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D. Natural Family Planning (NFP) and Responsible
Parenthood
1. NFP
The special reciprocity between masculinity and
femininity enables a man and a woman to love in a unique way. (And in this
context, we are presuming that the man and woman are participating in the
five characteristics of love. In other words, they are married and acting
in accordance with their dignity.) In fact, it can be said that through
the human sexual powers we can love in a more profound way than through
any other of our physical attributes. (It is not that there are not
greater acts of love, e.g., the mystical union with God which some of the
saints have experienced, but such acts of love are primarily movements of
grace within the soul and in essence are not physical.) Since our sexual
powers enable us to love in a unique way, they enable us to act like God
in a unique way. In loving through our sexual powers we become visible
images of God in a very special way. In other words, in the physical act
of love, the body expresses the person and reveals God in a most profound
way. In studying about this way of loving, we study what the body is
revealing. We come to know ourselves and God in a very special way. Our
sexuality is, in a sense, a window to the soul.
Therefore, the study of our sexual powers is, in a
sense, the practicum of the theology of the body and it reveals the
profound mystery of the human person. This study is undertaken by the
teachers and students in the NFP apostolate. NFP examines our fertility.
It investigates our sexuality, the window to the soul. In the NFP classes,
couples are taught about their own fertility. NFP is the knowledge of
fertility. There is a distinction between knowledge of fertility and its
application. Married couples may apply the knowledge of their fertility to
plan their families, but this actually is responsible parenthood.
Since NFP is the study of our sexual powers, the
window to the soul, NFP reveals the profound mystery of the human person.
In studying their sexual powers, men and women will see the mystery which
is expressed in and through these faculties. Men and women will perceive
the dignity of the body and its sacramental value as a physical image of
God. People will begin to respect the body and hold it in awe and
reverence. NFP is the means to teach the world the incomparable dignity of
the human body as the expression of the human person. When men and women
understand the truth about themselves, they will be more inclined to act
responsibly, i.e., in accordance with their truth and value. But it is
impossible to act responsibly if one is unaware of the truth. NFP teaches
the truth about fertility. As such, NFP, properly taught, will usually
lead to virtue. The Church encourages its use as a means of developing a
holy life. NFP has been elevated to an apostolate. It is the study of
human fertility, of sexuality, which shows the individual that she or he
is truly an image of God made to love as God loves. NFP probes the
unchartered and infinite depths of each individual human person. It gives
people a sense of their own worth and dignity.
2. Responsible Parenthood
As a relationship of love, marriage must have the
five characteristics of divine love, and the bodies of the spouses must
participate in the characteristics of divine love in so far as is
possible. Each spouse must choose to give himself or herself to the other.
The choice must be based on the recognition of the value and dignity of
the spouse. The decision to give oneself to the other must be permanent
and life-giving.
If even one of these five characteristics is
missing, the spouses do not love each other. Clearly, the body cannot make
a choice since it does not have a will. Further, it cannot recognize the
value of another person because it does not have a mind. Lacking a will,
the body cannot give itself. However, the body can share in the permanent
characteristic of love because it can be given as a permanent gift until
death. Our bodies do not require a series of partners over life as they
require food. If God had created the human body to need a series of
partners over a lifetime, there could be no permanent bodily gift to one
other person. In this case, the physical union of two people in marriage
would not be love because one of the necessary characteristics of love:
permanence, would be missing from such a relationship.
The body also participates in the fifth
characteristic of love: life. God has joined the physical expression of
love between two married people to the creation of new human life. It must
be this way if married love is truly to be love. God's love is always
life-giving. If married love is to be truly love, it must be life-giving.
The intimate physical gift of love between husband and wife includes the
possibility of physical life. If this were not the case, the physical
union of the two people in marriage would not be love. But the body does
participate in the fifth characteristic of love: life. If the human body
could not participate in this characteristic of love, husbands and wives
would be using each other rather than loving each other. But God created
us to imitate Him in his love and so the physical love of spouses is truly
love because it is physically permanent and life-giving.
