Tag Archives: NFP

Moral Worlds Apart

The Orthodox Church is going through its “Lambeth moment”.  In 1930 at the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Church opened the door contraception as a morally licit means of birth control provided that “this is done in the light of the same Christian principles.”  Every mainline Protestant community soon followed suit.  Always behind the times and proud of it, the Orthodox Church is going through a similar debate currently.  Many in the Church hold that contraception is always wrong while others think it can be used as long as the couple has the permission of their pastor.  With no central teaching authority and guided by “the free conscience of the people” one can imagine where they will eventually land.  In the meantime, they use the debate as an opportunity to attack the Catholic Church.  Specifically, they claim that contraception and Natural Family Planning (NFP) are essentially the same thing.  Reasoning that because the intention is the same in both cases, they are either equally to be condemned or equally allowed.  Since this objection comes from other opponents of the Church it is worth examining in full.

Understanding the Plan

Although this should be obvious, it bears mentioning at the outset that NFP is not an action but a plan.  NFP is a plan for avoiding or getting pregnant.  In this regard it is like an exercise plan that someone puts together in order to lose 10 pounds or to gain ten pounds.  Just as no one would morally evaluate the workout plan, you cannot morally evaluate NFP.  There is, of course, the decision to put the plan into action which has a moral quality, but the moral quality comes from the individual acts that make up that plan.  We are not judged for plans but for actions.  So, we cannot immediately compare contraception and NFP because we are trying to compare an action with a plan.

With this necessary distinction in place, we can alter the objection slightly and say that because contraception and recourse to temporary abstinence both intend to avoid pregnancy, they have the same moral quality.  To frame it properly almost makes the objection absurd, but it is still worth examining the two actions to see how they differ.

Evaluating the Moral Quality of an Action

Every human act has three sources—the object chosen, the intention and the circumstances surrounding the action.  We can look at these three elements to evaluate the morality of any given act.  If all three are good, then the action is good.  If any of the three is evil, then the action is evil. (see CCC 1750-1753 for more detail).  Without getting into the weeds too much, it is also important to note that the object, that is the action we are choosing as a means to carry out our intention, carries a certain primacy in that it must be examined first in order to see if it can ever be ordered to the good.  There are certain intrinsic evils that, no matter the intention or circumstances, can never be ordered to a good end.  As. Pope St. John Paul II puts it, “[T]he primary and decisive element for moral judgment is the object of the human act, which establishes whether it is capable of being ordered to the good and to the ultimate end, which is God” (Veritatis Splendor, 79).

Let’s begin with an easy example to see how it might work.  Suppose a father is intending to give his son a $100 gift and is contemplating two acts.  The intention of the two actions is identical and good.  For the sake of argument assume the circumstances are the same and good as well.

Object1: Rob a bank

Object 2: Work two extra hours at work.

Despite the intention being the same, it is clear these are two very different acts.  The act that includes Object 1 would be wrong because stealing is intrinsically evil.  The good intention and circumstances do not override this.  The act that includes Object 2, because all three elements are good, is good.

The Moral Difference

We can now apply the same sort of analysis to the question at hand.  We will start by setting the circumstance that the woman is thought (in most cases you cannot be absolutely certain) to be fertile.  Their intention is twofold: to avoid pregnancy (for reasons that are just) and to have sex.  On the surface this seems absurd, but it is clear that because God designed the woman to only be fertile in certain times that this remains a possibility.  As stated previously, there is a link between the physical laws and the moral laws such that the former can be a guide for the latter.         

Returning to our example, the couple contemplates two acts.  Object1 is to have contracepted sex while Object2 is to abstain.  With Object1 in view, the action becomes evil because contraception is an intrinsic evil and thus can never be chosen directly as a means for avoiding pregnancy and having sex. Object2 is good per se so that when it is combined with a good intention and circumstances, it is part of a good action.

Changing the circumstances to a time when the woman is believed to be infertile, we can evaluate if the couple does anything wrong in engaging in the marital embrace.  The intention remained the same, but the object must retain its connection to procreation.  In other words, the act must be one that is procreative in nature.  An act that is procreative in nature is one in which pregnancy is the result.  There are no artificial barriers, either physical or chemical put in place by the couple.  Because fertilization is not automatic and occurs outside the actual act there are natural “barriers” that, known and unknown, can be present.  These include whether the woman is temporary or permanently infertile (like post-menopausal), the health of the man’s sperm, the woman’s pH and many others.  The key is that neither partner has intentionally rendered the act infertile.  That the circumstances have rendered the act ultimately unfruitful is beyond our control and are not morally relevant.  Therefore, when we examine the object (conjugal act), intention (marital act while avoiding pregnancy for just reasons) and circumstances we can determine that the conjugal act when the woman is infertile is morally good.  

