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July 19, 2008
From Lambeth 1930 to Lambeth 2008
Here is a short essay on the present and future of Anglicanism, by Peter Toon, a former president and still a leader of the American branch of the Prayer Book Society, a good friend of mine (he's the godfather of our third child), and someone who has served Touchstone as a contributing editor.
The Lambeth Conference of 1930: Its continuing influence on the Morals and Behavior of Anglicans.
“It is about as clear as any historical chain can get that the continuing implosion of The Episcopal Church is a direct consequence of the famous Lambeth Conference in 1930” [First Things, August 2008, page 40].
So what happened in 1930 of such consequence? Whatever did the assembled Bishops (mostly from the West in those days) do or say to be so important and far-reaching?
Do not be surprised! They spoke about sex and family life in which they said many helpful and even wise things (see Resolutions 9-20 of the Conference). However, in one Resolution, in which they were also trying to be helpful (and relevant!), they gave advice that was wholly innovatory in 1930 for a traditional Christian Church, be it Catholic or Protestant. Here is Resolution 15:
The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex
Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.
Voting: For 193; Against 67.
In the Early Church, in the Medieval Church, in the Churches of the Protestant Reformation and in the Christian tradition to the 1920s (e.g., see the Marriage Service in The BCP 1662), any form of artificial birth control in order to make the sexual act sterile was regarded as a serious sin against God’s holy law. In 1930 the Anglican Council of Bishops, for what seemed to be good pastoral reasons, suggested ways for Christian couples in certain circumstances to reject this law.
By this Resolution, which went around the world like wild-fire, the Anglican Way was changed permanently. No attempt has been made in any Lambeth Conference since 1930 to reverse it, and no national or regional synod of the Anglican Communion has officially rejected it. Thus it stands as part of the modern, Anglican teaching on sexual relations within marriage.
To quote from First Things again: “By giving benediction in 1930 to married heterosexual members purposely seeking sterile sex, the Anglican Church lost, bit by bit, any authority to tell other members — married or unmarried, homosexual or heterosexual — not to do the same. To put the point another way, once heterosexuals start claiming the right to act as homosexuals, it would not be long before homosexuals start claiming the rights of heterosexuals” (page 40).
Much ground is covered and many assumptions taken for granted, of course, in the last sentence, for, while the seed was sown in 1930, the fruit did not really begin to be seen till the 1970s and on into the twenty-first century. (For more detail on this period see my booklets from the Anglican Marketplace: “Episcopal Innovations, 1970-2004” and “Same-Sex Affection, Holiness and Ordination”.)
The key moments and moves in the historical chain, which goes from the adoption of artificial birth-control, through marriage without procreation, to the pursuit of sterile sex between homosexual partners, include the following:
(a) The arrival of the “Pill” in the early 1960s and its impact on the easy availability of sterile sex for all kinds of heterosexual couples from then till now;
(b) The major change in the Episcopal Canon of Marriage in 1973, allowing for Divorce and then Remarriage in Church; and making “traditional marriage” as one of various possibilities.
(c) The new marriage service in the Episcopal 1976/79 prayer book, where procreation seen as an option within, not a normal part of, the “one flesh” union in healthy married couples.
(d) The widespread presence and acceptance of expressive individualism so that a person seeks self-worth, self fulfillment, self-justification and self-orientation. In this context, marriage is seen as created by the two concerned as a personal covenant, according to their own lights and needs. They marry into a subjective rather than an objective reality and order.
(e) The powerful homosexual lobby in the General Conventions and some diocesan synods from 1970 onwards; and the support for this major push given by those whose see morality in terms of human rights and human happiness in terms of expressive individualism as the norm for human identity.
(f) A sense of major support from the culture, its media and progressive Roman Catholics—via the continued major ridiculing of the official Roman Catholic teaching on right Sexual Relations and against artificial birth control and sterile sex, as found in Humanae Vitae.
(g) The election and consecration of the openly-active homosexual Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2004.
Other facts and details, of course, could be added to this list.
What seems to be the case is that the progressive liberals of The Episcopal Church, who favor full and equal rights for homosexual persons and couples, accept the general truth of this historical chain. They have long made their petition, “Give us what the heterosexuals enjoy in the Episcopal Church.” Also those few Anglicans who hold to the doctrine of Marriage provided in the Service in The BCP 1662 (see especially the Preface) generally find the historical chain makes full sense, as do Roman Catholics (see e.g., the essay, “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae” cited above).
However, many of those evangelical Anglicans in The Network, Gafcon and Common Cause, who describe themselves as “orthodox” or “traditional,” or both, seem to reject the historical chain presented above. Apparently, they actually believe that the historical chain does not begin with the Resolution of Lambeth 1930, and not even with the new Canon on Marriage of 1973 and the new Marriage Service of 1976/79. In fact, many of them have no quarrel with what these three teach.
Rather, they believe that The Episcopal Church got its first homosexually-active Bishop in 2004, and provided before then for the blessing of same-sex couples in varied dioceses, because during the 1980s and on into the 1990, the General Convention of the Church, followed by diocesan conventions, knowingly rejected the teaching of the Scriptures on sexuality in its traditional and straightforward meaning.
That is, the supporters of same-sex arrangements worked over-hard to seek justification for their position by new and involved interpretations of Scripture, thereby twisting the meaning of the Bible to make it say the very opposite of what it actually says and had been heard to say by millions over millennia. And all this, it was alleged, was to avoid the clear sense and meaning of the Bible, which is that God has willed marriage for a man and a woman. (For details of this “new” use of the Bible to commend homosexual acts see my booklet, Same-Sex Affection.)
For many conservative Anglicans the primary question and issue has been, and remains, primarily hetero- or homo- sexuality. And for them absolutely and clearly hetero- is seen as the only Scriptural way. On this basis and from this mindset, it seems that, usually, they are happy to fall in with the Episcopal Church’s Canon Law and its 1976/79 Marriage Service.
Why? Because they accept the “pastoral” need for divorce and remarriage in modern society and also they do not see any problems with “sterile” sex, if engaged lovingly and tenderly within a marriage. In real terms, one may onbserve they have accepted some if not all of the expressive individualism of modern society and are “realists,” not denying the full biblical doctrine of the one-flesh union (of the BCP 1662 Marriage Service), but seeing as an “ideal” for which to strive, not a commandment to follow now.
Finally, let us recall that the famous Resolution on sexuality of the Lambeth Conference of 1998, cited universally as a modern statement of Anglican orthodoxy, is, of course, the “orthodoxy” of post-1930, and it is within what we may call the modern, partial Anglican Christian doctrine of marriage.
Conclusion
While it is clearly the case that Anglican married couples are not prevented from following the full Christian doctrine of sexual relations within marriage, they do not as Anglicans belong to a visible branch or part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, which can claim to receive and proclaim the teaching of the Bible, the Early Church, and the Fathers on sexual relations in holy matrimony. And this situation will not change in the immediate future!
In fact, the Anglican Way may be said to have been permanently weakened and disturbed in its morality and teaching office. This means, in brief, that the Anglican Way has constantly to fight the harder to keep at bay innovations even in basic sexual morality. What it has endured in the last decade is merely a foretaste of that which is to come!
— The Rev’d Dr Peter Toon, July 18 2008
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Comments
These points cannot be made too often. That such large numbers of conservative Christians cannot see the connections is evidence of how powerful Satan's influence and that of the spirit of the age, really is.
Posted by: Janet | Jul 20, 2008 2:57:20 PM
These points cannot be made too often. That such large numbers of conservative Christians cannot see the connections is evidence of how powerful Satan's influence and that of the spirit of the age, really is.
Posted by: Janet | Jul 20, 2008 2:58:54 PM
"they do not as Anglicans belong to a visible branch or part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, which can claim to receive and proclaim the teaching of the Bible, the Early Church, and the Fathers on sexual relations in holy matrimony."
Hmmm. Major teachers of the Orthodox church, the other lung of the catholic churches, have not declared a position against birth control. It seems to me that Peter Toon is looking in only one direction for input based on the early church.
Posted by: John Stolzenbach | Jul 21, 2008 3:39:38 AM
>>>Major teachers of the Orthodox church, the other lung of the catholic churches, have not declared a position against birth control. It seems to me that Peter Toon is looking in only one direction for input based on the early church.<<<
He also ignores the ancient canonical practice of the Orthodox Church of allowing second marriages after divorce to the innocent party in a limited number of circumstances, while concurrently upholding the indissoluable character of the sacramental bond of marriage by not according the rite of second marriage a sacrament, by requiring abstinence from communion for an extended (but fixed) time, and by allowing no more than three marriages in any one lifetime.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 21, 2008 4:35:55 AM
Then again, Anglicanism is indisputably Western. To invoke these Eastern practices (retroactively, no less) to justify 20th century Anglicanism would be unusually childish.
However, though I haven't yet read it, I share doubts about Dr. Toon's thesis. The problem is not so much these identified links in the causal chain, but why it should stop in 1930. From there it could be traced back to 19th century Enlightenment disregard for traditon, or to the peculiarities of the English Reformation and the disobedient posture it implies, or to the numerous Roman outrages that occasioned the Reformation. Some EOs, according to their custom, will blame it all on St. Augustine of Hippo.
The original sin was in the disobedience of the first man. Everything else is just the logical consequences. I expect Dr. Toon quite correctly traces these from 1930 to the present. Still, the Anglican story is everyone's story. But for the grace of God, we are all Episcopalians.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 21, 2008 6:19:27 AM
"Major teachers of the Orthodox church, the other lung of the catholic churches, have not declared a position against birth control."
An entertaining, and perhaps edifying, exercise is to seek out the first edition (c. 1962) of K. T. Ware (i.e., Kyr Kallistos) *The Orthodox Church* and see what he writes there on birth control, and then compare it with the revisions he introduced into it sometime in the late 70s, and then with the second edition of 1992. Or, if one wishes to "cut to the chase," inquire of Fr. Reardon of Touchstone concerning the Orthodox position on birth control.
Posted by: William Tighe | Jul 21, 2008 6:38:35 AM
>>>Then again, Anglicanism is indisputably Western. To invoke these Eastern practices (retroactively, no less) to justify 20th century Anglicanism would be unusually childish.<<<
Of course it would. The problem, however, is the universalization of the "Western" practice implicit in Toon's essay: "Why? Because they accept the “pastoral” need for divorce and remarriage in modern society", ignoring the fact that half of Christendom, at least, understood the pastoral need for divorce and (limited) remarriage approximately 1700 years ago, yet somehow did not slide into the abyss despite that. As you note, obviously something more is at work here.
There is, of course, the inherent irony of an ecclesial community that owes its existence to the need for dissoluability in marriage (and whose founder took advantage of this twice) trying to make a stalwart defense of the indissoluability of marriage in the first place. Perhaps it is that kind of dichotomy that lies at the heart of the problem.
Being an Eastern Christian, I of course would have to take issue with Toon's cavalier dismissal of the pastoral need for divorce and remarriage "in church" (a quaint phrase--I suppose it means that since all Anglican marriages done under the auspices of the church are necessarily "sacramental"). The Orthodox Church recognizes the sacramentality of marriage, which is why it only allows one sacramental marriage. On the other hand, it also recognizes the fallen nature of the world, and thus condescends to human weakness without abrogating the principle (I know this drives a lot of Western Christians nuts). We recognize that the sacrament requires the cooperation of both parties with the Holy Spirit, and that in the absence of this cooperation, the sacrament will not "fructify".
Even the Latin Church has recognized the pastoral demands, not of the modern age, but of every age, to accommodate human frailty when a marriage is irretrievably broken. It has its own way of dealing with the matter; the East has its own way.
Coincidentally, until the issuance of a single Code of Canons for the Catholic Church in 1917, almost all of the Eastern Catholic Churches followed Orthodox marriage regulations. The imposition of the Western discipline upon the Eastern Churches has caused a number of serious pastoral and theological problems. On the one hand, remarriage is no longer allowed after divorce without a decree of nullity; on the other hand, the concept of a single sacramental marriage for all eternity has been seriously diluted. In a fundamental latinization, one can hardly find an Eastern Catholic jurisdiction anywhere that uses the rite of second marriage for divorcees or widowers, and there is no limitation on the number of sacramental marriages into which a person may enter provided there is no living spouse. This will have to be addressed at some point.
>>>Some EOs, according to their custom, will blame it all on St. Augustine of Hippo.<<<
If Augustine did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
>>>The original sin was in the disobedience of the first man. Everything else is just the logical consequences. <<<
indeed. The issue then is how to deal with the consequences. There seem to be three approaches. The classic or traditional Western approach is to set a standard and insist that everyone live by it, and impose penalties on those who do not. The classic Eastern approach is to set a standard and encourage everyone to attempt to live up to it, making necessary concessions to help them come as close as possible. Then there is the modern approach, which takes two forms: first, recognizing that nobody can live up to the traditional standard, but unwilling to penalize anyone for weakness, dilute the standard almost to (and sometimes beyond) the point of nullity; second, simply declare that all standards are arbitrary and historically conditioned, and settle for a squishy "follow-your-heart-all-you-need-is-love" doctrine. Both of these seem to be gaining ground.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 21, 2008 6:46:07 AM
>>>An entertaining, and perhaps edifying, exercise is to seek out the first edition (c. 1962) of K. T. Ware (i.e., Kyr Kallistos) *The Orthodox Church* and see what he writes there on birth control, and then compare it with the revisions he introduced into it sometime in the late 70s, and then with the second edition of 1992. Or, if one wishes to "cut to the chase," inquire of Fr. Reardon of Touchstone concerning the Orthodox position on birth control.<<<
This is to assume that Tradition is unchanging rather than a dynamic response to the action of the Holy Spirit within the Church. Indisputably, in the age of the Fathers contraception and abortion were considered generally synonymous, and therefore prohibitions against the latter applied to the former.
The formal statement of the OCA on the issue is this:
On Marriage, Family, Sexuality, and the Sanctity of Life
The Procreation of Children
The procreation of children in marriage is the "heritage" and "reward" of the Lord; a blessing of God (cf. Psalm 127:3). It is the natural result of the act of sexual intercourse in marriage, which is a sacred union through which God Himself joins the two together into "one flesh" (Genesis 1-2, Matthew 19, Mark 10, Ephesians 5, et. al.).
The procreation of children is not in itself the sole purpose of marriage, but a marriage without the desire for children, and the prayer to God to bear and nurture them, is contrary to the "sacrament of love" (Orthodox Marriage Service; St. John Chrysostom, On Ephesians, Homily 20).
Married couples are encouraged to abstain from sexual union at times for the sake of devotion to prayer (as, for example, on the eves of the eucharist, and during lenten seasons). They are to do so, however, only "for a season by agreement" since their bodies are not their own but belong to each other; and they are to "come together again lest Satan tempt" them (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:2-7).
God himself "knits together" the child conceived in the mother's womb, beholding its "unformed substance" as it is being intricately wrought before his all-knowing eyes (Psalm 139:13-18). The Lord Jesus himself was first acknowledged on earth by John the Baptist when both the Lord and His Forerunner were still embryos within their mothers' wombs (Luke 1:39-45).
Orthodox Christians have always viewed the willful abortion of unborn children as a heinous act of evil. The Church's canonical tradition identifies any action intended to destroy a fetus as the crime of murder (Ancyra, Canon 21; Trullo, Canon 91; St. Basil, Canon 2).
Convinced of these God-revealed truths, we offer the following affirmations and admonitions for the guidance of the faithful:
The procreation of children is to take place in the context of marital union where the father and mother accept the care of the children whom they conceive.
Married couples may express their love in sexual union without always intending the conception of a child, but only those means of controlling conception within marriage are acceptable which do not harm a foetus already conceived.
Married couples may use medical means to enhance conception of their common children, but the use of semen or ova other than that of the married couple who both take responsibility for their offspring is forbidden.
The Russian Orthodox Church has issued the following statement:
XII. 3. Among the problems which need a religious and moral assessment is that of contraception. Some contraceptives have an abortive effect, interrupting artificially the life of the embryo on the very first stages of his life. Therefore, the same judgements are applicable to the use of them as to abortion. But other means, which do not involve interrupting an already conceived life, cannot be equated with abortion in the least. In defining their attitude to the non-abortive contraceptives, Christian spouses should remember that human reproduction is one of the principal purposes of the divinely established marital union (see, X. 4). The deliberate refusal of childbirth on egoistic grounds devalues marriage and is a definite sin.
