In fact, “Natural Family Planning” has the same effect on me, for it is about as natural as the current phenomena of grandmothers having babies and the unconceivable having quintuplets. OK, let’s not stretch it, but is having children by its nature consistent with consulting charts and graphs, etc.? To put the mystery of child bearing with its chastely covered secrets into the laboratory is more scientific than anything else. What we have today—call it NFP for now—is nothing like the periodic abstinence which our ancestors practiced back in the 1800’s. Is this natural: “We’ll get married on 8/10/07, have our first baby in the same month in 2009, have our second a year later …and our tenth around my 40th birthday? I’m sure this is not the way it goes but what plans, if any, are actually made in the use of NFP?

We all despise the term “Planned Parenthood,” knowing that this name is a devious deception. Under that euphemism, the evils of contraception and abortion are craftily cloaked. And yet we adopt the same terminology with a slight variation. Is there any wonder why people dismiss NFP as a mere play on words, lacking serious distinction with PP?

“Periodic Abstinence” sounds like a virtue and although NFP is morally permissible by the principal of “double effect” (Thank you, Father. That was the best explanation I ever heard.) it is not the same as one normally thinks of when using that term, i.e. six months of total abstinence. Despite what some claim, the rigors of self-control involved with NFP do not add up to virtue for lack of proper intention. I may well do a good thing by going on a diet in order to prevent ill health but I really shouldn’t disguise it by calling it a “Fast,” because my motives are not supernatural. People laugh at the fast of Ramada: for many it is no food during the day but a feast after dusk.

To me, the most accurate but not most attractive name is “Scientific Child Prevention.”

I was shocked by a childhood traditional Catholic girlfriend of mine saying to me that she didn’t want to be ’sick for the rest of her life’, that she wanted ‘more time with this child’, and all the colloquial excuses for spacing/having less children.

I just want everyone to look at my little family and say they’re so beautiful, they’re so worth it, I want to do that too. Or, I wish I had done that too.

It’s like a deliberate slap, I have an easy time with non Traditional Catholics who think I’m crazy, they don’t have the fullness of faith, the fullness of truth, the joy that comes from God. I have a hard time seeing people I know and love who were raised with everything, going the easier way.

I was told by a wise teacher of mine, in grade eleven in high school, that Catholicism used to have a bar that you could jump to. How good can you be? How kind? How modest? How patient? How holy? Now it’s a limbo bar; How low can you go? We go to Mass on Sunday. We have our three, or two and that was good enough for us.

We’re supposed to compare ourselves to God, “be ye perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” Not to the world, “for what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world…”

Father Buckley preaches a beautiful retreat… I was disappointed in his sermon… not because he is wrong, but because I want to hear encouragement for what I am doing right. I do not want to hear… what I am doing wrong… I want to poke at the ‘others’ but indeed as Clara says we should examine our motives, and take his wise words to heart.

We should practice heroic charity. Being the bearers of mean comments about, “how that works”, and that “NFP is allowed”, “our bishop told us that NFP was okay”, “our priest told us it was okay”, all meaning we shouldn’t have ‘a million kids’, (Yes I have born all of these comments personally). After all we are following in the footsteps of Christ and look what they did to him.

God bless,

TPC

Amen, Clara. And as I’ve *skimmed* through all 71 (phew!) comments, what I’m about to say may have been said better elsewhere, so bear with me.

Taking Clara’s point about not knowing all the factors in other people’s situations a wee bit further, I think we need to remember that even if we *did*, what’s bearable for one person/couple could well be unbearable for another. Because of how our stories have developed through the intersection of culture, family, personality, experiences, etc., what may be licit for one couple may not be licit for another. I’m not *trying* to be relativist, but I’m thinking that if a licit reason for using NFP is an unbearable psychological or physical burden - that’s going to be different for all of us, since we have different thresholds and coping abilities.

So even if I knew everything about a friend’s situation,
I couldn’t judge if she was in the right…I think that’s between her, her husband, confessor and God (yeah, I know it’s getting a bit crowded in there).

