Posted on 08/16/2005 1:48:10 PM PDT by NYer
Having read all your post......you have hit on part of my problem which is - WHY must the Church have any approved Method for regulating births. Why doesn't the Church disapprove all methods? NFP and artificial birth control do accomplish the same ends, and yes people, I know all about the means, etc. The "means" by which a couple plays mad scientists and uses charts, temperatures, cycles, etc are, in my opinion, playing God too. They too have taken God out of the equation or they would have to do science experiments every month. The point is,,,,,why doesn't the Church condemn all forms of regulating births.
I know all about the full and final Authority of the Church, infallibility, etc, etc. I must reiterate.....I am trying to fully understand this NFP method from an intellectual standpoint. And Maximillian, I'm not addressing you so much,,,,,as those who are about to jump on me for my intellectual departure from Church teaching. I have prayed about this, I have tried so hard to put my mind around NFP and I can't do it. Yet, I'm called by the Church to trust in it's infallibilities.
As you have so eloguently put it Maximillian,.....those couples who neither use artificial birth control or NFP are the honorable couple before God Amighty and it is they who trust, without any human reservations, in His Divine Authority.
I'm trying to digest all your posts.....there is a lot there. I do need to ask you a simple question about the Church's teaching on sexuality. It teaches the sex act must be "unitive" and "procreative." Does this mean "unitive" and "procreative" must both be present in every sex act or does only one or the other have to be present to be in accordance with Church teaching?
Because continence is virtuous, and because it is better to abstain from having sex than to have sex if one is able, just like it is better to fast and abstain from meat than to eat whatever one wishes until one is satisfied.
The Church does not dissaprove of the use of continence to regulate or prevent births because the Church cannot condemn the practice of a virtue.
Those familiar with ecclesiastical history know that many married couples in the early history of the Church (and later) used to practice continence by refraining from all intercourse after the birth of only a few children, while remaining married. In fact, the Church used to require this of all her clergy, since the clergy in the early Church was frequently made up of men who had been married, but who gave up marital intercourse with their wife once ordained.
NFP is merely a different way of practicing the same virtue with less difficulty for most people.
"The Catholic Church has also ruled that it is worthy to accomplish the end of avoiding a pregnancy by abstaining, since this tends to bring the sexual appertite under the control of right reason."
It's worthy for what, abstaining 48 hours.........sexual appetite under control for what.....48 hours! And then it's carry on your wild passion for the next 28 days. And then, the process is repeated. "Hold the line, honey, we are fertile, we only have to wait another 18 hours and then we're good to go." That is the practical application for the majority of Catholic couples. I suppose I'm just a hard-headed obstinate individual who has problems with NFP. I've heard all the flowery and beautiful Church definitions and explanations for NFP but when it's true applications are used in the bedroom, a couple has engaged in the sex act WITHOUT the probality of conception. And I'd say they make up for the "abstained period" to which the Church addresses. As a matter of fact, I'd say that "appetite" you speak of is mitigated by a couple who engages passionately up to that small window where they can't engage in sex. They know the froth off their sex drives leading up to that window! I'm just trying to get people to think about the practical application of NFP. And you can't tell me the way I've described the NFP application above isn't the way most Catholics go about it.
"They know the froth off their sex drives leading up to that window!"
Should read: they KNOCK the froth of their sex drives
Please explain how you acquired this information.
I've interviewed 100 couples using NFP!
This article from Crisis magazine by HW Crocker (author of "Triumph, the 2000-year history of the Catholic Church") will most likely ring true for you. He has the chutzpah to say what so many others like yourself have been feeling and thinking:
Making Babies: A Very Different Look at Natural Family Planning
The best part about an article like Crocker's is the huge relief it provides from the humorlesness of the NFP cult.
For a complete sexual act to be totally without blame it must:
1) Occur between a married couple
2) Have a motivation apart from lust or pleasure
3) Result in the man climaxing inside the woman in the normal way
4) Be open to the creation of life if that is physically possible (this is obviosuly not required during pregnancy or after menopause)
5) Occur without the use of force
So it must be marital, unitive, unlustful, procreative if naturally possible, and naturally performed. If any one of these requirements is not met, a sin is committed, since the sexual function is being distorted from its proper ends and means. As noted the only exception to your question then becomes the continued use of sexuality during pregnancy or after menopause, when procreation is not physically possible. In that case, it may only be used rightly if it is motivated by something other than the seeking of pleasure or the satisfaction of lustful urges and thoughts, i.e. as expressing love, or allaying concupiscence, or for strengthening ones marriage.
It is no more right to have sex merely because it is pleasurable than it is to eat food merely because it tastes good without regard to an actual need for food.
And that constitutes "a majority" of every couple practicing NFP in the world. How interesting. They do say statistics is a mystery.
