Nope dont feel better
Can i opt out ? :-)

But iam with you 100% on hearing opposing points of view just so you are clearer with what you believe . Hey you even become more empathetic . Am not so quick to judge contraceptive users anymore not since i almost died from bleeding out after having my baby then watching my sister tear her cervix and uterus in the same birth process 7 months later

Um….since I’m posting anonymously on the Internet, I can talk about things I don’t discussed out loud with most of the people I know in real life, and say…..the grass actually isn’t complicated at all, on my side. Not all of us contracepters out here are using Plan B or abortion as our regular birth control, or dosing ourselves with hormones whose long-term effects are unclear.

Barrier methods (diaphragm, condom) are in fact easy ways to sidestep fertility—unless you’re one of the rare people with a sensitivity to latex, and then I guess you’re out of luck.

Leaving the moral implications aside, from a strictly physical point of view, I honestly don’t give contraception, much thought, or worry, and I haven’t in the nearly three decades since I started using it.

Now, if someone happens to be among those who believe all artificial contraception is a mortal sin, I would never suggest she try it. And we all know that only abstinence is 100% effective, though using multiple barrier methods together can drastically reduce the failure rate.

Another barrier method: Sleep with your children in the same bed. We have found this to be the MOST effective way to prevent conception of any more of them.

In the infamous words of…. who was that? 

“NFP, the worst possible method, except for all the others”

Oh, yes, that was our dear Simcha!

We all have our crosses.  If someone else’s life looks like a bed of roses, remember it, too, has hidden thorns.

Well this is just incredibly naive I’m sure, but I’m absolutely horrified after reading the comments on those sites. I simply cannot believe women live each day making such horrible choices. Multiple abortions? And she admits she believes it’s murder? And these women are supposed to be the liberated ones? Ok…my life will never be the same.

I like your disclaimer. :) LMAO at the chewing on the mattress bit. Ha!

And K, I am sorry- it sounds like you and your sister had such terrible and scary birth experiences! Thank goodness you’re ok. 

Kinda like Simcha said, nothing on this side of Eden is easy. :( I’m sorry for your pain.

I’m so glad you wrote about this. I’ve often thought that I wish people who think NFP is horrible would read those sites more often, and see that the grass is not any greener on the other side.

You are so right about the other side not being any better!  I used to work with women who lost a baby and the majority of women had become pregnant by accident. And if you ask most couples, that second child wasn’t a planned incident.

Another point to make, throughout marriage there are times when marital relations are put on hold for quite awhile. Consider when someone is physically ill or has a serious injury. Sometimes a spouse becomes permanently disabled and can no longer fulfill marital relations. Imagine! That is a great sacrifice on the part of the healthy spouse to remain by their side for the rest of their life (or until their spouse departs). We’ve seen stories like this in the news. The secular world would tell that spouse to ditch the sick one and divorce them, find happiness (and sex) elsewhere. Isn’t that so shallow, low and cruel?  Yup! It is not for those who take marriage seriously.

On L. points. I don’t agree with contraception for moral and religious reasons but she did give a good suggestion: let your children sleep in the bed. Yup. That works charms. The only bad part is that when ovulation is over and the safe days for sex have come, you will struggle to keep that toddler out of your bed so you can have some privacy! :)

I’m going to be sharing this article with others. I kind of wish I’d been told all of this years ago when I was young, taking NFP classes, and thinking contraception would be so much easier.
Simcha, you are very wise and perceptive.

It’s hard for either side to take an honest look at the other’s life…. but it is good to do.  It gives us perspective and insight into the world.  We are all fallen.  It’s hard for me to imagine living as some of those women do, they would say the same of me.  ( married, mother of 5, mon-Catholic NFP user)

And yes I do feel better, even if I am “bad at NFP” ;)  I wouldn’t trade it.

In my opinion, sex is a violent and disgusting act that degrades women. However this is not always the case. Within a loving marriage for the intent of conception, sex can be a beautiful thing. What I don’t understand is how women can poison their delicate reproductive systems with harmful substances so they can have a good time sans responsibility - and try to pass this hedonistic behavior off as feminism. They are not only harming themselves, they are also artificially denying God’s most precious gift. If a woman uses self control in her marriage, she will not end up with too many mouths to feed.

Great article!

I needed to hear this today… I’m in one of those postpartum crazy times where I’m convinced I’m fertile .every.single.day. (and we need to postpone the next kiddo for a little bit…)

... let’s just say we’re “chewing the mattress to bits” lately. But, I guess that’s just how is sometimes is!

Thanks for your wisdom today :)

@L. :  well, sure—and there are plenty of NFP-ers (and nothing-users) who have no problem, either, just like you.  My point wasn’t that everyone who uses artificial contraception was hiding some secret hell, but just that people who struggle with NFP sometimes attribute any trouble they have to NFP, when, in my experience, what makes NFP so hard is that it forces you to confront the nature of sexuality head-on, so to speak. 

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Also, I wasn’t speaking mostly of the physical or even the spiritual side-effects of dealing with fertility, but the emotional ones.  I know there are people out there who don’t see what the big deal about sex is, but for people for whom it carries a big emotional freight, then I still find it hard to believe that using a condom (or any other form of contraception), no matter how physically simple, makes sex emotionally simple.  Frankly, I think there’s something wrong with a person who doesn’t occasionally get upset about sex!

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@Noelle:  you said “In my opinion, sex is a violent and disgusting act that degrades women. However this is not always the case. Within a loving marriage for the intent of conception, sex can be a beautiful thing. “

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I sincerely hope your opinion is based on conjecture and not on experience—or maybe I’ve misunderstood you.  In a loving marriage, sex is never violent, disgusting, or degrading, whether conception is intended (or occurs) or not.  I do pray for all women who experience sex in such a dreadful way, and am grateful not to be among them.

I believe sex is only violent, disgusting and degrading when it is done with someone other than a loving husband. I think that a wife should not engage in sex unless she is welcoming the possibility of conception. I also practice the behavior that I believe to be right.

Ugh, I couldn’t make it past about the first ten comments.  My first thought is to take a (mental) shower and try to forget—but I’m deliberately correcting myself to pray for those poor women instead.

I’m glad you clarified that, Simcha, because you linked to blogs on which, indeed, it seems that “everyone who uses artificial contraception was hiding some secret hell,” which is why I spoke up.

You know, come to think of it, I honestly do believe sex is both physically and emotionally simple—perhaps it’s because my partner and I have been together for so long? Remove the element of my unwanted fertility, and what do I have left? The bonding with, and love of, that person. And this seems like the easiest, most natural thing in the world.
 
I do think I can understand how practicing NFP and being totally open to life could bring a couple closer together. On the other hand, I know some non-Catholic but devout Christians who use (non-abortificant) contraception, and I don’t see it driving them apart anymore than it’s ever been a stumbling block in my own secular relationship.

Maybe those horror-story websites to which you linked are less about contraception, than about the higher ideal of commitment to one’s partner, for purposes above and beyond one’s own pleasure?

Simcha,
Great points, but I haven’t had to look at blogs, I’ve only had to look around at my friends. They struggle all the time. Whether it’s their husbands being ready for a vasectomy, or their realization that they need to get off the pill at a certain age, which is well before menopause, or a surprise BC baby, they all struggle. It’s no secret.

We’ve struggled too, but I think that’s the particular beauty of Catholicism. We know suffering is unavoidable, so we are less inclined to act out of fear of it.

I liked this post, even though I do use ABC. Thank you for showing that most women have issues with whatever they are using, be it NFP, ABC or even providentialists (we need a 3 letter abbreviation for that!). I do want to use NFP, but for many reasons, yes, it’s “easier” to use ABC. But it’s no walk in the park, either. It does NOT mean that my husband and I (or many other couples out there) are having crazy, carefree sex. In fact, we don’t have much sex because of the way our lives are right now, including medical conditions and job stress. I also know that there’s a chance, every time we are intimate, that the ABC could fail. If it did fail, we wouldn’t run out and get an abortion. We’d deal with what we were given. Thank you for posting this to show that NFP isn’t perfect and neither is ABC. They’ve both got their pros and cons…I know you can’t come out and say “hey not all people who practice ABC are evil doers,” because it DOES go against the church, but posts like this do help to show that one thing (ABC) doesn’t always lead to something really bad (abortion).

@L. - I dunno, I’m not doubting your experience, but to remove fertility and leave only the other aspects of sex seems to me a little like having a meal together, and having a lovely social experience, and relishing the smells and the visual aspects, but not actually ingesting any nutrition.  It may be simpler and more satisfying than having to deal with digestion (or indigestion), but what does it mean?  What’s it for?  Simpler isn’t always better!

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For me, after many years of hating and struggling with NFP, I’ve finally come to a point where the practice has not only brought me and my husband closer together, but it’s given me an entirely new attitude about Why We Are Here In General, and I’m immensely grateful for that.  Too much to go into in the comment box, but I have always thought that—well, sex looms notoriously large in the lives of most human beings.  You can either work around it until it shrinks to a manageable size, or you can dive in until you yourself become—ech, don’t want to say “bigger,” since at 34 weeks I’m frickin enormous, and it doesn’t feel great.  But you know what I mean. 

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I hope that doesn’t sound condescending - -I’m speaking about my personal experience and my own shift in attitude, and I do understand that I don’t know what it’s like to be a secular person.  I appreciate your willingness to talk about this!

@L. - oh, so what I meant to say was that there are really three levels of sex, I guess you could say:  there’s personal gratification, and then there’s the higher level of commitment and love to your partner, which you speak of; and then there’s the even higher one, which has to do with things like “what God is like” and “It turns out that love is actually like THIS, instead of everything you’ve ever heard before from anyone.”  Married for nearly 14 years, and I’m getting my first peek at level three.  It’s really weird, but I like it (and haven’t by any means shed personal gratification or love of my husband!).

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And then of course sometimes, it’s just sex.

Noelle,
I would be careful with your wording… “I think that a wife should not engage in sex unless she is welcoming the possibility of conception.”

Absolutely. We are always open to life…. but it’s not just the wife, it’s the husband as well. Fertility is a joint effort in marriage (it takes two to tango… and raise/feed/provide for a brood of children), and your wording makes it sound like the wife is the gatekeeper. (Forgive me if I misunderstood). My husband and I strive to have communcation and shared responsibility about sex… and make a joint decision whether or not to engage.
Off my soapbox, now :)

@Noelle—yes, it also really isn’t clear if you mean that sex is only a licit activity between spouses if they think the wife is fertile.  It sounds a little like you’re implying that it’s immoral to engage in sex when we can be reasonably sure that no conception will occur.  I apologize if I’ve misunderstood, but just to clarify for anyone reading:  that is NOT what the Church teaches.

I’ll be honest.  In the early years of our marriage we used condoms and were fine with them.  I’ve never known a couple who’s admitted to me that they used condoms who was unhappy with them.  Sure, you might have the occasional unplanned pregnancy, but that happens with NFP too.   
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That said, we switched to NFP because either we believe in our Faith or we don’t.  We decided we do believe.  NFP wasn’t any big cross, but we weren’t great at that either, mostly because I was too lazy to chart.  All our surprise babies - from condoms and NFP - have been blessings. 
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I have to admit that my husband and I don’t really see the difference in terms of condoms versus NFP.  Each way requires a conscious effort on both husband and wife, and condoms require an even more conscious effort on the husband’s part.  But when our Church’s view started to tug at our consciences, we started to read a little about it.  That’s when we formed the opinion that professional NFP proponents were really hung up on sex to a degree with which we were uncomfortable.  All that Theology of the Body stuff was just too out there for us.  So we just stopped trying to convince ourselves that NFP was better and just took our Church’s word for it.   
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If we had it to do over, we’d have probably used NFP from the beginning but only because it gives us less to confess, not from any deeply held belief that it’s superior to condoms.