At the same time, spouses are responsible before God for the comprehensive upbringing of their children. One of the ways to be responsible for their birth is to restrain themselves from sexual relations for a time. However, Christian spouses should remember the words of St. Paul addressed to them: «Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency» (1 Cor. 7:5). Clearly, spouses should make such decisions mutually on the counsel of their spiritual father. The latter should take into account, with pastoral prudence, the concrete living conditions of the couple, their age, health, degree of spiritual maturity and many other circumstances. In doing so, he should distinguish those who can hold the high demands of continence from those to whom it is not given (Mt. 19:11), taking care above all of the preservation and consolidation of the family.
The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church in its Decision of December 28, 1998, instructed the clergy serving as spiritual guides that «it is inadmissible to coerce or induce the flock to… refuse conjugal relations in marriage». It also reminded the pastors of the need «to show special chastity and special pastoral prudence in discussing with the flock the questions involved in particular aspects of their family life».
The fundamental thrust of both statements is the same:
1. Children are the fruit of marriage, wherein the couple seal their roles as co-creators with God.
2. To enter marriage without the intention of having children, or to refuse to have children for selfish economic or social reasons, is sinful
3. Therefore, to always be open to new life is the ideal
4. But the couple also have a responsibility for raising their children, which may necessitate limiting the number of children or spacing their births.
5. In such instances, natural methods are considered the most spiritually beneificial
6. But recognizing that such methods may not be appropriate for all couples, artificial means are acceptable, provided they are not abortifactant, and that the couple prayerfully enter into this decision with the counsel of their priest or spiritual father.
7. Abortion is equivalent to murder, and is never permissible except to save the life of the mother (equivalent to the Catholic doctrine of double effect).
This is consistent with the Orthodox approach to most aspects of human life: the Church holds forth the ideal, offers support and guidance to live up to it, but works to accommodate human weakness in order that each person has the opportunity to grow in holiness and not be driven away by insupportable burdens.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 21, 2008 8:40:39 AM
>>If Augustine did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
[Chuckle.] As I see it, the Augustine under discussion did not in fact exist; he was invented.
>>The classic or traditional Western approach is to set a standard and insist that everyone live by it, and impose penalties on those who do not.
Mm, this is a bit caricatured. There's some truth to the caricature, but as you pointed out, the RCC has found ways to accommodate weakness of faith and resolve.
Indeed, probably many here at MC are likely more scandalized by the accommodations than by the ideals and disciplines. The bubble in clergy sex abuse is arguably associated with those bishops and priests of the post-Humanae Vitae era who expected a softening of ecclesiastical discipline, a softening that would include accommodation for experimental and/or educational masturbation and homosexuality in teen years, and to a lesser extent some indulgence of ephebophilia among adults. While the causal factors are at this point merely speculative, the generational singularity is not: Apart from this era, the instances of sex abuse appear to hold to a low, linear relation to the male population.
Moreover, the bishops of recent decades, drawn as they are from the elderly, are also of this cohort. I would argue that their sometime irresponsible attitude to clergy sex abuse cannot be fully understood apart from the post-HV attitude to these accommodations to sexuality.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 21, 2008 9:51:54 AM
>>>[Chuckle.] As I see it, the Augustine under discussion did not in fact exist; he was invented.<<<
Actually, he was in an indeterminate quantum state until someone opened the box and observed him.
>>>Indeed, probably many here at MC are likely more scandalized by the accommodations than by the ideals and disciplines. <<<
But this has been the case in the Church at least since the time of Tertullian: there are some who stand for rigor, and others who stand for mercy, and the Church in her wisdom has managed to hold both in dynamic tension. Each then counterbalances the excesses of the other.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 21, 2008 9:59:14 AM
Several comments above allude to something that puzzles me about the Catholic (or I gather I should say Latin?) teaching on birth control. (By way of background, I'm Presbyterian, 29 years old, married and the father of a toddler.) I get why the Pill is impermissible -- it's (at least potentially) an early abortifacient, and baby-killing is no less wrong for being done early.
But non-abortifacient methods of birth control (e.g., condoms) are not per se objectionable because they destroy lives in being -- they don't -- nor because of the intention with which they are used (i.e., the intent to avoid conceiving a child in this particular marital act). The Latin Church allows (and sometimes encourages) NFP, which is used with the same intention of avoiding or limiting or spacing out births, and teaches that such an intention can be morally acceptable or morally unacceptable, depending on circumstances.
Rather, the per se impermissibility of condoms in Latin teaching arises from the premises that (i) use of a condom renders the marital act intrinsically something other than the marital act, without regard to the reasons for which the condom is used, and (ii) that it is per se immoral, even for married couples who have reasons for avoiding conception now that would justify them in using NFP, to engage in this act other than the marital act. This may be residual Protestant nominalism or modernism asking, but why are these premises, and especially the second one, true?
Posted by: RL | Jul 21, 2008 10:48:37 AM
>>Actually, he was in an indeterminate quantum state until someone opened the box and observed him.
I suppose if there are Schroedinger miracles, there can be Schroedinger saints.
>>This may be residual Protestant nominalism or modernism asking, but why are these premises, and especially the second one, true?
There are abundant answers on the net. A brief recap:
The premises you cite are not premises but inferences from a positive claim about sex -- that its natural purpose is the procreation of children and the nuptial union of husband and wife. A human act which has as its object (i.e., a quality of an act intrinsic to the act and not dependent upon the agent's intention or circumstances) something in overt opposition to this purpose is by that fact immoral.
Couples using NFP may do so with right or wrong intentions, but their sexual act itself remains simply the natural sexual act. If they sin, the sin lies in their inner disposition and not in what they actually do. Meanwhile, couples who make use of condoms, pills, sponges, etc., have taken direct and deliberate action against their sexual purpose. The moral quality of their action may be magnified or mitigated by their intent and circumstances, but the basic act is still wrong.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 21, 2008 11:04:28 AM
RL,
I too am currently a Presbyterian. Read Calvin and Luther on contraception. Also read David Kennedy's biography on Margaret Sanger, Birth Control in America. It will be a real eye opener. You will find that not only did Calvin and Luther condemn the practice in no uncertain terms, but that the Southern Presbyterians threatened to leave the Federal Council of Churches when a resolution was proposed in 1931 approving the use of birth control. (Their objection along with that of several other conservative Protestant denominations killed that particular proposal.)
You might also consider pointing your browser to the Bayly brothers' (two Presbyterian pastors) blog at http://www.baylyblog.com/ and searching for the terms "contraception" and "birth control."
Finally, while I will not debate Stuart on the subject, his statement that "Indisputably, in the age of the Fathers contraception and abortion were considered generally synonymous, and therefore prohibitions against the latter applied to the former" is misleading in that it ignores statements by the Fathers condemning contraception on grounds other than those related to abortion. The Fathers did not merely condemn the act of contraception but the motives behind it and the ungrateful attitude it represents, what St. Chrysostom called "contemning the gift of God," that is, what Scripture clearly and explicitly calls His blessing of children. See, e.g., Psalm 127.
I am posting this only because I would not want anyone to be misled about the applicability of the teaching of the Fathers to the modern use of contraceptives. Their teaching still applies and is still valid and not merely as to the use of abortifacients. I have posted on this subject here in the past and will not further debate it here again.
Posted by: GL | Jul 21, 2008 11:41:28 AM
I am trying to download Allan Carlson's "The Natural Family: A Manifesto," but the web-page (www.familymanifesto.net) is giving me a run-time error. There's no link to a webmaster. Anybody know who maintains that site?
Posted by: Clifford Simon | Jul 21, 2008 1:47:07 PM
For the Natural Family Manifesto, try this link.
GL, excellent answer, and being from a Protestant to a Protestant, you managed the head off at the pass all the Papists rushing to heap abuse upon poor RL. Funny how your thinking on the matter is closer to heart of the Universal Church than even some (alas, most) of its more prominent Ostensible Members.
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Jul 21, 2008 3:05:45 PM
It seems to me the difference between NFP and barrier methods does exactly lie in the intention. By abstaining for a time, a couple is agreeing a child will not be concieved at this point in their marriage. By using a barrier method, the couple is simply hoping a child will not be conceived (they are fools if they believe they are immune to the statistics on failure for barrier methods).
I have to agree with Rome on this.
Kamilla
Posted by: Kamilla | Jul 21, 2008 3:16:57 PM
>>you managed the head off at the pass all the Papists rushing to heap abuse upon poor RL.
I really didn't see much of a rush from us papists. RL asked a simple question; I gave a simple answer.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 21, 2008 3:36:58 PM
>I have to agree with Rome on this.
One should always agree with Rome when they are right...
Posted by: David Gray | Jul 21, 2008 4:48:52 PM
I really didn't see much of a rush from us papists. RL asked a simple question; I gave a simple answer.
I was mostly joking DGP, but the old canard: How is NFP any different than barrier methods? is actually quite worthy of derision, betraying a profound failure to distinguish between object and subject, had it not been answered properly. Which it was...
One should always agree with Rome when they are right...
Chesterton is credited (although I cannot lately find the reference) for noting that a man does not need a Church that is right where he is right, but rather a Church that is right where he is in error.
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Jul 22, 2008 10:40:00 AM
>>I was mostly joking DGP
Sorry, I missed it. I'll be more careful next time.
>>but the old canard: How is NFP any different than barrier methods? is actually quite worthy of derision, betraying a profound failure to distinguish between object and subject, had it not been answered properly. Which it was...
I thought RL did a good job of making it clear where he (if you're female, RL, my apologies) is coming from -- an ethic based on intentionality. It's a perfectly understandable perspective, based on what's in circulation.
>>One should always agree with Rome when they are right...
I wish all RC clergy were this magnanimous. :(
Posted by: DGP | Jul 22, 2008 1:57:38 PM
>Chesterton is credited (although I cannot lately find the reference) for noting that a man does not need a Church that is right where he is right, but rather a Church that is right where he is in error.
That's why Chesterton should have been a Presbyterian... :)
Posted by: David Gray | Jul 22, 2008 2:58:48 PM
I don't think an ethic based on intentionality is an adequate foundation upon which a Christian can base their use of hormonal contraception. A man who gets behind the wheel of a car after having indulged in adult beverages normally has no intention to kill anyone, but he knows (or at least he did while sober) that is a possible consequence of his actions. He simply hopes it will not happen or thinks he is immune. It is a similar hope with the couple using possibly abortifacent methods of birth control - they don't know whether or not they are ending a human life, but they don't intend it and they hope their actions do not result in the ending of a human life but they can never know that will not be the end of their actions.
Is that really an adequate basis for justifying their use of hormonal birth control? I hope not.
Kamilla
Posted by: Kamilla | Jul 22, 2008 5:23:03 PM
>>I don't think an ethic based on intentionality is an adequate foundation upon which a Christian can base their use of hormonal contraception.
No, it's not. RL was simply disclosing his limited understanding of an RC account of contraception. He asked about the teaching, and I made an effort to clarify it.
>>A man who gets behind the wheel of a car after having indulged in adult beverages normally has no intention to kill anyone.... It is a similar hope with the couple using possibly abortifacent methods of birth control....
Your analogy works fairly well, but remember that the RCC excludes even non-abortifacient acts of contraception. RL was asking specifically about condoms.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 22, 2008 5:46:40 PM
The American Scientific Affiliation ran this article on the Pill. Particular focus was paid to the evidence on whether it is an abortificient or not. The criterion of "abortificient" used here needs to be explained.
It is known that you can ovulate on the pill. We know this because you can get pregnant on the pill. Now it is a fact that, when you're not on the pill, 70% of fertilized embryos do not implant in the uterus. It is also a fact that we do not know the same figure for the pill: we do not know whether greater or less than 70% of ovulated and fertilized eggs implant when you are on the pill. (The scientific challenege here is detecting minute quantites of new hormones that accompany ovulation.) If the number is greater than 70%, then clearly there's an abortificient effect.
Now the article I'm citing (rightly or wrongly) goes as far as to suggest that the alleged abotificient effect of the pill is what I'd call a "random maybe" - a claim in the form "If X, then maybe Y" apart from any hard evidence either way about the corrolation of X and Y.
The upshot here is that when we get down to the details, the abortificient effect is not going to carry the whole case for us (unless the number is measured and found to be clearly greater than the natural 70%).
Posted by: Clifford Simon | Jul 22, 2008 5:53:00 PM
Ooops - you're right. I am getting myself confused by participating in three similar threads on three blogs at the same time!
The argument works better for hormonal birth control but I think the point about intention still stands, regardless of the method (barrier or hormonal).
Just a side note before I go - there is a reason some methods are properly called contraception and others (i.e. "The Pill") are called birth control or abortifacent (the IUD is specifically abortifacent, I think).
Kamilla
Posted by: Kamilla | Jul 22, 2008 5:54:59 PM
Why is it that these barrels of ink, or I should say bandwidths, are being spent on Contraception without anyone having the presence of mind to point out the actual consequences, political, national, cultural and most important of all, demographic. Simple fact is we in the West have no children, hence our days are numbered. We won't exist by the end of this century. Does that bother anyone?
Posted by: Founder | Jul 28, 2008 10:09:13 AM
Who is "we" kemosabe? My wife and I have supplied western civilization with eight future taxpayers. That's a little more than spilling barrels of ink, no?
Posted by: W.E.D. Godbold | Jul 28, 2008 12:17:42 PM
I'm not sure that there is an essential distinction between Natural Family Planning (NFP) and barrier methods of contraception. The Fathers condemned contraception as any attempt to have marital relations but avoid their procreative effect. They never limited this condemnation to anti-procreative measures done during the woman's fertile period, despite the fact that the ancient world knew of the concept of a female fertility cycle (cf. the Manichean practice condemned by St. Augustine). Furthermore, the sin of Onan in Genesis 38 hasn’t traditionally been limited to any particular time of the month, but has always been condemned because it is an example of any attempt to have sex but deliberately avoid conception.
In my opinion, the Orthodox Church’s refusal to see a distinction between NFP and barrier methods of contraception is a continuation of the ancient Church’s less nuanced understanding of contraception as any deliberate attempt to have sex but avoid procreation. Of course, the ancient Church added strict condemnation of contraception to this more general definition of birth control, whereas the majority of contemporary Orthodox Christians ignore these condemnations. However, the similarity in both group’s refusal to limit the definition of contraception to anti-procreative measures during a certain time of the month is striking. This presents the interesting situation of admitting that, the growing number of Orthodox Christians who condemn contraception within the framework of all deliberate attempts to avoid conception as a result of any conjugal act, are the true heirs of the patristic condemners of contraception instead of Roman Catholics who hold to the letter of the condemnation, but have so altered the definition of contraception so as to no longer be faithful witnesses of the patristic definition, which was more general in scope.
Posted by: AMB | Jul 29, 2008 9:48:47 PM
AMB: >>However, the similarity in both group’s refusal to limit the definition of contraception to anti-procreative measures during a certain time of the month is striking.
Your tendentious remarks aside, you seem to employ a peculiar definition of "anti-procreative measures." Abstaining from the marital act (say, as NFP users sometimes do before and after a woman's ovulation) is not a contraceptive act -- indeed, not an act at all. It is, at most but not necessarily, an expression of anti-procreative intent.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 30, 2008 6:26:40 AM
"Abstaining from the marital act (say, as NFP users sometimes do before and after a woman's ovulation) is not a contraceptive act -- indeed, not an act at all. It is, at most but not necessarily, an expression of anti-procreative intent."
In relation to the particular conjugal act, which NFP attempts to keep non-procreative, the use of NFP would serve as an a priori contraceptive. The use of NFP certainly is an expression of an anti-procreative intent (even if for the best and most worthy of reasons) and it is an anti-procreative action, insofar as it is a deliberate attempt to keep procreation from occurring in a particular conjugal act.
Those who plead for an essential distinction between NFP and barrier methods will argue that NFP cannot remove the procreative end of conjugal acts during the woman's infertile periods because such acts don't have a procreative nature. However, such arguments ignore the fact that the question of which acts have a procreative nature are resolved by Church Tradition and are supported by those natural mechanisms, which make procreation an objective possibility.
Church Tradition never makes a distinction between the conjugal acts and the disciplines, which govern them, of different times of the month, despite the fact that there was knowledge of the existence of some such cycle in the ancient world. Besides, the Roman Catholic Magisterium has traditionally spoken of the procreative and unitive (in that order) nature of one, concrete conjugal act and has posited one discipline for all Christian sexual intercourse. It would be impossible to speak so uniformly of all conjugal acts if the nature of conjugal intercourse changes depending on when it occurs. To endorse the new arguments for NFP not being contraceptive, causes one to end up creating two conjugal acts, with different disciplines governing each. The grotesque alteration of the traditional teaching on conjugal intercourse is plain to see by anyone with a traditional Roman Catholic, or generally Christian, education. (As an aside, the South African Bishops Conference in the year 2000, with permission from the Vatican, has allowed couples where one spouse has AIDS to use condoms during the infertile time of the woman’s cycle, thus showing that the above principles of two conjugal acts, with respective disciplines, is already being applied in some quarters of the Roman Catholic world).
