Why the conversations explaining why NFP is moral don't work

[ahs]

The most easy to understand example of this would be a dispensation from Mass. Now, can that be abused? Sure, and does it mean that all one has to do is decide for themselves what is a good reason and go from there? No, they must seek counsel and then be dispensed, (or not dispensed)

NFP needs to be looked at like this.

First, it cuts both ways. You just suggested that a couple needs a dispensation to use NFP to attempt to get pregnant. Not all NFP use is for avoiding.

Second, and I will just quote exactly what I said to Mr. Carroll because it is the exact same thing he said:

“[He] claimed that “NFP is a dispensation”. It’s now [your] burden of proof to show where the Church has explicitly granted this dispensation for couples to chart their cycles. You also bear the burden of proof to show the specific days that the Church requires a couple to have sex on, since every dispensation is related to an act (attending Mass, fasting, etc…) which has a specific requirement.
Pius XII was speaking about sexual intercourse - exempting husband and wife from the positive debt for whatever period. NFP is not a withholding of the marital debt…it’s charting cycles and gathering information. Couples who practice NFP often DO have sex. Unless you can show where married couples are required to have sex on fertile days in any given cycle, the claim of “dispensation” remains [ridiculous] and is NOT supported by any Church teaching. And unless you can show that NFP is ONLY for couples who wish to avoid conception, your whole premise here falls flat. And in fact, NFP is used very often by couples TRYING to conceive. This makes [your]claim even more illogical because now [you have] just claimed that attempting to procreate with the help of charting requires a dispensation. [Are you] going to show that the Church has a defined schedule for marital sex, as it has for participating in the Mass? [Please] present for us the prescribed sex schedule for couples which the Church has instituted by her Authority.”

 

[ahs]

LOL way to pimp the article! I have enjoyed your writings on the subject though we definitely disagree.

Meanwhile Muslims are having an average of 8 children. They must not have any grave reasons to avoid…

Perhaps they could use this as a recruiting tool for frustrated Catholic husbands…

Thanks!

Muslims could either be a red herring argument, or a non-sequitur, (maybe a strawman?)…nothing to do with whether a couple has a serious motive to avoid conception or the licitness of NFP use.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

First, it cuts both ways. You just suggested that a couple needs a dispensation to use NFP to attempt to get pregnant. Not all NFP use is for avoiding.

Second, and I will just quote exactly what I said to Mr. Carroll because it is the exact same thing he said:

“[He] claimed that “NFP is a dispensation”. It’s now [your] burden of proof to show where the Church has explicitly granted this dispensation for couples to chart their cycles. You also bear the burden of proof to show the specific days that the Church requires a couple to have sex on, since every dispensation is related to an act (attending Mass, fasting, etc…) which has a specific requirement.
Pius XII was speaking about sexual intercourse - exempting husband and wife from the positive debt for whatever period. NFP is not a withholding of the marital debt…it’s charting cycles and gathering information. Couples who practice NFP often DO have sex. Unless you can show where married couples are required to have sex on fertile days in any given cycle, the claim of “dispensation” remains [ridiculous] and is NOT supported by any Church teaching. And unless you can show that NFP is ONLY for couples who wish to avoid conception, your whole premise here falls flat. And in fact, NFP is used very often by couples TRYING to conceive. This makes [your]claim even more illogical because now [you have] just claimed that attempting to procreate with the help of charting requires a dispensation. [Are you] going to show that the Church has a defined schedule for marital sex, as it has for participating in the Mass? [Please] present for us the prescribed sex schedule for couples which the Church has instituted by her Authority.”

I fully understand your position. I also fully understand why I don’t agree. I was not saying it is a dispensation but only that there is some parallel between the two.

NFP as taught in the majority of cases is a failure. period. As soon as we can have honest discussions about why we can address the HUGE elephant in the room of Catholic marriage, but until then we can expect more of the same. arguments for ABC, SS"M", and communion for the divorced and attempted “remarried”. We will lose these battles until we can more fully understand the purpose of marriage and family. And yes, NFP’s marketing is a big part of the problem.

