During retreat, make sure to confess the sin of avoiding children while enjoying conjugal relations...
Natural Family Planning (NFP)
NFP is an umbrella term for certain methods used to achieve and avoid pregnancies. These methods are based on observation of the naturally occurring signs and symptoms of the fertile and infertile phases of a woman's menstrual cycle. ....... No drugs, devices, or surgical procedures are used to AVOID PREGNANCY. (emphasis mine)
From http://www.nccbuscc.org/prolife/issues/nfp/index.shtml
Translation: We've found a way to circumvent God's will for catholic families to propogate children...yahoo ! Now, I ask you, does this violate the spirit of the teaching? Of course it does !
Also this is bullcr*p from bishops, the same crowd who supports illegal aliens, high taxes, etc, etc.
Tribemike,
Youare absolutely correct that intentionally divorcing conjugal relations from the procreation of children is a sin. What you are not acknowledging is that when a couple uses NFP for legitimate reasons such as a grave health concern, they are in no way resisting God's ability and perogative to create life. They remain open to life in the act of marriage, but for serious reasons abstain during the days on which conception is most likely to occur. Couples using NFP take no action to prevent conception when they are intimate. NFP does not attempt to alter the unitive and procreative nature of sex; contraception works to make each sexual act infertile, deliberately eliminating its procreative potential.
While NFP can certainly be abused--and the Church is very clear that it should not be used for reasons of convenience or out of a desire to avoid children-- its mechanism of abstinence is conceptually and practically opposed to contraception.
Would you argue that chaste unmarried people are practicing birth control because their abstinence causes them to "avoid pregnancy?"