I agree with you, grega, that the apparent significant rejection of HV by Catholics is an issue and should not be simply dismissed by those who say that morality is not a matter of majority vote. I agree that morality is not up to a majority vote, but I do think the experience of average Catholics is significant.

That said, I disagree with the quote above. Life takes “support groups” in order to work properly. Brett’s right: NFP is not just another type of “birth control product,” but should be thought of as a way of discipleship. And discipleship in general (and in marriage) is not about isolated individuals (or isolated couples) but takes place in communities. I agree that one of the casualties of contraception is its tendency to encourage the isolation of couples from one another: the ideal romanticized north american couple set apart from everyone else.

And the Church need not organize “special conferences” about TOB; it only needs to make sure TOB is kept out of the hands of the “cult”-types, as SVII said above and as Brett implied in his post.

God forbid another couple kids might mean a smaller shabbier house or car, a loss of that trip to Disneyland, the inability to eat out 4 times a month, or the kids going to community college instead of a Private University … … … I guess I am critiquing a world of values where mere material possessions and status are viewed with so much more worth than “one more soul”.

It seems that you are essentially saying that NFP could not possibly be abused in a selfish or damaging way (or if it could it surely isn’t common). I grant that “contraceptive” is probably not the best term to use in the way I was using it. And it seems self-evident that NFP (speaking generally and not in every last individual case) should not be the norm for Catholic marriage.

I am not just looking at this in a merely legalistic or mechanical way regarding the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage and whether they are being separated or not, as if that is the only consideration. I think the Church also teaches that one also has a duty to look at motives and the will, especially as to whether they are primarily oriented in a selfish (vs. self-giving) manner, or as Brian phased it above, being used with “purity of intention”.

CCC 2368 “For just reasons …” “… It is their duty to make certain that their desire is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood”. These statements suppose that NFP can be used for unjust reasons and for selfish reasons do they not?

That is really the only claim I was making, that NFP can (and in my opinion often is) used for the selfish reasons that many might use the pill for (kids are a pain in the butt and hell of a lot of work).

I did not once mention a minimal family size, did I? Did I ever say it was not possible for some couples to use NFP for the rest of their marriage if there were serious reasons (an obvious one would be for mental health reasons ie;. post-partum depression etc.)?

cradlecatholic,

This is very abstract and difficult to understand for those of us without advanced degrees. If a woman takes the pill for some reason other than contraception (say, to treat endometriosis), then marital sex is still licit and unitive. Apparently, it is even procreative, although the drug renders the woman infertile. If she secretly takes the pill for contraceptive purposes, sex is still unitive for her husband (I would assume). If the wife is past her childbearing years, sex is still procreative. If infertile couples should have sex, say, oral sex to completion, it is not procreative even though they can’t procreate. It seems baffling to me that all sexual acts must be “open to the transmission of life” when that transmission is impossible. How can infertile couples thwart the impossible by having what for fertile couples would be nonprocreative sex? It seems to all boil down to the “tab A in slot B” theory of sexuality — that sexual acts were meant to happen in only one way, when that isn’t even the case in nature.

By the way, I much admired the Brett Salkeld’s original post and look forward to hearing more from him.

I imagine that’s even more effective than NFP.

The Catholic Church means something very specific when it talks about Contraception. I think this is a case of theological language clashing with one’s personal understanding of ‘contraception’.

As defined by the Catholic Church, Contraception is any act or device that breaks the two meanings of the Marital Act. Those two meanings are the Unitive and the Procreative.

As Catholics we have a responsibility to understand what the means in her teachings. Confusion in terms often leads to confusion in understanding Church teaching.

There is a vast difference between ivf, condoms and abstaining from sex during fertile periods. In one you participate in the sexual act with a ‘barrier’ a broken expression, the Unitive being inhibited. In the other you simply refrain from expressing marital love through the sexual act.

But NFP is the only thing that is presented unrealistically, TOB itself presents an unrealistic picture of sex. It’s spoken of almost in total abstraction from the will and intentionality of the subjects during the act, even though it is the purity of intention, among other things, that determine what the moral and qualitative experience is like.

You hear almost nothing at all about the very real pitfalls and dangers of sex even for married couples who are *doing* everything else right. Hildebrand, for example, spoke about the possibility of ‘swamping’ or ‘drowning’ during sex. There are moral dangers present during the whole process of the act. But you don’t hear about this from Christopher West and others (at least I haven’t). They seem to be talking about sex in complete seperation from the human will, – an impossibility.

Does anyone else think that couples are isolated and need a place (maybe online) where they can talk to other couples about sex, nfp, and the challenges of living a chaste, holy life as a married couple?