Natural Family Planning Properly Understood

Gary L. Morella

Professor Janet Smith of the University of Dallas in "The Moral Use of Natural Family Planning", Why Humanae Vitae Was Right, explains the differences between contraception and Natural Family Planning (NFP), showing why the use of NFP is moral whereas the use of contraception is not. In particular, Smith concentrates on why NFP is in accord with the Natural Law, thereby making it wholly reasonable and beneficial for marriage in accord with the Pope’s apostolic exhortation to families, Familiaris Consortio, which says the following. 

In the light of the experience of many couples and of the data provided by the different human sciences, theological reflection is able to perceive and is called to study further the difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle: it is a difference which is much wider and deeper than is usually thought, one which involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality. The choice of the natural rhythms involves accepting the cycle of the person, that is the woman, and thereby accepting dialogue, reciprocal respect, shared responsibility and self-control. To accept the cycle and to enter into dialogue means to recognize both the spiritual and corporal character of conjugal communion, and to live personal love with its requirement of fidelity. In this context the couple comes to experience how conjugal communion is enriched with those values of tenderness and affection which constitute the inner soul of human sexuality, in its physical dimension also. In this way sexuality is respected and promoted in its truly and fully human dimension, and is never "use" as an "object" that, by breaking the personal unity of soul and body, strikes at God’s creation itself at the level of the deepest interaction of nature and person. (sec. 32)

We will take a closer look at what the Pope is saying here in regard to Natural Family Planning properly understood. In order to do this, the Pope’s words must be seen in the light of the metaphysical aspect of the Natural Law, not just the biological.

The ethical methodology underlying NFP can be described as follows. We are free to choose what we are to do and, by making free choices, to determine ourselves and give to ourselves our identity as moral persons. But we are not free to make what we choose to do to be good or bad. We can choose badly or well. We choose well when we choose in accordance with the truth. This truth, ultimately, is God’s Divine and Eternal Law, which is His Natural Law written on the hearts of man, given out of His unconditional love for our human existence with the final goal of spending an eternity with Him in Heaven. Thus, God made us capable, because we are intelligent beings, of participating in His Divine and Eternal Law through His Natural Law.

William E. May, in a treatise on the ethics of NFP, discusses the first moral principle or truth meant to guide our choices. He says that this is expressed, religiously, by the twofold commandment to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves. It is important to note, however, that we can love our neighbors and ourselves only by being willing to respect and reverence the real goods perfective of human persons and aspects of their full-being, goods such as life itself, the handing on and care of new human life, knowledge of the truth, the communion of persons in marriage, friendship and peace and justice. May makes it clear that we violate this primordial truth whenever we adopt by choice proposals to damage, destroy, or impede anything that is really good, any real good of human persons. We are not, as Paul teaches us in Romans 3:8, to do evil so that good may come about. The end doesn’t justify the means, a basic tenet of Catholic moral theology rooted in the Natural Law.

May briefly describes the understanding of human morality (ethics) underlying NFP as follows.

NFP is made possible by fertility awareness, the awareness that it is the married couple, together, who are fertile and that although the husband is continuously fertile (unless there is some pathology) the wife is not. The couple can then choose to regulate conception by freely choosing either to engage in the conjugal act when both husband and wife are fertile or to abstain from it when both are fertile and to engage in it when the wife is not fertile. If they have serious reasons not to cause a pregnancy (e.g., the wife’s health, the serious economic problems a new pregnancy might cause), they realize that it would not be prudent to engage in the conjugal act at a time when both husband and wife are fertile and consequently they choose to abstain from expressing their love for one another through the marital act at this time. Choosing to abstain is surely not immoral; in no way by doing so do they choose to damage, destroy, or impede anything good. And obviously they are not choosing to do anything evil when they do choose to engage in the conjugal act during the wife’s infertile period, because the conjugal act is good, not evil. If they acted in this way for selfish reasons if they did so because they refused to accept the gift of life, then they would be acting immorally because of the ends motivating their behavior. But if they act in this way because they have serious reasons for avoiding a pregnancy here and now, they are surely not acting immorally.

May observes that a good definition of contraception, one in accord with the truth, is provided by Pope Paul VI in his Encyclical Humanae Vitae, where he described it as "every action, which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes either as end or as means to impede procreation." In other words, what one does the "object" specifying one’s choice and making it to be the kind of choice it is when one contracepts is to impede deliberately the beginning of a new human life. Consequently, a married couple contracepts because, freely choosing to engage in a genital act reasonably thought to be the kind of act through which a new human life can come to be, they do not want that new human life to come to be. They therefore choose to do something precisely to impede procreation, i.e., to keep that possible new life from coming into existence. Should it come to be, despite their efforts to prevent its coming into being, it would come to be as an unwanted child.

What is being lost sight of here is that human beings do not engage solely in sexual acts for the preservation of the species in an animalistic sense, but rather do so to populate Heaven in a metaphysical understanding of the Natural Law in a supernatural sense. This is in accord with Genesis, the very reason for our creation, to know, love, and serve God in this world, and to spend everlasting life with Him in the next. We are procreating for Heaven, cooperating with God in His creation. We are allowing God to be God, which makes the evil of contraception and the ramifications of it so clear in the contraceptive mentality of the age which will not allow God to be God. This is a mentality that has replaced God with the god in our mirrors. The sobering words of Jeremiah come to mind, "I knew you before you were in the womb." To be responsible for not allowing God to put you in the womb is not something that we should look forward to upon drawing our last breath in this life prior to judgment in the next.

What this shows us is that contraception is an "anti-life" kind of an act. It is a freely chosen kind of act through which one sets oneself against the good of human life in its transmission. Contracepting couples thus set their "hearts," their persons, against the good of human life: they do not want to let it be. The Natural Law is all about seeking the "good", and as such, it is violated by contraception.