I can bottom line it for you.

You cannot expect a Catholic couple to be with the Mind of God in regards to being Co-creators, if we don’t even know what married means.

 

[LongingSoul]

We are a big NFP extended family raised with a fairly thorough Catholicity. I note that we are quite unusual amongst our peers and contemporaries. Apart from these Catholic internet sites I’ve never encountered this weird attitude of superiority about NFP or the quiverfull types. Doing natural family planning is a commitment of love and a perfecting of a marital dance that innately hones a type of respect and generosity and godly conformity. It involves self discipline and sacrifice and submission to God and nature.

Now to address these couples… these people that have said the yes to respecting their sexual gift for the entirity of their marriage and prior to it… as having selfish, contraceptive attitudes is just a crime. An absolute crime.

The true contraceptive mentality… the true selfishness and sinfulness does NOT lie with these couples. This is not where the war against contraception should start or even moderately lie. As Catholics, we should esteem those couples rather than counting their kids, their cars and tut tutting from your ivory tower of self righteousness.

 

[LongingSoul]

LOL way to pimp the article! I have enjoyed your writings on the subject though we definitely disagree.

Meanwhile Muslims are having an average of 8 children. They must not have any grave reasons to avoid…

Perhaps they could use this as a recruiting tool for frustrated Catholic husbands…

Well that says it all.

 

[ahs]

I fully understand your position. I also fully understand why I don’t agree. I was not saying it is a dispensation but only that there is some parallel between the two.

NFP as taught in the majority of cases is a failure. period. As soon as we can have honest discussions about why we can address the HUGE elephant in the room of Catholic marriage, but until then we can expect more of the same. arguments for ABC, SS"M", and communion for the divorced and attempted “remarried”. We will lose these battles until we can more fully understand the purpose of marriage and family. And yes, NFP’s marketing is a big part of the problem.

I can bottom line it for you.

You cannot expect a Catholic couple to be with the Mind of God in regards to being Co-creators, if we don’t even know what married means.

Amen to that. I don’t know if I would say “the majority of cases”, but I agree 100% with you that NFP does get mis-marketed in some parishes and this is causing exactly what you say…“arguments for ABC, SS"M”, and communion for the divorced and attempted “remarried”."

 

[Rob_Arnzen]

I do not believe that contraception is evil, especially after I visited South Africa and poor areas in Central America. I also do not think that those couples that use NFP as contraception are sinning.

Artificial contraception is immoral. NFP is not artificial contraception and as long as it used for a good reason is not immoral.

.

 

[hydin]

Major issue with NFP is the use of a personal definition of “Serious reason”. I need a nicer car, lake house, vacation etc. seem to not be serious… If you have a serious reason it is licit. If not, it is simply another method of contraception. This is because your reason for using NPF is so you don’t have a kid because you want the pleasure but not the risk. No man/woman “naturally” wants to avoid sex for those days. It is a deliberate act to avoid fertility. If you wonder if your reason is a serious reason it most likely is not…

FYI, personally I was told by a Priest at engaged encounter that the pill was OK as long as we wanted kids someday. When you use the pill or other methods when your spouse turns you down the reason becomes “he/she didn’t want to” God’s plan avoids that pressure as the couple works together and comes to a joint decision…and the spouse with less sex drive is not blamed… Wish I had known this 25 years ago…

 

[Abu]

hydin #68
I was told by a Priest at engaged encounter that the pill was OK as long as we wanted kids someday.

That is precisely the sort of dissent which became rampant in the 1960’s and beyond, which trashed the explicit and salutary teaching of Casti Connubii (Pope Pius XI, 1930), and Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, 1968, which both explain the evils of contraception and encourage, where salutary, the use of NBR for serious, just and grave reasons.

 

[Sophie_Lawrence]

more.