God allows married couples a unique participation in
the power of creation. The animals reproduce, but their offspring are not
persons. The angels do not give life to new angels. Only human persons can
bring new embodied images of God into our world. Only human beings can
give life to new unique persons of equal value to themselves. Each child
is another expression of God in this world and will live for all eternity.
Nevertheless, God did not intend that every act of
marital love should result in a new human person. There are only a few
days in a woman's cycle when a pregnancy is possible. Further, God
gave us a mind and a will so that we could cooperate with Him in the
creation of a new human person: procreation. Responsible parenthood
signifies the virtuous choice made by a married couple either to strive to
procreate or to try to avoid conception.
Some people think that a decision by a couple to
time their acts of love in order to space children using NFP is the same
as the decision by a couple to avoid pregnancy through contraception. This
is a confusion of purposes and means. The purpose may be the same, but the
means are different. The NFP couple delaying another pregnancy and the
contraceptive couple delaying a pregnancy are engaging in two radically
different acts. The difference between the NFP couple and the
contracepting couple is as wide as two men who decide to go to the bank to
withdraw $100. The one who fills out a withdrawal slip and takes the money
from his account is doing a totally different act from the other one who
holds a gun to the teller and takes $100 in a robbery. The NFP couple,
while engaging in non-procreative intercourse by making use of the
infertile times, give themselves to each other totally and completely as
they are at that moment. The contracepting couple withholds their
fertility from each other in an anti-procreative act and do not give
themselves totally. Remember, love is defined as a total self-gift. The
NFP couple engages in an act of authentic love, while the contracepting
couple does not, even if they think they are. It should be further noted
that God never told married couples when they should make love. That is
totally up to the couple. What He does say (through His act of creation in
that we are called to love as He loves) is that when married couples love,
they are to give themselves totally to one another. The NFP couple does
that while knowing that they are infertile. The contracepting couple does
not because they withhold their fertility from one another. Further, the
contracepting couple alters either both their bodies or one of them and in
so doing they violate the integrity of their own bodies.
There is a further difference, one in purpose. The
contracepting couple while engaging in the marital act, has excluded
procreation both physically and purposely (in their wills). Such a couple
has said "No" to new life. The NFP couple has said to God,
"We do not think this is the time, but if you wish a new life, we
will accept that life." In this sense, the NFP couple making use of
the infertile times have not excluded the (remote) possibility of
procreation physically or purposely (in their wills). There is a radical
difference in these intentions.
Couples who have developed a familial spirituality
and who are acting responsibly in planning their families will always
accept the potential for new life while engaging in the marital act. If a
responsible couple has decided to avoid a pregnancy for a time by having
recourse to the infertile periods only, they still have not excluded the
possibility of procreation in their intentions (or physically). If a
pregnancy should occur during these times, the couple will accept the
child as a precious new life given to them by God. The Church's constant
teaching is that the procreative purpose may never be excluded in the
physical or intentional orders. While teaching that procreation can never
be excluded, the Church also encourages responsible parenthood and the
spacing of children through the application of fertility awareness.
It is clear that the NFP couple and the
contracepting couple have different intentions while engaging in a
specific marital act. However, some criticize those who use NFP with
having a contraceptive mentality because they intend not to have children
over the course of some months or years. In other words, even though each
act is "ordained to the transmission of life" as Pope Paul VI
insisted in his encyclical, On Human Life, Humanae Vitae (See no.
11.), still the NFP couple is criticized, even condemned, because, say the
critics, their general intention is identical to the general intention of
the contracepting couple. These critics are charging the NFP couple not
with having the same specific intention in each marital act as the
contracepting couple, but with having the same general intention as the
contracepting couple. Intentions or thoughts can be sinful, e.g., the
thought of hating someone to the point of wanting him dead, or worse, in
hell for all eternity, is sinful. However, with regard to individual acts,
e.g., acts of conjugal love by married partners, the Church never examines
a general intention. Rather, it is always the specific act and the
specific intentions which accompany the specific act which weigh as
evidence in the judgment. In other words, an NFP couple may have some
vague general intention about avoiding children for months or even years,
but that does not matter. It is the specific intention which they both
have when engaging in an act of love which either contributes to the
virtue of the act or to its sinfulness. And, as we have seen, the specific
intention of the NFP couple is not contraceptive. Therefore, the NFP
couple does not have a contraceptive mentality.
