Wife uses contraception

[nkelly]

Hello all,

this is something that’s been bothering me for a while now…

My wife uses contraception because she’s afraid of becoming pregnant again after having post-partum depression with our other children. She was hospitalized on one occasion…

I’ve brought up the subject of NFP a few times and she’s not having any of it. She fears it’s unreliable and she’s of the mindset that it’s her body and she controls it.

In this situation am I culpable by having marital relations? My conscience is uneasy about this.

God bless,
Noel.

 

[1ke]

No, you are not culpable nor are you required to refuse relations.

As the spouse who is against contraception the requirements on you are to never use contraception yourself (ie, condom, vasectomy, etc), and to continue to periodically discuss the situation with your wife and attempt to convince her to stop contracepting.

There are good resources at www.omsoul.com and the www.ccli.org website has a page on reliability, since that seems to be her big concern.

I hope that your wife will one day see the error of her ways, keep praying!

 

[gardenswithkids]

nkelly:

Hello all,

this is something that’s been bothering me for a while now…

My wife uses contraception because she’s afraid of becoming pregnant again after having post-partum depression with our other children. She was hospitalized on one occasion…

I’ve brought up the subject of NFP a few times and she’s not having any of it. She fears it’s unreliable and she’s of the mindset that it’s her body and she controls it.

In this situation am I culpable by having marital relations? My conscience is uneasy about this.

God bless,
Noel.

Hi Noel,

I think this reading the “vademecum for confessors” document may help you. It includes some guidelines such as what 1ke referred to when one spouse refuses to stop contracepting. If you are agonizing over your wife using contraception, it may help you personally. But your conscience is uneasy for good reason because contraception is wrong.

Even if you aren’t fully culpable for your wife’s actions, spouses are supposed to help each other get to heaven. While people who fear they can’t get out of mortal sin when their spouse contracepts should not loose hope, neither should they become complacent with their spouses serious sin. It might be easy to say, “it’s not my fault so I won’t do anything about it.” That would be wrong. Even if you may not be the one contracepting, you really do need to pray for your wife and make efforts to help her understand the Church teachings. If you don’t fully understand why the Church teaches against contraception, learn them.

You may not be the one contracepting, but you are still her husband and husbands should help their wives grow in holiness. You know that your wife should not be using contraception. Additionally, some method of contraception can be abortificants. One suggestion: while your wife refuses to rely on NFP, perhaps you can abstain during her fertile times. Maybe she could begin charting or you could use a rough approximation. That might help prevent you from becoming complacent with her sin, and may help her to break away from reliance on artificial contraception.

God bless you.

 

[nkelly]

Thanks gardenswithkids, that’s very helpful.

God bless you too!
Noel.

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

Pax vobiscum!

One thing you may want to do is to try and convince her to come to a NFP class with you. If you’ve only discussed it with her yourself and it hasn’t worked, then perhaps if she got a full explanation of it from someone trained in teaching it then it might work.

In Christ,
Rand