Maybe I’m just not firm enough, but I’ve seen too much pain hidden by a ‘perfect’ exterior to trust initial appearances. I’d rather err on the side of having faith that we’re all doing the best that we can with what we’ve got. (Except, maybe, politicians…;-) )

And Clara, your story about your initial encounter with traditionalists was very edifying and encouraging. Thank you.

Px

It helps to remember that, canonically, validity and indissolubility are two different things.

Consummation is not required for a marriage to be valid; it is required for it to be indissoluble (among other things, of course.) A non-consummated valid Catholic marriage is termed “ratum et non-consummatum” in canon law.

This means that such a marriage could indeed be dissolved should one of the parties wish it IF the other refuses to render the marital obligation. Refusal has to be shown for there to be cause, since what is promised in marriage is the right to the marital act upon request - not the actual performance of the act at some actual time, as it may never be requested by the free choice of both spouses.

As Tobias wrote, the spouses could change their minds regarding celibacy at any time, e.g., St Therese’s parents. If one wishes such a change and the other does not, the marriage, though valid and licit, is also dissolvable by the Church, since this would mean that the other person did not uphold their promise to allow his/her spouse marital rights upon request.

Marriage requires openness to life, the intentio bonum prolis; it does not require that children actually be born, else sterile and elderly couples would not be allowed to wed. It is enough as regards validity for a couple to see children as a good and accept any children which may be born. As above, someone who wants children NOW and whose spouse will not render the marital obligation can have the marriage dissolved.

A lot of Josephite marriages became such after the birth of a child or two; although there have been those that were Josephite from the start, I think that those are less common.

CF this for related info.

But you’re quite right, JSP, that this method can be dangerous to some, as Brad C has also agreed. It’s mainly a question of pride. If the philosopher values his own intelligence above the truth of the Church, he will be in danger, but then again so will anyone who is filled with overweening pride.

Since I mostly read philosophers who are also Doctors of the Church, I generally start out my work each day by praying for the intercession of whomever I am going to be studying, that I may not misinterpret his work, and especially that I may not misinterpret it to evil effect. Since I’ve been working mainly on St. Bonaventure and the moral virtues, this has the funny effect of making me feel doubly motivated to go to confession when I think it might be warranted. For one thing, I read a lot about how great sanctifying grace really is, and at the same time, I have this feeling like I can’t be “on good terms” with the Seraphic Doctor himself unless I’m actually in a state of grace. Don’t report this to my philosophical colleagues, please. I’d be the laughingstock of the department.

Thanks for the clarification and your kind words. My point about tolerating the less rigorous interpretation of “grave burdens” assumed that Fr. Buckley was right about there being no unambiguous (point taken about using “definitive” here) official interpretation of this. If there are good reasons for thinking Fr. Buckley is wrong and the more rigorous interpretation is obligatory, then my point won’t apply. My point about not telling priests what to do in pastoral situations was directed at the Iosephus’ original post and some of the other commentors who seemed overly harsh towards those Catholics making the transition from contraception to NFP.

Regarding the JSP/Clara debate about the Scholastic method:

Clara is right about the strength of the Scholastic method. But JSP has a point about it possibly producing heretics. Cardinal Newman in his History of the Arians (I think I got the title right) points out that the Arians originally arose from theologians who were using just such a method. He points out that training yourself to argue both sides of a point with equal force can lead a mind to disregard the truth. You can adopt a sort of nihilistic mentality: “anyone who is smart enough can produce arguments for any conclusion whatsoever”.

But this is only a danger to those whose wills are corrupted. In his discussion of faith in De Veritate, St. Thomas points out that one feature of faith is that, even though our assent to the truths of faith is firm, we never stop thinking about them since we cannot prove them independently but rather believe them on the grounds that God revealed them. This is how he parses St. Augustine’s definition of faith as “thinking with assent”. It’s as if our minds are restless and are always trying to look at the truths of faith in new ways. Still, at no point do we regard them as things we are willing to give up on the basis of objections. So St. Thomas gives an explanation of our desire to examine the truths of faith and even consider objections against them without ever considering them as uncertain.

