(Quote from article) “However, the 83-year-old host had negative words for the Natural Family Planning method. “Our good friends in the Catholic Church forbid the use of birth control but they allow people to use what’s called ‘rhythm,’” he said at the beginning of his answer. “If you read the Old Testament they were forbidden to have sex while women were having their menstrual period, and the Catholic Church is telling women to do just that, and it’s OK.””
Interesting, may research this a bit later.
He’s wrong. NFP methods exclude sexual intercourse during menstruation. If you’re genuinely interested in NFP, the basic methods are the Billings Ovulation Method, the Creighton Method, and the Sympto-Thermal Method.
It is true that the OT forbid that, only for Israelites, but it was part of their “cleanliness” laws. A women who was menstruating was ritually unclean, so, for example, she could not enter the temple during that time, and was even supposed to live outside the home, in a tent or other seclusion, so as not to transfer her uncleanliness to her family members. The prohibition against sex was part of that effort to maintain ritual purity, not a moral law.
Since the laws about ritual purification were judged to be unnecessary after Christ, Pat should know that citing such a law for Christians is a really bad argument. Also, an inconsistent one, unless Pat also wants menstruating women to camp out in the yard, and doesn’t want people with excema or psoriasis to be allowed in church.