Furthermore, nature herself reveals that each conjugal act has a procreative end, which must be respected. A point, which many defenders of NFP vis-à-vis barrier methods forget is that the female fertility cycle is not the only natural mechanism, which God designed to result in objective procreation. It is true that other natural mechanisms, which no less that the fertility cycle, lead to procreation, are present in humanity. These include, but aren't limited to the chief inclination of the woman to have relations when she is fertile and the chief attraction of the man to the smell of the woman on the days when she is able to conceive. These natural mechanisms, which are inverted as part of the contraceptive use of NFP, are also designs of God that would normally lead to the objective possibility of procreation if users of NFP did not thwart such designs of God. The presence of such natural tendancies, alongside the female fertility cycle, lends credence to the argument that all conjugal acts have a realizable objective procreative end, which must not be deliberately frustrated, and in the process support the ancient Christian belief that all conjugal acts have a procreative as well as an unitive nature and that contraception consists of any attempt to avoid conception as a result of any conjugal act.
Posted by: AMB | Jul 30, 2008 12:05:18 PM
I'm not sure that there is an essential distinction between Natural Family Planning (NFP) and barrier methods of contraception.
Interesting choice of words. There is certainly an essential distinction between NFP and barrier contraception. I.e., in the one case one is merely not having conjugal relations; in the latter, one is having a simulation thereof; these are, in essence, thoroughly distinct things. Of course, it is possible that the intent of, the subjective experience behind, the two could be aligned, in which case evil could be done even by a subjects inaction in NFP. But let's not equate having sex with not having sex, in essence; neither conflate intention with essence.
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Jul 30, 2008 1:04:16 PM
I would appreciate a post or a citation to a source in which I could read a fully developed defense of NFP as opposed to so-called barrier methods. It has always seemed to me that NFP and a condom both have the same goal in minds, preventing sperm from uniting with an egg. The former uses a time barrier by deliberately abstaining from intercourse during a woman's fertile period and the latter uses a space barrier by deliberately preventing the sperm from entering the woman's vagina. Both, however, use barriers.
I am not seeking to open a debate on the issue. I sincerely desire a full apology for why NFP is permissible and a condom is not. In addressing this request, it would also be helpful to have an explanation for why a method that seeks to place a time barrier between the sperm and egg by means of various observations for signs of fertility being made before deciding whether to engage in intercourse is "natural" while a method that places a space barrier between the sperm and egg is "artificial." It seems to me that both are artificial.
My own current, admittedly still developing view, is that any effort to prevent conception is illicit unless their are exigent circumstances (e.g., real risk to maternal life) in case of a pregnancy and, when such circumstances exist, any non-abortifacient method to prevent conception (e.g., NFP and/or a condom) would be equally licit.
Posted by: GL | Jul 30, 2008 1:05:18 PM
"My own current, admittedly still developing view, is that any effort to prevent conception is illicit unless their are exigent circumstances (e.g., real risk to maternal life) in case of a pregnancy and, when such circumstances exist, any non-abortifacient method to prevent conception (e.g., NFP and/or a condom) would be equally licit."
This is where my wife and I, as Protestants, also found ourselves. We weren't hostile to NFP; we just remained unpersuaded by its logic.
Posted by: Bill R | Jul 30, 2008 1:22:20 PM
Genesis 38 (ESV): 9 But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother's wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. 10 And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also.
And
I Corinthians 7: 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
It's not a full apology, but the two passages offer some clues as to why the one might be acceptable but the other not.
Perhaps an illustration might help.
If I want to lose weight, some people say I can have an extra large Diet Coke every day - because I love Coke but the consequences of consuming it every day would prevent me from making my goal. Others advocate I simply abstain for the time of my diet and resume drinking Coke on a limited basis when I reach my goal. Not a perfect analogy, certainly, somewhat useful, I think.
Now here is the interesting thing - studies have shown that those who consume diet drinks actually end up consuming more calories than those who abstain. One theory is dieters compensate for the false sugar by adding too much true sugar (I had a diet coke so I can eat those cookies).
I think we can draw a possible correspondence to false marital intimacy with the use of condoms and diaphragms. You think you are engaging in the real thing without consequences, but your brain knows you are not and tries to substitute.
I don't know how well that works, but it seems to me to make a kind of intuitive sense. Whether or not NFP/periodic abstinence are moraly permissible for the Christian - it seems certain from the condemnation of Onan that barrier methods are not.
Kamilla
Posted by: Kamilla | Jul 30, 2008 1:28:58 PM
>>Church Tradition never makes a distinction between the conjugal acts and the disciplines, which govern them, of different times of the month, despite the fact that there was knowledge of the existence of some such cycle in the ancient world.
Yes, there is such a tradition. Abstinence from sexual relations during periods of presumed fertility for the purposes of avoiding procreation was understood as a *formal* sin -- i.e., a sin of intentionality. Sexual relations in conjunction with contraceptive devices or acts was a *deontological* sin -- i.e., a sin of objectivity.
It can make a difference, largely because of 20th century revisions in the understanding of the relations among the purposes of the sexual act. According to some, e.g. the personalists, it may be possible to give oneself wholeheartedly in the sexual act, even under the conditions of (1) not actively intending procreation, (2) not taking overt action *against* procreation, (3) being ready and willing to accept procreation, should it occur nonetheless, and (4) practicing the aforementioned as a discipline, for sufficiently serious reasons.
Of course, some people reject these revisions. If so, they will infer the same moral prohibitions as AMB, albeit hopefully without the quirky equivocations. However, RC authorities as of Pius XII are open to the change. His 1951 allocution to midwives:
"Today, besides, another grave problem has arisen, namely, if and how far the obligation of being ready for the service of maternity is reconcilable with the ever more general recourse to the periods of natural sterility the so-called 'agenesic' periods in woman, which seems a clear expression of a will contrary to that precept....
"It is necessary first of all to consider two hypotheses. If the application of that theory implies that husband and wife may use their matrimonial right even during the days of natural sterility no objection can be made. In this case they do not hinder or jeopardize in any way the consummation of the natural act and its ulterior natural consequences.... If, instead, husband and wife go further, that is, limiting the conjugal act exclusively to those periods, then their conduct must be examined more closely.
"Here again we are faced with two hypotheses. If, one of the parties contracted marriage with the intention of limiting the matrimonial right itself to the periods of sterility, and not only its use, in such a manner that during the other days the other party would not even have the right to ask for the debt, than this would imply an essential defect in the marriage consent, which would result in the marriage being invalid, because the right deriving from the marriage contract is a permanent, uninterrupted and continuous right of husband and wife with respect to each other.
"However if the limitation of the act to the periods of natural sterility does not refer to the right itself but only to the use of the right, the validity of the marriage does not come up for discussion. Nonetheless, the moral lawfulness of such conduct of husband and wife should be affirmed or denied according as their intention to observe constantly those periods is or is not based on sufficiently morally sure motives. The mere fact that husband and wife do not offend the nature of the act and are even ready to accept and bring up the child, who, notwithstanding their precautions, might be born, would not be itself sufficient to guarantee the rectitude of their intention and the unobjectionable morality of their motives.
"The reason is that marriage obliges the partners to a state of life, which even as it confers certain rights so it also imposes the accomplishment of a positive work concerning the state itself. In such a case, the general principle may be applied that a positive action may be omitted if grave motives, independent of the good will of those who are obliged to perform it, show that its performance is inopportune, or prove that it may not be claimed with equal right by the petitioner—in this case, mankind.
"The matrimonial contract, which confers on the married couple the right to satisfy the inclination of nature, constitutes them in a state of life, namely, the matrimonial state. Now, on married couples, who make use of the specific act of their state, nature and the Creator impose the function of providing for the preservation of mankind. This is the characteristic service which gives rise to the peculiar value of their state, the *bonum prolis.* The individual and society, the people and the State, the Church itself, depend for their existence, in the order established by God, on fruitful marriages. Therefore, to embrace the matrimonial state, to use continually the faculty proper to such a state and lawful only therein, and, at the same time, to avoid its primary duty without a grave reason, would be a sin against the very nature of married life.
"Serious motives, such as those which not rarely arise from medical, eugenic, economic and social so-called 'indications,' may exempt husband and wife from the obligatory, positive debt for a long period or even for the entire period of matrimonial life. From this it follows that the observance of the natural sterile periods may be lawful, from the moral viewpoint: and it is lawful in the conditions mentioned. If, however, according to a reasonable and equitable judgment, there are no such grave reasons either personal or deriving from exterior circumstances, the will to avoid the fecundity of their union, while continuing to satisfy to tile full their sensuality, can only be the result of a false appreciation of life and of motives foreign to sound ethical principles."
Posted by: DGP | Jul 30, 2008 3:38:51 PM
>>I would appreciate a post or a citation to a source in which I could read a fully developed defense of NFP as opposed to so-called barrier methods.
It's hard to say what "fully developed" means to you without knowing your moral-philosophical starting point. Where are you in this? Have you covered Janet Smith? The Kippleys? JPII's *Love and Responsibility* (as Wojtyla)?
Posted by: DGP | Jul 30, 2008 3:44:08 PM
>>>Have you covered Janet Smith? The Kippleys? JPII's *Love and Responsibility* (as Wojtyla)?<<<
I have one of Janet Smith's books, the one with essays defending HV on its 25th or 30th anniversary, and Pope JPII's Love and Responsibility. I have not read either. I guess you are saying that that is where I should look for the answers to my questions.
Please understand, I believe the indiscriminate use of any means to limit deliberately one's fertility is illicit. As I understand it, even NFP cannot licitly be used merely because a couple wants just one or two kids so that they can afford a McMansion, a luxury car and nice vacations. As I understand Catholic teaching, there must be serious reasons to need to space children or otherwise limit procreation before even NFP is licit.
What I have had trouble with is the teaching that when such reasons exist ONLY NFP is licit. And my concern is that no method, including NFP, is perfectly effective. It seems that this teaching might be asking a couple to take a greater risk that is necessary because the risk could be further reduced by combining NFP with a condom or other non-abortifacient barrier method. That is, if NFP is 95% effective, that means it fails 5% of the time. If combining NFP with a condom creates a 99.5% effective rate (and I am just using these numbers as examples -- I don't have real data), then the probability that the wife might become pregnant (and face either a real risk of her own death or the decision to abort) would drop from 5% to 0.5%. (Am I incorrect that Catholic teaching would permit the wife to have an abortion if continuing the pregnancy would likely result in her death? If so, and if it were known before she became pregnant that such a risk exists, then wouldn't it be preferable to prevent conception than to face the dilemma of the mother's life or the life of the unborn child?)
I know two couples who face just such circumstances. One couple would love to have more children -- they have only one -- but the wife has been told in no uncertain terms that another pregnancy would put her life at grave risk. The other couple has six children and the wife almost died giving birth to the last one. Again, the couple was told another pregnancy would put the wife's life at grave risk.
If the reason justifying NFP is that the wife's life would be at serious risk should she become pregnant, why doesn't that risk justify even further protective measures such as the husband's use of a condom combined with NFP? That is what I need to have fleshed out more fully and the question of truly exigent circumstances is my only real problem with HV.
Posted by: GL | Jul 30, 2008 4:20:26 PM
I think the person who spoke of a time barrier vs a space barrier is not considering whether individual acts of intercourse are properly conjugal. It is possible to object to the analysis based on single acts of intercourse, and of course people have done so, but this is the way the argument has been made. In any single act of intercourse one is not allowed to do anything in anticipation of it, during it, or after it, to render it infertile. Abstaining at a time the couple believes the woman is fertile clearly does not deform a particular act of inercourse.
I was interested in the argument made that the woman's increased desire at the time of fertility and the man's response, either to that or to her smell, are all part of God's plan, which one is frustrating by abstaining then. Certainly this has never been part of the scholastic analysis of the sexual act. One might comment that these factors also come into play between unmarried people, so that they cannot be considered absolute indicators of the will of God in any particular situation. I would think too that it is rather dangerous to identify God's will with our desires, even with physiologically completely natural desires.
I agree that the tradition generally was negative about any attempts of married people to avoid having children. On top of that there was the condemnation of "pharmakeia" in Paul, sometimes translated sorcery, but in practice referring mostly to contraceptives and abortifacients. Were contraceptives condemned only because they were indistinguishable from abortifacients? I believe the whole enterprise of rendering the marital act sterile was condemned. I think the only question which remains is whether 'recourse to the infertile period' is allowable. As a Catholic I accept the Church's teaching that, for grave reasons, it is. I don't think the whole idea that NFP is Catholic birth control and one can use it to plan the perfect two child suburban family is acceptable to traditional Christianity. I don't think that idea works out too well in practice anyway, as, if the reasons are not grave, the natural impetus to intercourse in the fertile period easily overcomes them.
I find it very difficult to understand how people can say a barrier method is no different than abstaining during the fertile period. Believe me, it is radically different in practice! If people say that it is the intention to avoid children which is wrong, and therefore accept all the children God sends, I am able to believe that their inability to see the difference is honest. But if they use a condom or diaphragm and have all the sex they want whenever they want, while preventing the beginning of new life, and then say what they are doing is no different from the couple who are abstaining for two or three weeks a month, or perhaps for most of several months during the return of fertility during breastfeeding, well, I can't help suspecting that their reasoning is tinged with rationalization.
Abstaining during the fertile period requires a degree of sscesis, It also keeps before the mind of the couple that their intercourse is related to having children. They ask themselves, "Are we willing to have a child right now?" and if the answer is no, then they refrain from intercourse. The couple using a barrier method never has to think of children. You could say that having to insert/put on the device would make them think of children, but I think that just becomes a ritual and generalized "precaution", in most cases. The psychological difference between using NFP and using a barrier method is so great, that that alone makes me think there has to be a moral difference.
Susan Peterson
Posted by: Susan Peterson | Jul 30, 2008 4:43:31 PM
No, the Catholic Church would not permit an abortion to save the life of the mother. In the past, when C sections were usually fatal to women, it would not allow the destruction of an unborn baby which could not be delivered. (This was done by the same procedure as is now called "partial birth abortion" by the way.) A direct attack on an innocent life is never allowed.
On the other hand, the church accepts the death of the unborn as the indirect result of treating a disease condition which might cause death. A woman with a cancerous uterus may have it removed even if she is also pregnant. A fallopian tube in which there is an ectopic pregnancy may be removed. On the other hand, the newer treatment for ectopic pregnancy, the use of methotrexate to kill the developing embryo combined with a flushing out of the tube, is not acceptable, because it is a direct attack on the life of the embryo.
I realize this makes the situations described by GL even more serious. Some people abstain completely in such situations. (I do think such situations are rare, and that one cannot always trust what doctors say about them; I was told after my third had newborn problems that subsequent babies would have such problems to a greater degree, and that I should not have more. I had six more, and none of them did. I have heard of so many situations where women were told they shouldn't have more children, and they did have more children, perhaps being followed by a high risk pregnancy specialist, and everything was OK, that I am sceptical of any such assertion without having the medical details. But since such situations do exist, they have to be addressed.) AS I said, some people abstain completely. Others make use of only the "absolutely infertile" period which starts about 4 days after ovulation is confirmed. This may allow for only a week a month during which intercourse is possible. But it is an extremely reliable method.
Correction for above..I was trying to write ascesis and wasn't sure how to spell it...but how I got the "S" in there at the beginnning, I don't know.
Susan Peterson
Posted by: Susan Peterson | Jul 30, 2008 5:02:47 PM
>>If the reason justifying NFP is that the wife's life would be at serious risk should she become pregnant, why doesn't that risk justify even further protective measures such as the husband's use of a condom combined with NFP? That is what I need to have fleshed out more fully and the question of truly exigent circumstances is my only real problem with HV.
Susan Peterson makes some worthwhile remarks. I would add two observations:
(1) Physicians might get sued if they don't warn you of potential complications to your medical problems. It's exceedingly unlikely that they will be sued because you have children *without* problems. It's reasonable that they'd be skewed toward advice against children.
(2) Christian moral thought follows Christian anthropology. You are body and soul. To love, you must do good with both body and soul. By analogy, you must get both object and intention correct: You must act rightly, and intend rightly.
The Scriptures are littered with people who did the wrong thing for the right reason, and the right thing for the wrong reason. Neither come off as righteous (though some escape punishment for one reason or another).