I was only seeking some explanation as to the apparent conflict between the Josephine marriage and the legal ground for annulment regarding intending from the start of the marriage to never have children.

I had never heard the only half - that being, the intent to have children but with a desire to still have marital relations. So, the intent to not have children is just part of the grounds of the annulment.

JSP, are you saying that Our Lady and St. Joseph weren’t validly married? Tradition says that even before the Annunciation they vowed to remain celibate. Pope John Paul II says so on an EWTN post — speaking of which, where has Johnboy been? I miss him. Anyway, here is the link: http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp2bvm27.htm.

Plus, St. Therese’s parents started out their marriage without the intention to consummate it. St. Edward the Confessor had a virginal marriage with his wife, which is why he never produced an heir, which is why the Kingdom of England fell to William the Conqueror, 1066 and all that. Sts. Henry II and Cunegund may have had a Josephite marriage, and they were the Holy Roman Emperor and Empress.

Consider it this way, JSP. The couple have a mutual agreement to discharge the marriage debt when the other spouse requests it. Both agree, for the right reasons, that they choose not to ask for this. If they did decide to, they could. But they don’t. And they have the freedom not to. If either partner refused to consent to marital relations when the other asked for it, and never had the intention at the time of the wedding, then there would be grounds for annulment. If the spouse desired to have marital relations but never desired children, then that too would be grounds for annulment. But if neither partner ever desires to have relations — while rare, and permissible only in certain circumstances for certain people, this does not violate the idea of marriage. Or were the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph not really married?

I can’t stand toe-toe to you regarding Scholasticism, but it seems to this simple Catholic that style of debate that you claim to be in the Thomistic style is like playing a deadly game of chicken - ‘Well, I know that the gates of Hell cannot prevail and that the Church is true, so let’s push the envelope and see how much we can stretch and bend our understanding of these doctrines.’

Very intelligent, brilliant, Scholastic Catholic theologians can become heretics.

The Church’s guarantee of doctrinal infallibity is extremely limited in this sense and pondering the vagaries and searching for exceptions isn’t quite the level of a parlor game, it can have spiritually and eternally deadly consequences.

It would seem to me that the job of the theologian is to take what has been handed to him by Sacred Tradition and defend it against the forces of novelty. He is not an objective scientist in a laboratory proving an empirically based hypothesis. He is an advocate for a particular position. He has some fundamental assumptions upon which his case rests - assumptions that are not necessary empirically provable or necessarily reasonable.

If there is any doubt, and for the sheer sake of argument I’ll concede that there is some doubt in what constitutes grave reasons and sinfulness of periodic continence used outside those grave reasons, then the so-called rigorist position should be the default position. We’re dealing with immortal souls and eternal judgment here!

This sounds to me like an excellent description of what philosophers are supposed to do. In Catholicism, you can do some of this without fear, knowing that the faith is strong enough to stand up to any enquiry, and we have plenty of stalwart examples of this kind of philosophical rigor among the doctors and saints. Are you familiar with the classic Scholastic approach to doing theology? They would amass every possible objection to the Church’s position, lay it out in the clearest and strongest possible form, and then undertake to answer it.

Mormonism prided itself on being “plain and simple to understand” and in a sense this was right. Generally speaking, Mormons don’t suffer too much anxiety over ambiguities and shades of grey. Trouble was, it was a little too simple… and thus failed to reflect reality, as I eventually came to realize. What immediately impressed me about Catholicism, when I first encountered it in my late teens, was its subtlety and depth. Flexible as rope, and yet strong as steel, here was a faith that had the resources to respond to the many complications of life without compromising its own integrity. And yes, I agree — that’s probably because it’s true.