The last thing I will say, is that I find your desire to judgmentally gloat over the moral state of other people's marriages, with a distinct undertone of pornographic hyperventilating, to be ... eeeewww.
Have a nice day.
Why the ugliness towards me? Why do you seem vindictive for my posts here and my internal struggle with a teaching of the Church? Why the attack?
I've done nothing but try to catalogue my frustration with NFP with sincerity and I'll grant maybe some hardheadedness BUT you go and get extremely ugly.....WHY DID YOU DO THAT?
Dear Maximilian,
Your link doesn't seem to work quite right.
Thanks,
sitetest
Let's hope this one works better:
Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means. ...Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the later practice may appear to be upright and serious. In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the latter they obstruct the natural development of the generative process. It cannot be denied that in each case the married couple, for acceptable reasons, are both perfectly clear in their intention to avoid children and wish to make sure that none will result. (Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §14-15)
Contraception is sinful because it is against nature; exercising the marital act on days of natural infertility is obviously not sinful. The intention itself to avoid children, as long as it is for just reasons, is not sinful, even if it is held by those using contraception.
Separately from these considerations of sins against the Sixth Commandment, men are also obliged under the Seventh Commandment, in social justice, to have a sufficient number of children for the propagation and gradual increase of society. Failing to fulfill this duty, even if NFP and not contraception is used, is also a sin, but one separate from the malice of contraception itself. Thus Pope Pius XII states:
The matrimonial contract, which confers on the married couple the right to satisfy the inclination of nature, constitutes them in a state of life, namely, the matrimonial state. Now, on married couples, who make use of the specific act of their state, nature and the Creator impose the function of providing for the preservation of mankind. This is the characteristic service which gives rise to the peculiar value of their state, the bonum prolis. The individual and society, the people and the State, the Church itself, depend for their existence, in the order established by God, on fruitful marriages. Therefore, to embrace the matrimonial state, to use continually the faculty proper to such a state and lawful only therein, and, at the same time, to avoid its primary duty without a grave reason, would be a sin against the very nature of married life.
Read your post #84, and its descriptions of your imagination of other people's marital relationships, if you want to see "ugly." I'm almost throwing up looking at it again.
And have a nice day. (That's a closer, btw, indicating that I've nothing further to say.)
Actually, I understand for NFP to work generally requires abstinence on the order of 10-15 days, not 2 days.
A marriage that is one of "wild passion" does not sound particularly Catholic to me. Catholics traditionally abstained from sex on days of fast and abstinence and before and after receiving Holy Communion. In an ordinary week, this would require no sex Friday through Sunday evening, since Friday and Saturday are the traditional days of fast and abstinence, and Sunday we go to Mass. Additionally, Catholics were to abstain from sex for the duration of Lent and Advent, the Ember Days and Rogation Days, and the Vigils and Days of major feasts. If that were followed, you would be abstaining about 190 days per year for purposes of prayer.
If the majority of couples do not follow this, it is because even fewer people can be bothered with following the traditional ascetical rules of the Church than can be bothered to follow her rules on the use of marriage.
As a matter of fact, I'd say that "appetite" you speak of is mitigated by a couple who engages passionately up to that small window where they can't engage in sex. They know the froth off their sex drives leading up to that window! I'm just trying to get people to think about the practical application of NFP.
This whole attitude is foreign to me, and I don't discuss the sex lives of others with them, so I wouldn't know. I believe in following the traditions of the Church, and abstaining from sex for prayer to control the sexual appetite, not giving in to immense gratification. If someone is using NFP, they need to approach this from a similar perspective. Similarly, if someone is trusting in divine providence, they also need to approach sex from this perspective. Marital life should be a time of ascetical struggle to obtain perfection and purity of heart, not an indulgence in passion and lust with or without the intention of procreating children.
And you can't tell me the way I've described the NFP application above isn't the way most Catholics go about it.
I wouldn't know. Most Catholics use contraceptives.
The Church does not dissaprove of the use of continence to regulate or prevent births because the Church cannot condemn the practice of a virtue.
Continence is virtuous, true (cf. 1 Cor 7:5). But is the continence of NFP-using couples virtuous? It seems to me that continence is virtuous because it is a sacrifice "for the kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 19:12). This is a point which JP II also made in 1982: "Continence, even if consciously chosen or personally decided upon, but without that finality ["for the kingdom of heaven"], does not come within the scope of the above-mentioned statement of Christ." (General Audience of 17 March)
When couples abtain in the practice of NFP, are they making a sacrifice "for the kingdom of Heaven", or is their intention not rather to avoid children for those just reasons which are admitted by the Church?
Thanks.
If you don't want to use NFP, don't. But why harass and try to convict as sinful those who follow the church on NFP?
Hermann's response to Max earlier is spot on.
Frankly, I think you are weird. Please try to not to fantasize about my sex life.
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