Hmmm, I think a better food metaphor for fertility would be, sex with contraception is like eating those non-caloric foods. There’s a zero-calorie jello thing that I love, and eat all the time, and I swear I could live just on that and my next-to-zero-calorie soup and crackers—but if I ate only this, then I would eventually starve to death from zero nutrition.

Similarly, if human beings didn’t have procreative sex sometime, the human race would die out. My diet foods are wonderful, but if I ate nothing but diet food, we wouldn’t have our family.

I also think….well, sex doesn’t loom notoriously large in everyone’s lives. Sure, it’s how we all got here, but once we’re here, there are some pretty vast differences—often within the same person’s lifetime. I can remember sex once being very important to me, but now it’s not high up on my list of priorities. I know celibate people who don’t have sex but seem to think about it all the time, and married people who have lots of sex but have it in a way that seems mechanical, without thinking about it (or so some of my friends make it sound). I can see how NFP could really put a spotlight on sex, so that one sees it in a whole new context.

(By the way, I’m actually Catholic—secular Catholic, married to an anti-Catholic partner. I make no claim of being anything close to devout in any way, but I am very familiar with Catholic teachings and I know many people at my church who are faithfully living them. Sex has always been a “manageable size” for me. Which is good, because I struggle with so many other things in life.)

I just got pregnant with my 4th child while trying to finish nursing school. I have found myself looking at the other women in my class with envy - it seems so easy for everyone else to plan a pregnancy when they want it. I needed this article! Thanks!

Reading your posts, Simcha, makes it that much easier to accept my current, single state in life!  :-)  Whether or not you intended that, it’s a benefit.  (Same with babysitting our mutual friend, Jessica H.‘s, one-year-old Joseph last weekend . . . moms do NOT have easy lives!)

Yeah, it’s always a stumbling block when discussing sex because you can either talk about it from a universal perspective, based on what most people seem to experience (in which case someone will always say “That’s not been my experience!) or from a personal perspective (in which case someone will always say, “But that’s not how most people see it!”).  And it’s one thing to talk about how fertile the human race should be, and quite another to become pregnant!

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This is why I always try to speak strictly from my experience, and think about how that converges with what I believe in universal terms—and also I find it useful to find out the personal experiences of other people, rather than just swallowing the party line that “All people who have a different universal understanding probably experience X, Y, and Z—isn’t that sad.”  I think the only sane and honest way to discuss these things is to get a little personal, but that leads to problems of its own. 

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I guess you could say it’s my goal to take what I understand as objective moral truths about sexuality, and to keep hammering away at my personal approach to it, until these two actually have something in common. 

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To torture the food analogy a bit more:  I could (in theory) control my weight by restricting myself to those zero-calorie jello things (I love that crap too, by the way), or I could (in theory) arrive at the same weight by ruthlessly examining my attitude toward food, and learning how to chose reasonable portions of all sorts of dishes, and exercising, and teaching myself to view food in a more emotionally sane way than I do now.  I might fit into the same dress size either way, but I’d be doing myself a big favor to start living the second way.

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Well, that’s probably my personal record for talking about sex without actually talking about actual sex.

@Cathy
Of course your husband’s wishes must be considered as well, but I think that birth control choices are naturally left for women to decide. If you want to have a baby you would need your husband’s approval obviously, but he might want to have a lot more kids than you are prepared to give birth to. Men don’t understand the pain of labor, so your husband might not know when you have had enough kids for your body to handle unless you tell him. If a woman is done having children, and if she and her husband want to continue to engage in sex that is certainly up to them. Personally, I would not want to because if I did not think I could handle another child, I wouldn’t want to chance it, but that is my personal belief. Sex would not be a sin if birth control was not used.

Your comment about birth control devices being the “object of a class action lawsuit in 10 years” is right on the money. When I was working as health reporter for my college newspaper, one of the medical school profs was being sued because he helped develop a certain form of IUD, which caused major complications. Reading about what the women went through—including horrible infections—was enough to make you cry.

Oh, Noelle, my heart is breaking for you.  Of course a loving husband understands what pregnancy does to his wife’s body.    Each of my pregnancies darn near killed me and nobody felt that more accutely than my husband.    In many ways he felt my pain more than I did because while I could feel my babies’ life within me, he was just taking my word for that and all he could see was his bloated, vomiting, weak as anything wife with the IV’s in her arm for months at a time.    He also was the one picking up the slack with the already born children during those laborious pregnancies, which mercifully never lasted more than 7 months.

@Simcha Fisher
I did not mean to sound so self-righteous. I would never imply that a woman who is unsure of whether or not conception is possible for her is committing a sin by trying, or if she knows she is infertile that she and her husband should not engage if they wish. If you are completely certain you are infertile, then you must take into account that miracles have been know to occur. You could actually be about 70 years old, and end up getting pregnant because God decided he wanted you to. Personally if I didn’t want a child, I wouldn’t have sex. But that is just me.

@noelle,  what if you were already pregnant? Perhaps a miracle could make you pregnant over again, so to avoid that possibility would you abstain?

@noelle - no no, you didn’t sound self-righteous, and I didn’t mean to sound hard hearted.  My problem is that literally every time I talk about NFP, someone responds by misrepresenting Church teaching, and I wanted to make sure that doesn’t happen, because you never know who’s reading.

Thanks for this post. Sometimes I get sick of NFP and the love of God is hardly enough to keep me going. Then I remember all the stories from friends and relatives—from low sex drives on the pill and 5 years of missed periods on injections to frequent bleeding and eventual sterility (I’m not exaggerating) from IUDs—and hang in their for health reasons if not the right reasons. Sad, but maybe it is the grace of God that allows us to be faithful in our actions even when our consciences are still poorly formed.

I found the one comment interesting where the one woman says she took the pill “religiously” and still got pregnant.  I use NFP “religiously”  (well, I try anyways) and I don’t have to pump any nasty chemicals into my body.  You would think with all this movement in the secular world towards “Natural” and “Organic” that people might give NFP a try.  Although, yes, I do realize all of the counter arguments about effectiveness and that you really should be open to life while using NFP.  I just find it interesting that people will only eat organic, hormone-free, sustainable foods yet take hormonal birth control.  That’s all!  :)

@Jenny
I suppose that could happen, anything could. I would abstain during pregnancy, but that doesn’t mean you have to. If you are so sure a miracle could not occur then maybe you will never experience one.

NB, for the record, there is indeed a movement within that broad cause known as “feminism” that’s against hormonal birth control.
Also, I know some non-religious people who, for natural health-seeking reasons, do practice something similar to NFP instead—but can NFP without the God part really be called NFP? More like natural contraception.

Also, I have a wonderful dear friend who was told by doctors all her life that hormonal birth control was the only way to control her irregular cycles (lots of spotting, irregular bleeding, cramping, etc).  She was on it for near a decade I think.  Now she is happily married, using NFP and trying to get pregnant and she can’t.  I can’t help wonder if all those years of using BC messed with her fertility and why no one ever warned her of that possibility.  Prayers for her please!  :(

@noelle, wasn’t trying to be condescending, just curious.  That is an interesting perspective you have there, and not one I have ever encountered, but that may be because others are unwilling to speak about it openly.  As to miracles, I do believe!  I happen to be raising several of them!

@L. - not that you were asking me, but I just had to throw in that, when NFP is physically healthier than hormonal or other invasive types of contraception, that’s not some sort of unexpected bonus tacked on to the moral benefits - it’s all part of the same thing.  Catholics do believe that we must not place our physical well-being *above* our sprirtual well-being, but we see ourselves as integrated creatures made of body and soul, and the Church calls us to treat both body and soul well.

@L - interesting point.  I definitely think there’s a contraceptive mentality that exists independent of whether or not a couple uses ABC.    When I got pregnant with one of my last two babies, there was a woman in my parish who teaches NFP who asked me point blank what my husband thought of my pregnancy.  I was horrified.    Then she asked, “is he mad at you?”  What????    Surely this woman understands it takes two people to make a baby.    Talk about a contraceptive mentality.

I think the problem whenever religious people and secular people try to talk about sex is that for the former, it has something deep and transcendent, beyond the experience itself, and is part of something that brings people closer to God.

Secular people don’t see anything in this light—not sex, not anything else. Some of them don’t even believe in God, or don’t even stop to consider what they believe and what they don’t. It’s hard for such people to imagine why people who don’t want more children wouldn’t just investigate some of the more benign forms of contraception, and try to find something that works for them, instead of subjecting them to the possibility of a not entirely welcome (or unwelcome!) pregnancy.

Similarly, I imagine it’s hard for religious people to understand how anyone could NOT believe.

But faith is like eyesight—some people are born without it but develop it later, some have it but lose it, and some never have it and live their whole lives unaware of what they’re missing.

L., I’ve never come across anyone like that (in real life or on the internet), but I guess it would make sense that some sort of natural contraception is gaining popularity.  I wonder why we don’t hear more about it in the mainstream media (or at least why I haven’t).  And yes, I guess you wouldn’t call it NFP at that point.  Although if we’re being technical, I should say use the Creighton Model since that’s probably more accurate (which is what I always tell my OB) and less likely to be confused with the rhythm method (like my extended family calls it.).  Thanks for the comment!  :)

About NFP being physically healthier than hormonal or other invasive types of contraception—I was referring more to the attitudes of those using it. I meant, the non-religious, entirely secucular couples who use it contraceptively, with its main purpose being preventing babies. Even hormone-free, it ain’t NFP.

@L - and the correlation is, I know several couples very well who were using barrier methods when they found out they were pregnant with numbers 3 or 4.  And their only response was to laugh and welcome the new baby with open arms.  If you read NFP literature, they’d have you believe those couples don’t exist, but the truth is, they’re are plenty of them.

And I think reading some of those posts you linked too just emphasizes how life is indeed very messy.  I will pray for those women and their little ones in Heaven.  What a burden to bear, I can’t even imagine.  I think whether women like to admit it to themselves or not, they know both in their head and in their heart that from the moment they conceive there is new life within them.  Yup, life is messy.  Sometimes I feel like all I can do is pray!

@L. - Oh, I see.  But still, that integration I spoke of comes into play here, I think.  As a Catholic, I believe that there is something inherently transcendent about the physical sexual act, no matter what the attitude of the couple engaging in it.  So I guess you could say that I suspect that an atheist having sex with another atheist, neither hoping for or expecting a conception, are still doing something which is by definition holy, whether they know it or not. 

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Like, even though my toddler doesn’t know that oxygen exists, she still moves it around when she swishes her hand in the air.  Or if I, as an adult, know about oxygen, I’m not always necessarily thinking about it when I wave my hand in the air.  Maybe I’m just trying to catch a fly—but still, the air moves, because that’s the kind of world it is.

@Jenny
I’m sorry. I have just come across so many people who ridicule others for their beliefs that I assumed that was what you were meaning. Miracles are quite wonderful aren’t they?

Eileen, I also know lots of couples who got pregnant as the result of contraception failure (or, more often, imperfect use—forgot a pill, condom broke, used diaphragm without gel, etc.) and they happily welcomed the resulting babies.

And NB, I think the reason the mainstream press doesn’t write about couples using natural forms of contraception is that it doesn’t write much about contraception at all—except in the context of people who seek to ban certain forms of it, whether it should be distributed to minors, etc.—all the social aspects, and not a lot of the “how to.”

“So I guess you could say that I suspect that an atheist having sex with another atheist, neither hoping for or expecting a conception, are still doing something which is by definition holy, whether they know it or not.”—>

That’s a nice thought.