Thus you must have more than a grave reason not to conceive children. This end does not justify any means. It remains also that you should not directly and deliberately act against the good of human sexuality, which means no act against either loving union or procreation. The king who desperately needs to conceive an heir, and whose queen by her vows has pledged her body to him, nevertheless sins when he takes her by force or fear, thus acting directly against their loving union. Likewise the couple with grave reasons not to conceive nevertheless sin if they act overtly to frustrate the procreative good by impeding conception.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 30, 2008 5:28:24 PM
GL's point and mine would, I think, be along these lines. The Catholic teaching regarding NFP and contraception focus on intention, despite language addressing the sinfulness of an act which renders conjugal relations sterile. For example, if one spouse ingested a substance, thinking it was a food or a medicine, but which substance rendered the marital act sterile, no one would regard the act as sinful where there was no reasonable basis for suspecting the true consequence of taking such substance. I do not know, but suspect, that contrariwise if one engaged in normal sexual relations with one's spouse, but prayed that God would render the act nevertheless sterile, one has thereby sinned, not because of the act but because of the intention. Now NFP is closer to the latter example than the former. There may not be a prayer to render the act sterile, but the intention that the act be infertile is inferable from the very choice of NFP, even if conception is not the normal consequence of the act. One cannot distinguish NFP from contraception on the basis of the sinful act because the act only becomes sinful when coupled with a sinful intent. Indeed at law one may be prosecuted, or be found liable, if one fails to act when action is required by law, e.g., to surrender or stop when ordered to do so by law enforcement officers. The failure to act, in other words, may itself be regarded a morally culpable act.
Posted by: Bill R | Jul 30, 2008 6:11:59 PM
"Perhaps an illustration might help."
Analogies only work to support an already proven foundational premise. They cannot become the core proof of such a premise without misunderstanding their intended purpose.
"I don't know how well that works, but it seems to me to make a kind of intuitive sense. Whether or not NFP/periodic abstinence are morally permissible for the Christian - it seems certain from the condemnation of Onan that barrier methods are not."
When I read Genesis 38 and patristic commentaries on the same, I see a condemnation of any deliberate intention and action designed to keep conception from occurring in any conjugal act. Modern attempts to limit this condemnation to only naturally fertile intercourse is a limitation that is foreign to the Fathers and the ancient Church in their commentaries on this passage and in their condemnations of contraception, in general.
Posted by: AMB | Jul 30, 2008 8:53:45 PM
>>The Catholic teaching regarding NFP and contraception focus on intention, despite language addressing the sinfulness of an act which renders conjugal relations sterile.
No, Catholic moral thought in this case (as elsewhere) focuses on both intent and act. Again: You have to get *both* right in order to love aright.
>>For example, if one spouse ingested a substance, thinking it was a food or a medicine, but which substance rendered the marital act sterile, no one would regard the act as sinful where there was no reasonable basis for suspecting the true consequence of taking such substance.
C'mon, I've read your comments before; you're smarter than this. You're not seriously proposing that the ingestion of poison (other than alcohol :-) ) is good, if done unknowingly? Is it not rather that the spouse acts out of perfect ignorance, and is therefore entirely inculpable?
>>I do not know, but suspect, that contrariwise if one engaged in normal sexual relations with one's spouse, but prayed that God would render the act nevertheless sterile, one has thereby sinned, not because of the act but because of the intention.
Possibly. It depends upon what you mean by "prayed" and "render." Even the Lord Jesus prayed that he might evade the cup, but appended the all-important "thy will be done," and acted accordingly.
>>Now NFP is closer to the latter example than the former.
Well, yes, as NFP has nothing to do with the former example.
>>but the intention that the act be infertile is inferable from the very choice of NFP,
Not exactly. People also use NFP to regulate and time conception or the coitus likely to lead to conception. As noted above, the conditions under which couples may intend a specific instance or period of coitus to be infertile are disputable. Couples using NFP, like RC bishops, are of different minds on this. But for the sake of argument, we can grant that some NFP couples intend infertile outcomes similar to some contracepting couples.
>>One cannot distinguish NFP from contraception on the basis of the sinful act because the act only becomes sinful when coupled with a sinful intent.
No. No, no. Indeed, in this equivocation lies one of the major problems of modern moral thought. The moral quality of an act is *not* entirely reducible to the intention of the actor.
Of course, the deliberate choice of an evil act implies moral fault, but at some potentially small length down the causal chain, the intended outcome may nevertheless be morally pure -- perhaps, for example, the intention to end a war and save gazillions of lives by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A man could order such a thing, or execute the order, with perfectly innocent intent provided he thought only of the excess lives to be saved. Indeed, in some such cases, he might rightly believe that the lives he takes would be lost all the same should he *not* proceed. Still, it is wrong for him directly and deliberately to kill the civilians: It is wrong because the act itself is wrong, no matter the innocent intention.
>>Indeed at law one may be prosecuted, or be found liable, if one fails to act when action is required by law, e.g., to surrender or stop when ordered to do so by law enforcement officers. The failure to act, in other words, may itself be regarded a morally culpable act.
Yes, but we're talking about morality. If I could shout here, I would: Morality is not coextensive with law! In moral philosophy, the failure to act is sinful only when (1) the failure is accompanied by sinful intent, or (2) it occurs under conditions in which the actor is *obliged* to act or to otherwise guarantee an outcome. This is not the case in specific instances of marital coitus.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 30, 2008 8:55:29 PM
"Yes, there is such a tradition. Abstinence from sexual relations during periods of presumed fertility for the purposes of avoiding procreation was understood as a *formal* sin -- i.e., a sin of intentionality. Sexual relations in conjunction with contraceptive devices or acts was a *deontological* sin -- i.e., a sin of objectivity."
This principle of distinction, which is also manifested in the doctrine of mental reservation, underwent its own development in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Compared to the Tradition of the Fathers, such distinctions appear as so much casuistry, without much ancient basis. However, I'm welcome to evidence of the contrary.
"It can make a difference, largely because of 20th century revisions in the understanding of the relations among the purposes of the sexual act."
I'm not sure how revisions to the Faith and even of moral principles of right and wrong can be accepted by Christians who admit of no alteration of the Faith, which is always known in its doctrine and may only develop in its manner of expression. Such a change can only be considered a "corruption" of the ancient Faith and not its organic development per the Vincentian Canon.
Posted by: AMB | Jul 30, 2008 9:14:44 PM
"In any single act of intercourse one is not allowed to do anything in anticipation of it, during it, or after it, to render it infertile. Abstaining at a time the couple believes the woman is fertile clearly does not deform a particular act of intercourse."
Eventually the couple's next conjugal act will occur and it will either bear the marks of the couple's use of NFP or not. The infertility, itself, is created through nature. However, it affects the conjugal act due to the couple's deliberate interference. Likewise, a couple doesn't (usually) create a condom, but they do influence its effect on the conjugal act. And its the deliberate effect and its intention, which is immoral. Besides, your argument is based on the assumption that all conjugal acts don't have a procreative end, which cannot be deliberately hindered from appearing, without violating its nature. The refusal to admit this principle is a flaw of modern moral teaching and isn't present in Sacred Tradition.
Posted by: AMB | Jul 30, 2008 9:29:11 PM
>>This principle of distinction, which is also manifested in the doctrine of mental reservation, underwent its own development in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
True.
>>Compared to the Tradition of the Fathers, such distinctions appear as so much casuistry, without much ancient basis. However, I'm welcome to evidence of the contrary.
The medieval development was an effort to put the ancient understanding into then-contemporary language, itself derived from pagan antiquity and surviving in baptized forms into the Middle Ages.
>>I'm not sure how revisions to the Faith and even of moral principles of right and wrong can be accepted by Christians who admit of no alteration of the Faith, which is always known in its doctrine and may only develop in its manner of expression. Such a change can only be considered a "corruption" of the ancient Faith and not its organic development per the Vincentian Canon.
To call them revisions of the Faith is to beg the question. You have some RC sympathizers. Still, Pius XII was not especially sympathetic to modernism or similarly innovative dispositions, so I hardly think your case is obvious.
The revisions arguably strive for a better, more organic understanding of the relations among the positive purposes of the marital act. The strict hierarchy of ends, symptomatic of the casuistry you pretend to decry, is not terribly intuitive; on the contrary, a subtler anthropology tends to see the two positive purposes (I am prescinding from discussion of the remedium concupiscentiae) as two sides of a coin, mutually conditioning -- or perhaps perichoretic. These revisions have clear biblical foundations, and (again, arguably) improve on a weak point in Patristic thought -- namely, the Fathers' own dependence upon the vocabulary of pagan psychological anthropologies.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 30, 2008 9:32:26 PM
"I was interested in the argument made that the woman's increased desire at the time of fertility and the man's response, either to that or to her smell, are all part of God's plan, which one is frustrating by abstaining then. Certainly this has never been part of the scholastic analysis of the sexual act. One might comment that these factors also come into play between unmarried people, so that they cannot be considered absolute indicators of the will of God in any particular situation. I would think too that it is rather dangerous to identify God's will with our desires, even with physiologically completely natural desires."
The scholastic analysis of the sexual act was uncertain of the full nature of the female fertility cycle and often had to labor under the misunderstandings of Aristotelian biology and anatomy. Other aspects of human sexual nature were not known and many are only now coming to light, thus making their presence in the scholastic analysis impossible. And the female fertility cycle also comes into play with unmarried couples, yet this doesn't stop modern Catholicism from using it as a sign of the will of God. Furthermore, it *is* dangerous and a serious fallacy to consider anything natural (not just desires) as a reflection of God's will. However, using nature (which includes desires) to support the teachings of Sacred Tradition is a venerable tradition known as natural law morality. I don't think you've yet shown the difference between the natural mechanisms, which I mentioned earlier, and the female fertility cycle, nor the incompatibility of the former in an evaluation of the nature of the sexual union.
"I find it very difficult to understand how people can say a barrier method is no different than abstaining during the fertile period. Believe me, it is radically different in practice!"
I think we should focus on principle before practice. Besides, comparing the worst intentions of users of barrier methods with the best intentions of NFP-users is too subjective to be helpful.
Posted by: AMB | Jul 30, 2008 9:47:14 PM
This may not be a deep theological point -- and is most certainly *not* the fundamental distinction -- but in the effort to distinguish between NFP on the one hand and barrier-contraception on the other, it may be worth noting that NFP requires a certain amount of discipline, whereas condoms do not.
Any quick-fix, no-worries, fire-and-forget technology which makes grandiose promises to liberate us from the natural order of things -- i.e., that we can have anything we want whenever we want it, without any sacrifice or exercise of proper discretion or proper will on our part -- should be regarded with extreme skepticism. Unlike contraception, NFP *does* entail a clear, up-front sacrifice, as anyone who has practiced it can verify.
Since the post is about Anglicanism (and since this entire magazine/website is based on *Mere Christianity*), it's interesting to note C.S. Lewis' apparent schizophrenia on the matter. I'm 99.999% positive I've read an interview with him in which he explicitly said he had no objections to contraception. (I forget where I read it, but it's not an obscure reference, I'm sure somebody here has read it too. Maybe *God In The Dock*. I remember that at some point he is also asked about Billy Graham...)
Yet in one of his novels (*That Hideous Strength*) contraception is clearly depicted as an evil.
And it doesn't appear (to me, anyhow) that this latter, fictional depiction is simply a question of contraception being used for wrong reasons. For those who've read it, I'm thinking of the bit where Merlin mentions (in extremely disapproving terms) contraception as being one of the "usages of Sulva" -- Sulva being an imaginary realm on the Moon populated by a sterile race of degenerate technocrats.
Posted by: G.S. | Jul 30, 2008 9:56:06 PM
This may not be a deep theological point -- and is most certainly *not* the fundamental distinction -- but in the effort to distinguish between NFP on the one hand and barrier-contraception on the other, it may be worth noting that NFP requires a certain amount of discipline, whereas condoms do not.
Any quick-fix, no-worries, fire-and-forget technology which makes grandiose promises to liberate us from the natural order of things -- i.e., that we can have anything we want whenever we want it, without any sacrifice or exercise of proper discretion or proper will on our part -- should be regarded with extreme skepticism. Unlike contraception, NFP *does* entail a clear, up-front sacrifice, as anyone who has practiced it can verify.
Since the post is about Anglicanism (and since this entire magazine/website is based on *Mere Christianity*), it's interesting to note C.S. Lewis' apparent schizophrenia on the matter. I'm 99.999% positive I've read an interview with him in which he explicitly said he had no objections to contraception. (I forget where I read it, but it's not an obscure reference, I'm sure somebody here has read it too. Maybe *God In The Dock*. I remember that at some point he is also asked about Billy Graham...)
Yet in one of his novels (*That Hideous Strength*) contraception is clearly depicted as an evil.
And it doesn't appear (to me, anyhow) that this latter, fictional depiction is simply a question of contraception being used for wrong reasons. For those who've read it, I'm thinking of the bit where Merlin mentions (in extremely disapproving terms) contraception as being one of the "usages of Sulva" -- Sulva being an imaginary realm on the Moon populated by a sterile race of degenerate technocrats.
Posted by: G.S. | Jul 30, 2008 9:57:38 PM
"C'mon, I've read your comments before; you're smarter than this." -- DGP
Hmmm...well, sorry to disappoint you. The example was pure hypothetical, and I wasn't assuming the substance to be poisonous to the couple, but only to the sperm or the egg.
"...no one would regard the act as sinful where there was no reasonable basis for suspecting the true consequence of taking such substance."
Yes, that was my point.
"Still, it is wrong for him directly and deliberately to kill the civilians: It is wrong because the act itself is wrong, no matter the innocent intention."
But it is not necessarily sinful for the actor. You confuse the meaning of "sinful" here. An act may be evil in its consequences but still may not be sinful as to the actor who honestly believes he acts morally. An act may be intrinsically evil, but the actor cannot be said to have sinned without a sinful intent. Please try again. If you are right, then would not the abstaining couple have committed sin where they would have had relations during the woman's fertile period but for their desire not to sire children at that time, and that union would have produced a child?
"Morality is not coextensive with law!"
Couldn't agree with you more. But the refusal to stop when ordered to do so by the police is usually a moral, and not merely a legal, failing. Try this: a man fails to act so as to prevent a serious crime, when the action could have been undertaken at little cost to himself. This may or may not be lawful, but it is certainly immoral.
Posted by: Bill R | Jul 30, 2008 10:45:27 PM
>>You confuse the meaning of "sinful" here. An act may be evil in its consequences but still may not be sinful as to the actor who honestly believes he acts morally. An act may be intrinsically evil, but the actor cannot be said to have sinned without a sinful intent. Please try again.
No, I meant what I said. The culpability of the actor is not equivalent to the sinfulness of the act. Moreover, there are situations where sincerity is insufficient: In that immortal phrase, "There are some things we can't not know." In my opinion, one of those things has to do with condoms and pills.
>>If you are right, then would not the abstaining couple have committed sin where they would have had relations during the woman's fertile period but for their desire not to sire children at that time, and that union would have produced a child?
No, because they had no obligation to produce a child specifically at that time.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 31, 2008 4:46:54 AM
An act may be intrinsically evil, but the actor cannot be said to have sinned without a sinful intent.
If he intended the act, even with the holiest of intentions, then he has sinned. Period. You cannot not sin in performing an intrinsically evil act. An intrinsically (your word) evil act is... well... intrinsically... evil. The gravity of the sin (whether it lands you in hell or not) may be mitigated by intention (consent of the will), knowledge, and other extenuating circumstances, but the sinful act can never have been anything but a sin.
On the subject of NFP vs. Barrier Contraception, perhaps it would be helpful to separate the two moral questions, for there are, in fact, two:
1) Is it evil to intend (or strongly prefer) not to conceive a child as a result of an act of coitus?
2) Is it evil to employ artificial means or techniques to interfere with the fertility of an act of coitus?
The RC and traditional Christian answer to (2) is yes. It is an objective and intrinsic evil and no good intention in the world can make it otherwise. The answer to (1) is less obvious, and seems to be a source of the diversity of opinion on the matter (except for where we disagree on whether an intrinsically evil act is a sin). There is a deep suspicion in Christian tradition of such an intention. It could be sinful. AMB seems to think it is, per se', sinful. I doubt this. There are serious reasons, albeit some more serious than others, to desire not to have a(nother) child conceived as result of the coital act. And there are also serious reasons (e.g., avoiding temptation, to say nothing of its positive benefits) to engage in licit coital acts. Are there people using NFP sinfully? There is little doubt that some, perhaps many do. Are there people using barrier contraception without sin? No. That is the difference.