This distinction between the general intention and
the specific intention explains one of the effects of NFP on couples.
Since the advent of modern NFP, pastoral practice has been to encourage
couples to use NFP even if they did not have the most virtuous of general
intentions. Pastors were pleased if an engaged couple agreed to use NFP
and generally never addressed further the question of spacing children. It
is the universal experience of the Church in the last twenty years all
over the world that couples who began using NFP with the intention to
exclude children in their marriage for a long time or to have only one or
two, usually "change their minds." Pastors have often met
couples whose marriages they witnessed years before who have five, six and
even more children and often they are closely spaced. When asked, the
couples who more often than not only wanted two and those widely spaced,
will say: "We changed our minds." Partly this is attributable to
their discovering through NFP that they are "fearfully and
wonderfully made." (See Psalm 139:14.) They encountered their wonder
and dignity by learning the theology of the body through the practice of
NFP. But something else also is happening when couples "change their
minds." The general intention (which might be called contraceptive)
has given way to the series of specific intentions they had when they
engaged in the marital act. Each marital act (with the proper intention,
i.e., an openness to life ) weakened the general intention until it was
conformed to the specific intentions accompanying each act. It is
impossible to maintain a general intention towards something and
continually act contrary to that general intention. Either the specific
intentions will change to conform to the general intention or the general
intention will change to conform to the specific intentions. When NFP is
successfully and faithfully practiced, the initial general intention
(which might be contraceptive) disappears in favor of the specific
intention (openness to life). This is another way that NFP builds virtue.
It is also the reason why pastors always encourage its use, even if the
general intention of a couple is not the best at the beginning!
Nevertheless, how do couples decide on the spacing
of children? In the past the magisterium has taught that couples,
who have recourse to the infertile periods only, should have "serious
reasons." (See Pope Paul VI, On Human Life, Humanae Vitae, no.
16.) However, in The Apostolic Exhortation on the Family, Familiaris
Consortio, nos. 32 and 33, Pope John Paul II does not use the phrase
"serious reasons" when speaking of responsible parenthood.
Rather he sees the natural regulation of births as fidelity to "the
Creator-person." (See John Paul II, "A Discipline That Ennobles
Human Love," L'Osservatore Romano, [English Edition],
[September 3, 1984], vol. 17, no. 36, no. 118 in the Theology of the
Body series.) In another passage, the Holy Father writes that
"responsible fatherhood and motherhood, understood integrally, is
none other than an important element of all conjugal and family
spirituality." (See John Paul II, "Sources of Spirituality For
Married Couples," L'Osservatore Romano, [English Edition],
[October 8, 1984], vol. 17, no. 41, no. 120 in the Theology of the Body
series.) John Paul sees responsible parenthood as the fruit of a genuine
familial spirituality, a familial holiness which is encouraged and
developed through the theology of the body, NFP, and the theology of the
family. Studying the profound mystery of the human person as an image of
God both in his individual existence (theology of the body and NFP) and in
the family, a reflection of the Trinity (theology of the family), spouses
will come to know themselves and God. They will know the truth about
themselves as images of God. They will come to know something of the
profound love which God has for them. Spouses will realize that they are
called to act as He does. They will strive to respond to each other and to
God with the same love and fidelity which He shows them. Gradually, a
familial spirituality will develop in the spouses. Responsible parenthood
flows from this familial spirituality which is developed through knowledge
of the truth about man and God (theology of the body, NFP, and the
theology of the family). As in so many other areas, John Paul has
elucidated and clarified what lay behind previous magisterial teaching on
responsible parenthood. If the language of "serious reasons" has
almost disappeared, it is because John Paul knows that these will exist as
a matter of course if families respond to his challenge to learn the
theology of the body, NFP, and the theology of the family.
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