You assign all sorts of motives to my article … that is quite unfair. I explicitly said that NFP couples need to be careful not to be selfish … but, even if they are selfish, they are still not “contracepting” (and it is a serious thing to accuse someone of a sin that they are not committing).

Well, why don’t you go back to HV and read these words form Pope Paul VI — “The two cases [NFP and contraception] are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT” (HV 16).

Not “a little different”, not “different in some respects”, not “different in most circumstances”, not “different in act, but the same in intention”, but “completely different”.
Could it be any clearer than that?!

I can appreciate your perspective as a convert. Anything is better than what you described. But, my entire extended family has been Catholic as far back as we’ve been able to trace and my immediate family was the first NFP family that I know of.
As a young adult, I was particularly precocious and knew about NFP even when the closest I came to hearing about it in school was the health teacher joking about Rhythm as the “method to use if you don’t care about becoming parents.” It made me mad. But while what you say should be true from an objective standpoint, life at home left me sad. The TOB literature and little calendars left on the coffee table and hearing our parents “doing it” at night knowing there would be no siblings left indelible scars.
My late father’s desire for more children never materialized into anything but a few hints and I’m convinced that my brother’s inability to bond with a “man who wouldn’t be a man” led to his SSAD and his suicide attempt. Were it not for the prompt intervention of our parish priest and the wonderful people of Courage, I fear he would have succeeded. In any event, he’s chaste.
Just some food for thought. God Bless+

Father, thank you too for your contributions.

Now, to be clear, I did not say that NFP could never be used sinfully or selfishly … I said it could never possibly be used contraceptively. Some couples do sin when they use NFP, but they do not contracept, nor do they have a “contraceptive mentality”.

Further, I am convinced that NFP will often help a couple to grow into greater openness to children.
But you are right, there are times when it is abused (though, in my pastoral experience, this is rare).

Peace to you! +

As far as our backgrounds influence us, we can’t change where we grew up or how, but we do have free will to make our own choices. I grew up in a protestant family with only 3 kids. My parents used contraception and then permanent sterilization. I am Catholic today, but I LOVE marriage and love children and hope to have a large family. I’m not going to blame all of my inclinations on my family, I am responsible for my life today.

Married couples are advised to be fruitful and multiple. We are advised to be generous with the gift of life. We AREN”T being told to have as many children as humanly possible so that we contribute the maximum number of children to heaven (correct me if I am wrong Father!). After all, we are responsible also for the health, safety, and education of children, not just begetting them.How that works out in different NFP using (or nothing-using) families I can’t say. However, as I pointed out in my comment, I know many people who use NFP with very large fdamilies. They use NFP to space births so that their pregnancies/bodies/mental states are babies are healthier.

Father- Sorry for conflating BC with NFP in my earlier comment, I didn’t mean to, I am just not very clear in my writing sometimes. Not one of my gifts.

My head spins when I try to work through the morality of NFP especially when I hear conflicting logic from people 10 times smarter than me. But don’t you think it’s a little odd to suggest there’s a false dichotomy at work here?
On balance, has NFP led to more or less souls for Heaven?
Take this anecdotal evidence from my own family. My grandmother was the 14th of 14 children. My mom was number six in a “rhythm section of six.” And I’m the second and last nfp child of my parents.

I have to struggle very hard not to fault NFP (I don’t think I can judge), but neither my brother nor I have ever shown any inclination toward marriage and personally we can’t stand to be around children. We are, however, very generous financially around our many nieces and nephews.

Just a few thoughts. Father, what do you think?

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for this article. I know I’m very late to this discussion, but I hope that you will still receive this comment.

It is very sad to me that the issue of NFP is so polarizing for Catholics. I don’t even mean between between Catholics who are for artificial contraception and those who are against it. I mean Catholics who practice NFP and those who either A) Believe that NFP is wrong somehow or B) Catholics who believe that NFP should only be used in dire circumstances.

It takes courage and wisdom to speak out about NFP…It sometimes seems that Catholics who are against it or believe it should only be used in dire circumstances can be extremely judgmental and hurtful. I appreciate your support of couples like my husband and I who are using NFP to space births after having three children in three years. It is true that if I would have kept having a child every year that I probably wouldn’t have died, but my marriage and my mental state would have suffered greatly. Thank you for your support!

Hope that makes sense … I’m not disagreeing with the priest, I’m only emphasizing a different aspect of the issue.

peace! +