IS NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING A 'HERESY'? (Trads, please take note)

When I write these posts I place it on my word processor first and try to get the italics there OK but I can't seem to figure it how to make it italic on the post.

If you're using MS Word, under the "File" tab in the toolbar you will see "Save," "Save As," and "Save As HTML."

Put the text you want to post into MS Word, use the italics key to italicize whatever text you want, then click "Save." That wuill save it as an MS Word document.

Then click "Save As HTML."

It will then be saved as a web page.

Now click "View" in the toolbar, and then click "HTML Source"

Now you can copy and paste the HTML formatted text into the "Your Reply" box here on the Forum.

After you experiment with it a few times it will become easy.

It would certainly seem to me that there is a significant difference between a couple who use it to avoid having any children or more than just one or two children versus those who use it to say, give a wife a year or two of a breather, or to let the man have a year or two to let his salary catch up to the family's expenses, who has had four kids in six years before they go on to another. Would you not agree that there is a moral difference in such a set of cases even though the motive is identical?

This is a good question, and I honestly have to answer that I haven't thought it through. I'll try to give it some consideration, because it is clearly a relevant issue.

Here then is another good question. What if a couple that is 35 years old, and already has 4 or 6 or 8 children decides they have had enough for what they can handle and starts to practice NFP from then on? Do you think that is a good enough reason for someone with that many children?

What if the families of the same couple had a history of producing genetically diseased children from late-in-life pregnancies?

You seem to have many Catholic beliefs so this is perhaps the foundation that your mom gave you

Correction: "You seem to have many ~~Catholic~~ Scriptural beliefs." And no, Mom can't really take the credit, as she largely dropped the ball on my religious education. Both my parents -- my Catholic mom and my nonreligious (but Protestant-reared) dad -- were equally morally conservative.

Read the Bible yourself; you will find absolutely intolerable contradictions between Scripture and Catholic teaching.

You mentioned something about all my ancestors being Catholic. Well... I'm 5/8ths Irish, and that's the only ethnic heritage I really knew about growing up -- my Scot and Ulster-Scot lineages had been in the US long enough to forget the old-country quarrels, and I didn't learn of my Huguenot blood till many years later (via www.familytreedna.com). So, considering myself ethnically Irish, I felt like I was committing an act of racial betrayal by giving up the Catholic religion. So help me, I absolutely did NOT want to leave the Catholic church. But truth trumps ancestry -- fortunately -- otherwise I'd be a Druid!

BTW, my Polish/Italian wife and father-in-law also went through a similar struggle. They are of 100% Catholic ancestry and were good Catholics till they read the Bible. And so, I say again, read the Bible for yourself. Just like us, you will find yourself forced by the pages of Scripture to leave the Catholic church despite your deep desire to the contrary.

In light of the massacres of the Huguenots, that's a pretty chilling thing to say. You consider me in error, therefore, do you think I have no rights? Would you execute me as a heretic if you had the power?

Error has no rights, but the State has no right to punish heretics who don't harm the common good of society.

Furthermore, society has the right to defend itself against possible abuses committed on the pretext of freedom of religion. It is the special duty of government to provide this protection. However, government is not to act in an arbitrary fashion or in an unfair spirit of partisanship. Its action is to be controlled by juridical norms which are in conformity with the objective moral order. These norms arise out of the need for the effective safeguard of the rights of all citizens and for the peaceful settlement of conflicts of rights, also out of the need for an adequate care of genuine public peace, which comes about when men live together in good order and in true justice, and finally out of the need for a proper guardianship of public morality. These matters constitute the basic component of the common welfare: they are what is meant by public order. For the rest, the usages of society are to be the usages of freedom in their full range: that is, the freedom of man is to be respected as far as possible and is not to be curtailed except when and insofar as necessary. (Vatican Council II, Declaration "Dignitatis Humanae")

Another question, essentially different, is this: could the norm be established in a community of states-at least in certain circumstances-that the free exercise of a belief and of a religious or moral practice which possess validity in one of the member states, be not hindered throughout the entire territory of the community of nations by state laws or coercive measures? In other words, the question is raised whether in these circumstances "non impedire" or toleration is permissible, and whether, consequently, positive repression is not always a duty.
We have just adduced the authority of God. Could God, although it would be possible and easy for Him to repress error and moral deviation, in some cases choose the "non impedire" without contradicting His infinite perfection? Could it be that in certain circumstances He would not give men any mandate, would not impose any duty, and would not even communicate the right to impede or to repress what is erroneous and false? A look at things as they are gives an affirmative answer. Reality shows that error and sin are in the world in great measure. God reprobates them, but He permits them to exist. Hence the affirmation: religious and moral error must always be impeded, when it is possible, because toleration of them is in itself immoral, is not valid absolutely and unconditionally.
Moreover, God has not given even to human authority such an absolute and universal command in matters of faith and morality. Such a command is unknown to the common convictions of mankind, to Christian conscience, to the sources of Revelation and to the practice of the Church. To omit here other Scriptural texts which are adduced in support of this argument, Christ in the parable of the cockle gives the following advice: let the cockle grow in the field of the world together with the good seed in view of the harvest (cf. Matt. 13:24-30). The duty of repressing moral and religious error cannot therefore be an ultimate norm of action. It must be subordinate to higher and more general norms, which in some circumstances permit, and even perhaps seem to indicate as the better policy, toleration of error in order to promote a greater good.
Thus the two principles are clarified to which recourse must be had in concrete cases for the answer to the serious question concerning the attitude which the jurist, the statesman and the sovereign Catholic state is to adopt in consideration of the community of nations in regard to a formula of religious and moral toleration as described above. First: that which does not correspond to truth or to the norm of morality objectively has no right to exist, to be spread or to be activated. Secondly: failure to impede this with civil laws and coercive measures can nevertheless be justified in the interests of a higher and more general good. (Pius XII, Allocution "Ci Riesce")

Everyone was Catholic before the protestant reformation accept the Orthodox. So you are incorrect on that point. There is no contradiction between the Holy Catholic faith
and Holy Scripture.