Well, it’s one that I cling to, when I think of all the times I’ve engaged in what is supposed to be a holy act with nothing but the most carnal intentions.  Anyway, thanks for listening - I’ll quit bending your ear now.

And I’m in Tokyo and it’s one in the morning and I have to wake up in five hours and go to work, so I’ll take my ear, and the rest of me, to bed. I have enjoyed all of these comments.

The really cool thing about NFP is that it really forces a choice. When my husband and I got really tired of abstaining, we had a choice to make: which to we want more, not to have another child, or not to abstain? After child number 6, the choice was that we wanted each other more than we wanted to avoid pregnancy. After number 8, we decided that avoiding pregnancy wasn’t negotiable. The fact that it really lays out our choices like that is freeing.

The only real question I have is this: is it wrong to pray for an early menopause? :)

Ah, no, Miss Fisher, I don’t feel better.  I feel icky and disheartened.
That’s some sad stuff you had me slog through…

I didn’t go read that stuff….I have non-Catholic friends who use ABC (mostly hormonal stuff) and they hate it. Makes them feel crappy. Boggles my mind….I’ve brought up NFP many times….my own kids are almost 3 years apart solely from ecological breastfeeding. I don’t know. It’s a curious thing for me to watch them feel like that is the only way to go. At the same time, I have other non-Catholic friends who use a form of NFP b/c they are pretty “crunchy.”

One of my v. close friends who is an atheist was using an IUD when she met me, and is pretty sure she got pregnant and then had an early abortion…she was devastated. I let her borrow my info on Creighton and she started charting while her IUD was still in, b/c her husband didn’t want her to remove it. She made him abstain on top of the IUD b/c she wanted to do her best to not put any more babies at risk. She finally was able to convince him to let her take out the IUD and she is still charting. I’d call what they are using NFP, though she is an atheist and he is…Baptist? I think? He doesn’t really go to church. She wants more babies, he doesn’t (not until she is done with pharm school…??). I say all this because during our friendship I didn’t harass her for their choices…I just talked about what NOT contracepting was like…I shared struggles and I shared, though, the over-whelming sense that my husband respects and cherishes me. That sex and the way we see it with the eyes of our faith has led us to see where we need to become better people and better spouses. I think the honest example, and a whole lot of Holy Spirit, is what allowed my friend to be open to NFP and removing her IUD.

I LOVE menopause! Love it! Love it! Love it! That joy would not exist at its current level had it not been for—see above—. CM, it won’t be long before you shock your friends by welcoming the “hope and change” that really delights.

I’m with L. As a Protestant who has a loving, sexually fulfilling marriage, I don’t see sex as complicated and difficult. We use a diaphragm (sp?), and it’s actually unnoticable and hormone free.

Linking to horror story articles like you have shows an extreme side of contraception that bears no resemblance whatsover to the sex lives of many, many happily married Christians.

I think that Catholics are encouraged to believe that sex with contraception is emotionally empty because that will help build a case for NFP. Sorry, but I think that’s truly dishonest.

BTW, I have three beautiful children, and I’d have more if I could figure out a way to raise and homeschool more without losing my temper far more than I’d like. =) And I would never consider using an abortificiant contraceptive. There are many of us out here, and we’re happy with our sex lives.

Now, we have the advantage in that no one in authority over us has told us that using contraception is a sin. My conscience doesn’t stumble over this a bit because the Bible doesn’t tell me specifically what forms of birth control are acceptable and are not. I have freedom in this area.

So if you’re another Protestant reading this post, and there are many of us that are, here’s another perspective. I’m one who is saying that your sexual issues are not necessarily because of a “contraceptive mentality.” Not that I’ve figured out what that means, exactly… =)

Posted by Simcha Fisher on Thursday, Oct 20, 2011 10:46 AM (EDT):

“To torture the food analogy a bit more:  I could (in theory) control my weight by restricting myself to those zero-calorie jello things (I love that crap too, by the way), or I could (in theory) arrive at the same weight by ruthlessly examining my attitude toward food, and learning how to chose reasonable portions of all sorts of dishes, and exercising, and teaching myself to view food in a more emotionally sane way than I do now.  I might fit into the same dress size either way, but I’d be doing myself a big favor to start living the second way.”

But both approaches are moral according to Catholic doctrine. Why is it OK to enjoy the artificial sweetness or fake fat in diet foods while frustrating the natural purpose of eating, but wrong to enjoy the sex act while frustrating its natural purpose?

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/simcha-fisher/the-grass-is-just-as-complicated-on-the-other-side/#ixzz1bLHrEOLE

I honestly don’t wish I was able to contracept.  Contracepting couples have a higher divorce rate than NFP couples.  And if we get more children this way, that just makes life more fun and full.

@E., as I clarified to L. (what is this, _The Prisoner_?  Oh wait, everyone had a number, not an initial) the purpose of my post was not to claim that all non-Catholics are leading brutish and disgusting lives, but to offer some perspective to Catholics who practice NFP and find themselves struggling.  Part of my reason for doing so is because, like you, I see a certain amount of dishonesty in the way NFP is promoted.

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I’m happy to have another perspective, and I appreciate your comment.  But I still assert that we should aim for something higher than “uncomplicated and easy” in our sexual lives!

@E—it isn’t that Catholics are just encouraged to think artificial contraception causes problems, many of us (especially converts) have experienced it for ourselves. I can’t judge the sex life of others, obviously, but I can say that for myself sex before NFP had complications and problems that sex after NFP does not. I know others who agree. If you haven’t tried NFP you might not even be aware of the difficulties even a barrier method can throw into a marriage…?

Does any one ever think of jut leaving it all in God’s hands?  You might end up with a large family or none at all but it’s a wonderful way to live.

@Nana, yep, that was covered in the “some couples are called to radical providentialsm, but some are not” disclaimer, paragraph 4.  It may or may not be a wonderful lifestyle, depending on the state in life of the couple in question.

By “the state of life of the couple in question” I imagine you mean “financial state”.  To quote my late husband, “With every child came a blessing” . Yes, you have to have complete trust in God who will send what you need when you need it,” financially and emotionally “.

I have to say something that nobody else has mentioned and is sort of off topic - sex 3 weeks postpartum???  And it wasn’t like she had a few too many glasses of wine one night - she was already on the Pill!    Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.  Ouch!
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I know they usually say six weeks, and it certainly seems like 4 or 5 weeks would be possibly for lots of young, healthy gals on their second or third kid.  I actually googled it just now to see if I was the abnormal one, but nope, turns out that lady’s just a fertile freak of nature all around.  Three weeks. Ouch.

No, I don’t just mean financial state, and not just emotional, either.  I gotta run out now, but I did write a post on my own blog about what sort of circumstances help a couple decide God’s will for them.  If you’d like to take a look, it’s here:

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http://simchafisher.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/why-doesnt-the-church-just-make-a-list/

“Yes, you have to have complete trust in God who will send what you need when you need it,” financially and emotionally “.”

Tell that to the families who actually lose their homes, or genuinely starve.  Tell that to the women who suffer PPD so severely they have psychotic breaks and hurt themselves, or worse yet, hurt their children.  Tell that to parents who are completely overwhelmed with caring for a seriously disabled or medically fragile child. 

Or, mind your own business and give everyone around you the benefit of the doubt.

Yes, there’s a reason the Church doesn’t say that radical providentialsm is always the superior choice, and that reason isn’t because the Church is a pushover—it’s because she’s wiser, and knows more about humanity, than we do.

I’m also very glad you posted this.  We are Orthodox Christians, and follow the same contraceptive bans as Catholics, and I didn’t struggle with it one bit until my fourth baby was born just a little too quick after #3.  Having two non-walking children in a city where we don’t drive much has been very challenging.  The pregnancy was challenging for many of the same reasons, and that doesn’t even touch on all the social issues—you wouldn’t believe the comments I got when I got pregnant this last time.  I’m hoping by the time we have #5, people will just assume we’re insane and not say anything at all, because honestly, I’m sick of it. 

I read this: http://www.rantsfrommommyland.com/2011/08/domestic-enemies-of-pregnant-mom.html recently and it pretty much sums up all the lousy comments I’ve received this year about my child spacing philosophy.  (And no, we’re not done having children, thank you very much!)

I’m also horrified by the woman you linked to—Plan B as regular contraception?  And by someone who believes abortion is murder??  Boggles the mind.

Tired of User Names—I know what you’re saying.

Also, and this wasn’t covered anywhere here or anywhere else I’ve seen recently. What about those women who MUST work (LIKE ME)? Many of those women can’t afford to have an oops because they don’t get paid maternity leave and or they just took FMLA last year for a previous baby, which put their family into a bit of debt? Oh and not to mention, when you work full time, away from your baby, there goes trying to ecologically breast feed to space your babies! And good luck even pumping breast milk for one year.

I know, I’m sure there’s someone out there who’s going to say “well, when I was PG with #12, DH was only making $10,000 a year and we were living in a shoe, eating nothing but our fingernails, and we got by.” Yes, I’m exaggerating on purpose…

Honestly, there’s a reason why people aren’t open to life at all or for lengthy periods throughout their marriage (or fertile years). It’s this disgusting economy and all the crap it’s bringing with it. That’s because for many of us, we can’t support ourselves on our incomes, never mind pay for day care, diapers, an increase in health insurance—the things that come with children. It would be great if everyone’s husbands had jobs that paid a LIVING wage for a FAMILY and included low cost health insurance. I’m not talking about rolling in dough or living extravagant lives. The reason I work is because I have OK benefits and a decent salary. My husband makes very little money and is in an unstable job field. I’d love to stay home NOW, before kids, but because of our health issues, we need good health insurance, and money to buy prescriptions so that SOMEDAY we can be ALIVE to be open to life. So that is why we are not having children at this moment. I’m not saying that those who are open to life and who are stay at home moms don’t have their struggles—because, OH THEY DO. But when so many things in society are set up NOT to allow for more babies or more family-friendly environments so that people can live a certain (better) way, it’s disheartening. That angers me MORE out of anything, as well as women who have attitudes of “accept what God gives you” but they aren’t in the fight for better conditions for families. God help them if their husbands die/get sick or hurt/or abandon them.

I feel like a failure because at 32, I’ve been married for 5 years, and no babies and I pray every day that I’m not ruining my body w/ my meds and waiting. So maybe I’m just projecting here.

I am open to life.  I don’t chart, because I am lazy.  I have 6 children and I am ok with that.  I would be ok with more if that is God’s wishes.  The only complaint I have is I ACTUALLY want MORE SEX!  Yes, according to all the data, the men are the sex machines and the women could care less if they get physical.  Well, I guess I missed that memo.  lol

There are of course the truths of natural law that enforce the NFP, but I would suggest a divine reason, inspired by H.U. von Balthasar. Always the Father and the Son don’t calculate any interest in their Love, either in the intra-Trinitarian life, or in the earth. So, the christian family’s love shouldn’t be programmed. But it will require a mystical dimension, not only reserved of course to the monks! St. Joseph, and the Vatican Council 2 is there to remember us, is the saint who reconciles the two dimensions, temporal and spiritual, of the Church: the same sanctity inspires and belongs to all vocations, alleluia!

Simcha, you said a lot with the comment about uncomplicated and easy sex. Relationships are not supposed to be uncomplicated. If sex is uncomplicated, you’re doing it wrong.

When a couple uses a barrier method of birth control the husband is basically saying I love every part of you except the part that makes babies.  I can do without your fertility part.  That is why contraception is wrong in the Catholic Church.  A couple needs to accept all parts and I think that is a beautiful way to look at it!  (I hope this reads right!)

