice article about this concept, but it is a dead link now and I can’t find it. Essentially, a sexual act that is procreative looks, in every aspect, like baby making sex. Whether or not a baby is a possibility is not at issue at all (infertile couples, menopause, etc). The “why” can get pretty theological…but I know you aren’t interested in going there, as one can argue a theological basis for pretty much anything.

Based on this definition contracepted sex is not procreative b/c intercouse with a condom, with intentionally suppressed ovulation, or with withdrawing etc. is not baby making sex (none of these things would be present in baby making sex). But sex while avoiding with NFP is still ok by this definition b/c it is essentially baby making sex. If you were trying to get pregant the act would be the same…only the timing would be different.

I think you explained this well, but no one can still convince me how this isn’t just mental gymnastics. I can’t fathom, in my head, that God would be concerned if you wore some rubber on your penis or not.

 

[PassingThru]

Perhaps I can explain things that may make sense to you.

According to Church teaching, the marital act must be both procreative and unitive. Procreative does not mean “open to life” and so ignore any argument that includes that. Procreative, as defined/intended/interpreted by the church means ordered toward life. I had saved a link to a nice article about this concept, but it is a dead link now and I can’t find it. Essentially, a sexual act that is procreative looks, in every aspect, like baby making sex. Whether or not a baby is a possibility is not at issue at all (infertile couples, menopause, etc). The “why” can get pretty theological…but I know you aren’t interested in going there, as one can argue a theological basis for pretty much anything.

Based on this definition contracepted sex is not procreative b/c intercouse with a condom, with intentionally suppressed ovulation, or with withdrawing etc. is not baby making sex (none of these things would be present in baby making sex). But sex while avoiding with NFP is still ok by this definition b/c it is essentially baby making sex. If you were trying to get pregant the act would be the same…only the timing would be different.

I hear ya Rico. I have heard this a few times. I only see this logic working if you use a narrow definition of NFP, and look at NFP as a series of almost independent decisions. If you follow these pre-defined “rules” as to how you look at NFP, then yes, you are correct. I do not accept this view that NFP is simply a one time decision to not have sex. It is a systems specifically tailored to avoid conception over indefinite periods of time. How someone can deny this, is beyond me. So, if you look at NFP as an actual system or plan, it fails just as ABC fails. You just defined “Procreative” as “ordered toward life”. I would contend that a system specifically and successfully designed to avoid life for an indefinite amount of time is most definitely NOT ordered toward life. Again, your rules going into the question determine its result. It is fine if you choose to accept those rules. If you do not have these preconceived limits, it fails.

I could just as easily put my own rules on my own beliefs and make it work as well. There would be nothing you could say to undermine my religious basis for these rules. But it wouldn’t make the result any more valid. (ie, my rules encompass a greater view, largely ignoring individual sexual acts and focusing on overall intents and effects)

This is why early in the discussion we largely looked past “open to life” issues as not conclusive to any one system.

 

[Rico_S]

I hear ya Rico. I have heard this a few times. I only see this logic working if you use a narrow definition of NFP, and look at NFP as a series of almost independent decisions. If you follow these pre-defined “rules” as to how you look at NFP, then yes, you are correct. I do not accept this view that NFP is simply a one time decision to not have sex. It is a systems specifically tailored to avoid conception over indefinite periods of time. How someone can deny this, is beyond me.

Let me try this.

Every sex act must be both procreative (not necessarily open to life…blah, blah, blah) and unitive.

A marriage must be **open to life **except when there is serious reason to not be. It is ok for a marriage to be closed to life under certain circumstances. It is ok for people who are not “open to life” (ie avoidng pregnancy) to have sex, b/c the act itself doesn’t have to be open to life. However the act must still be procreative. The only way to licitly achieve that end (have sex and avoid pregnancy) is to use NFP to have “procreative” sex on days where conception is not likely.

The use of contraceptives is illicit, not b/c it is wrong to have sex while trying to avoid pregnancy, it is b/c the sex act is no longer “procreative” as defined by the church.

 

[Holly3278]

Natural Family Planning is not a method of contraception. I think that is where you are getting messed up at. Natural Family Planning is simply a way of planning how and when you are going to have your children. I hope this makes some sense.