My Pontification

This is the final post of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.

Q. How did the Church arrive at the conclusion that NFP is a viable family planning practice as opposed to completely putting one’s trust in God?

A. Putting trust in God does not mean not planning.  God gave us our reason.  And He gave us our reason to plan.  I honestly don’t know anybody who at the end of every month empties out their bank account and gives it to the poor.  No one insists that “God will provide.  Trust in God.  I’m just going to give away every penny every month.” We pretty much know that God doesn’t ask us to do that.  Save some, give some away.  He gave us our reason to plan.   We don’t just eat whatever we want and expect God to keep us at our best weight.  No one counsels: “Just eat whatever you want and trust in God.  You won’t get diabetes.”  Isn’t it rather that God wants us to use our reason to live moderately?  We have to govern all of our appetites, and sometimes even the appetite for children needs to be governed.  In marriage it’s not always a good idea to have another child at this time.  Hopefully, eventually, the parents will be able to have more children.

Humanae Vitae says that some couples make the prudent and generous decision to have a large family.  But note that it speaks of a prudent decision.  The spouses should be confident they can meet the demands of a large family.  Some people are such good parents and so stable that it is a prudent decision on their part to “just let the babies come.”  I’ve got many friends who have very large families of 8, 9, 10, 11 children. Most of them are very stable people.  I don’t know where they came from.  Maybe having children makes people stable. I don’t know, there’s something about them that’s really special.  Some of them might say everyone ought to do what they would do.  But I don’t think that is necessary true. Some people can have six children and go to daily mass and get a medical degree and run the local Right to Life group and go on missions to foreign lands and run in marathons. They have an energy level that defies belief and that not everyone has.  Not all of us have the same gifts; not all are called to do the same things.  We need to accept who we are and live in accord with the gifts God has given us.

On the other hand, it is easy for some of us to look for the easy life.  A lot of us need to learn stretch ourselves in most every respect.  Most of us need to give away more money than we do.  Most of us have to volunteer more time than we do.  And probably a lot of people should consider having a somewhat larger family than they are initially comfortable with.  But I see nothing in Church teaching that says that we’re supposed to let the babies come unless you make a decision that you can handle that.

Q. Isn’t having sex only when one can’t get pregnant, using NFP, not giving oneself completely in the act of marriage?

A. Again, it is possible to use NFP selfishly.  Some couples simply don’t want to have more children because they don’t want to take on the additional responsibility. That’s selfish.  And those people are not giving of themselves completely.

But we also need to be clear that sometimes it is an act of self-giving not to have sex.  Often having sex is the selfish act.  People who don’t have sex before marriage, for instance, are giving of themselves very completely.  It’s those who are having sex that are being selfish.  They want a pleasure without commitment.  I find that people who are chaste before marriage find NFP quite natural to use; they abstained before marriage precisely because they loved each other and it was not appropriate to give themselves to each other sexually.  Their not having sex was a loving and self giving act. The same thing can be in marriage.  One or the other spouse is tired.  One spouse would like to have sex, the other wouldn’t.  “Not tonight, dear.”  There is considerable disappointment on the other end.  But if the disappointed spouse doesn’t pressure for sex, that is an act of self giving.  That person doesn’t put any pressure on you because it’s not good.  It’s not good right now.  That person walking out of the room is giving completely of himself or herself because it’s not good to engage in this act at this time.  So, I’m going to say yes, you can be giving of yourself completely by not having sex.

Q. How does cohabitation cause an increase in divorce rate?

A. Cohabitation is not a good preparation for many reasons.  Consider how it begins.  In our culture, those who begin serious relationships have often not made a very careful choice of a partner; they have not considered whether they want to have children with this person or to marry this person. Many couples start having sex fairly early in an intense relationship; if not early on, then eventually.  They wonder why they are paying rent at two places. So they move in together.  Pretty soon after they move in together they stop having the kinds of conversations they should have to build a relationship.  When you move in with someone, it’s very awkward to move out.  Important conversations are avoided because they might lead to fights and fights might lead to a separation.  Moving out means that somebody has to find a new apartment.  It’s embarrassing and costly.  So all of these conversations that couples should have, they don’t have.  They don’t have them until after marriage and then they discover that they have huge incompatibilities about really important matters.

I saw a segment of Oprah one day featuring couples who had lived together for a year and a half and decided to get married.  They spent a whole year planning their wedding, some huge extravaganza.  When the wedding came, they just rolled out of bed in the morning, went off to the wedding, and experienced no real change in their relationship except that the wedding was over. These couples reported that as they were driving away from the wedding, they looked at each other and said, “What’s next?”  Their life had just been planning a wedding together, not a life together.

And then what happens?  Two or three years after they get married one or the other says, “I think maybe we should start planning our family now.”  And the other one says, “What?  What do you mean now?  Why now?” The response: “I’m not getting any younger.  I only had one brother.  And I thought I’d like to have my kids have brothers and sisters.  I’d like to have three or four kids.”  The spouse replies, “Three or four, where’d you ever get that idea?  We’ve got college loans to pay off.  Where did you get that idea?”  The couple had no conversation about how many children they wanted to have previous to marriage.  Or they might disagree about the practice of religion.  One spouse decides to return to going to church on Sunday.  That other asks, “Church, where’d that come from?  You don’t go to church.  Why go to church?”  The spouse replies, “Well once we start our family, that’s how I’d like to raise the kids, in church.” “What?  You don’t expect me to go, do you?  What is happening? Are you becoming some kind of a fanatic?”  Marriages break up over these sorts of things.