Just a quick response to E on her comment that the Bible does not tell her which forms of birth control are acceptable or not.  That’s not accurate.  In the book of Genesis, the Lord took the life of Onan for wasting his seed on the ground, essentially the withdrawal method.  Catholic Answers describes the episode: “‘Onan went through the motions of the life-giving act but refused to accept the consequences. He withdrew in order that the act could carry no reproductive consequences . . . [H]e went through the motions of the Levirate covenant, but he denied the reality of that covenant.’

Catholic teaching regards marriage as a covenant which has as one of its constituent elements an openness to new life and the procreative good. Sexual intercourse involves a renewal of the marriage covenant. Contraceptive intercourse is a violation of that covenant because it acts directly against procreation, one of the basic goods of marriage.

By acting contraceptively, Onan robbed sexual intercourse of its life-giving meaning and acted against the good of his potential offspring’s life. Both his intent and his concrete actions were against life. As a result, Onan received the Old Testament penalty for his crime.”

A valid argument can be made from the story of Onan that any action that refuses the consequences of sex is equally offensive to God, and hence morally wrong.  Which is, in effect, the Catholic position.

My husband and I have used either NFP or “providentialism” our whole 32 years of married life but I don’t have to read the blogs to find out what the other side (so to speak) has to say.  I was a Billings Method teacher for years and so I have heard it all. And my dear husband has heard plenty from buddies at work about how their wives pressure them into vasectomies by refusing to be a wife to them until they give in and how after that, it is never the same. (How could it be?) Or how horrible the effects of the various hormones etc. are on their wives.  Time after time he has heard the same thing. It could be that he only hears the malcontents but, if so, there are more of them than people would have us believe.  We have never heard anyone say contraception or surgery has saved their marriage.  But we have heard that from people who use NFP.
The self-control required by NFP can get old sometimes though.  Just a couple of days ago my husband said “So we have, what, about 10 more years of this?” and I said, “I have no idea, most women have gone through menopause by the time they are 51 I am still having regular cycles though so who knows?” I certainly hope it is not a sin to not be disappointed when menopause occurs.
I agree that having children in your bed does seem to work wonders for spacing out your blessings. Teenagers are quite marvelous chaparones for parents as well. Blessing number 6 would probably never have occured had we not upgraded to a non-squeaky bed. 
-BTW, Simcha, I just discovered your blog two days ago and I have been going through the past posts and I am enjoying them very much.-

I am not going to add anything to the discussion about birth control. However, the implication that the website you linked to is a feminist website is shocking to me. There is nothing remotely feminist about the discussions on that site. I suppose a genuine feminist site wouldn’t be popular here either but the blatant misrepresentation is pretty disingenuous.

@Lily - I didn’t intend any misrepresentation, and maybe I was careless with my terminology.  Can you suggest a genuine feminist website?  I know many of the readers consider themselves Catholic feminists, so it would be interesting to see where the intersection of ideas comes.

@Simcha and L.:  Your discussion, esp. food metaphors, puts me in mind of how much magical thinking pervades our current mindset—about food and sex both.  Those no-calorie jello things are a way to please our taste buds and access the “ok fixed it!” part of our brain: I eat *this* kind of food then I am eating what I want but not being bad.  (In reality those things might be worse for you because they are nutritionally bankrupt but full of chemicals.  Fat-free stuff is even worse!)  Chemical contraception totally appeals to our magical thinking, too:  Goody I took a pill/got the IUD/used my diaphragm and all is thus well… Even the “next” level of “safer sex” that we were to instruct our freshmen in when I was an RA was just a kind of keep-disease-in-mind-too kind of thing.  Lots of people realize that no BC method is a cure-all, but sadly most don’t.  And then there are the people who refuse to think about it at all…

And p.s. @L.:  I saw another comment you posted on a recent thing here…I am happy to see you around the internet again!  Makes me remember I haven’t checked out your blog in a while…..Hope you are well.

In response to E., there is much more depth to what the Catholic Church tells us about sex and marriage than just that using contraception is immoral. Furthermore, while Scripture might not tell us specifically what contraception is immoral, it does tell us a whole lot more about marriage and love as God intended, and a contraceptive mentality contradicts that framework. We see constantly throughout Scripture that God intended us to love as He does: freely, faithfully, fruitfully, and totally. He’s given us the gift of marriage to do that and to image here on earth the sort of union that we will each have with Him in heaven, and He’s given us the gift of sex to be able to say to our spouses that we love them in those four ways. Contraception works against each of those aspects of love and makes sex a false representation of marriage vows.

Simcha, thank you for writing this thoughtful piece. I look forward to days when you post here. I especially enjoyed the piece on naming children, as my husband and I are expecting our first and arguing a fair amount about names.

One of the books that really helped augment my newfound Catholic beliefs on being open to life was actually not Catholic.  After my first baby I found myself exhausted, and on my knees, begging for light.  The name of the book was called “The family Bed”. (Hold the eye rolling!) Most of all, I was intrigued to find that the average fertility rates for indigenous women, from Inuits to Africans was births over 40 months apart.  Why? No separation between infant and mother.  No pacifiers.  Nursing on demand.  It is interesting that the World Health Organization (!), on seeing the birth rate go UP with the adopting of a more western mentality, which includes formula and artificial birth control, is trying to reintroduce “the natural model” that was used for thousands of years to bring birth rates down!...God’s model of fertility works better than the Victorian model that our “modern” culture has adopted!

Wow. This was exhausting and depressing. I may never have sex again.

p.s.  My experience with the contraceptive mentality is that it sucks the passion out of sex eventually.  When a husband and wife literally REVERE each others’ bodies, and have a deep reverence for their life giving potential, it changes everything.  I will never scoff or complain about my fertility again.  When the spirit of God reigns in the bedroom, we can truly have a daily foretaste of heaven.

Hi, Corita! Yeah, I’m back to commenting on blogs—7 months after the earthquake, I am finally able to sleep again, and have started commenting on blogs again.

@Susan M, you said, “We have never heard anyone say contraception or surgery has saved their marriage.” Would you believe me if I said contraception saved mine, in its early years, when my partner wanted to try for a babies and I didn’t? We were not on the same page at all, and waiting a few years helped us get us there. I am willing to admit we might have achieved the same end with NFP, but in our case, it would have been “using it contraceptively” (at least from my point of view), so it wouldn’t have been “real NFP.” 

And you know….I’ve never seen a Catholic feminist site/blog, and would love to see one, if the exist. This is a Mormon feminist site I greatly enjoy: http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/
The contributors and commenters range across a broad spectrum.

Also…since so many commenters have mentioned breastfeeding as a means of spacing pregnancies, I feel compelled to add that although it works for some people (and apparently worked for me, since I was unable to conceive my second until I stopped feeding my first), it does NOT work for everyone. I know plenty of “Irish twins” (“Italian twins,” “Polish twins…” heck, why not just call them, “Catholic twins?”) born different months of the same year, and the same grade in school.

In the contraceptive myth, women are never put at a disadvantage as long as they’re exercising choice; and while sex may occasionally be a little silly or disappointing, it’s never really a big problem.  If things aren’t going the way you want, it’s just a matter of going back to the doctor for another tidy solution that works better for you.
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So, you think contraception is an “easy” solution for relationships? “Non-Catholic” women (except Muslims, who are killed if they are not virgins before they are married) don’t know that they can be disappointed? Why is virginity (i.e. not experiencing sex) so important? “Virgin” used to mean “an unmarried woman” before Catholics became so obsessed with sex. That is why the Virgin Mary is acceptable—she became pregnant with Christ before she was married, and Joseph saved her from the misogynist society in which they lived.
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I think no one really appreciates Joseph in his role as Mary’s protector. She would have been stoned to death for having a child out-of-wedlock. Joseph’s compassion and kindness should be a lesson to us all.

Just out of curiosity, (I am not a radical providentialist, we use NFP) what did the church teach before NFP?  I know NFP is pretty recent with the science and research…maybe 1950’s…before that there was the rhythm method.  Did the church teach full on abstinence all the time before that if there was a grave reason to avoid or were there other “woman’s intuition” methods kind of passed down from mother to daughter?  When we state the church in her wisdom does not expect us to live radical providentialism,  what other method was there for nearly two thousand years?

@Christian - no, you’re missing the entire point of my post.  I’m saying that Catholics who are unhappy with NFP can fool themselves into thinking that people who do use contraception have it esay—but that this is not so.

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I’ve never understood why people say that Catholics are obsessed with sex.  After all, we’re the only ones who say, “Yes, you can abstain from time to time,” whereas the secular world thinks that abstinence is too much to expect.  It’s kind of like an obese person, or a bulemic, telling someone of normal weight that she’s obsessed with food, because she thinks rationally about how to use it.

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Not sure what your point about Mary and Joseph is, but I assure you that Joseph is highly revered as a protector.

The church is against sex—it just made amends to its doctrines because Christ did NOT return during his disciples’ lifetimes and the faith had to deal with sexual desire of normal people. They had no comment in the beginning about “birth control” because it wasn’t an issue. They just insisted that the one way to salvation included abstinence, but it was better to marry than to burn (i.e. lust).
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NFP only uses science to promote abstinence—which they seem to believe is an easy choice. This makes objects of both husbands and wives as just partners in making babies. The catechism honeys this with “love, honor, and cherish” but the actions speak louder than words.

Right, don’t believe what an actual Catholic who actually uses NFP says; and don’t cite any Church documents to back up your claims.  I love this game!  Now it’s my turn:  “Christian,” a commenter on this blog, teaches that bananas are blue.  What a dummy Christian is!  Why does she say these things!  It’s because she hates fruit! 

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Look, I gotta back away from the computer.  I do not know your background or your reasons for your hostility toward the Church, but you are grievously misinformed about theology and history.  If the Church taught what you claims it teaches, I’d hate it, too.

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Tagging out now.  Anyone who wants to duke this one out, be my guest.

“In the contraceptive myth, women are never put at a disadvantage as long as they’re exercising choice; and while sex may occasionally be a little silly or disappointing, it’s never really a big problem.”—>

Wait, what’s this “myth?” That using contraception is supposed to prevent sex from being “silly or disappointing?” I thought its only claim was to greatly reduce the odds of contraception.

I had better go look at the package insert on my contraception to see what it says about preventing disappointing sex.

@L. this is what comes of editing posts for length.  Originally I talked about the typical TV commercial for contraception, and ads in women’s magazines, with the fields of dancing flowers and slim women traipsing around with whimsical umbrellas and such.  That’s why I said “myth” and not “medical information on the package”—because I was referring to the cultural story that is told.  If (like many Catholics) all you know about contraception is what you hear and see on TV, then you certainly would be tempted to believe that it’s a no-fuss problem-solver for everyone.

“Christian” I don’t understand why you think virginity equates to Islam or misogyny. Virginity is not a kind of ownership as you seem to think; rather, it is a sign of two things. First, it means that a husband and a wife have not given sex outside of committed marital love, and thus they know that the marital relation is sacred and not casual.  Second, it shows that the two people have self control and restraint, which goes a long way toward future marital fidelity.

Should virginity before marriage (aka chastity according to your state in life) be reserved for just women? Absolutely not. Nor should either sex be unwilling to forgive past and repented mistakes. But as an ideal and a goal, it most certainly contributes to the healthiest relationships by promoting a sacred attitude about the relationship, and long lasting fidelity.

Crap, I said I was getting away from the computer.  Really leaving now.