Emphasis mine:

Here we see that it is “new” theory. And that it is indeed others business not just the priest and that there is propaganda involved that people should not be a part of.

The new theory being referred to is not the church teaching of avoiding fertile time. The Church addressed that by answering an inquiry in the 1800’s regarding if couples avoid time where the woman is fertile and whether it was immoral behavior. The church answered that such couples should not be disturbed, it was not immoral.

The new theory was how to determine fertility. I am guessing that at this point temperature shifts were being used to determine fertility. Billings started in the 1950’s to develop the method utilizing mucus.

Also, the address to midwives was a talk addressed to a conference of Italian midwives. Its focus was to address challenges Italian midwives faced with h their patients. It, I believe was written in Italian, and not Latin. Historically, Italy was only a few years out of WW II, at that point. I don’t pretend to understand what societal factors were occurring in Italy to necessitate a his talk.

It isn’t an encyclical.

 

[Sophie_Lawrence]

“…may exempt…from the obligatory, positive debt…” He’s talking about sex. For serious motives, a couple may practice abstinence “for a long period, or even the entire period of matrimonial life…”.

And, no, it’s not a dispensation. To cliam that it is, one would have to first establish the prescribed schedule by which the Church expects couples to have sex. I address this logical fallacy as well in this article:

CMTV’s ‘Reply’ to ‘A Catholic Answer to ‘The Scandal of NFP’’ Refuted

Agreeing that “debt” refers to relations between husband and wives.

Debt does not refer to a number of children we give God. He actually gives them to us.

 

[Rau]

The new theory being referred to is not the church teaching of avoiding fertile time. The Church addressed that by answering an inquiry in the 1800’s regarding if couples avoid time where the woman is fertile and whether it was immoral behavior. The church answered that such couples should not be disturbed, it was not immoral.

The new theory was how to determine fertility. I am guessing that at this point temperature shifts were being used to determine fertility. Billings started in the 1950’s to develop the method utilizing mucus.

Also, the address to midwives was a talk addressed to a conference of Italian midwives. Its focus was to address challenges Italian midwives faced with h their patients. It, I believe was written in Italian, and not Latin. Historically, Italy was only a few years out of WW II, at that point. I don’t pretend to understand what societal factors were occurring in Italy to necessitate a his talk.

It isn’t an encyclical.

Arguably, the day will come when with essentially no effort, we will know accurately our fertility. It will never be wrong to “know” such facts. The decisions we make in life will continue to be judged by God. The user of NFP makes many good decisions in respect of Church teaching. Why do we obsess whether he might possibly make some poor decisions?

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

Arguably, the day will come when with essentially no effort, we will know accurately our fertility. It will never be wrong to “know” such facts. The decisions we make in life will continue to be judged by God. The user of NFP makes many good decisions in respect of Church teaching. Why do we obsess whether he might possibly make some poor decisions?

It is not bad to obsess over poor decisions people may make with tools or talent or information. That is the basis of moral discussion within the context of theology. It always has been. Nuclear energy is good but we rightly obsess over what might be done.

A gun can be used to defend life. It can be used to protect yourself or others. It can indeed be quite a good thing. And the tool and information of a gun can indeed be used to achieve good things. The protection of the innocent. But we rightly obsess and talk about guns. We emphasize proper use and education and there is rarely much debate on what serious reasons are to employ it. The Church and most countries have laws to the subject clearly defining and restricting them.
now, we can see that especially in the USA we debate this subject ad nausim. But we are allowed to do so. Even on CAF no matter what side of the fence you fall on with respect to gun ownership, there are things that can be agreed upon. For instance we can all agree that many people use guns wrongly. Everyone agrees with that statement. But with NFP that statement gets a lot of emotional push back.

I hold opposite opinions on the two subjects. I am a supporter with gun ownership. I defend my right to own and use a gun. And I think many people should be armed or at least be educated about guns. But with NFP I favor more of an anti gun attitude. That ownership and employment of the tool be reserved to those who have reason to have one.