When I speak to college students I tell them that within the first few weeks if not days of dating someone they need to make it clear that they are not going to have sex before marriage, they want to have children and they will be practicing their faith.  If the person they are dating doesn’t agree, find someone new.  Don’t fall in love with someone and then find out that that person does not share your values.  In our culture, people have sex, live together and then get to know each other. That is backwards; you should get to know someone, fall in love with the person, and then get married and have sex. Sexual intercourse should be moving the relationship to a new level, a relationship that already has a firm and solid foundation.

One problem is that too few people in our culture know what their values are.  They don’t know how many children they want to have.  They don’t know whether they believe in God and want to go to church.  Years later they figure it out and they look at this person and think, “What I am doing with this person?? We don’t have the same values and same aims in life.”

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This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.

Slide: Coronation of Mary

Married couples are meant to represent the marriage of Christ and his Church.  Christ is the bridegroom, the Church is the bride.  Couples are meant to symbolize for the rest of us the devotion, the love, the commitment, the unconditional laying down of your life for your bride, which Christ, the bridegroom did for Mary and for the Church, his bride.  It’s an incredible thing.  It’s an incredible responsibility and one not accomplished by the 50 to 60 percent of the marriages in our culture that end in divorce.  When I meet couples who have been married for 15 years or longer, I want to thank them.  They’ve done something good for all of us.  For their children, for each other, and for all if us.  Divorce is hard on everyone; it is hard for the couple, for their children, and for the rest of us to see all that goes on.  When we think of what it takes to have a marriage last, we realize it is very difficult.   The spouses need to learn to forgive and to ask forgiveness.  They need to learn to put up with disappointment both in their spouses and in themselves. It’s hard to when we are a disappointment to ourselves. I think that happens a lot in marriage.  We want to be better than we are and we are not.  And our faults cause a lot of trouble for other people.  People who have been married for 15 years or longer have done a lot of the hard work it takes to get along in this world.  I believe the rewards are great for such dedication; that the satisfaction they experience is incredibly deep.  I hope that they are incredibly in love with each other and it just gets better all the time.  My parents have been married, as I said, for 60 years.  I think they are happier and more in love now than they’ve ever been.  They are reaping the rewards of a life that was well lived.  Let’s stop there and get some questions in.

Q. How would you address the misuse of NFP to control family size for selfish reasons?

A. Some people say that couples using NFP can use it just as selfishly as couples who are contracepting.  I think that’s possible, but I’m going to actually argue that natural family planning is the solution to the problem.

Let me explain.  Let’s consider two couples who both want to control their family size.  Both have been married several years.  Let’s say that they may have 3 children under 5, and want to wait awhile before they have another child.  They are tired and need some time to work on household organization, etc.  One couple decides to use contraception and the other couple decides to use natural family planning.  Are they doing the same thing?  While both couples have the same goal, they are using different means to achieve their goals.

The Church teaches that you not only have to have a good goal, and controlling your family size can be a good goal, you have to have a good means to that goal.  I think contraception, again, violates a woman’s health.  It’s a barrier between the spouses.  It’s a rejection of God, etc.  Natural family planning couples are living in accord with God’s plan.  Very importantly – they are having to deny themselves, and it is a very good thing to be able to deny yourself in pursuit of other goods.  Let’s consider two individuals who both need to lose weight, one engages in bulimia – in eating and throwing up, because that person wants the pleasure of food without the consequence.   Another individual diets.  That denies him or herself cake, ice cream, etc, because he or she is seeking a good, which is weight loss.  Through that self-denial, that dieter is probably going to rise in self-esteem, feel better about him or herself, have more self-control, probably enjoy food more than the bulimic person.

The couple who is using natural family planning is like the dieter, the contracepting couple are like a bulimic person.  The NFP couple appreciates the goodness of sex but refrains from fertile sex until they are prepared to have another child. The contracepting couple treats fertility as a great annoyance if not a bad thing and they are determined to have sexual pleasure without the consequences. They are engaging in an act and as they engage in it are trying to undo the consequences of it.

The couple using NFP treat the fertile period of the woman’s cycle somewhat like sacred ground. They revere it and will not enter that sacred space until they are prepared to accept the gift of a child.  If it is not a good idea for them to have a child at some time, they won’t engage in an action that amounts to inviting God to send them a child and at the same time rejecting that invitation.  NFP means that a couple is going to have sex during the infertile times and not during the fertile times.  Remember, there is no obligation to have sex during the fertile times.  If there is no obligation to have sex, those who are not having sex during the fertile times are not doing something wrong by not having sex during those times.  Remember that it is perfectly all right to have sex during the infertile days.  So a couple is doing nothing wrong in having sex during the infertile days.  We all know that couples don’t have sex for a lot of reasons, headaches, sporting events they want to watch on TV, visitors in the house.  Now if it’s okay not to have sex because you had a headache, or you want to watch a sporting event, or you have visitors in the house, it’s okay not to have sex because it’s not a good idea to have a child.  That’s a good reason.

Couples who teach natural family planning say a lot of people coming to them have no more openness to life than those who are contraceptive.  They just are sick and tired of the bad physical side effects.  But in using natural family planning they start to have more respect for their fertility.  They start to have more respect for each other.  They start to appreciate fertility as a gift.  And some of them will have more children and some of them won’t.  But they have a whole different appreciation of their fertility.  That suggests that NFP is a cure for using natural family planning selfishly.  Abstention is difficult.  When people want to have sex, they want to have sex.  If they don’t have a good reason for not having sex, it is difficult for them to abstain.  As they discuss their reasons for abstaining, they often discover whether they are being selfish or unselfish in their decision not to have a child.  So NFP has in internal mechanism for helping spouses realize their selfishness if in fact they are being selfish.

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