I’ve heard some pretty nasty NFP stories in Catholic circles.  So it gets ugly there too.  Honestly, are ANY of these sites you linked to based in any faith?  (I didn’t even look I am assuming they are not.  But you can call me on it if I am wrong) Since the Catholic church is the only one that condems contraception I’m wondering if you included any other Christian women in your experiment here?  Are they saying something different?  You’ve referenced women sleeping with their boyfriends.  Level the playing field and talk with women who are Christians and see what response you get.  Honestly, I heard from some Catholics and other christians and I get a different story.

I had to work up my courage to post this.  When I was a young newlywed, I had a priest ask me a very abrupt question about oral foreplay.  He condemned it with such vehemence that I was startled into submission.  Some YEARS later I spoke to a very balanced and holy priest who set things straight.  I was so relieved! (My husband was simply MAD that fear had the power to reduce me to this.) I have now come to understand that Americans tend toward a certain puritanism. Natural, life giving love is a holy blessing.  Our beautiful faith is a loving affirmation of everything that is good, whether it concerns pleasure or suffering.

@L….I would totally love that blog; hell I did try to start a discussion blog for feminist issues that wouldn’t be so hostile to “prolife feminists” and those who question the complete deconstruction of gender… but I discovered I had NO patience for the technical side of things.  Oh, well, I keep writing anyway and save the files on my computer; at least it is proof that my brain is still sort of working.

Ah, the TV commercial myth - fields of flowers and slim women traipsing around with whimsical umbrellas, etc.

I believe there’s a similar “motherhood myth,” in which the babies always coo and smile, and never cry or have poopy diapers.

@L:
Oops sorry didn’t realize there would be so many comments between the one I was replying to and mine. To clarify I meant about the Catholic feminist blog.
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Also, glad you are feeling better.  I went to your blog just after the earthquake to see how you were.  Funny how the internet makes you feel like you have a stake in the lives of people you have never even met.

@Simcha:  Poster Christian, above, is undoubtedly of the school of education that believes St. Paul created Christianity, or that one which studies the development of Christianity as a kind of accidental explosion of a fringe movement that was obsessed with a returning Christ. 
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Reductive education does tend to reduce one’s ability to reason, unfortunately.

If anyone is willing to say a prayer for a doctor who deals with all different types of women on the contraception side of the fence, I would greatly appreciate it.  I truly have little idea what is best to do sometimes.  Because of where I trained I met many women similar to the role playing hooker and as you can imagine, they are usually poor, undereducated, and without the benefit of any type of stable parental figure in their lives.  I’m not sure how best to help them other than to educate and pray.  There is a lot of hidden pain there that no human is going to be able to erase.

This:

“What Plan B does: Zap that sucker at the source! No, I don’t actually think there is a “sucker.” I would not talk in such a ... glib tone about abortion, which I believe, yes, is murder—“the extermination of the powerless by the powerful,” as my #1 !@#$% hero Camille Paglia would say, and you can be as liberal as you want but there are biological facts to acknowledge. Yet it’s a murder within the confines of MY biological body, not in the governed-by-society rules, and thus I have the right to murder it. Just like I have the right to kill myself!”

She know’s it’s murder but she does it anyway?!?! It’s murder inside her body, so she has the right to do it? My head is spinning.

Pardon me for saying so, but I think this really sums things up:  About 20 years ago, I was sidewalk counseling in front of our local, late-term abortion clinic, which is a couple of blocks from the hospital.  A woman came down the sidewalk pushing her elderly mother in a wheelchair.  The older woman began to cry, with deep,soul-wracking sobs.  She blurted out: “I came so close to having an abortion”.  We tried to calm her down and listened to her story as she wept.  She explained to us that she and her husband had been desperately poor during the depression, and that the child she had almost aborted was the woman pushing her wheelchair.

Mary, who was homeless, and fleeing into Egypt,  “pray for us.”

p.s. The late-term abortionist is dying of M.S., and has converted…

Morgan, I didn’t write that comment that you cite and only its original writer can say for sure what she means, but perhaps—PERHAPS—she is using “murder” to mean “killing,” rather than the definition of “intentionally and maliciously taking the life of another person.”

There are many of us who are not pro-life and who do acknowledge that abortion involves killing an embryo. The question isn’t whether it involves killing or not—certainly it does—but whether an embryo has an absolute right to life under all circumstances.

(By the way, Plan B primarily works by preventing ovulation—it was also initially believed to inhibit implantation, but there’s been some questions about whether the latter effect actually does happen. I am up on the most recent studies because coincidentally, I just took it myself for the very first time two weeks ago, just in case, because one of our barrier methods failed.)

Posted by corita on Thursday, Oct 20, 2011 5:19 PM (EDT)
“Simcha and L.:  Your discussion, esp. food metaphors, puts me in mind of how much magical thinking pervades our current mindset—about food and sex both.  Those no-calorie jello things are a way to please our taste buds and access the “ok fixed it!” part of our brain: I eat *this* kind of food then I am eating what I want but not being bad.  (In reality those things might be worse for you because they are nutritionally bankrupt but full of chemicals.  Fat-free stuff is even worse!)  Chemical contraception totally appeals to our magical thinking, too:  Goody I took a pill/got the IUD/used my diaphragm and all is thus well.”

This relates to my question upthread that popped in late, and so was probably overlooked. I am genuinely curious about the answer, if any of you have given thought to this matter.

It is not a sin to drink diet soda or to eat chips made with Olestra. Why is it OK to enjoy the artificial sweetness or fake fat in diet foods while frustrating the natural purpose of eating, but wrong to enjoy the sex act while frustrating its natural purpose?

I’m sorry L, but I don’t think it’s possible to misinterpret what she meant by the word murder.

I don’t know, since I’m not her. All I know is what I would have meant if I had said it myself. And I didn’t.

My wife frequently calls me from the grocery store to see if I need anything.  Every now and then, to feel like a “normal” couple, I remind her that we’re out of condoms and that she should pick up a pack or two.  We both laugh because no doubt other couples do have this conversation and it seems so bizarre to us and makes us remember that *we* are a normal couple.

Great article, I enjoy considering all different viewpoints in order to be well rounded. I constantly find myself in the minority because I really don’t think NFP is that hard. My husband and I have been using it for a while now and it definitely strengthens our relationship. LOL it makes me wonder if there is something wrong with me, but I don’t see taking a few days off as that bad. We can do other things to express our love for each other and catch up on sleep ;)

Reading through all these comments is exhausting.  I feel like I accidentally walked into some book club meeting and couldn’t find the exit.  WHOA!  God bless all women!  You sure are different.  But if you didn’t put all this thought and conversation and analysis into these things, well, who would?

I did want to comment to noelle:
@noelle: something tells me that you are unmarried and may have never actually had sex.  At least I sure hope so.  Maybe you had a bad experience when very young, or have heard some bad stories or something.  But I can not even image why you would view sex as violent or disgusting unless…something violent or disgusting may have happened to you.  That would be rape - which has little to do with sex imo.

Even when I was a great sinning pagan having sex outside marriage it was never that way for me or the women I was with.  They loved it and so did I.  I would say that it was “beautiful” but really, I had not idea what beautiful was until I was first with my wife having relations in a pure way completely open to each other and to life.  That IS beautiful - a little bit of heaven.  A real gift from God.  As a man here, you may wish to dismiss this view, but my wife would tell you the same thing.  I used “Manly man” as my moniker because, even though to see me, you might get one impression of me, my wife would tell you that I am simply her servant in all ways.  And she is mine.  It is wonderful.  We are blessed.

One other point: This economy has crushed my bacon-bringing prowess.  It really slashes a guy down a peg when his wife worries about paying the bills while he is doing his level best.  However, we have allowed ourselves to be open again to another child knowing full well we can’t pay for this baby.  Like - at all.  I won’t pretend that we are not concerned, but I have been unable to think back and identify a single time when God even let us down.  Ever.  Why would he start now?  I truly believe God will provide. Loose our house?  Maybe He wants us to move somewhere else.  Loose my job - maybe he wants me to do something else.  Now, so long as I don’t loose my mind we will be in good shape.

God bless each and every one of you.  I thank God that He made women!  Incredible!

As a mother of four kids 5 and under who struggles with NFP, I feel so much better.  Great post.

@L.  Thank you so much for sharing your views about how contraception worked for you and for your marriage.  While I have never actually met anyone who has felt that way, of course, there have to be people out there like that.  The law of averages say it must be so if nothing else.  Thanks to the wonders of the internet, though, we can be exposed to views and thoughts we may never hear from people we wouldn’t meet otherwise due the limitations of space and time.
One of the things I most look forward to while enjoying eternity (or more properly, aeviternity) in heaven (God willing) is meeting in person everyone I was never able to meet during life and hearing their stories. 
That said I have to go on record as saying that I firmly believe that the idea that you can use NFP “contraceptively” has never cut any ice with me.  I spent years working in NFP where I heard people say it all the time and I know there are a lot of people who do believe it, but I ain’t one of them.  In my opinion, a couple who is trying to space/limit/avoid children using natural methods is showing themselves to be open to God’s plan. Full stop. End of story.  Expecting everyone to be thrilled at all times in all circumstances with a pregnancy lest they be considered having a “contracepting mentality” is being too judgemental.  And I am not even talking about people being judgemental about someone else where we can NEVER know their true hearts, but I think people can also be too hard on themselves. Postponing children until both partners are in accord about the timing doesn’t seem contraceptive to me, but prudent.  The problem with using artifical contraception is that those constant conversations of “are you ready yet?” are avoided. I also firmly believe that blindly expecting God to cover us if we throw caution to the winds in the face of real financial difficulties or hardship is not “trusting in God” but acting like foolish virgins who did not have oil for the wedding feast.
Just my personal opinon which may not be widely shared, I know. 
Thanks again for your comments.

Susan, I couldn’t agree more. When one uses artificial methods, one is getting around the natural way God made the body; when one uses NFP one is cooperating with the way God made the body. But even more, it leaves a decision to be made each and every time, along with reinforcing the consciousness each and every time of how the marital act connects with pregnancy, family, and parenthood. Unlike the pill, which must be taken every day (and not even at the time of relations)NFP makes you stop and think every single time that you want to be intimate, about all the things that connect to that intimacy.

I zipped over to read a while and wow, my heart is breaking for the people involved and for what Jesus must suffer. I couldn’t read that stuff—I would break into tears randomly. I have to live in this bubble that says people want to be good and want to get to heaven or… I don’t know, I just don’t have that kind of strength.

That is proof of how good and how big God is—that He is all knowing and loves us so intimately, then suffering so much for love of us, sees us living in lies and in ignorance… if someone I loved so perfectly was so lost, I would break into pieces. And God has had and has and will have so many of his children fall away, hurt each other, be lost—we have to pray.

Is it weird to anybody else how the “free-thinking,” modern, 21st century woman knows about as much (or sadly less) about how her body works than your average 19th century housewife. I blame this on the birth control industry and its never-ending quest to sell pills, wires, and latex crap. When I found out a woman only has a small window of fertility each month, I was gobsmacked!  Seriously?!  But Planned Parenthood told me my whole life I could get pregnant pretty much breathing the same air as a man at any and all stages of my life and monthly cycle! Even during your period?—happens every day.  Speck of semen on the outside of your pants?-better swallow a Plan B just to be “safe.”  Even after 50?-well yes and this cyst-inducing IUD will protect you until age 70.
I guess the reasoning goes, if you can induce fertility hysteria in women and keep them barefoot and contracepting you can sell more product and “services” with the extra-added bonus of portraying women as victims of rampant fertility and thus selling ever more gruesome products and “services.”

@Susan M, you’re welcome - happy to share my views, happy hear everyone else’s.