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Jul 31, 2008 9:33:04 AM
Susan posted:
>>>I think the person who spoke of a time barrier vs a space barrier is not considering whether individual acts of intercourse are properly conjugal. It is possible to object to the analysis based on single acts of intercourse, and of course people have done so, but this is the way the argument has been made.<<<
I suppose that this is where one of my problems lie. The idea that each act of sexual intercourse should be treated independently and that one should not look also to the entire sexual relationship seems to me to be an attempt to avoid a moral problem with NFP. It is true that an individual act of intercourse engaged in during an infertile period is not in and of itself immoral, but when the entire relationship is ordered to only have intercourse during infertile periods it seems to me that the relationship as a whole seeks an immoral end -- absent compelling reasons not to conceive. That is, individual acts of intercourse are planned to take place so as to avoid conception, so that something is being done "in anticipation of [sexual intercourse] . . . to render it infertile." And, as a consequence, "[a]bstaining at a time the couple believes the woman is fertile clearly does . . . deform [the sexual relationship as a whole]."
DGP posted:
>>>No, because they had no obligation to produce a child specifically at that time.<<<
You were making progress with me until you wrote this. It seems to me that absent compelling circumstances a couple has a moral duty to being open to life in each and every act of intercourse and -- and here is my problem -- in their relationship as a whole. To plan coitus to occur only at times when the wife is infertile is an attempt to -- forgive the crudeness of the following -- have one's cake and eat it to. Again, the individual sexual act is not distorted, but the sexual relationship as a whole is. Thus, it appears to me that advocates of this teaching cannot see for the forest for the trees.
The couple is, in essence, playing God, deciding when a child may be conceived and, as an unavoidable consequence, deciding who will be conceived and, rather, who will not. To quote Merlin from That Hideous Strength:
[I]t was the purpose of God that she and her lord should between them have begotten a child by whom the enemies should have been put out of Logres for a thousand years.”That is, while another child might be conceived, the child who would have been conceived in a particular act of intercourse is denied existence. This is true whether conception was avoided by use of a condom or by deliberately avoiding intercourse during fertile periods. And thus, as Lewis observed in The Abolition of Man as to contraception, by NFP as well,To this, Ransom replies that Jane is only recently married.
Merlin then replies: "[B]e assured that the child will never be born, for the hour of its begetting is passed. Of their own will they are barren: I did not know till now that the usages of Sulva were so common among you. For a hundred generations in two lines the begetting of this child was prepared; and unless God should rip up the work of time, such seed, and such an hour, in such a land, shall never be again."
By contraception simply, they are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of selective breeding (e.g., NFP because the couple selects the time of breeding), they are, without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer. From this point of view, what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.Thus, Father, at least for me, I need to have a more fully developed argument as to why the use of NFP does not distort the sexual relationship as a whole by which, "in anticipation of" sexual intercourse, the couple intends to "render [their sexual relationship] infertile," and, thereby, make their relationship as a whole closed to life, at least for a time, and why, in so doing, they are not playing God, choosing who will be and who will not be.
Again, I am not trying to be argumentative. I am trying to understand the Catholic teaching and why it is in fact licit to use NFP but not space barriers when they seem to me to have the same end, which itself, absent compelling circumstances, is immoral. My own developing understanding is that ANY effort to avoid conception, including NFP, cannot be justified except in extreme circumstances and, when such circumstances exist, I cannot see why the use of space barriers are not justified as well as the time barrier. And this is because the circumstances which justify avoiding conception must be such that minimizing the risk is imperative. Of course, no method which is an abortifacient could ever be justified.
Posted by: GL | Jul 31, 2008 10:13:59 AM
"To call them revisions of the Faith is to beg the question. You have some RC sympathizers. Still, Pius XII was not especially sympathetic to modernism or similarly innovative dispositions, so I hardly think your case is obvious."
I understand and appreciate the many traditional doctrinal stances of Pius XII. However, it appears in contestable that, in the name of pastorality, he made a compromise to the ancient prohibition of contraception, and by continuing to condemn barrier forms of birth control while accepting the rhythm method/NFP he enabled Paul VI to change/limit the ancient definition of contraception to only anti-conception interference in certain conjugal acts (as opposed to any conjugal act), in his encyclical, Humane Vitae.
"The revisions arguably strive for a better, more organic understanding of the relations among the positive purposes of the marital act."
Better, more developed and organic understandings of the always-believed Faith do occur in the Church. However, for such development to be true it must be development within the same Faith and the same meaning of the Faith. The revisions you concede to cause us to revise our list of which actions are sinful and, subsequently, cause us to revise our understanding of contraception, itself. This is certainly a change to the Faith and its meaning/application in moral theology.
The same development (more aptly termed evolution) has occurred within the Anglican Communion, which as a result of its change of considering contraception a sin has now removed many other actions from the realm of sin. Hasn't this very principle been enshrined in modern Catholicism when, in a less well-known action, it declassified the deliberate intention of having relations during the woman's infertile period from being a formal sin (which, IMO, would be classified by the Fathers as "deontological" also)? In its own way, this subtle change is worse than open dissent, because it changes a foundational moral premise, thus all but ensuring that a return to ancient Faith won’t happen, even among conservatives.
The Orthodox Church, often decried for liberalism on the issue of contraception, has despite the dissent it suffers on her doctrine in this area, has not changed the ancient definition of contraception, thus leaving those Orthodox who still reject contraception as being the true heirs of those who anciently condemned contraception and also enabling those Orthodox who are currently returning to Tradition on this point to return fully to the patristic Faith on this issue.
Posted by: AMB | Jul 31, 2008 1:14:16 PM
>>ANY effort to avoid conception, including NFP, cannot be justified except in extreme circumstances...
I would agree with this, as I think would most proponents of NFP. As someone mentioned earlier, if a couple practices NFP simply in order to remain forever DINKs, save up to buy a jet-ski, etc., then they are missing the point.
Of course some might argue that there are *no* valid reasons, ever, for a married couple to delay having children; I'm not sure what I think about that position but it's certainly consistent.
>> when such circumstances exist, I cannot see why the use of space barriers are not justified as well as the time barrier.
Now, here... I think we should be careful using terms such as "space barrier" and "time barrier", keeping in mind that such abstractions may be misleading.
For that matter, if a couple "uses NFP" on a day when pregnancy is likely to ensue, they are not really "using NFP" -- that is, not in the sense that they are reaching into a drawer to pull out some sort of tool or gadget which happens to have received the imprimatur of the Catholic Church.
What "using NFP" and "time barrier" actually mean is that they are *abstaining* from sex on this day.
This is hardly the same thing as a "space barrier" -- pull out a condom and full speed ahead. I don't think that the couples who practice periodic abstinence much feel liberated from their human predicament, as if they are having their cake and eating it too.
This does not, of course, address the question as to if and when the intent to delay having children can be justified at all. But NFP & condoms are hardly the same thing, when one actually looks at how they translate into real life. They bear little more similarity to one another than do a man who has vowed to abstain from meat on Fridays, vs. another man who indulges himself in sirloin steak whenever the appetite strikes him -- always following such meals with a visit to the vomitorium.
Obviously the analogy is limited, as it does not take into account your valid point that the ends of NFP and of contraception seem virtually indistinguishable.
But my point is that unless we are utilitarians, we accept that means as well as ends have moral content. Just because a couple has (for sake of argument) a valid reason to delay children, it does not automatically follow that they are justified in any and all methods for achieving that end.
NFP directs a couple to achieve their end via working with the rules of nature; the means of contraception represents an attempt to change the rules.
Posted by: G.S. | Jul 31, 2008 1:31:49 PM
"Moreover, there are situations where sincerity is insufficient..." -- DGP
But I'm not talking about "sincerity": I am talking about a well-informed conscience. A not-far-fetched example: two DC-10s are heading toward the World Trade Center in New York City. The first strikes one tower, and the second, some minutes behind, is heading over Long Island Sound toward the second tower. You are an Air Force fighter pilot scrambled to approach the second plane. If you don't shoot down the plane, hundreds of people in the WTC will die, along with everyone in the plane. If you do shoot, everyone in the plane still dies, but those in the WTC are presumably spared. But if you do shoot, do you commit an intrinsically evil act? Have you sinned? No doubt the deaths of everyone aboard the plane is intrinsically evil, but is the fighter pilot's intention likewise intrinsically evil? Obviously this is not an outrageously theoretical possibility.
"No, because they had no obligation to produce a child specifically at that time." -- DGP
GL has responded well to your statement. I would only add that the issue is not "obligation to produce" but rather the "intention not to produce." This is the same intention that governs the act of the spouses using barrier contraception. The common intention in both cases is the determination that man, not God, shall decide when a child shall be welcomed into the family, and that the marital relationship shall be crafted so as to seek to preclude "chance" (that is, the will of God) as the factor which determines when a new life shall be brought into the world.
Posted by: Bill R | Jul 31, 2008 1:59:19 PM
You are an Air Force fighter...
Yes, he has sinned in shooting down the plane, insofar as he has committed an intrinsically evil act: intentionally killing non-combatants. I suppose you could maybe get around this by saying that his only intention was to kill armed combatants: bad guys armed with a plane full of fuel. An intention cannot be intrinsically evil except insofar as there is a will to commit an intrisically evil act (cf. intrinsically disordered desires), so that part I think is a red herring. But to pretend the said pilot has not sinned (at all) in this act refuses to take evil seriously, to say nothing of the probable effect on the pilot's soul. This is yet one more reason the sacrament of penance is so very necessary.
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Jul 31, 2008 2:27:58 PM
>>It seems to me that absent compelling circumstances a couple has a moral duty to being open to life in each and every act of intercourse and -- and here is my problem -- in their relationship as a whole.
Yes, but is "being open to life" the same as "intending to conceive?" I don't think so. The traditional Catholic approach in many such moral subtleties is to observe that it is morally sufficient not to place an obstacle to whatever goods may come. This, after all, is the pattern of grace and redemption: God will justify, if only we do not impede him.
As to the relationship as a whole -- yes, of course. This was addressed in my citation from Pius XII.
>>Again, the individual sexual act is not distorted, but the sexual relationship as a whole is. Thus, it appears to me that advocates of this teaching cannot see for the forest for the trees.
Yes, this is quite possible. NFP does not purify the intentions of the couple, but only evades the intrinsically evil act of contraception. Many RC critics of NFP claim that most users have the evil intention of foreclosing on the possibility of conception.
>>Thus, Father, at least for me, I need to have a more fully developed argument as to why the use of NFP does not distort the sexual relationship as a whole by which, "in anticipation of" sexual intercourse, the couple intends to "render [their sexual relationship] infertile," and, thereby, make their relationship as a whole closed to life, at least for a time, and why, in so doing, they are not playing God, choosing who will be and who will not be.
For RCs, this choice is not always bad to make. I know the rhetoric of "playing God" is sometimes used here, or in abortion or elsewhere, but the choice itself is not really all that unusual. We make it whenever ER or military physicians make problematice triage decisions, when officers decide which troops to deploy where, etc. It's not the choice itself which is the problem, but rather (1) the need to ensure that every action remains morally defensible, i.e., not intrinsically evile and (2) sufficient prudential grounds remain not only for every individual act but also for choices that rely as well on inaction. Thus, e.g., a physician may for grave reasons allow a patient to die unnecessarily, but he may not kill the patient to harvest life-saving organs, even when the patient faces imminent death nonetheless.
>>Again, I am not trying to be argumentative.
Oh, don't worry. Your comments are perfectly reasonable and respectable.
>>I am trying to understand the Catholic teaching and why it is in fact licit to use NFP but not space barriers when they seem to me to have the same end, which itself, absent compelling circumstances, is immoral.
I don't know how to explain it differently. No one may perform an evil act, without exception. Intentions, however, are prudential: One may intend evil consequences provided they are necessary conditions for and sufficiently counterweighed by good intentions. The the Lord does not kill himself for love, but he allows himself to be killed for the salvation of the world -- and likewise other martyrs for Christ.
>>My own developing understanding is that ANY effort to avoid conception, including NFP, cannot be justified except in extreme circumstances...
In this, you agree with Pius XII. Unfortunately, "extreme circumstances" has become a rather loose term these days.
>>and, when such circumstances exist, I cannot see why the use of space barriers are not justified as well as the time barrier.
Because there, a similar intention has now been joined to an evil act, and there can be no justification for such an act, no matter how important the consequences.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 31, 2008 2:32:40 PM
G.S. posted:
>>>What "using NFP" and "time barrier" actually mean is that they are *abstaining* from sex on this day.<<<
Indeed. And they are abstaining for a specific purpose, avoiding conception. When the fertile period ends, they can copulate all they want or, as you put it, full speed ahead, for they have used timing to achieve exactly the same goal as a condom, the unitive aspect of sexual intercourse while avoiding the procreative aspect. The idea of a time barrier is an abstraction, but it is an accurate one. The idea of a space barrier is likewise an abstraction, but it is also an accurate one. Both NFP and a condom have the same goal, putting a barrier between sperm and egg. The former uses time; the latter using space.
Does successfully using NFP require care and discipline? Yes. Does using a condom require care and discipline? Yes and the failure to exercise this care and discipline is a major reason for "unwanted" pregnancies. Does NFP require more care and discipline than using a condom? I would say yes. Does that create a moral distinction? You'll have to convince me and I haven't been convinced yet.
So far, I find AMB's arguments the more persuasive and his definition of contraception does appear to me to be the one used by the ancient Church. I'll read Janet Smith's and JPII's books and see if I can get a better understanding which helps me understand why, or if, the distinctions between NFP and space barriers make a moral difference.
I appreciate everyone's efforts to educate me.
Posted by: GL | Jul 31, 2008 2:37:54 PM
>>I understand and appreciate the many traditional doctrinal stances of Pius XII. However, it appears in contestable that, in the name of pastorality, he made a compromise to the ancient prohibition of contraception,
In fact, the matter is contested.
>>Better, more developed and organic understandings of the always-believed Faith do occur in the Church. However, for such development to be true it must be development within the same Faith and the same meaning of the Faith. The revisions you concede to cause us to revise our list of which actions are sinful and, subsequently, cause us to revise our understanding of contraception, itself.
No, they have caused us to revise our list of intentions which are sinful. For RCs, however, intentionality has always been subject to the ebb and flow of prudentiality. Times change, values adjust, and therefore proportionalities change. Good and evil acts remain the same, but human purposes -- where these factor into morality -- can vary in their relative weights.
>>This is certainly a change to the Faith and its meaning/application in moral theology.
If it is certain to you, it was not certain to Pius XII, Paul VI, and John Paul II.
>>The same development (more aptly termed evolution) has occurred within the Anglican Communion, which as a result of its change of considering contraception a sin has now removed many other actions from the realm of sin.
No, they changed the rules for action, not merely intention.
>>Hasn't this very principle been enshrined in modern Catholicism when, in a less well-known action, it declassified the deliberate intention of having relations during the woman's infertile period from being a formal sin (which, IMO, would be classified by the Fathers as "deontological" also)?
Your parenthetical remark is interesting, because it is indeed defensible. It depends upon how you understand female fertility cycles in relation to the human condition and human nature. This understanding has changed considerably over the centuries, not incidentally as the natural philosophy / science of the matter has changed.
>>In its own way, this subtle change is worse than open dissent, because it changes a foundational moral premise, thus all but ensuring that a return to ancient Faith won’t happen, even among conservatives.
Well, of course, we RCs don't look at it that way. If you want an EO-only conversation, you'll have to go elsewhere.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 31, 2008 2:43:52 PM
Is the "intention not to produce" (at this time) per se' illicit? I mean we're getting into "let God determine the size of your family" territory here. If you "let God" determine the size of your family, there's a good chance (given good health and libido) that "God" will "decide" that your family will be a big one. So who did the choosing? Is it similarly illicit to purchase life insurance? to save for retirement? to set one's alarm clock? Shouldn't we allow God to provide for our loved ones, or plan for the future, or wake us up on time for tomorrow's obligations? God has allowed his creatures (created in His image) freedom to determine such things; yes, even when to have children, insofar that he has given them freedom to engage in conjugal relations, if at all, then whenever (within constraints) they choose. Is it possible that couples might use such freedom wrongly so that they might get that second Hummer or boat or vacation or renovated kitchen they don't really need? It happens every day, no doubt; and anyone who thinks that NFP (Vatican-approved birth spacing) gives them an automatic pass, that its use is per se' licit, misunderstands the Vatican, and nature before her, on this matter.
