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Thanks for clarifying that statement. It is providential that we are discussing St. Paul and NFP. Some of St. Paul's most basic teaching is based on the body, love, the Church and Marriage. This has everything to do with sexual intercourse, NFP and contraception.

St. Paul's teachings helped the Church to understand that Marriage is a primordial Sacrament. (Eph 5:31-32) "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church."

St. Paul also teaches of the Church being one body: (Eph 4:4) "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling." This is like a husband and wife that becomes one body, through Marriage. So we have Christ married to the Church. Coupled with the early bible teaching that husband and wife become one body, like Christ and the Church.

When Christ gave himself for His church, he did not hold back anything. He gave himself completely in body, blood, soul and divinity. Christ had no blood left to give at the end. Jn 19:34 "one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water." St. Paul calls husbands to do no less in Eph 5:25 "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." This speaks for not holding anything back. When a husband gives/offers himself to his wife, he should do it as Christ offered himself for His Church. This is the opposite of contraceptive sex.

Finally Paul defines the attributes of love. 1 Cor 13:4-8 "Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." Please show me how contraceptive sex fits into this description especially since St. Paul includes: patience, not seeking its own interests, bearing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things and never failing.

You stated that: It doesn't answer the questions: Is non-conceptive NFP moral? Is artificial contraception immoral?

Reading St. Paul and the Gospels as a whole, in context, answers these questions. I have briefly shown this above and in my last post. Please show me how St. Paul, Christ or the Church teaches that:

1. Contraceptive sex is moral.
2. NFP based sex is not moral.

If you engage in non-conceptive NFP, then yes, you do have the opportunity to exercise patience. You would have even more opportunity to exercise patience if you never had intercourse. Many things are occasions to exercise patience; they are not necessarily good things.

As for "not seeking its own interests," I don't see that contraceptive FP is necessarily more selfish than non-conceptive NFP. God does not forbid us from seeking our own interests if those interests are not sinful. People who engage in NFP are seeking their interests - the desire to have a child or not have a child.

"Bearing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things and never failing." Good for any marriage - not necessarily precluded by contraception. I suspect that my great-grandparents, who had five children by the time my g.grandmother was 27 and no more after, used contraception - and they were devout Christians (Baptists) and were devoted to each other for almost 70 years.

I don't claim to find in Paul either that contraceptive NFP is moral or non-conceptive NFP is not moral. But I sure can't find the contrary which is what the Church teaches. The tradtional teaching of the Church matters; I am not a sola scriptura person. The sola scriptura denominations DON'T teach that contraception is wrong. Neither do the Orthodox.

You show that someone can read Paul in that way, sure. Not everyone does. But Paul could not have been preaching NFP - it did not exist; the scientific knowledge was not there.

Something doesn't become good just because it is a sacrifice. You need more justification than that.

Mrs VS