JSP says “the NFP Do’s and Don’ts are lauded in our feminized Church and general culture. Can you imagine giving NFP instruction to any generation of Catholic men prior to WWII?”

Question for the two estimable gentlemen: if the Church is the Bride and Christ is the Bridegroom, what is your objection to the church being “feminised”?

I am not referring to priests who, as alter Christus, should be masculine. I am just wondering how NFP is “feminine” or represents a “feminised church”. What is so wrong with that, and what is its automatic connection to “laxity”?

JSP — I believe that NFP instruction is primarily given to the women, not men. In my parish, at least. It’s not required that husbands/fiances tag along.

And here’s a question for everyone who considers the “Do’s and Don’ts” feminine/gay — what advice would heterosexual men give, then? Or is the giving of advice itself effeminate?

Most converts and almost all traditional Catholics are drawn to Catholicism because of its doctrinal clarity - especially on moral matters - which is unique to Catholicism and separates it from all other religions. (of course this unique feature is a result of Catholicism being the only true religion)

Others however inside the Church since its very beginnings have relished every shade of gray they could read into a doctrine and have attempted to find loopholes and exceptions. They parse words and ponder exceptional circumstances constantly searching for some ambiguity – like an enemy army probing the defending force’s lines looking for a weak spot in order penetrate or envelop.

1) Isn’t one of the grounds for annulment that the parties entered in marriage with the intent to have no children?

2) What’s the point of a Josephite marriage? Are these actual marriage - Holy Matrimony - or are they separate sort of vows that allow a man and women to live together as brother and sister? Perhaps in the case of close family relations this would be appropriate since they could not have a standard marriage and yet this ‘civil union’ allows them to better take care of each other.

3) If one is so committed to the spiritual life to consider a Josephite marriage wouldn’t he be better off going into religious life?

4) Under what conditions would you as a confessor allow a couple to enter into a Josephite marriage?

It’s not for everyone, nor should it be, but it’s not wrong or evil either, as long as both are willing and it is for spiritual purposes. Otherwise we wouldn’t have canonized the above people - look up St Nicholas of Flue, for one example.

There are other requirements that go along with the grave reason such as -

1) both parties must agree

2) either married person can break the agreement at any time

there are other stipulations addressed by Pope Pius.

There marital debt can be refused only for a few reasons -

1) for a period of time after one party commits adultery (up until the adulterer is forgiven by the spouse)

2) if the spouse (usually the husband I’d imagine) is crazy, out of his mind, drunk..

3) if there is the risk of serious health problems or death.

4) for a period of time after child birth.

5) all other issues should be addressed to a traditional confessor (other than Fr. Buckley perhaps. Just kidding!)

Anyway, complete abstinence from the marital act may be a sin of another kind. The sacrament of holy matrimony is invalid for any couple (or individual) who marries with the intent to not have any children. (This is grounds for annulment, since the marriage is invalid) So, it would be impossible to get married with the intent to abstain from the marital act - it would be a sacrilege in so far as it’s an invalid sacrament.

Assuming one enters marriage with the intent to have children and then later on decides to stop marital relations and have complete abstinence, then this would be a valid marriage, but the complete abstinence would have to be justified (the same grave reasons which can warrant NFP, can also warrant complete abstinence. AGAIN, read Pius XII address to the Italian mid-wives). But, if complete abstinence has the reasonable potential to lead one of the persons to sins against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, then it would seem to me that without sufficient, proportional grave reasons, that complete abstinence would be sinful in this case. Since it’s a sin to put yourself in the near occasion of sin without sufficient reason.

I don’t see how complete abstinence, used other than for the same grave reasons as NFP can be used for, can be justified.

1 - you have voluntarily entered in the Holy Matrimony, why did you do so if you plan on having complete abstinence for no good reason?

2 - if you wanted to live a celibate life you should have become a religious

3 - you may be recklessly putting yourself in the near occasion of sin

there are probably other issues here too, but this is my gut reaction to it.