But... and here's the problem, the Church cannot legislate on such matters. She cannot say: Thou shalt have marital relations at certain periods of time; or thou shalt have marital relations at sundry times without regard whatsoever to the calendar. Regarding objective behavior, she can legislate: intentional interference with the natural outcome(s) of the conjugal act is forbidden. But with the subjective intentions she cannot legislate. She can give us principles to live (and hopefully grow) by. But she cannot draw the line once and for all for everyone: at this given amount of poverty, or that level of psychic stress, or at such-n-such level of indebtedness to the charity of others, the intention to not procreate is licit, but never before then... one [insert luxury] okay, but with the second, you're gravely sinning (remembering that your "luxury" is considered a necessity by someone, and that your "necessity" would probably be considered a great luxury by most of the world). The Church cannot (even hypothetically) make calls like this (at least without quickly descending into crass legalism) so she doesn't.
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Jul 31, 2008 2:56:43 PM
>>But I'm not talking about "sincerity": I am talking about a well-informed conscience.
If it's well-informed, then it knows that it can't directly and deliberately act against the good of conception.
>>A not-far-fetched example: two DC-10s are heading toward the World Trade Center in New York City. The first strikes one tower, and the second, some minutes behind, is heading over Long Island Sound toward the second tower. You are an Air Force fighter pilot scrambled to approach the second plane. If you don't shoot down the plane, hundreds of people in the WTC will die, along with everyone in the plane. If you do shoot, everyone in the plane still dies, but those in the WTC are presumably spared. But if you do shoot, do you commit an intrinsically evil act? Have you sinned? No doubt the deaths of everyone aboard the plane is intrinsically evil, but is the fighter pilot's intention likewise intrinsically evil? Obviously this is not an outrageously theoretical possibility.
That's a version of my example about Japan, but more ambiguous because it's not clear whether the planes remain civilian targets.
>>I would only add that the issue is not "obligation to produce" but rather the "intention not to produce."
The obligation to the intention is exactly what's in dispute between AMB and me.
>>This is the same intention that governs the act of the spouses using barrier contraception.
Except, again, intention and act are not the same thing.
>>The common intention in both cases is the determination that man, not God, shall decide when a child shall be welcomed into the family, and that the marital relationship shall be crafted so as to seek to preclude "chance" (that is, the will of God) as the factor which determines when a new life shall be brought into the world.
That is not a Catholic way of understanding the issue. Does not man so decide when he chooses coitus, intending conception? Is not conception by man's decision perfectly biblical? The problem is not that man is deciding, but whether or not the intention against conception can be justified.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 31, 2008 2:59:15 PM
Does NFP require more care and discipline than using a condom? I would say yes. Does that create a moral distinction? You'll have to convince me and I haven't been convinced yet.
GL, if I didn't know better, I'd say you're being intentionally obtuse on this matter. The moral distinction between NFP and the condom does lie in the amount of "care and discipline" involved in implementing them (as if the discipline required in unrolling a condom was somewhere near the level of that required by NOT HAVING SEX... I've done both, believe me they don't compare) It lies in the difference between having coitus and NOT having coitus. NFP is simply NOT having coitus, i.e., it is an inaction known as abstinence. You're comparing the intentions BEHIND condom and abstinence. They MAY be the same. They MAY or MAY NOT be licit intentions. But all the good intentions in the world cannot make an illicit act (that of intentional interference with the natural outcome of coitus) licit.
What is not to understand? We're talking about two different things here (intent AND bodily action) and you (and others) are collapsing them into one thing (intent) and then pointing out: Heh, condoms and NFP sure look alot alike. Well, yeah, in intent they may look alot alike: and that intent (even for NFP) may well be illicit. An NFP advocate who won't admit this fails to understand the Church's teaching as much as the Cafeteria Catholic. But in action (or inaction) they don't look anything at all alike, and by my extensive, albeit anecdotal, experience with both, I can confirm they don't feel at all alike. One requires no discipline, the other requires significant ascesis. One disregards the feelings and fears of one's wife; the other honors them. One is a simulacrum of sex; the other (however carefully scheduled) is the real thing.
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Jul 31, 2008 3:13:59 PM
>>>NFP is simply NOT having coitus, i.e., it is an inaction known as abstinence.<<<
No, Steve, NFP is not simply NOT having coitus. It is HAVING coitus at times when conception is highly unlikely and abstaining at times when it is likely and it is based on a considerable amount of work and discipline. NFP is not abstaining for brief periods of fasting and prayer; it is abstinence with a purpose and it is not total abstinence. If it is simply abstinence, why do couples need classes to learn it? I know how to simply abstain: just say something which my wife takes the wrong way and I didn't need formal lessons to figure out how to do that. ;-) Abstaining from doing good is what the priest and Levite did and when we confess we confess not only what we have done, but also what we have failed to do. Just because it is abstinence (an inaction) does not make it right. And, finally, breaking it down to discrete, individual acts or inactions is a way, intentionally or not, to obscure what is being done over time and to the marital relationship in general, i.e., hiding the forest by use of the trees.
Who is being deliberately obtuse, my friend?
Posted by: GL | Jul 31, 2008 3:47:02 PM
"Is it possible that couples might use such freedom wrongly so that they might get that second Hummer.."
I'm still waiting for the first Hummer, Steve...
"That's a version of my example about Japan, but more ambiguous because it's not clear whether the planes remain civilian targets."
Sorry if I missed your example, Father. Was it in this thread?
A point of clarification: like GL, I'm here to be persuaded, not necessarily to argue a position. Some years ago, again like GL, my wife and I came to the conclusion that artificial contraception was wrong. We then practiced NFP. Some time after that, my wife was medically required to undergo a hysterectomy, so the issue became moot for us. But since then I've had my doubts about NFP. It's still a real issue for me for it affects how I teach my children. I do see the distinctions that Steve and DGP have outlined, but I have yet to be fully convinced by them. As a practical matter, I doubt that any but a small percentage of those who practice NFP have "grave reasons" for doing so, but I take it that Steve, DGP, and others defending NFP would concede this point.
Posted by: Bill R | Jul 31, 2008 4:34:21 PM
Just because it is abstinence (an inaction) does not make it right.
There is no obligation upon spouses to engage in coitus at any specific time. Abstinence is therefore, per se', licit. It may be, as I and DGP have admitted over and over (and over), that the intention behind abstinence is evil. But that, i.e., such an intention, as I said before, is not something the Church can (even if she wanted to) legislate against. Are you arguing that all such intentions, not to conceive a child at this time, are evil? If so. Well then by all means do not do so. But this is not a burden that can (by nature) be placed by the Church upon the faithful, i.e., to always positively desire with every act of intercourse to conceive a child. Not desiring and deliberately blocking by specific action, are not only not the same thing: they are are different as subject and object. Being open to life is not the same thing as trying to get pregnant (and BTW in the latter case, NFP can work extremely well).
In short, you are be saying that, since the intention behind NFP may be (and often is) the same as that behind barrier contraception (BC), therefore they are either both licit or both illicit (tending apparently to the latter conclusion). But you are ignoring the obviously different objective behaviors. In this and this alone, you appear to be deliberately obtuse. I don't know what the word for this error, but it is an error, i.e., in assuming that sin exists entirely in the intent of an actor. You've taken Christ's admonition on lust (that any man who lusts in his heart hath committed adultery already) and turned it around, denying (ostensibly) that what one actually does with one's body matters at all in God's economy--as though, with the best and holiest hypopthetical intentions, engagement in physical adultery might somehow be good and right. But it's Both/And: both intention AND action that matter; the latter being much easier to diagnose and prescribe or proscribe, and therefore subject to being possibly objectively disordered. An intention can only be described as objectively disordered insofar as it relates to an objectively disordered act.
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Jul 31, 2008 4:53:10 PM
I doubt that any but a small percentage of those who practice NFP have "grave reasons" for doing so, but I take it that Steve, DGP, and others defending NFP would concede this point.
Okay, well let me be the guinea pig. My wife and I practice NFP, tho' since my wife is nursing a 3 mo. old, there's not much to (P) practice. But natural fertility will return soon, and we plan on not intending to have another child at least until we change our minds, or nature takes its course (my wife is about 41). We have 7 (ages 17 to 3 mo.) children, live on a 0.17 acre lot in a modest, and quite crowded, 1800 ft^2 home whose value, tho' below median for this very expensive area, is far greater than we could afford if we were to purchase it today (we got in before the bubble... apparently). So let's see, our budget is something like:
12% takehome pay -- groceries
26% : mortgage+interest+tax+homeowners ins
6% : utilities
16% : charity
4% : gas, auto ins. & repair
10% : kids' college svgs (not nearly enough!)
5% : long-term savings
leaving about 20% take home pay for clothing (~1%), entertainment (~3%), music & books (<1%), sports (~2%), travel (~1.5%), wine & spirits(<1%), housing maintenance & improvement (~2%), life insurance (~1%), medical copays and out-of-pocket (~2%), homeschool expenses (~2%), and miscellaneous (<1%) and probably some stuff I forgot. I pay almost no federal taxes (none in 2007, probably none this year) due mostly to the expanded child tax credit (and lots of kids), but get socked with heavy property taxes (included above) and of course the FICA ponzi scheme.
So... Do I have "grave" reasons for using NFP? I'd be interested to know.
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Jul 31, 2008 5:24:11 PM
Steve,
>>>Are you arguing that all such intentions, not to conceive a child at this time, are evil?<<<
No, I am trying to understand the Catholic teaching and the logic behind it.
What do you make of the following quotes?
Clement of Alexandria: "To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature (The Instructor of Children 2:10:95:3, A.D. 191).
Lactantius: "God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital ['generating'] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring." (Divine Institutes 6:23:18, A.D. 307).
Jerome: "Does [the heretic Jovinianus] imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children? (Against Jovinian 1:19, A.D. 393).
Augustine:
"In marriage, as the marriage law declares, the man and woman come together for the procreation of children." (The Morals of the Manichees 18:65, A.D. 388).
"For thus the eternal law, that is, the will of God creator of all creatures, taking counsel for the conservation of natural order, not to serve lust, but to see to the preservation of the race, permits the delight of mortal flesh to be released from the control of reason in copulation only to propagate progeny (Against Faustus 22:30, A.D. 400).
Isn't to use NFP to schedule intercourse during infertile times and abstain during fertile times "[t]o have coitus other than to procreate children," to use our genitals for "other purpose[s] than the generation of offspring," having "sexual intercourse [for reasons other than] the procreation of children," a "com[ing] together" of "the man and woman" for reasons other than "the procreation of children," and copulating for reasons other than "to propagate progeny"?
Thus, early fathers, saints, and doctors of the Church appear to have held just such a view which you now reject. I am not arguing for or against that view, but illustrating that it is not my argument, but that of Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, Jerome and Augustine. Isn't it quotes from just such men as these which Catholics pull out when arguing that Protestants have rejected the teachings of the early Church? Isn't it a fact that those Protestants who espouse the quiverful approach to marital sex are closer to these early fathers than are Catholics who condone the use of NFP?
Don't you owe it to those of us with questions to at least explain why sources whom you normally site for your case in other instances are, in this instance, wrong?
Posted by: GL | Jul 31, 2008 5:31:07 PM
Steve,
>>>So... Do I have "grave" reasons for using NFP? I'd be interested to know.<<<
As I have told others, I take C.S. Lewis' view that lacking a pastoral obligation, it is not place to approve or disapprove of your reasons for using NFP. That is a matter for you, your wife and your priest to discern.
What I am trying to understand is why using NFP is moral when exigent circumstances do exist (however determined) and using a condom is not? (Actually, what I have more specifically in mind is combining NFP with a space barrier to further decrease the probability of conception. As I said before, if the circumstances are significant enough to justify NFP then it would seem that minimizing the risk is warranted and, as is a proven fact, even NFP is not 100% effective.) As my quote above illustrates, at least those early fathers quote would appear to condemn any sexual intercourse for purposes other than procreation, which would appear to include NFP, as it limits sexual intercourse to infertile times.
Posted by: GL | Jul 31, 2008 5:40:02 PM
I'm having a bit of trouble following all the arguments - I'll have to print things out when I am at work tomorrow. However, and in the mean time, the position some seem to be taking against NFP, periodic abstinence, etc. - it sounds almost as if the marital act is being reduced to an act of breeding.
How do you avoid reducing the marital act to a mere act of breeding? How do the two purposes (unitive and procreative) fit together?
Kamilla
Posted by: Kamilla | Jul 31, 2008 5:49:18 PM
"So... Do I have "grave" reasons for using NFP?"
Does anyone know how this has been defined historically?
Posted by: Bill R | Jul 31, 2008 5:53:08 PM
"How do the two purposes (unitive and procreative) fit together?"
Excellent question, Kamilla. We may have been too one-sided in our approach here.
Posted by: Bill R | Jul 31, 2008 6:21:50 PM
Interesting question:
Did Lewis' Mr. & Mrs. Dimble have an obligation to give up sex altogether, since they could not have children?
Perhaps Christian couples must practice a sort of anti-NFP?
That is, if sex during infertile periods is a sin for NFP-couples, then why is sex during infertile periods not a sin for *every* couple? Is it not using the sex act outside of its procreative purpose in the latter case just as much as in the former?
Given how easy it is to determine infertile periods, cannot a good case be made that couples are under obligation to find out when those infertile periods are, and abstain during those times?
Posted by: G.S. | Jul 31, 2008 7:01:38 PM
"No, Steve, NFP is not simply NOT having coitus. If it is simply abstinence, why do couples need classes to learn it?"
Excellent point. True abstinence, be it for a period or the totality of marital life, involves passively taking a break from all intercourse, not actively attempting to influence the outcome of the next conjugal act by placing it in a hostile environment for conception. NFP is "contraceptive continence" instead of "periodic continence", given that it is about removing the objective procreative potential of the next conjugal act and not about taking a break from all intercourse, which would leave the nature of the next conjugal act intact and in the hands of God when it eventually will occur.
Posted by: AMB | Jul 31, 2008 7:10:44 PM
"....by placing it in a hostile environment for conception."
Which is precisely what *every* man does who engages his wife during her infertile period.
"True abstinence, be it for a period or the totality of marital life, involves passively taking a break from all intercourse..."
So if a couple took a total break from sex for a 2-year period in order to delay having children, would that be abstinence, or a form of proscribed NFP?
Posted by: G.S. | Jul 31, 2008 7:23:24 PM
"An intention can only be described as objectively disordered insofar as it relates to an objectively disordered act."
There exist indirectly sinful actions, which involve an objectively disordered intention, but utilize a morally neutral action in the realization of the sinful intention, thus causing the otherwise non-sinful action to become evil. One of the most prominent examples of this principle is the story of King David and Uriah. David had an evil intention (to murder Uriah), but he gave the morally neutral advice of any serious commander. The Lord deemed the action, not just the intention, evil. This principle also holds true with the sinfulness of NFP. NFP starts with the wrong intention of desiring to keep conception from occurring in a particular conjugal act (not the simple desire to avoid conception, which would be faulty, but not the essential sin of contraception, as some have wrongly characterized my position) and, regardless of the fact that it utilizes a morally neutral action (having intercourse during an infertile time), it is a sinful action because the wrong intention was fulfilled, albeit indirectly through the means of a morally neutral action. Thus, while the use of NFP isn't chiefly a deontological sin, but rather a formal sin, it is still a sinful action. To argue otherwise is to make indirectly sinful actions (as opposed to intentions) impossible, which sound moral theology doesn't admit.
Posted by: AMB | Jul 31, 2008 7:41:04 PM
GL,
I have already noted above a theological / philosophical reason for parsing the Fathers very carefully on this subject: I am claiming for the RCC a subtler anthropological account of nature, person, and coitus, than the Fathers had. A different understanding can't change the objective moral value of an act, but it can make possible different constructions of intentionality -- and even make possible intentions hitherto unrecognized.
Recall the Fathers' excitement at the Christic restoration of human nature. Their assertions about the power of this restoration led St. Jerome, for example, to denounce speech about other food while eating as the height of perversity. For him, this was to separate the natural purpose of eating (nourishment) from the lawful pleasure gained. (According to Jerome, speech about food necessitated fantasy about it, which fantasy presumably reoriented one from the food on the table.)
Beyond the obvious analogy to coitus (don't fantasize about one occasion while you're in another), there's also a parallel in the strict hierarchy of natural purposes: One purpose stubbornly disallows another. In fact, however, these purposes need not always be in competition, and they can be in relations that do not conform to a strict prioritization.
BILL R & KAMILLA,
As far as I know, there are no historical accounts of such "grave reasons" prior to 1951. AMB is correct that the use of NFP for the purposes of delaying or avoiding conception is a novelty. The question, of course, is whether the novelty is warranted by legitimate theological development or whether it is a concession to modernism.
