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While reading this brief news story at ZENIT, I was reminded of a discussion which the members of the Cornell Society for a Good Time have had in the past about the circumstances under which it is licit to use natural family planning to avoid having children. For some of us have a vague impression that NFP has become, for some Catholics, “Catholic contraception”, just like annulments, after the Council, were mocked as “Catholic divorce”. To put the matter simplistically, though using NFP (and continuing to have sex) to avoid children requires more self-discipline than using contraception, yet the end may still be to avoid the trouble of children, or more children, as the case may be.
Further, I think that there is an impression among good, John Paul II Catholics that NFP is just what one does when one gets married. But this isn’t the case at all, right? Why use NFP at all? To avoid having children. And why get married in the first place, if must immediately avoid the primary end of marriage, namely having children? There are so many questions in this neighborhood, and I have only raised a very few of them.
I should like to advance the following thesis and then see what others have to say:
The medical knowledge surrounding NFP has done far more good helping infertile couples than it has helping those who may become pregnant with ease because it has presented to the latter group a putatively moral way to avoid having as many children as God would otherwise send if nature were allowed to take its course.
This is all building to a little story from the biography of the Cure d’Ars which I am continuing to read. I originally posted about it here and there is so much more from it which I hope to post later. I quote from the chapter about the Cure as spiritual director:
“Married people were shown the nobility of their calling, and he exhorted them to fulfil holily its duties. A lady of the name of Ruet, of Ouroux, in the departement of the Rhone, had already a large family, and was about to become a mother once more. She came to Ars in order to seek courage at the feet of its holy Cure. She had not long to wait, for M. Vianney summoned her from amid the crowd.
” ‘You look very sad, my child,’ he said, when she was on her knees in his confessional.
” ‘Oh! I am so advanced in years, Father!’
” ‘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!’
” ‘Come now, my little one,’ he said with fatherly kindness, ‘do not be alarmed at your burden; our Lord carries it with you. The good God does well all that He does: when He gives many children to a young mother it is that He deems her worthy to rear them. It is a mark of confidence on His part.’”
I am a married, so I am personally implicated in this discussion.
If you leave it up to nature, breast-feeding limits fertility by supressing hormones. It acts as a natural “spacer” which keeps successive children about 2 years apart. Likewise, NFP shows that about half of any given ovulation is infertile cycle. So the question basically boils down to whether this specific knowledge that NFP teachers promulgate to their students makes those the intercourse of those student’s sinful because now it is done with the knowledge that it is not statistically likely to result in children? Is this statistically reality in contrast to a claim of openess?
I am not sure, but I do have two observations…
1) We are called to have children, and we are called to live chastely. Our society is sex-crazed, and gives the impression that everyone should and can have intercourse whenever they want (ie. all the time). Traditional Catholics have to be careful that in the name of a healthy fecundity, they are do not imply that God’s will is synonomous with their sexual impulses. In other words, it may be true that we are only meant to have sex when we are trying to have children, but it is certainly untrue that we should have all the children that result from our uncontrolled desires. NFP has been a blessing to many because it teaches that sex is neither their’s to manipulate, nor a drive to be constantly indulged. It must be subjected to reason in line with the Church.
2. Pregnancy and birth is an incredibly difficult physical experience, in a word it is exhausting. Caring for a new-born is also extrodinarily tiring. I was not really aware of this reality until my wife had our first. Demanding that one’s wife simply have another baby as soon as she can is not compassionate, may be dangerous, and is certainly not wise. It makes sense to wait both until she fully recovers, and also until there is ample energy and ability to adequately care for the present child and the next one simultaneously.
Cosmo, thank you for these interesting comments.
I wonder what you think about what people must have done in the past, long before NFP, when it came to “demanding one’s wife simply to have another baby”?
Did married people then refrain from sex altogether? Or is NFP a medical advance which spares us natural trouble, like the alleviation of certain diseases which people had to deal with in the past, but do not now?
Perhaps there is now a difficult prudential judgement about when the woman has had enough time to recover from one pregnancy, whereas in the past, without NFP, one had to put the matter exclusively in God’s hands?
I would guess that in the past, much more than now, it was obvious to everyone that pregnancy was serious business. There are countries right now where the maternal mortality rate is well over 1,000 per 100,000 live births. So while you might say that people in the past were “putting it in God’s hands,” they knew that their behavior carried a significant risk. Then again, some women are simply built for pregnancy and delivery, and multiple child births are not a huge problem for them. My guess is that some people probably did abstain for prudential reasons involving their wives’ health, while others did not. Sometimes this choice resulted in problems for their wives and children, and sometimes it did not. I only raised this to point out that there is a “reality on the ground,” that informs many people’s thinking.
I do not think that NFP is like other medicinal advances because while there is always a duty to seek healing; NFP is merely information that informs a decision. The real dilemma seems to be created by the Church’s teaching that sex and marriage have a “unitive” end rather than simply a procreative end. If we draw an analogy to eating, we might say that while meals certainly builds community and fellowship, and while the taste of food and the act of satisfying our hunger is pleasurable, the real purpose of food is sustenance, and that eating for other reasons is ultimately disordered. Some might disagree and say those other aspects are of equal importance. Which is true of sex? Is the purpose of sex procreation, though the act is both unitive and pleasurable? Or are the unitive and procreative aspects both equal purposes of the act? I am personally very confused by this issue.
Furthermore, NFP often differentiates itself from birth control by insisting that it is “open” to life and God. But many people wonder how meaningful this “openness” is when NFP is designed to inform them precisely when it is statistically impossible to conceive life- ie when openness to God seems almost meaningless. (Even if conception is not impossible, the odds are right up there with birth control devices.) The point is that while “openness” seems important, NFP does not seem to foster it. However, “openness” has become the criteria for discerning virtuous sex, and so people naturally ask what it really means? The conclusion is generally that sex is “open” to life and God in an individual act when it either intends to be procreative, or at least is not trying to avoid procreation, and it is open to life and God over a lifetime when it is willing to embrace all the children God intends for them to have. And because not having children seems antithetical to the purpose of marriage, as well as unthinkably drab, the conclusion is simple: In order to be open to God, we should constantly have procreative sex. (Women beware!)
A hypothetical question that may be informative is whether a married couple could licitly abstain from all sex and devote their lives to prayer and service? (It seems like there are examples of this in the early Church, but I could be making that up.) I wonder if the Church would simply say that this is not their vocation. What if that couple that has already had one child then makes that decision? What about 5 children?