I realize that current Church teaching says NFP is okay in extreme circumstances. However, I have decided that I disagree with these teachings and with the clergy that support them.
Common sense led me to question the use of NFP to avoid pregnancy. It sounds simplistic, but I kept thinking that purposely avoiding pregnancy undermined God’s control and authority. It tells God no and assumes that you know better.
So, once again, I asked the question and looked for an answer. I read the NFP material, the Priests For Life site, the Catechism, etc. All fallible.
Enter “Casti Connubii,” a papal encyclical issued in 1931… ex cathedra. Pope Pius XI’s statements in this document are infallible, meaning that they come straight from the Holy Spirit, and all Catholics are bound to this teaching. Nothing can change it, nothing can declare it null and void, nothing can modify it.
Marriage has one sole, primary purpose: to procreate and educate children. This is also the primary purpose of sex. Here is a quote from the document:
“For in matrimony as well as in the use of the matrimonial right [sex] there are secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider so long as they are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved.”
It’s interesting that when I learned about the purpose of marriage, I learned (or at least perceived) that these two purposes were equal. That was wrong. But, I digress.
Now, keeping all that in mind, here is another quote from the encyclical.
“…Others say that they cannot on the one hand remain continent nor on the other can they have children because of the difficulties whether on the part of the mother or on the part of the family circumstances. But no reason, however grave, may be put forward by which anything intrinsically against nature may become conformable to nature and morally good. Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural powers and purpose, sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.”
The best way to sum it up is to quote a source I have been reading: “To summarize: the only difference between artificial contraception and NFP is that artificial contraception frustrates the power of the marriage act itself, while NFP frustrates its primary purpose (by subordinating the procreation of children to other things).”
St. Augustine (from “The Morals of the Manichees”): “Marriage, as the marriage tablets themselves proclaim, joins male and female for the procreation of children. Whoever says that to procreate children is a worse sin than to copulate thereby prohibits the purpose of marriage; and he makes the woman no more a wife than a harlot, who, when she has been given certain gifts, is joined to a man to satisfy his lust. If there is a wife, there is matrimony. But there is no matrimony where motherhood is prevented, for then there is no wife.”
St. Caesar of Arles: “As often as he knows his wife without a desire for children…without a doubt he commits sin.”
St. John Vianney (to a mother with many children who was feeling overwhelmed and old): “Be comforted my child; if you only knew the women who will go to Hell because they did not bring into the world the children they should have given to it!”
Thoughts?
Common sense led me to question the use of NFP to avoid pregnancy. It sounds simplistic, but I kept thinking that purposely avoiding pregnancy undermined God’s control and authority. It tells God no and assumes that you know better.
So, once again, I asked the question and looked for an answer. I read the NFP material, the Priests For Life site, the Catechism, etc. All fallible.
Enter “Casti Connubii,” a papal encyclical issued in 1931… ex cathedra. Pope Pius XI’s statements in this document are infallible, meaning that they come straight from the Holy Spirit, and all Catholics are bound to this teaching. Nothing can change it, nothing can declare it null and void, nothing can modify it.
Marriage has one sole, primary purpose: to procreate and educate children. This is also the primary purpose of sex. Here is a quote from the document:
“For in matrimony as well as in the use of the matrimonial right [sex] there are secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider so long as they are subordinated to the primary end and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved.”
It’s interesting that when I learned about the purpose of marriage, I learned (or at least perceived) that these two purposes were equal. That was wrong. But, I digress.
Now, keeping all that in mind, here is another quote from the encyclical.
“…Others say that they cannot on the one hand remain continent nor on the other can they have children because of the difficulties whether on the part of the mother or on the part of the family circumstances. But no reason, however grave, may be put forward by which anything intrinsically against nature may become conformable to nature and morally good. Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural powers and purpose, sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.”
The best way to sum it up is to quote a source I have been reading: “To summarize: the only difference between artificial contraception and NFP is that artificial contraception frustrates the power of the marriage act itself, while NFP frustrates its primary purpose (by subordinating the procreation of children to other things).”
St. Augustine (from “The Morals of the Manichees”): “Marriage, as the marriage tablets themselves proclaim, joins male and female for the procreation of children. Whoever says that to procreate children is a worse sin than to copulate thereby prohibits the purpose of marriage; and he makes the woman no more a wife than a harlot, who, when she has been given certain gifts, is joined to a man to satisfy his lust. If there is a wife, there is matrimony. But there is no matrimony where motherhood is prevented, for then there is no wife.”
St. Caesar of Arles: “As often as he knows his wife without a desire for children…without a doubt he commits sin.”
St. John Vianney (to a mother with many children who was feeling overwhelmed and old): “Be comforted my child; if you only knew the women who will go to Hell because they did not bring into the world the children they should have given to it!”
Thoughts?
--would respectfully disagree 
Bring on the "cafeteria Catholic" flames.