To pose the question in terms of the relation between the unitive and procreative purposes, as if it's an open question, is to give the game away to Pius XII and the popes who followed him. The claim of RCs against NFP is that the relation is an already settled matter de fidei: The first purpose is procreation, the second is union, and the third (a negative purpose) is remedy for lust. If you're willing to reconsider, then your up against Karol Wojtyla's *Love and Responsibility,* and what you get is current RC teaching on the matter.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 31, 2008 8:02:09 PM
"Which is precisely what *every* man does who engages his wife during her infertile period."
Not exactly. In order to violate the objective procreative end of a conjugal act (which is what contraception is about), deliberate intention must first be present. Taking the fertile and infertile days as they come lack this deliberate intention and remain firmly in the realm of the subjective, thus ensuring that the objective violation of the act is not committed.
"So if a couple took a total break from sex for a 2-year period in order to delay having children, would that be abstinence, or a form of proscribed NFP?"
This would be an example of true Christian continence sanctioned by the ancient Tradition of the Church. Such actions could hardly be considered contraceptive (unlike NFP) since they involve no deliberate intention or deliberate attempt to cause conception from occurring as a result of a conjugal act, as no conjugal act is deliberately influenced in a non-procreative way through such abstinence.
Posted by: AMB | Jul 31, 2008 8:11:28 PM
>>David had an evil intention (to murder Uriah), but he gave the morally neutral advice of any serious commander.
Hardly morally neutral! The command was warped to contrive Uriah's death. The command was not warranted for other (prudential) reasons, but in fact was a military disaster on its own. We are presuming that NFP couples actually have *good* reasons for coitus, and also for not actively seeking conception.
>>The Lord deemed the action, not just the intention, evil.
How can you possibly know this, given that no such distinction is made there? "You killed Uriah with the sword of the Ammonites." David's intention to kill Uriah was malign, and his action (to order and attack and withdrawal) was also malign. You might as easily argue that God was angrier at the former than the latter, given that the deliberate military failure doesn't even warrant a prophetic mention.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 31, 2008 8:13:31 PM
"Hardly morally neutral!"
I hardly want to get into a prolonged discussion of the morality of David's infamous military command. Let it suffice to say that when we analyze the command apart from the circumstances it was given in that it could just as well have been the command of a good commander done for the good of the army (via sending one of the best soldiers to the most needed areas of battle). I think the command was morally neutral, since the context of my comment dealt with the nature of actions before they are influenced by malign intentions.
"We are presuming that NFP couples actually have *good* reasons for coitus, and also for not actively seeking conception."
According to Tradition, there is never a good reason to actively attempt to keep procreation from occurring in any conjugal act. To call NFP "not actively seeking conception" is much too gentle for the reality involved in this form of family planning.
"How can you possibly know this, given that no such distinction is made there? 'You killed Uriah with the sword of the Ammonites.' David's intention to kill Uriah was malign, and his action (to order and attack and withdrawal) was also malign."
Both actions were malign. I thought I expressed this in my comment. If not, I do so now.
Posted by: AMB | Jul 31, 2008 8:34:40 PM
>>I think the command was morally neutral, since the context of my comment dealt with the nature of actions before they are influenced by malign intentions.
>>Both actions were malign.
But that is precisely the point: The command was not neutral, because there was no reason to do it apart from David's malign intent. And this is the same mistake you are making elsewhere: You are presuming to speak of the "nature" of a non-action, when in fact it is the intent which is important in a non-action. It boggles the mind to imagine what you might mean by the nature of something that doesn't exist. David's intent was not an action, but it was malign, so it was evil.
Although the application to NFP is recent, the principle is an old one: Evil intentions may be tolerated when conjoined with sufficiently grave good intentions. This recently came up regarding abortion in FT: Even Abp. Chaput concedes that a Catholic could virtuously vote for a pro-choice candidate, provided there are sufficiently grave reasons to do so. (Of course, he implies that there aren't any extant.)
To avoid formal cooperation in evil, it is also necessary that the actor not actually desire the evil in question. For NFP, this might mean regretting the infertility, but it might possibly be enough to regret the circumstances that make conception imprudent. If the latter, then the discipline of NFP to delay conception fits within the RC moral tradition.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 31, 2008 9:05:42 PM
"But that is precisely the point: The command was not neutral, because there was no reason to do it apart from David's malign intent. And this is the same mistake you are making elsewhere: You are presuming to speak of the "nature" of a non-action, when in fact it is the intent, which is important in a non-action. It boggles the mind to imagine what you might mean by the nature of something that doesn't exist. David's intent was not an action, but it was malign, so it was evil."
We agree that intention cannot be divorced from the action in question. If the intention is wrong, it automatically colors the act, which fulfills the disordered intention, even if under other circumstances, the action would be not is wrong. This was my whole point. I thought I imparted this clearly enough, but maybe I didn't.
Regarding NFP, if the intention is objectively wrong, so is its execution through deliberately choosing to have relations during the infertile time, even though regular intercourse during infertile times is not objectively wrong when done under other intentions (e.g. having relations in a normal Christian marriage without any anti-procreative intent). Thus, NFP involves sinful intention and action, despite it being chiefly a formal, not deontological, sin. Earlier I got the impression that you wished to deny sinful action on the part of the use of NFP, desiring to limit the evil to only the intention (a rather paradoxical position, I must admit).
"Although the application to NFP is recent, the principle is an old one: Evil intentions may be tolerated when conjoined with sufficiently grave good intentions. This recently came up regarding abortion in FT: Even Abp. Chaput concedes that a Catholic could virtuously vote for a pro-choice candidate, provided there are sufficiently grave reasons to do so. (Of course, he implies that there aren't any extant.)
To avoid formal cooperation in evil, it is also necessary that the actor not actually desire the evil in question. For NFP, this might mean regretting the infertility, but it might possibly be enough to regret the circumstances that make conception imprudent. If the latter, then the discipline of NFP to delay conception fits within the RC moral tradition."
Yes, the principle of double-effect. I agree that this principle can be applied in new ways without violating the Faith, itself. I also concur that it can be applied to the balanced use of NFP. Now to be consistent you must say the same of barrier methods of contraception, which no less than NFP, involve a sinful intention and action (albeit of a more direct, deontological form).
Posted by: AMB | Jul 31, 2008 9:34:17 PM
I don't understand AMB when he speaks of "the next marital act" being distorted by abstinence during the fertile period. He clearly means something different by what I meant when I used the term distorted to refer to the effect of a barrier contraceptive. I was referring to the physical integrity of the act, that it results in semen being deposited in the vagina and having access to the cervix and beyond. (A condom prevents the former, a diaphragm or cap, the latter.) He clearly is not referring to that sort of distortion. It seems he can only be referring, again, to the intention in the first act of intercourse after the period of abstinence, that the act not result in conception. So we are back talking about whether having such an intention is ever licit.
I think he rightly points out that the fathers would have said no. I certainly think we have to consider whether they might be right about this. But all of them are not right about everything, after all. I think one would have to consider on what basis the church has developed a theology of marriage which considers the unitive meaning of marital intimacy to be of almost equal weight with the procreative meaning. One suggestion would be that this is rooted in the value of the human person, by a similar development to that by which we concluded that slavery was wrong.
Another would be that this is a result of meditation on the passages in Paul where he described marriage as analogous to the relationship of Christ and the Church, combined with the mystical understanding of the love of Christ for souls. If the husband loves his wife as Christ loves the church, surely their physical union has a spiritual value and meaning, and is not merely tolerated for the purpose of offspring. I consider this development to be valid and at this point to be part of our tradition, which did not end after some early century.
Thus couples past child bearing can marry, and people who know they are infertile can marry, and their marriage still serves the unitive purpose of marriage. Even though they know it cannot fulfill the procreative purpose, they do not directly intend to block the procreative purpose of marriage. It would seem from your citations from the fathers, that such people could not in their view legitimately marry and have intercourse.
And, therefore, when there are grave reasons to avoid further children, the church still considers that there is a positive value to the sexual union of the couple and allows them to continue to engage in intercourse when they foresee that conception will not result, while always prohibiting a direct interference in the fertility of any individual sexual act.
A Catholic, of course, does not come to this conclusion on his own, considering scripture and the fathers and moral theologians and mystical writers and modern writers about marriage and what he experiences and sees around him in the world. A Catholic sees that there can be a question here about whether any intention to have marital intercourse and avoid offspring can ever be licit, and is at peace because he trusts that the Church has been guided by the Holy Spirit in coming to the conclusion that it can.
Susan Peterson
Posted by: Susan Peterson | Jul 31, 2008 10:18:15 PM
Thus, NFP involves sinful intention and action, despite it being chiefly a formal, not deontological, sin.
So I guess that is the only question now: Is exploiting the calendar to avoid conception, or alternatively merely hoping that a given act of coitus doesn't result in conception, even for "grave" (other documents say "serious") reasons, in its very nature sinful? Note there are grave reasons, other than procreation, to engage in coitus. St. Paul admits as much, so Satan may not tempt us through lack of self-control. The fathers of the Church were not and are not infallible. (Many who sit in their seats today are among the most fallible leaders in history... that is to say, if and when they attempt to teach at all!) Doctrine can develop, and did in the Ancient Church, the very one to whose faith AMB insists we must get back. But if the Ancient Church took upon itself the authority to develop doctine, that same authority rests in the Church today... whether it's a concession to modernism or not.
And there's more than one way to accomodate modernism: one is to speak in a clear voice but toss the occasional concession; the other is to speak little if at all for 1000 years and hope the problem goes away.
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Jul 31, 2008 10:39:37 PM
What I am trying to understand is why using NFP is moral when exigent circumstances do exist (however determined) and using a condom is not?
And you know the answer: even though the intentions may be similar (possibly just, possibly evil), the actions are not. One action is per se' licit (not having sex right now), the other per se illicit (having simulated sex right now to avoid the consequences).
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Jul 31, 2008 10:47:15 PM
Steve.... those are right who say it is not ours to judge your reasons. But, if these reasons have to be "grave" rather than merely justly prudential, I would say they are not grave.
I think I can say this because when I had my nine children we had NO savings of any kind, no life insurance,and most of the time no medical insurance yet we were not eligible for medicaid. They hadn't increased the tax credit for children...by the time they did that all but two of mine were over 16 and didn't qualify..and in the late 70's we paid significant income tax, but by the mid to late 80s our income was so low we paid little taxes anyway....yet weren't quite eligible for earned income credit, which didn't take into account the number of children. We lived in a leaky uninsulated house and heated with wood. Our washing machines and refridgerators came from the local mission store and were always breaking down. Our cars cost $300-500 and were likewise always breaking down. We drove on bald tires. For one year we couldn't afford bottled gas to cook on or heat hot water, and I cooked on a wood cook stove and heated water to bathe the little ones on that; the older ones took cold, very cold, showers. Just about all of our clothes and shoes came from the local thrift store, with the cheapest new clothes from a discount store being a great rarity. My kids were thrilled to get new underwear and socks and I am not kidding.
They were thrilled to get pretzels and soda once a year for our family New Year's celebration.
I used cloth diapers and hung them out to dry. I canned on that wood stove in August. I baked six loaves of bread every other day. I made one chicken the basis for two meals for ten people.
(The first day, chicken and peas in cream sauce on brown rice, the second day the broth from the carcas was a basis for soup.)
Somehow we all survived this. My kids were always healthy. They did well in school. But, to be honest, the stresses of the struggle for money did affect the family. Eventually we were in danger of losing our house because we couldn't pay our not very high land and school taxes.
At that point I got a job as a nurses aide and then went to nursing school, and after that point we didn't have any more kids. I was 39 when the last was born, and could have had a few more, I think. Now I wish I could have. The kid who has had the most problems is the one who was young during the most financial stress and then had to deal with my absence while I was working and going to school to get us out of that financial hole. (To be honest I also was doing a bit of getting self esteem by knowing that I could earn a check and get A's in school, not really realizing that I had been doing something even more impressive than that before.) I didn't do a whole lot of thinking about whether this situation was grave. However, had we lost the house we could never have gotten an apartment with 9 kids and I think they would have wound up in the hands of social services, and that, I think, constitutes grave, looking back on it.
But who could say that one has to have kids right up to the point where the very existence of the family is threatened? And grave for someone might be a genuine threat to sanity (as in post partum depression, the real thing, with psychosis, not a joke., or the need to take a aged parent into the home and an absolute lack of space for any more people to sleep and store their clothes in the only home they can afford. Perhaps for some families, grave might mean that the financial stress and lack of privacy and space and quiet was resulting in domestic abuse, and perhaps for some families that point might come at a meagre 4 or 5 children, rather than at 7 or more.
Grave seems perhaps like too stern a criteria, yet prudence seems too indulgent a criteria, or one that can be interpreted too indulgently. If someone prays about such a decision and talks to his confessor/spriitual father about it, and is really genuine in wanting to know the will of God, I don't think he will go wrong. Could someone deceive himself about such things? Well sure, that is always a possibility, one that we work against. It isn't something one can be sure about for another person from the outside.
Susan Peterson
ps You should get advice about ways to hide that college fund so the colleges don't just take it and give you correspondingly less financial aid.
Posted by: Susan Peterson | Jul 31, 2008 11:03:19 PM
>>Now to be consistent you must say the same of barrier methods of contraception, which no less than NFP, involve a sinful intention and action (albeit of a more direct, deontological form).
No, I don't. The principle of double effect does not justify an action of evil object. That is why it's called "double *effect,*" as opposed to "double object."
Posted by: DGP | Aug 1, 2008 6:26:01 AM
Susan:
Thanks for your answer. On the one hand, one can always live with less. I was waiting for someone to say, "You spend more on entertainment per month than the average Namibian earns in a year." On the other hand, we live much more frugally (tho' not as frugally as you did) than the average American or New Jerseyan and much more generous than average in charitable donations (if Turbo Tax is to be believed, 10X more). I agree that our reasons are not grave, but they are serious I think. It is very stressful raising 7 in a small (well, huge by Namibian standards) house. We have done our part. We are open to life, but we plan (at least for a time) to not actively seek creating a new one, and looking at the calendar (among other things) is part of that plan. If God blesses us with a new life in spite of our intentions, well then we'll consider ourselves blessed. (He's done that thrice already!)
As to the college savings, it is hopeless: I make far too much for my kids to qualify for any need-based financial aid, except at schools that are far too expensive for us to afford. Truth be told, I'm not all that hip to college anyway. It worked well for me... only after the second time around. If they have a serious desire to go, fine, I'll help. My eldest daughter really wants to go to Christendom, which I can't afford, but I'll try. If they'd prefer vocational training, that'd make sense. If they want a lump sum to start their own business, I'd be happy to help as long as they have a sound plan. At least one is talking military. Etc.
Cheers!
Posted by: Steve Nicoloso | Aug 1, 2008 8:56:07 AM
>>>And you know the answer: even though the intentions may be similar (possibly just, possibly evil), the actions are not. One action is per se' licit (not having sex right now), the other per se illicit (having simulated sex right now to avoid the consequences).<<<
No I don't know the answer. I wouldn't be raising the questions if I did.
It is not simply a matter of "not having sex right now" as much as you may try to assert that it is. It is HAVING sex when conception is highly unlikely and NOT HAVING sex when it is. Or to put in more closely to your own words, it is having "sex right now [and not then] to avoid the consequences." Absent justifying circumstances that would be illicit. It is the circumstances which make even the use of NFP licit. I believe you and Father DGP have agreed to that principle.
I agree that some circumstances justify the use of NFP and, again, I am in no position to judge in individual cases when those circumstances exist, lacking the office, the authority and the expertise to make such judgments. Where we disagree is whether some circumstances (e.g., when there is an extreme and unusual risk to maternal life from a pregnancy) are such that even the reduced probability of pregnancy afforded by NFP is still too high so that other means are also justified which, under normal circumstances or even under circumstances which justify NFP, would not be. I'll concede that such circumstances might be rare, but I have not yet been convinced that they never exist. Indeed, I know couples whom I believe face such circumstances.