Many Catholic parents drop the ball on religion but that does not mean the Catholic faith is false.

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church....As a matter of fact, if we Catholics believed all of the untruths and lies which were said against the Church, we probably would hate the Church a thousand times more than they do." ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN -- preface to RADIO REPLIES (Radio Replies Vol 1, preface)

There must have been something inside you which did not think the Church was intolerable otherwise why would absolutely NOT want to leave it as you intimated?

What teaching was so intolerable to you which you believe contradicted scripture?

Dear Rytwyng,

I would not burn you as a heretic. I once scalded myself incurring second degree burns and I would not wish this on anyone. ST. Joan of Arc was burned by rotten Catholic Churchmen but that does not mean that the Catholic religion is false. Heresy kills the soul and sends people to hell. Now I think if you really study history you will see that plenty of Catholics were burned and tortured by Protestants for heresy. It is not necessary to give you a long list. If we look at our lives they are very brief and eternity is forever.

Anyway here is Aquinas "Heretics deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death. For it is a much more serious matter to corrupt the faith than to counterfeit that which supports temporal life. Wherefore, if counterfeiters and other evil-doers are immediately condemned to death by secular authorities, there is much more reason for heretics to be put to death. (St. Thomas Aquinas) see Thomas Aquinas: STL II-II, Q.11, art.3

Now we do not do this today- Protestants or Catholics- our civil society which is really not so civil renders this illegal so this idea of burning heretics is a mute point. But what does our so called "civil society" render legal today? It is anything but "civil" and what it allows kills both body and soul- look at abortion, contraception, homosexual acts, divorce, pornography, grotesque violent TV. and video games with no purpose but to reinforce violence for its own sake, child photography, the rampant break down of society and now the final straw homosexual marriage not to mention the weapons of mass destruction which if unleashed can kill millions. Many claim that because religion did such things as burned people at the stake we should just get rid of religion and make a one World religion based on a sycratistic mixing of all of the religions which will be the Satanism of the antichrist who will come into the World. Then we will we see a fire such as has never been known which St. Peter speaks.

2Pe 3:7 -But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of the ungodly men.

2Pe 3:12 -Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of the Lord, by which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with the burning heat?

Jude 1:7 -As Sodom and Gomorrha and the neighbouring cities, in like manner, having given themselves to fornication and going after other flesh, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire.

So in our “civil society” of today when unborn babies are aborted to the false god Baal- the god of sex and convenience are we really better off now when there are no heretics being burned? God bless you and lead you into the One, Catholic and Apostolic Faith.

Everyone was Catholic before the protestant reformation accept the Orthodox.

Yes, and before that they were pagans. So? Ancestry does not mean anything regarding eternal truth (or lack thereof). And of course all western Christians were Catholic at one time (except a few bands of heretics that were exterminated). But the point I was making is that some of my *immediate* ancestors were Catholic (at least nominally) right on up to me; others turned Protestant centuries ago.

There is no contradiction between the Holy Catholic faith and Holy Scripture.

So I once desperately wanted to believe. Go read it.

What teaching was so intolerable to you which you believe contradicted scripture?

Again, read it and then we'll talk. It wasn't one, in particular, it was the cumulative weight of many contradictions.

"....what does our so called "civil society" render legal today? It is anything but "civil" and what it allows kills both body and soul- look at abortion, contraception, homosexual acts, divorce, pornography, grotesque violent TV...and now the final straw homosexual marriage ... So in our “civil society” of today when unborn babies are aborted to the false god Baal- the god of sex and convenience are we really better off now when there are no heretics being burned?"

False choice: it's possible to have NEITHER: we can resist abortion, sodomites, euthanasia, divorce, "free" sex, violent video games, et al, and yet also not burn those we perceive as "heretics". America of several generations ago was this way.

Now I think if you really study history you will see that plenty of Catholics were burned and tortured by Protestants for heresy

Yes, I know this. I consider it just as wrong as the reverse. In fact I find it appalling that--

My Irish ancestors were persecuted by Protestants, for being Catholic....
My Huguenot ancestor was persecuted by Catholics, for being Protestant....
My Scottish ancestors were persecuted by Protestants for being Dissident Protestants....
Then in Ulster, my Irish and my Scoto-Huguenot ancestors horribly persecuted each other.

None of it seems very Christian to me. How about "do unto others as ye would have them do unto you?"

Well you have some good points but I think that you are overlooking some things. I guess you probably think that the early Church Fathers weren't very Christian either because they did not think any different than St. Thomas Aquinas. If Jesus said that "It is better if anyone harm one of these little ones of mine that a millstone be tied around his neck and he be cast into the sea." That sounds pretty harsh. Capital punishment was never regarded as intrinsically evil as was abortion or contraception and murder nor was a just war. Read the old Testament.

Heresy kills the soul and there are many souls who are being destroyed by this every day. What constitutes harming of a soul? Many things are involved. The world was better off when there was only one Church and not multiple denominations and sects and the fact of the matter is that Jesus only founded one Church and the see of Peter as its head.

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