@cowalker, I, too, wonder about the answer to your question: “It is not a sin to drink diet soda or to eat chips made with Olestra. Why is it OK to enjoy the artificial sweetness or fake fat in diet foods while frustrating the natural purpose of eating, but wrong to enjoy the sex act while frustrating its natural purpose?”

Considering how so many religions incorporate dietary restrictions into their beliefs, I wonder why (with the exception of meat on Fridays during Lent), the Catholic Church never ventured into that particular area? I’ve certainly had meals that were amazing sensual experiences—as good as (perhaps even better?) than sex.

@L:  I bet those sensual, better-than-sex meals were *all* with real ingredients, fats and calories.  No olestra, chemicals or fake sweeteners, amiright?

;)

Corita, most of those experiences indeed were *real* food (and some of them might have been near occaisions of the sin of gluttony).

But there were other times….like once, on a summer day, I ate four zero-calorie Italian ices: three lemon, one watermelon. I can still taste them now. (..sigh..)

L. said:  @cowalker, I, too, wonder about the answer to your question: “It is not a sin to drink diet soda or to eat chips made with Olestra. Why is it OK to enjoy the artificial sweetness or fake fat in diet foods while frustrating the natural purpose of eating, but wrong to enjoy the sex act while frustrating its natural purpose?”

.

I brought up the analogy of “fake” food because it makes emotional sense:  most of us can see that there is something less than ideal about eating fake food.  And most of us can see that there is something kind of awful about bulemia, for instance:  eating something and then throwing it up before it can be digested (and that might be comparable to what a condom does); or using a drug that allows you to eat whatever you want, in whatever quantities, but which prevents your body from absorbing the fat. Ew, right?

,

But even the worst method of frustrating the natural nutritional purpose of food is not the same as frustrating conception, because, while eating is an integral and essential part of what it means to be human (and thus why it’s used in so many analogies), feeding the body never rises to the same metaphysical level as human sexuality. 

.

This is because sex, by definition (at least MY definition!) always involves another person; and because, by its nature, it contains the potential of the creation yet ANOTHER human being. 

.

Food, at its very best, can make you happy and strong, and that’s important, but not THAT important.  But sex can bring about the creation of an immortal soul.  It is the closest we can come to doing something that God does.  That makes it holy, and that makes it something that we ought to be careful with. 

.

So when we frustrate the natural purpose of eating, our actions may be lame or disgusting or even perfectly neutral; but when we frustrate the natural purpose of sex, we’re tampering with something which I suspect is more profound than any human understands. 

.

To my mind, this explains at least in part why the Church has never imposed dietary restrictions:  because she has moved on.  I’m just guessing and probably making gross generalizations here, but I think that the dietary restrictions of Judaism were a kind of preparation for a deeper understanding of what the human body is for.  Moses didn’t forbid eating eels (or whatever) because they were so super yummy that it would be sinful to enjoy yourself that much—but (in part) because the Jews were supposed to understand that what you do with your body says something about your soul.

.

Religious people have always understood that there is an inextricable connection between the body and soul; but I believe that the Church’s teaching about sexuality refines the understanding of that connection.  Christ reformed not only the requirements about what is clean and unclean to eat, but also began guiding the Church toward a different understanding of marriage.

L, two responses:
First, I have never found any food that is better than marital sex. I doubt I ever will.

Second, drinking soda isn’t a sacrament, or even an expression or mirror of one. Marital sex is. The only eating that is a sacrament is the Eucharist, and you’ll notice the Church doesn’t allow any fiddling with the natural ingredients in that.

Why do we not treat sex the same way as we treat food?

Probably because “In the Beginning….” what God said was very good was not eating, but multiplication and begetting of living creatures, especially the procreation of human beings resulting from the union of a man and a woman, whose union alone was described as being in the image and likeness of God.

And because the ‘hidden mystery’ of redemption of all ages was revealed by Christ in the form of a nuptial mystery, where God’s love is signified not by eating and drinking but by a man and woman becoming ‘one flesh’.

And because food is connected with the growth of the individual, but sex is concerned with the growth of the human race.

And because sex is profoundly inter-personal in a way that eating and drinking could never be.

St. Augustine talked about the ‘fever of lust’. But he never could of spoken of a ‘fever of gluttony’. The disorders of eating and drinking just don’t compare with the depth and profundity of sex and its disorders. Or you might compare the damage that is done by eating disorders, which mostly harm only the person affected. But consider in contrast the social evils that arise from the misuse of sex, from abortion to sex-trafficking to divorce and marital breakdown, sex is deeply embedded in the social fabric of life.

In other words, food is trivial compared with sex. And while food metaphors can be helpful in illuminating certain sexual issues, the two simply don’t exist on the same level.

Johnno,

I think you have things backwards.

Contraception was invented so men and women wouldn’t have to learn to act with self-control about sex. Contraception enables our addictions to sex. It’s a cheat. You can’t use it without going along with the lie that sex is just a great sensual experience, or that sex is just as necessary for healthy living as food. Contraception and trivialization go hand in hand.

That’s why Catholics abstain from sex sometimes. Because they care about the truth of sexuality, they think it’s important to confront their vices, and so that when they do have sex, it isn’t the awful shallow thing contraception makes it.

When you buy into contraception,

I guess I will try,

.
Simcha’s technique,

.
For formatting these comments.

Those were all good thoughtful answers. It is interesting that they are somewhat different. I guess there has been no authoritative guidance on this from the church.

With all the obesity in modern society, I think wrong behavior with food is probably just as self-destructive as wrong sexual behavior, not to mention wasteful of resources. To create, market, sell and consume food that is designed not to nourish—it seems quite perverse to me. And as far as the importance of eating compared to sex, we literally die without food, but it is quite possible to live a celibate life. If the church thinks we can “move on” from dietary concerns when we have such problems with obesity and eating disorders, I think it is wrong.

But the effects of irresponsible sex on others, such as the birth of children who don’t get good care, or the spreading of disease are a good argument for exercising self-control in sexual matters. However I can’t see where using contraception within a faithful marriage when a pregnancy would cause serious problems is any worse than drinking diet soda when the rest of one’s diet is pretty good.

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my question. I do appreciate it.

In regards to food and church teaching I have a thought to share.  I work with people who undergo obesity treatment surgery such as gastric bypass, gastric sleeve or a lap band procedure. 

All of these procedures alter the normal function of the digestive system to help people lose weight.  I have do have strong opinions on obesity and how people get to that point.  However, I do see that people greatly benefit from this surgery by finally being able to lose and keep weight off, be able to go of diabetes medication for type 2 diabetes which is caused mostly by obesity and significantly reduce their risk for other obesity related chronic illness.  Their health is restored.  So this analogy of eating but not really eating?  Well, sometimes people are in serious situations and the healthiest things to do is not what we all might insist they do.

If anyone is interested, I had further thoughts on this subject while doing laundry today. Simcha, you stated very emphatically that not all Catholics are called to providentialism. Your emphasis makes me think you are familiar at first or second-hand with families who were NOT called to it, but who tried to live this way anyway, and who experienced bad consequences.

I grew up in the fifties, and witnessed the results of most Catholic families trying to live with only the rhythm method to space their children. One family inadvertantly practiced providentialism because he believed he could not control his urges. Even if he had tried,she was so disorganized due to mental problems it is unlikely that they would have succeeded.  Meanwhile, the hormonal swings caused by five pregnancies, one after the other, made her mental problems worse. During a period when she desperately tried to avoid intercourse, he had an affair. She could not care for her children adequately and the family did not have enough money for sufficient clothes and quality food. The father was in a never-ending state of rage because he could not provide for his family, and he took it out on the children. (Is anyone surprised that a human being behaves irrationally and selfishly?) After the sixth pregnancy ended in a stillbirth, her doctors mercifully declared that her health required that she have a hysterectomy. Her mental health certainly did. Her hysterectomy did not come soon enough to prevent her year-long committment to a mental institution while the children were sent to live with the grandparents. The family was finally compelled to declare bankruptcy because of the medical bills. The now middle-aged children, as you might expect, battle their own problems caused in large part by an insufficiency of love and guidance during their childhoods. The oldest were compelled to take on parental duties because the parents weren’t up to it. The youngest two—the most neglected—suffered the most emotional damage. There is lasting resentment all around.

My analysis of this is that tons of not easily quantifiable sins of omission (failure to put spouse before self, failure to meet children’s needs, failure to care for self) were committed in order to avoid committing one sin that involved a positive action—inserting a diaphragm.

My own Catholic parents were very different—both were skilled at self-denial and very good at planning. They had one unplanned pregnancy after two planned pregnancies, and never had another pregnancy, period. No doubt that decision was made because my mother was on tranquilizers for a while. As a four year old, I remember her occasionally sitting down on the floor to cry with fatigue and frustration at having three children under the age of five. She didn’t regain her cheerfulness until the youngest of us was in school. But I remember how sad my mother was when she told me in her old age that one of her deepest regrets was the great number of times they had to say no to sex in order to be safe.

If the statistics are correct, approximately 2% of Catholics trying to plan their families use NFP. The other 98% use contraceptives. I think this is meaningful information, and it doesn’t mean that 98% of Catholics have warped views of marriage and parenthood.  My opinion is that not all Catholic couples are called to the ideal of rejecting contraception, just as all are not called to providentialism.

Simcha (and all readers of Catholic blogs),

This was an interesting, if not depressing article, and you do have a wonderful way with words. I have been reading your stuff for months, along with others like “Bad Catholic” and “Little Catholic Bubble.” I have to say, however, I prefer “Shower of Roses,” “Catholic Cuisine,” “View from the Domestic CHurch,” “Accepting Abundance,” and “Saint Joseph’s Vangaard.”

I am actually surprises EWTN would host articles of such a crass nature.

I know many will think me prudish or old fashioned or any number of “out of touch” things, but I don’t believe this type of talk promotes true faith, goodness or beauty. It is often trashy. “Chewing the mattress to bits”? What, like a dog in heat? I think your points could have been made in a more modest and pure way, one that would not lead your reader’s minds astray. Do I need to know, for instance, about the disgusting sex life and intimate details of “Cat”? Do I need those images, images which I NEVER entertain in my life, going through my head? You have just provided your readership with dozens occasions of sin. The Bible, and Jesus himself, is very clear about the damnantion one brings upon themselves when they do such a thing.

On top of that, are any of us better because we now “buy into” NFP more, not because we understand and accept better the teachings of our Beloved Church, but because we have seen the ugliness, pain, stupidity, and evil on the other side? Is it nobler that we can now say “don’t want to be like them” or would it be nobler that we be able to say “God has blessed us with His designs for love and I will, even in strife, strive to understand and accept His will?” Has charity grown in our hearts from this exercize?

I have lived the life of the women in those links. I have tasted that depravity, darkness and hopelessness. Now that I am in the Church, on my path to sanctification and God, I don’t need to be reminded of that life. Having been there, I know I need purity, and I protect my purity at all costs. No Catholic needs to experience what you have shown them here to have a discussion about how difficult NFP can be at times. The language and descriptions used in your article(and its links) were atrocious, as well as the links and ads that you led us to at those other sites. I do not believe Jesus told us to step into the dark side so we could recognize His light. I am saddened it is so hard to find clever, and clean, Catholic reading.

You were probably hired because, not only are you a great writer with a rawness and interesting outlook, but also because you are controversial and entertaining. I would, from one Catholic sister to another, guard your heart and mind better, as well as the hearts and minds of your faithful readership. As the blogger admonished the Health Editor, I would admonish you to seek to bring forth virtues, Truth and Light, in all things.