Understand, my wife and I have four children, one of whom is developmentally disabled. We are in our 40s (my wife in 42) and we use no means of family planning or contraception, though my wife is currently nursing our 5 month old and is, based on past experience, likely infertile. Based on her past experience of nursing each child for about two years (not to avoid conception, but due to the benefits to both the child and her), I would expect her to again become fertile in another 10 to 15 months. At present, we have no plans to use either NFP or artificial contraception. Given our circumstances, if we were to decide that any form of family planning was justified -- and neither of us now do -- it would be NFP. BUT -- and this is a big BUT -- my wife has not been told that another pregnancy would likely kill her. If she were, I would believe that a 5% probability of another pregnancy was too high and would employ means other than NFP to protect her -- either total abstinence or a space barrier method employed in conjunction with NFP. What I am not convinced of is that a space barrier method employed in conjunction with NFP would not be justified under those circumstances. Nor am I convinced that total abstinence within marriage is licit per Scripture. I would expect a couple facing such circumstances to defend their use of such methods with as much conviction as Steve defends his use of NFP and I would no more tell them that they were sinning in doing so than I would tell Steve he is sinning in what he and his wife have chosen to do, again, lacking the office, the authority and the expertise to make such a judgment.
Thanks again to everyone for sharing your understanding. I remain, however, unconvinced on this one issue as it relates to the Catholic Church's teaching in this area. I otherwise accept the Catholic Church's teaching on this matter in its entirety (even though I am not Catholic). I will read JPII and Janet Smith on the subject.
Posted by: GL | Aug 1, 2008 9:49:28 AM
Some excellent illustrations (e.g., whether to shoot down a hijacked plane headed for a crowded building) have been provided of the exigency of making decisions within the context of a particular situation and competing moral priorities. I would think primacy of conscience, although rather an out of vogue moral tradition within the current zeitgeist, would be paramount in any decision-making process.
For example, a couple that chooses to contracept due to their belief that the earth is over-populated, but then adopts and lovingly nurtures several needy children, deserves credit for integrity and selflessness.
Posted by: Francesca | Aug 1, 2008 9:59:28 AM
>>I would think primacy of conscience, although rather an out of vogue moral tradition within the current zeitgeist, would be paramount in any decision-making process.
This simply demonstrates that you don't know what a conscience is. A conscience is not an alternative form of moral deliberation, but an essential means of deliberation. Deliberation must be and always is fed by external formative authorities -- parents, Scripture, bishops, philosophers, friends, etc. Primacy of conscience does not exempt anyone from the deliberation proceeding in all the posts above, but merely requires compliance with the results of one's moral deliberation.
Posted by: DGP | Aug 1, 2008 11:32:29 AM
"I think one would have to consider on what basis the church has developed a theology of marriage which considers the unitive meaning of marital intimacy to be of almost equal weight with the procreative meaning. One suggestion would be that this is rooted in the value of the human person, by a similar development to that by which we concluded that slavery was wrong."
Despite the problematic shift in primary and secondary ends of the conjugal act, the current Catholic position still admits that a proper act of love must embrace and objectively protect both the procreative and unitive aspects of conjugal intercourse. And modern Catholic doctrine advocates this regarding conjugal acts during the woman's fertile period. However, Tradition mandates that *all* (not just those in fertile periods) conjugal acts have these two ends, which must be respected and safeguarded. NFP doesn't entail respect and protection for the procreative end of the conjugal act. In fact, it seeks to keep it from appearing. Barrier methods do the same, albeit they wait a little longer to remove the procreative end.
"And, therefore, when there are grave reasons to avoid further children, the church still considers that there is a positive value to the sexual union of the couple and allows them to continue to engage in intercourse when they foresee that conception will not result, while always prohibiting a direct interference in the fertility of any individual sexual act."
Sinful actions can be done either directly or indirectly. Limiting the sin of contraception to only direct, more deontological action, instead of also including indirect means to fulfill the disordered intention, is an arbitrary limitation and hardly can be applied in other areas of moral theology without serious consequences.
Posted by: AMB | Aug 1, 2008 11:50:23 AM
I spent a fair amount of time last night (actually, early this morning) thinking about these comments, and I have some reflections I hope to post later. I may have resolved this issue for myself. In the meantime, I'll just express my admiration for Susan Peterson, Steve Nicoloso, and GL for their faithful and fruitful multiplication.
Posted by: Bill R | Aug 1, 2008 11:53:58 AM
“So I guess that is the only question now: Is exploiting the calendar to avoid conception, or alternatively merely hoping that a given act of coitus doesn't result in conception, even for ‘grave’ (other documents say "serious") reasons, in its very nature sinful?”
Merely hoping that a given act of coitus doesn’t result in conception is not a contraceptive intention. It would be considered slightly blameworthy by the Fathers, but it is not the same as an intention to keep procreation from occurring in the conjugal act. This intention to preclude the realization of the full natural of conjugal intercourse is a contraceptive desire (it would have to be so long as one admits that all conjugal acts have a procreative end, which must not be violated even in intention). And exploiting the calendar to avoid conception is not merely “not having sex.” It is deliberately choosing to have relations at an infertile time in order to fulfill the objectively disordered intention of keeping procreation from occurring in the individual conjugal act. In its own way, this is equivalent to a couple buying barrier contraceptives and using these barrier methods to have an effect on the conjugal act. The couples’ deliberate; anti-procreative action/attempt to move the conjugal act to this hostile zone for conception is truly placing a deliberate hindrance from the full realization of the conjugal act.
The only question left is whether all conjugal acts have procreative and unitive natures, which subsist in an abstract, unalterable manner through the will of God. If they do, then even NFP violates the nature of authentic conjugal love. If not, and the procreative nature of the act is only revealed when it shows up naturally, then only barrier methods are condemned. The former evaluation of the nature of conjugal sexuality rests upon sound Christian philosophical principles, as the telos of an act must be abstract and unchangeable despite the decisions and rhythms of nature (e.g. all conjugal acts have a procreative end regardless of when man decides to have sex), otherwise man, not God, may determine the moral nature of his actions via his individual choices (e.g. man’s choice determines when the conjugal act has a procreative nature). As you can see, not only are there theological problems with the artificial distinction between NFP and barrier methods, it is also philosophically unsound and a compromise to the man-centered philosophies of the modern era, albeit without the explicit intention of the creators of the distinction.
“Note there are grave reasons, other than procreation, to engage in coitus. St. Paul admits as much, so Satan may not tempt us through lack of self-control.”
I didn’t deny this. However, deliberately divorcing one end from another end of the conjugal act is different than simply focusing on one end instead of another.
“The fathers of the Church were not and are not infallible. (Many who sit in their seats today are among the most fallible leaders in history... that is to say, if and when they attempt to teach at all!)”
Of course, the Fathers aren’t infallible. However, regarding the definition of contraception and its full condemnation, both the Fathers and all the bishops agreed for centuries. In Catholicism, this is known as the ordinary universal magisterium, which is infallible by virtue of Christ’s promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church (in which at least one orthodox bishop must be present).
“Doctrine can develop, and did in the Ancient Church, the very one to whose faith AMB insists we must get back. But if the Ancient Church took upon itself the authority to develop doctrine, that same authority rests in the Church today... whether it's a concession to modernism or not.”
If we were dealing with authentic development of doctrine here, we would be discussing the new and better ways we have found to defend the traditional teaching, which we’ve always believed on contraception and its condemnation, not the differences between the ancient and current teaching, itself.
“And there's more than one way to accommodate modernism: one is to speak in a clear voice but toss the occasional concession; the other is to speak little if at all for 1000 years and hope the problem goes away.”
I find your allusion to modernism somewhat ironic, given that its fundamental principle is the evolution of doctrine, which is what the new teaching of contraception consists in. Btw, I don’t have any trouble with a concession regarding the use of contraception, so long as it engages in the double-effect example cited by DGP and exemplified in the just war theory. Your last comment about not speaking for centuries appears as a jab toward the Eastern Orthodox. If it is, I don’t think the comment stands, as the ancient form of imparting the truth has always been holistically, within the context of the spiritual life of the Church, and not through encyclicals or dogmatic statements (however necessary they may be).
Posted by: AMB | Aug 1, 2008 12:07:38 PM
"And you know the answer: even though the intentions may be similar (possibly just, possibly evil), the actions are not. One action is per se' licit (not having sex right now), the other per se illicit (having simulated sex right now to avoid the consequences)."
You're conveniently looking at only one side of NFP. Not only does it decide to not have sex right now, it deliberately decides to have relations at an infertile time in order to fulfill the disordered intention of keeping procreation from being objectively possible in the conjugal act. As DGP and I discussed last evening, once the intention is wrong it colors whatever action is done to ensure the fulfillment of the intention, even if under other intentions, the action in question would be acceptable. Your analysis is forgetting this moral principle and is thus coming to a faulty conclusion.
Posted by: AMB | Aug 1, 2008 12:12:14 PM
“No, I don't. The principle of double effect does not justify an action of evil object. That is why it's called ‘double *effect,*’ as opposed to "double object.”
You’re rather subjectively arguing that a couple that uses a barrier method cannot have the same proper intentions as a user of NFP. I don’t think this is absolutely true, and I’m not sure how you could prove otherwise without employing the ad hominem fallacy toward users of non-abortive ABC, and thus I stand by my argument that to be logically consistent you need to extend the principle of double-effect to good-intentioned users of barrier contraceptives.
Posted by: AMB | Aug 1, 2008 12:15:10 PM
>>Deliberation must be and always is fed by external formative authorities -- parents, Scripture, bishops, philosophers, friends, etc. Primacy of conscience does not exempt anyone from the deliberation proceeding in all the posts above, but merely requires compliance with the results of one's moral deliberation.<<
"Well, duh!" doesn't seem the most polite response, but it's the first that comes to mind. Yes, inform oneself, reflect on the full spectrum of that information (I support the Jesuits' teachings on probabilism), morally deliberate, and comply with the result. That is exactly what one should do. So your objection is ... ?
The topic has been discussed to death, so I will pull a Stuart and, without further comment, merely reference an article on the subject by Brian Lewis:
http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/research/theology/ejournal/aejt_6/lewis.htm
Posted by: Francesca | Aug 1, 2008 12:20:24 PM
I have nothing to add, except to say:
What an excellent discussion, filled with light, wisdom and courtesy. This has reminded me of all the things I so love about Mere Comments.
Posted by: Ethan C. | Aug 1, 2008 12:57:13 PM
After some considerable reflection on this topic, two thoughts were particularly helpful for me. The first related to GL's comments on time and space as the parameters for discussion of family planning; the other was something not yet raised in this thread, namely, the Lord's parable of the talents.
As embodied creatures we are limited by space and time, and within those dimensions God has set both natural and Scriptural barriers. In terms of the marital relationship, the spatial barrier to intercourse is the marital bond, that is, once married the spatial barrier to intercourse with one another is dissolved. No other spatial barrier is established by God. With respect to temporal barriers, God has established three times (to everything there is a season) within the marital relationship related to procreation: fertility, menses, and non-menses infertility. Nature implies, and God commands, that intercourse be avoided during menses. That is the one temporal barrier. But apart from that, and with respect to the two other times, there is neither restriction nor command from the Lord, except to be fruitful and multipy.
Here then I reflected on the parable of the talents. Each man received one or more talents from the Lord. These are certainly various gifts and entrustments, but one which is common to nearly all men is the gift of conception, of fertility, of multiplying the race. Here too the Lord bestows His gifts in varying amounts, but expects a return on His investment. Yet not only that, but he promises as well blessings proportionate to the return produced. All who produce a return are blessed; a curse comes only to the one who hides his talent and gives the Lord no return.
If this parable is truly applicable to God's gift of fertility, as I believe it must be, then a plain reading of the text suggests that all who invest their gift and work to produce a return for their Lord are blessed, although the degree of blessing will correspond to the return produced. I take this to mean that those who produce and raise Godly children receive blessings for doing so proportionate to their labors. Only he who hides his talent is cursed. (In context I wouldn't take this to be directed to those who, through no fault of their own, are infertile, or those who do not hide their talent but rather offer it up in sacrifice to produce, say, spiritual children. The latter indeed may be said to have invested their sacrifice and produced a return.)
Reflecting on this I would conclude preliminarily a few things. First, the marital relationship is defined both by nature and by nature's God, in that nature sets certain limits and God prescribes others through His word and church. Because man is not to sunder what God has joined together, any "sundering" that is neither natural nor allowed nor commanded by God misses the mark, i.e., is sinful. But within that nature, and the limits set by God through His means, no other restrictions need apply. It is the rewards promised by God which must then provoke to action. We are rewarded by our production of children, of blood and of spirit, for His pleasure. Provided that there is indeed a return on God's investment, we are not "punished" for the size of the return, except insofar as further reward is restricted. In this context then, a couple may limit their return, provided that such limit is natural and not contrary to God's teaching, but in turn they must be prepared to have their reward correspondingly limited.
If this reasoning is sound (and I sincerely welcome your comments and criticism), then it would seem that what we refer to as NFP is acceptable, provided that it is never used as a means to forego all conception.
Posted by: Bill R | Aug 1, 2008 1:18:37 PM
I am no expert in this matter, but I think some clarification of Jewish law in this matter might be illuminating. If I misstate the law, please correct me.
"When a woman has a discharge, and the discharge in her body is blood, she shall be in her menstrual impurity for seven days . . . ." Leviticus 15:19a (ESV)
The Torah requires a minimum seven days of sexual abstinence for women and their husbands, from the onset of blood flow. The rabbis in the Talmud (BT Niddah 66a) claim that women took upon themselves to extend the time during which couples are to refrain from sexual relations from the biblical minimum of seven days to at least twelve by waiting until the end of her flow, as described above — five or more days — and then waiting an additional seven days in which there is no flow or spotting.Menstruation and “Family Purity” (Tohorat ha-Mishpacha by Rabbi Alana Suskin, available at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/niddah.html.In practice, then, a woman needs to anticipate the beginning of menstruation to avoid accidents, and if she has an irregular cycle, to check regularly. The woman then checks herself toward the end of her flow to ascertain when the blood flow stops. On the last day of spotting, she begins to count seven additional days. At the end of that time period, the woman visits the mikveh.
At the mikveh the woman prepares herself by bathing, brushing her teeth, cleaning under her nails, removing all jewelry, and so forth, to make sure that her body is perfectly clean before entering the waters. She then goes into the water and immerses, and recites a prescribed blessing. The procedure is similar for a woman who has given birth. Until the woman returns from the mikveh, Jewish law bans all sexual contact, and mandates that the couple should refrain from any contact that might stir sexual feelings.
Today, observance of the traditional strictures and the post-menstrual immersion in a mikveh are common among Orthodox Jews, much less common (but growing) among Conservative Jews, and quite unusual in the more liberal religious communities.
Now, if Rabbi Suskin correctly relates the additional restrictions of the Talmud, the consequences would be abstaining from intercourse during a period when conception was unlikely, though not the entire period when conception was unlikely. Thus, the likelihood that intercourse would occur during a period of fertility is enhanced by this practice.
Bill R. wrote:
>>>If this reasoning is sound (and I sincerely welcome your comments and criticism), then it would seem that what we refer to as NFP is acceptable, provided that it is never used as a means to forego all conception.<<<
I think that goes too far. There must be a real and compelling reason to close oneself to God's blessing of children.
There is no indication in the Parable of the Talents that the one who invested his talents and received a small return deliberately invested in such a way as to limit his return. Perhaps God chose to limit the size of his blessing or perhaps he was not as competent an investor as the one who received the larger return. Nor is there any indication that once the moderately successful investor received his small return, he hid his original talent and the ones he made just as the one who made no investment from the outset hid his talent without seeking any return. For all we can tell from the parable, God more richly blessed on investor than the other. We have no indication that either quit investing before the time came for them to report on their return.
Thus, to return to the subject under discussion, the lesson to be learned is that both those who followed the Lord's command to invest their talents received a reward -- a blessing from Him. The one who had what little he had taken away was the one who feared to invest his talent. That is, if we are obedient to God's command to be fruitful and multiply and if our actions demonstrate our trust in His word that children are a blessing and blessed is the man whose quiver if full of them, then He will bless us according to His wisdom and mercy with however many children He chooses. If we are not obedient and if our actions show a lack of trust, we will have even what little we have taken from us and given to those who, in the words of the old hymn, trust and obey. That doesn't mean that our children will die; it may mean that they will demonstrate the same lack of openness to us and our needs in our old age that we demonstrated toward their would-be siblings in our young age.
(As I typed this, I couldn't help but think of the declining mainline denominations, most of whose members have had very small families during the past several decades -- a point of pride apparently for some, including the current head of the TEC -- and who have seen their numbers dwindle not only as their older members die off, but as the children of their small families either become Evangelicals, Catholics or Orthodox or abandon the faith altogether. What little they had has been taken away. That is the natural decline caused by their contracepting members has been exacerbated by the mass defection of what children they did have.)
Posted by: GL | Aug 1, 2008 1:56:35 PM