Some have questioned whether the object with the circumstance of infertility is per se good and will cite some (definitely not a consensus view) Church Fathers who said it is wrong; it is never licit to engage in the marital embrace when the woman is infertile.  The problem with this view is that it seems to be contrary to Sacred Scripture.  Abraham, Issac, and Zechariah all had marital relations with women they knew were infertile.  Rather than bringing down a curse for something that is wrong, God eventually blesses each of them with children.  Given the abundance of examples without condemnation and the appearance of blessing, it is at least implicit that infertile sex is permitted.  The Church has since made it explicit.  Furthermore, there is also the additional problem that such a prohibition would mean that those women who get married after going through menopause could not consummate their marriage.

The tendency to only look at the intention of acts is ubiquitous in our culture, but we must look at the entire act itself to determine its moral quality.  Despite the fact that contraception and NFP both attempt to avoid pregnancy, the acts associated with them are moral worlds apart. 

The NFP Lifestyle

In recent years there have been a number of sociological studies linking marital happiness/success with methods of birth regulation.   Most of them show positive differences between those couples who practice NFP and those who use other methods of birth control, although not always to the degree that NFP Catholics like to advertise.  This is mostly due to the fact that couples practicing NFP fall into two categories—those who do so with a contraceptive mentality and those who live an NFP lifestyle.  It is the latter group which would likely show a significantly higher marital satisfaction.

I called it a “lifestyle” because it is about so much more than just family planning.  NFP reinforces the one flesh union of marriage even when the couple is not engaged in the marital embrace.  At the risk of pointing out the obvious, I will mention that, unlike woman, man’s fertility is non-cyclical.  He is fertile all the time.  This means that the burden of self-mastery often falls upon him.  In fact one could say self-mastery is at the heart of being a man.  The man, as he finds stamped into his body, is made to make a gift of himself.  But to give oneself away, you must first own yourself, that is, have total self-mastery.  Your yes only means something when you are free to say no.  Without this requisite self-mastery comes the constant temptation to “lord it over the woman” (c.f. Gen 3:16).  When you do not have control over yourself, you will attempt to control other people, especially those that are close to you.

The Burden of Fertility

While man does not experience his fertility as a burden per se, the woman does.  This doesn’t mean that it is a bad thing, only that it carries with it “labor” even if that labor is joyfully and willfully endured.  She is the one who, ultimately, must bear the consequences of fertility.  Family planning and birth control often fall upon her.  As proof of this, despite all the nasty side effects, a woman is willing to take a birth control pill.  This is also the arena in which NFP can facilitate a true one flesh union by enabling the man to help carry the load of her fertility with her.

The most obvious time of her cycle is during menstruation.  The man experiences his constant fertility as a burden so as to be united bodily with his wife during a particularly painful period of time.  The burden of fertility that she is feeling can also be felt, albeit in a different way, in his body too.  He literally is practicing compassion, that is suffering with.  When borne with love and patience he is making a bodily gift of himself to his wife.

Most men already do this, although perhaps in not such a deliberate way.  But for those men who practice NFP and have experienced the “disappointment” of the arrival of an early period, this can enable them to see how the one flesh giving might continue.  Likewise, when for “just reasons” the couple is using NFP to avoid pregnancy the man puts aside the drive of his constant fertility so as to share in and through his body her fertility.  This is where real manhood, that is manhood founded upon self-mastery, is particularly felt because he feels an increase in the burden of his fertility because of the inviting presence of her pheromones signaling her fertility.  Even in abstaining from the marital embrace the couple is experiencing a type of one-flesh union when they join their wills together in postponing pregnancy.

NFP’s Effect on Family Life

An NFP lifestyle also makes for a happier home life in general in the relationship between the parents and children.  Schooled in self-mastery by NFP the parents are better able to love their children in a disinterested fashion.  As John Paul II, in a defense of Humanae Vitae once said:

“[parents that are contracepting] cannot sacrifice their egoism to the good of their spouse, will likewise lack generosity, patience, serenity and calm assurance in their relations with their children.  They will love their children to the degree to which their children bring them joy—that is selfishly and not for their own sakes; they will cajole them and teach them self-indulgence and self-love.  Instead of the peace given by self-mastery, unrest will reign in the family, because the state of tension created by a truncated sexual act surrounded by precautions, an act that is to be an unreserved gift of self, must in the long term be communicated to the children.  It seems that the increasing prevalence of anxiety and even certain neuroses results in large part from contraceptive practices.”

For the better part of the last half-century, the teaching Church has been (at best) silent promoting her teachings on birth control.  It is time that the rest of the Church step out into the void and preach the freedom that comes from ditching contraception.  The one flesh union within marriage is a daily lived experience.