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Max, my point was that one must believe many Popes, even pre VII Popes, were apostate or the Chair is empty, to believe that NFP is intrinsically morally illicit.

I don't think it's quite that drastic. You know that I have been arguing the same position the entire time I have been on FR -- that NFP is licit in certain circumstances, and that Catholic teaching sources need to do a better job explaining that. I think we agree on that score.

However, I was recently sent a booklet written by someone who believes that NFP is inherently immoral. He is not a sedevacantist, nor does he believe that the popes were apostates or heretics. His argument is that the magisterial teaching on this issue is thin and inconsistent. As Fr. Harrison points out in his article, one could reasonably take the position that Popes Pius XI and Pius XII contradicted each other. This may not be the case, but one needn't be a sedevacantist to believe it.

The author of the booklet takes the position that this issue is far from settled, and that when it is settled the Church will recognize that each and every conjugal act must share in some intention of fruitfulness. Everyone recognizes that not every conjugal act can be fruitful, but every act can share in the general intention of fruitfulness which covers all the actions. A couple who intends to be fruitful on the day they marry and never change that intention thereby guarantee that every individual act participates in a continuous intention of fruitfulness even if individual acts are clearly not going to be fruitful on their own (e.g. during pregnancy).

But what happens when you break that continuous intention of fruitfulness? What happens when you decide that you do not want to accept children from God, now or for the foreseeable future? Then the individual conjugal acts no longer share in a general intention of fruitfulness. So you are having sex but you have no intention to fulfill its purpose.

According to this view, for NFP to be licit, the couple would have to decide the first week of the month that they have no intention of fruitfulness, so they abstain that week, but then the next week they decide that they do have an intention of fruitfulness during the week that they know that they are infertile, then the next week they change their intention again based on thermometer readings, etc., so that they always have an intention of fruitfulness whenever they know it cannot be accomplished and they never have an intention of fruitfulness whenever they know that it could be accomplished.

Well, anyway, this is the writer's argument, and he is not a sedevacantist. He merely claims that the only authoritative statement approving NFP was Pope Pius XII's "Allocution to Italian Midwives," and that the pope got a lot of the issues right in that document, but that he failed to address all the relevant moral considerations.