My wife and and I taught NFP for ten years. We heard all the jokes (i.e., half truths and outright lies) about NFP, typified by this perennial favorite: "What do you call couples who use NPF? 'Parents.'" We heard the continual disparagement about "breeding like rabbits." We had couples who walked out of our class after my presentation on the necessity of having "grave reason" for recourse to NFP. We also had couples who, after hearing the Church's teaching on the
necessity of having "grave reason" for having recourse NFP, realized they had none, and happily reported within a month or two that they were expecting.
We also always wanted a big family, and I even bought a 12 passenger van when the children were young in hopes of having 6 or 8 children or more. After our third came along, God never sent us any more.We love our children, and we would have loved to have more, but He knew best for us.
We gave up teaching NFP partly because the mentality was not that Catholics could have recourse to NFP "for grave reasons," but one that had morphed into the idea that NFP was "responsible parenthood" and "Catholic birth control" and that "grave reasons" weren't really necessary any more. It was just too difficult to teach young couples how to be "responsible parents," avoiding pregnancy for often less than grave reasons, when we still were asking God for more children.
The Pope's recent comments were grossly imprudent in my opinion, even hurtful to many good faithful Christians. They contribute to the values-free mentality of the modern NFP movement and the idea that "responsible parents" must limit childbearing. They are not in any way helpful; I find them to be indefensible, despite the spin of the usual suspects who want to interpret them in a hermeneutic of continuity with former Magisterial statements on the subject. I find them to be a rupture with the perennial teachings of the Church on this subject, based on firm reliance on Divine Providence, appeals to the "responsible parenthood" proof texts in Guadium et Spes and Humanae Vitae notwithstanding.
If Pope Francis were not preparing an encyclical on "global warming" and "human ecology" I would just shrug off this latest embarrassment as just another in a long line of off-the-cuff gaffes.
But he is using the language of the environmentalists and population controllers who blame climate change on Christians, Islamists and Third World citizens who "breed like rabbits." If he has bought into the climate change propaganda then he has likely also bought into the idea that fighting climate change requires "responsible parenthood."
In his mind, maybe population control to combat global warming is fine, as long as it employs NFP?
No, NFP does not mean withdrawal ("coitus interruptus"). It means abstaining from sex the 6 to 6 days a months when the woman might be fertile.
In regards to "responsible parenthood" this is what we taught in our NFP classes:
To say that NFP (Natural Family Planning) is ALWAYS sinful (the position of some rad trads) is just as wrong as to say that NFP is NEVER sinful (the position of many Theology of the Body and NFP promoters).
If my "INTENTION" is to bring home enough money to feed my family, that is a good thing. I may get a job, bring home my salary, and feed my children. The job is a licit way to achieve a licit thing.
On the other hand, I could rob a bank and get enough money to feed my family for a whole year. That is an illicit way of achieving a licit good thing.
The same is true for child spacing. If my children would literally starve if my wife were to get pregnant, it is morally licit to space children until I could afford to feed them.
NFP would be a morally licit way to achieve this necessity.
But artificial birth control is intrinsically evil. It can never be morally licit to have recourse to artificial contraception.
So the INTENTION in having recourse to EITHER artificial family planning OR "natural" family planning could be illicit or licit. One may be sinful, one may not.
However, the method itself, in the case of artificial birth control, is intrinsically illicit, i.e. regardless of intent is it gravely sinful.
However, NFP itself is morally neutral. It becomes morally illicit when the intention itself is illicit.
4 main reasons for having recourse to NFP from Casti Connubii and Humanae Vitae:
1--Physical/ mental health---a pregnancy could kill you or so physically impair you as to prevent your fulfillment of your duties in your state in life---NOT because of a widening waste line or drooping skin! Or psychological health, i.e., mom would literally have a nervous breakdown if she became pregnant---not because she "just couldn't stand being home with the little kids all day without the personal fulfillment of her professional job..."
2--Financial constraints---your child will starve if you have another. Wanting a bigger house or designer SUV just does not cut it!
3--work on the mission fields by one or both spouses that would preclude having children temporarily
4--active persecution or war---i.e., you or your child likely to die by coercive abortion, in concentration camp, in acts of war, etc.
Clearly we say these reasons must be SERIOUS, not trivial. Only the couple and their confessor can decide what truly constitutes grave reason.
We've had couples sit through my talk on this subject and literally say, "Gee, we thought we were being good Catholics just for deciding to use NFP. Now we realize we don't even have grounds for recourse to NFP," then tell us a month or two later they're pregnant.
NFP vs Contraception
Spacing children may be a desirable goal that does not violate God's laws in certain serious situations such as those outlined above. But the means of achieving the goal differ.
One is intrinsically evil (abortion, abortifacient contraception, barrier methods, sterilization) while one is morally neutral (Natural Family Planning).
In one, an act is performed (sex) but its natural outcome is artificially foiled.
In the other, no act is performed (simple abstinence during fertile times) so there IS no act, therefore the practice is morally neutral.
It is then the intention of using NFP that constitutes its relative moral licitness or illicitness.
If NFP is used in a selfish manner, it too can be sinful.
If it is used only in grave circumstances, it is not sinful.
The difference is real.
Dieting (decreasing caloric intake, the "act" of NOT eating) is a moral and responsible means of losing weight to maintain the body's health.
Bulimia (the ACT of eating, them vomiting) is rightly called an eating DISORDER.
An ACT is performed (eating in this case) and its natural outcome (nutrition) is foiled by expelling the food from the body.
Likewise contraception is a disorder. An ACT is performed (sex) and its natural outcome (procreation) is foiled by expelling the sperm or egg or both (abortifacient contraceptives) from the body.
Contraception is to NFP what Bulimia is to dieting.
But just as dieting can be misused (anorexia) so too can NFP be misused in a sinful manner.