“Be you therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48
“Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Phil 4:8
“Do not cause anyone to stumble.” 1 Corinthians 10:32
“Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth; but that which is good, to the edification of faith, that it may administer grace to the hearers.” Eph 4:29

Blessings,
TB

Evil knew that “this side of Eden” as Simcha calls it, we would be incredibly vulnerable when it came to sex and fallen nature.  Would that be the reason God made circumcision the sign of his old covenant?  It seems like a strange practice on its face! Sex causes havoc throughout the Old Testament. The prophet Hosea had to live with a wife who had no sexual morals.  She reflects US, when we choose selfish licentiousness over love and reduce it to sterile lust (the devil’s counterfeit). Her lack of purity with her husband continues to break Hosea’s heart, who is ever faithful and stays by her.

God waits for us.  His love is generous and patient.  He literally loves “to death” every single child brought forth from sexual union. 

God tells his people NOT to have multiple wives but even David, who is so incredibly blessed by Him screws up sexually.  Solomon, the wisest man on earth completely loses it with his thousands of sexual partners.  It is good to see that David learns from the terrible grief that sexual sin caused him.  Nothing was worth rupturing his attentive relationship with God.  Behaving like a rapacious animal made him coarse and unable to commune with Him.  It had made him selfish and grasping. David stops having sex with a group of woman, and learns to live fidelity with one wife—a huge accomplishment for Old testament folks!

We, as God’s people have come so far from the days when our ancestors behaved like beasts.  But “this side of Eden” those same, dark, primal forces constantly beset us. The devil knows the power of sex.  He tempts us with his own version, but we are so weak and blind we can’t see how mutilated his version truly is.

That the marriage union is an image of of The Holy Trinity, is something our poor brains can only barely grasp.

If we contracept, we defile the true meaning of sexual union.  In essence we are saying “I selfishly accept the pleasure of union, but “love” dies with me, because I refuse to share it with another”...

Johnno, the adult virgin here found your post hilarious.  Sort of reminded me of the punch line to a joke in which the 70-year-old nun smiles sweetly as she tells a couple challenged to abstain for a couple weeks, “I think you’ll be all right, dear.”
-
I actually spent many years on the Pill, for minor issues (would that I could take it back).  It really does suck, as Marc Barnes would put it…his list of reasons doesn’t even convey it all.  I didn’t always think so, but it started to grate on me from so many different angles and there wasn’t even sex involved.

I’ve tried to enter the realm of contraception discussions (for quietly observational “research” purposes, of course), and I just can’t stomach it. The majority of the posts make me angry and judgmental, and that’s not who I want to be, so I now avoid such “chats” or “blogs” at all cost. I don’t need my blood boiling. I am one of those NFP-ers who has it easy peasey and finds it a piece of cake (Love that in your disclaimer!) all the while enjoying an amazing sex life. I’ve never seen the other side as remotely, possibly being greener. I recognize that my type are few and far between, and that makes me sad. I pray for all that they could have this too.

Cowalker,

To me, the difference between diet foods and contraception (heh…only on a Catholic board would this conversation make sense) is that sex is sacred. It is something far more special, intimate and ‘controlled’ than food. Everyone gets to/has to eat; only the chosen get to/have to have sex.

That said, I think diet foods are silly and a waste of my money and eating pleasure. I eat the real stuff and drink the occasional high fructose corn syrup Coke with my pizza.

As I type, I also am considering that gorging ourselves on any food, even diet food, is sinful. Moderate eating of all kinds of food is fine, though moderate engaging in sex, I guess, isn’t. Well, not intercourse, anyway.

Cowalker, are you seriously trying to tell us that an abusive philanderer and a mentally ill woman would have been healthy and nice if only they could contracept?

Wonderful points, Simcha! It works that way with infertility too. While we still pray for a pregnancy, we have embraced adoption, which is a difficult and unpredictable road at times, but also beautiful. We see how devastating it is for couples who choose the A.R.T. avenue with no success, and we wish more couples could see the downfall of that path ahead of time and embrace the idea of adoption earlier.

Thanks for the additional points of view.

Posted by CM on Monday, Oct 24, 2011 11:31 AM (EDT):
“Cowalker, are you seriously trying to tell us that an abusive philanderer and a mentally ill woman would have been healthy and nice if only they could contracept?” 

Heavens no! It’s just that their resources wouldn’t have been stretched so thin and they would have been able to be better parents to fewer children. In addition, they would have had more time, energy and money to put toward helping the woman get better treatment for her problems.

I’m also saying that my mother benefited greatly (and by extension her children benefited) from having the skills and the kind of regular cycles that make it possible to use planned periods of abstinence to limit her family size. Not all women are so lucky. And I’m pointing out that years later she did not find that she benefited spiritually from rejecting contraceptives. On the contrary, if she had had it to do over, in the later culture of Catholics following their own consciences on this question, she would have chosen to use contraceptives.

Many of you aspire to a beautiful ideal in your marriages, and clearly many of you have achieved it. But I am not convinced it is possible for the majority of married couples, and I have seen the damage that failure at this can cause.

CM. I think that Cowalker meant that if the abusive philanderer and mentally ill woman could have had fewer children, their conditions would have been less severe and their children may have suffered less.

@KHoward, @cowalker, et al: Of course, when we say X family would have been better off with fewer children, we are saying child #(insert value here) and above shouldn’t have been allowed to exist because the rest of the family would be better off without them, right?

I absolutely LOVED reading all of the sex/food comments!

@St Branbell, if you truly believe that reading some of Simcha’s columns brings you to “occasions of sin,” then I agree you need to stop—and certainly stop clicking on (clearly described) links that go to places you don’t want to go, because they remind you of where you were before. By all means, stick to seeking “clever, and clean, Catholic reading.” But please don’t presume that “no Catholic needs to experience what you have shown them here”—that may be true for you, but you don’t speak for all others, because no two journeys are alike. I wish you well on yours.

@Susan M., to play devil’s advocate here (a role which comes a bit TOO naturally to me), when you ask rhetorically, “Of course, when we say X family would have been better off with fewer children, we are saying child #(insert value here) and above shouldn’t have been allowed to exist because the rest of the family would be better off without them, right?”—what’s the difference, then, if the family had successfully limited their family size with NFP?
On another Catholic blog, I once described a night at a remote resort in Hawaii with my husband, when I realized I’d left my diaphragm in the suitcase I’d checked at the airport. I was at the most fertile point in my cycle—I was 100% sure of this (I was younger and even though I’ve never practiced NFP, I knew my body’s signals). We abstained, because we had two preschoolers, we were in the process of moving to a foreign country, and I was about to go back to work fulltime. I even insisted we sleep in separate beds, so we wouldn’t be tempted—it just wasn’t the right time to conceive another baby.
Some commenters on the other blog said, similarly, “Of course, when you abstained because you said it wasn’t the right time to conceive another baby, and you say your family would have been better off with fewer children, so you saying (child not conceived in Turtle Bay) is better off because he/she wasn’t allowed to exist because the rest of the family was better off without them, right?”
This strikes me as providential thinking—kids that were “contracepted away” are comparable to kids that were “abstained away,” and some of the other commenters even went so far as to tell me that I sinned by abstaining, at a time when my husband and I desired each other, just to avoid conception.

@L.  I was referring to the comments about specific families with what they (the commenter) believed was too many children.  Those children were already in existence and to suggest that the rest of the family would be better off if they had never been born, to me seems rather more hurtful than telling people they should/can space their children. I had a student once who told me that he and his brother were “mistakes”  I asked him what would ever give him that idea.  “Mom” he said, “Danny was a ‘drunken mistake’ and I was a ‘the drug store was closed mistake’.”  It was one of the saddest things I had ever heard.  Since then I have heard people tell us to our faces and the faces of our children that we have too many kids which would make the the younger ones feel bad.  However, my husband finally just started saying, “Really, too many?  Which ones should we take out and drown then?”  The speaker will always backtrack and say “Well I didn’t mean THAT.”  Whereupon our youngest will say, “What DID you mean, just get rid of ME or Anna (the two youngest) specifically then?”  As for your comment on vacationing without birth control, I understand where you are coming from.  We have always used NFP and once my husband won a trip to Hawaii at work.  It was scheduled for a time where we couldn’t afford to have another child because we hadn’t paid the last delivery off and wouldn’t have even gone on the trip if it hadn’t been paid for.  So we abstained.  No big deal really, we were used to it.  For some reason people seem to think that not being able to enjoy relations during a vacation is a big deal, but any time we CAN enjoy relations is a big deal to us, It’s Vacation Time at the M household then no matter where we are. We didn’t even have to sleep in separate beds or anything, because we know our limits.  We had a wonderful time.  I have never worried about which children are missing from our family because we abstained from time to time because I know that while we are trying to be prudent with our family resources and sometimes have had to postpone pregnancy, if God wanted us to have one, we would.  We are not actively trying to thwart His will, just do the best we can with the knowledge we have.  And I think that is what just about every one here is trying to do according to their lights.

Simcha wrote: “Food, at its very best, can make you happy and strong, and that’s important, but not THAT important.  But sex can bring about the creation of an immortal soul.”

God creates the immortal soul without our help and infuses it into the tiny body that husband and wife bring into being by means of the marital act.

co-walker, I very much understand your insight and concern.  I had to stop for a second as I wondered if you were talking about my mother and childhood.

I am grateful my siblings are here.  By questioning the church’s teaching I am not saying I don’t think they should not be here.  After a child is conceived there is nothing to do but look ahead.  Pre-conception is where we have to responsibly plan and make a choice.  I believe that you can be irresponsible in conceiving children that you are unable to care for and unable to give them a foundation for knowing, loving and serving God.  God does not discern that a situation is ok for a child to be born into.  Conception is a natural process that God does not prevent even if He knows that parents are unable to care for the child or even kill or abuse the child as we can tell by just taking a look around our world (or even just America).  If you live in America you are fortunate that the taxpayers will help you support you kids which means it is unlikely they will starve to death.  It is our responsibility as to what we bring our children into.  I have to say that because often Catholics make it sound like they have no responsibility.  “God surprised us again.  We have no idea how it happened.”  Sometimes bad situations can work out ok and sometimes they do not.  I am grateful my dad had a vasectomy after #4. I don’t miss any siblings that were somehow suppose to be here.  It was not an ideal Catholic choice but it was a choice that saved whatever was left of my mom’s sanity after having 4 kids in 5 years.  They did not live in the garden of Eden and I would not expect them to live like they were there. It was very unfortunate growing up with a mom who had a severe mental illness exacerbated by childbirth and closely spaced children.  She did the best she could but she was very limited in her ability to mother and if effected us greatly.  I know I know you all think they should have been celibate the rest of their married life. (No more eating and sex analogy there because you are no longer having sex) It was enough that they were already carrying burdens they could not bear. God was not asking them to be celibate.  My dad continued to care for my mom and to this day he cares for her in her mental illness with a dedication I’m not sure I could match.  Of all the couples I know who use contraception none of them fit the selfish, child hating people Catholics make them out to be.  That is in part because they are all involved in their faith communities but contraception has not made them into what you say they are.  Actually the largest family I know with 14 kids uses contraception but would certainly by outside appearances gain approval for being really open to life.

I love what Henry Fonda’s character said in “Yours Mine and Ours.”

“I know some people would say that having 19 kids is taking it a bit far, but if I had it to do over again, which would I put back? You?”

I don’t feel better, I feel heartbroken.  Reading those articles you linked to, and the subsequent comments, was so upsetting.  And while I do agree that complicated, NFP-following, sacramental Catholic sex is complicated in a lot of ways, I feel like I would love to just reach out to those women on the other side, who have no idea of their innate personhood - who have no idea what it really means to be a woman, respected, empowered, loved, and cherished - and preach the gospel of life to them!  I feel a little powerless, too.  Blessed and self-assured and desperate to help others see how much better life can be.  What can we do besides pray?  Thank you again, Simcha, for bringing my attention to something else that desperately needs to be in my prayers.

“eating and obesity”, thanks very much for your very thoughtful comments. You’ve been there and know exactly what I’m talking about and express it better than I did. It is painful to witness people struggling all their lives with the anxiety and anger issues can come out of such a situation. I’m sorry you couldn’t have had a more peaceful childhood. And how right you are that God doesn’t interfere to prevent children from being born into bad situations. That is up to the parents. Of course no one would choose to eliminate an already born sibling, but avoiding intercourse during fertile periods has exactly the same result as barrier contraceptives or sterilization. An opportunity to conceive a child is not taken.

Not everyone knows what God intended for sexuality and spousal love (I don’t mean intellectual knowledge, but experience). They may be content in the limited horizon of what they are used to. If shadows are all people know, they may imagine themselves content until they are introduced to the sun. And our culture, regarding sex, is full of shadows. Contraception always does more than prevent conception. It is also a barrier to self-knowledge, to conversion and virtue, and to the true unity which spouses desire in love.

Sex can be experienced and performed on an animal level, it can be treated as nothing more than an appetite to be satisfied. But it can also mediate the love of spouses. And as a sacrament, God wants to elevate it to a very special love indeed, so that it is a sign to the world of God’s pure love for humanity. But this way is not possible with contraception.

Perhaps it is like someone who is used to a communion service in a Protestant church. This may be fulfilling as far as it goes. But is not the eucharist. And no one who comes to understand the real significance of the eucharist would ever want to go back to that shadow they had previously thought to be the whole reality. No one prefers darkness to the light of the sun.

We can’t judge people who think they have no other choice but to sterilize themselves. Life is complicated. And we don’t know how blameworthy they are. However,

I believe it is absolutely false to think that there are no consequences to resorting to sterilization or contraception. And sterilization is a tragic thing because it is so permanent. It is a definitive concession to human misery and weakness. Of course, resorting to these things will solve certain problems and make things easier. But they necessarily introduce other problems and negative consequences into the equation. They may not be as confrontational as the problems abstinence brings to the fore, but they no less a challenge and threat. If NFP problems are screamers and in-your-face brawls, then sterilization/contraception is passive aggressive.

Evil always has consequences, even when we are not culpable for them. There is no such thing as a ‘call’ to contraception. There is only the cross. That alone is the source of all true love.

“We can’t judge people who think they have no other choice but to sterilize themselves”

(Ahem.)

If we hope one day to from the Divine Master the words “Well done, good and faithful servant. Now enter into my father’s kingdom,” then we will diligently refrain from judging anybody: from judging people who think they have no other choice but to sterilize themselves, or judging people who know better than to sterilize themselves, but do it anyway, or from judging people who deny God that exists and who think sterilization is a terrific idea in principle.

That’s because it was the Master Himself who said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

We may preach, write, counsel, exhort, encourage, teach others to do what is right. We may point out an example of what is wrong, and ask others to avoid it. But we may not point to another person who may be doing wrong, and say of them, “My righteousness in God’s sight is surely greater than this fellow’s! I set myself apart from this fellow because of my holiness and his lack of it.”

That is judging. 

Those who in this life feel that they are somehow dispensed from this command and who set about judging others to their hearts’ content, may expect to hear very different words fall from the Master’s lips on that Awful Day. (Hint: “I tell you I never knew you.”)

“I believe it is absolutely false to think that there are no consequences to resorting to sterilization or contraception”

It is false to think there are no consquences when you do not plan your family responsibly and conceive children that you are not capable of caring for.  We create obstacles to grace for our kids when we are so overwhelmed we can not be present them.  Raising kids in the presence of God is an enormous responsibility that begins with conception.  The hard work all comes after that.  You can be open to life and conceive a child but to be truly open to life is much more than that.

In response to some of E.‘s comments:

There are a couple of things I think merit a little further discussion.  Without going back up and copy-pasting (forgive my laziness!) you said something like,

“no one in authority over us has told us that using contraception is a sin.”

and

“Considering how so many religions incorporate dietary restrictions into their beliefs, I wonder why (with the exception of meat on Fridays during Lent), the Catholic Church never ventured into that particular area?”

(Ok, I repented of my laziness and went and found the quotes!)

I’d like to briefly address the first statement.

It depends what you mean by “authority over.”  Contraception was denounced by Luther and later also denounced unambiguously by Calvin - perhaps the two most influential founders of modern protestantism - certainly the most famous.  In fact, contraception was disallowed in all the major Christian sects until the 20th century.  It was only in 1930 that the Anglican communion issued a statement allowing contraceptive use for married couples.  Other Christian churches followed in dribs and drabs.  It seems only certain branches of the Orthodox and the Catholic Church have maintained this approach.  Although, from memory, one of the Lutheran sects stated in the early 90’s that all birth control is a sin, but allows for an exception when the life of the mother is at risk.  And of course, the Amish generally forbid contraception, although I’m not sure what the usual stance is on NFP.  I haven’t been involved in interfaith relations for a few years, since I had children, so cannot be sure if the situation has changed since last I heard. 

The point being, the understanding of Protestant Christianity was, until recently, that contraception is sinful.  I guess it depends on how much stock you put in the history of your faith and its significant leaders.  It might also depend on the theological reasoning that now allows contraception amongst the Methodists, Anglicans, most baptists etc.  Seem the reasons differ.  It might be an interesting exercise to examine the protestant theological (as opposed to social) reasons against contraception and see how robust modern theological (again, not to be confused with social) counterarguments are.  I wish I had the time for it. 

I have worked for the Catholic Church in interfaith relations, and it seems to me that the issue of authority is as thorny a one in protestantism as it has on occasion proven in Catholicism.  Some of my Protestant friends accept their pastor’s interpretation of scripture as more learned and de facto authoritative.  Some rely on their own reading of Scripture (which raises interesting questions when different people have incompatible interpretations.)  My Anglican acquaintances usually defer to the teaching authority of their local bishop. 

Oh, and how could I forget the Quiverfull movement, which is mostly composed of Protestants?  Amongst my internet forays I have encountered a few Quiverfull adherents who believe the choice is up to the conscience of the couple, I have found more that assert the authority of Scripture itself, in the early commandment of God to Adam and Eve as he sent them out of Eden; “Go forth; be fruitful and multiply.”  Of course, you could argue over whether that’s a command or a simply a blessing. 

And so on.  The point being that, for some Protestants in today’s time, they have been told that contraception (or sometimes any birth control including “natural” methods) is sinful.  And for all others, it has been the understanding of Protestant Christianity until no more than 81 years ago and for many, a lesser period of time.  It remains debated in the smaller sects. 

I personally haven’t found a theological reason sufficient to oust the Catholic church’s adherence to the traditional condemnation of contraception, or that beats Her more recently elaborated upon understanding of the sacrament of Matrimony and how that relates to the reenactment of the Sacrament in the marital bed.

I will address the second comment in a following post, as this one is becoming lengthy and unwieldy.

I am not sure my previous comment posted.  If it hasn’t, someone notify me and I’ll retry posting.  (I remembered to copy and save it for once!)

So, in response to E., I will now look at the other comment I hoped to explore a little further, namely:

“Considering how so many religions incorporate dietary restrictions into their beliefs, I wonder why (with the exception of meat on Fridays during Lent), the Catholic Church never ventured into that particular area?”

Actually, the regulation remains to abstain from meat on every Friday of the year, in penance and in commemoration of the Lord’s passion.  My Italian grandparents (born in the early 1920’s) still practice this.  I try to, as well. 

For the sake of clarity for any interested readers, I’ll briefly mention that Catholics distinguish between fasting (reducing food intake to the equivalent of one full meal per day) and abstinence (not eating meat).  You can abstain without fasting, or fast without abstaining.

The Church requires Catholics to do penance (I won’t go into a long explanation), and part of this is observing food-related disciplines that are believed to bear spiritual fruit.  Abstinence actually still *is* required *throughout the year* on Fridays as an overarching rule. However, Bishops Conferences in some regions (like the USA, and Australia) allow other pentitential acts as a substitute.  That is why you may have noticed a reduction in the practice.  Catholics are supposed to be offering some other act, but it may be that without the tangible trigger of food, many have forgotten their duty. 

Currently, during Lent, abstinence is required, with fasting also required on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.  Some are exempted for various reasons.  Children under 14yo, the ill, pregnant and nursing mothers, for example, are exempted from this requirement, but expected to do penance in one of the other ways. 

Historically, there were more fasting and abstinence days than just Fridays.  The choice of Friday is of course, due to our commemoration of the death of our Lord.  Wednesday was very common.  The choice of Wednesday is in remembrance of the betrayal of our Lord by Judas, a betrayal that reminds us to consider our own betrayals of Christ.  In addition, Saturdays were sometimes included, as a vigil for Resurrection Sunday.  Other vigils before important feasts (such as on Christmas Eve, or the day before Pentecost) also required fasting and/or abstinence. 

The history has been somewhat mixed depending on region and time.  I just now discovered that wikipedia (*sigh*) has a decent explanation of the situation.  You can see how it varies. 

My spiritual adviser and confessor is a rare case: he is a religious brother and a priest of both the Latin Rite and the Ukrainian (Eastern) rite of the Catholic Church.  The liturgical calendars differ - often the Eastern calendar’s Lent and Easter trails the Latin one.  He fasts according to Western convention (without taking advantage of any of the modern allowances) during the Latin-rite Lent.  When the Eastern rite Lent begins, he switches to their conventions (which require one meal a day and abstinence from all animal products) until Latin-rite Easter - which he celebrates with the usual feasting, which is fine because it’s a Sunday anyway and one shouldn’t fast on the Resurrection. Then he returns to his vegan Eastern fast until Ukrainian Easter.  Wow.  Sometimes it can extend “Lent” for 6 weeks. 

Perhaps most importantly, you have forgotten the Eucharistic fast - which is the abstaining from food before partaking in the Eucharist.  For a long time one was supposed to abstain from midnight until one attended Mass and received the Lord.  Then the requirement was shifted to a 3 hour fast.  Currently it is a mere 1 hour fast, which is so easy it doesn’t really need any conscious effort to do it.  I think that’s a shame, and I’m not sure what the reasoning behind the relaxations are. 

Nevertheless, the religious dietary restrictions are more significant than you think.

Someone asked about the difference between contraception and “non real” foods, and noted that many different answers offered.

Just because different answers are given, doesn’t mean there isn’t a primary answer that explains the truth of a teaching, or that these reasons aren’t simply aspects of the one larger reason.  There are many layers of meaning that give added depth, but the point is that there is something particularly sacred about the sexual act that the act of eating does not reach (excepting the Eucharist and there are many regulations around that too, as one would expect of something like the holy of holies.)

With the exception of the Eucharist, eating is important, but not sacred.  Sex, relating in Christian understanding to the Sacrament of Matrimony, is designed to be a reenactment and confirmation of that covenant, vow, sacrament.  This is what leads to a particular perspective in Catholicism of Marriage, the body, and sexual expression.  The “rules” we have are a product of logical steps of reasoning that follow from a theological understanding of both the Sacrament of Matrimony and more fundamentally, from Scripture. 

You can get a reasonably brief and outline of the doctrine by looking up the relevant sections in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is probably a better option than trying to sift through the many good posts here online.

Why don’t you people just have a baby?  Fertility is gone sooner than you think.

“We have never heard anyone say contraception or surgery has saved their marriage.”

You have now.

NFP brought nothing but stress and frustration into our marriage.

Wonderful piece!
Keep up the good work-couldn’t have said it better myself.