May makes the following concluding observations.

Contraception, in addition to being an anti-life kind of act, is also an anti-love kind of act, one incompatible with the sincere self-giving that is meant to characterize marriage and the marital act. When a married couple contracepts, they in effect refuse to give themselves unreservedly to one another in the act proper to marriage the marital act. In fact, through contraception they change their freely chosen genital act from being one of true conjugal love a giving and receiving to a different kind of human act. As John Paul II has perceptively pointed out again and again, "the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads ... to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality."

Precisely because married couples who practice NFP do not want to contracept, i.e., adopt by choice the proposal to impede the beginning of new human life, and precisely because they do not want to make freely chosen acts of intercourse anti-loving, anti-spousal, they choose to practice NFP so that they can embrace in the marital act when it is a time to embrace and abstain from it when it is not the time so to embrace. Their ethic is an ethic of love, an ethic that respects fully every true good of human persons and refuses to do anything intentionally to damage, destroy or impede what is really good.

There are clearly profound differences in the understanding of the moral life operative in the defense and practice of contraception, an act that is both anti-life and anti-love, and in the defense and practice of periodic continence, a practice rooted in a love and respect for life and for the integral meaning of the conjugal act. The moral ideology behind contraception generates the "culture of death"; the philosophy and theology behind the practice of periodic continence is an integral component of the "civilization of love."

Professor Smith reminds us that the basis for the Church’s teaching in Humanae Vitae is that marriage has certain ends or purposes that those who marry are obliged to pursue and that these ends or purposes are the goods of marriage, i.e., they are the goods that marriage is meant to help people achieve and enjoy. We need to remember that the Church teaches that marriage has procreation as an end because children, in order to prosper, need to be raised in a stable home environment and cared for by both their mother and father; marriage, then, is for the well-being of children as much as for the well-being of spouses. Thus, to refuse to have any children would be a violation of the nature and purpose of marriage; it would be to use marriage for something other than its natural end. Bringing forth new life is a great good, first, for the good of the child conceived who has the potential of enjoying many other goods, in particular, eternal life with God in Heaven; secondly, for the spouses who enjoy the meaningful lives made possible by children and the many joys that accompany parenthood; the children lead their parents to Heaven and vice-versa, and thirdly, for society which needs individuals to work for the common good. Since these goods are so great, spouses should be willing to foster such goods.

We live in a world where such reasoning is the object of scorn and ridicule. The modern way of thinking considers childbearing an "option" to the point where there are married couples who proudly and conspicuously proclaim their voluntary childless state - often for the reason that children would impede their pursuit of various avenues of self-fulfillment. Smith points out that the modern view, however, is an anomaly; people in nearly every age, culture and religion have generally considered children to be a great good and something that spouses naturally want. Those who voluntarily remained childless have been considered peculiarities. But many moderns think it irresponsible to bring more children into the world since the world is, in their view, such a "messed up" place. Here again are the mistakes being made when the aforementioned metaphysical aspects of the Natural Law in regard to procreation are totally forgotten.

As Pope John Paul II interprets the creation story in Genesis, God created man and woman and their sexuality to expand the opportunities for love in this world. The body, in John Paul II’s view, has a "nuptial meaning", a meaning that entails total self-giving; and total self-giving entails being open to the gift of children.

Let us further note that in the Catholic Church, canon law holds that if spouses enter marriage with the intent never to have children, their "marriages" are invalid, i.e., they are not marriages at all. The Church bases this restriction not on some arbitrary fancy nor because it has some Machiavellian scheme of filling the earth with Catholics, but on the very nature of marriage. Exhortations about the blessing that children are and about the obligation that parents have to have children if there are no good reasons not to, e.g., the most serious of threats to the life of the mother, are commonplace in Church documents. Casti Connubii (echoed by Gaudium et Spes, Humanae Vitae and Familiaris Consortio) speaks of the child being the first among the blessings of marriage. After citing the admonition in Genesis to "increase and multiply", Casti Connubii states:

How great a boon of God this [having children] is, and how great a blessing of matrimony is clear from a consideration of man’s dignity and of his sublime end. For man surpasses all other visible creatures by the superiority of his rational nature alone. Besides, God wishes men to be born not only that they should live and fill the earth, but much more that they may be worshippers of God, that they may know Him and love Him and finally enjoy Him forever in heaven; and this end, since man is raised by God in a marvelous way to the natural order, surpasses all that eye hath seen, and ear heard, and all that hath entered into the heart of man. From which it is easily seen how great a gift of divine goodness and how remarkable a fruit of marriage are children born by the omnipotent power of God through the cooperation of those bound in wedlock.

Pope Pius XII speaks explicitly about the obligation to have children but teaches that the obligation is not absolute; that is, there may be moral reasons for the spouses to elect not to fulfill that obligation. Pope Pius XII’s instruction on the nature of the obligation to have children is important in a NFP context because he makes it clear that there are moral responsibilities that come into play when using NFP. He says the following.

... if the act [of sexual intercourse] be limited to the sterile periods insofar as the mere use and not the right is concerned, there is no question about the validity of the marriage. Nevertheless, the moral licitness of such conduct on the part of the couple would have to be approved or denied according as to whether or not the intention of observing those periods constantly was based on sufficient and secure moral grounds. The mere fact that the couple do not offend the nature of the act and are prepared to accept and bring up the child which in spite of their precautions came into the world would not be sufficient in itself to guarantee the rectitude of intention and the unobjectionable morality of the motives themselves.

The very first line of Humanae Vitae picks up on this description of the proper mission of spouses: "God has entrusted to spouses the extremely important mission of transmitting human life . . . " Familiaris Consortio speaks at great length about children as a gift and lauds the essential role the family plays in advancing the goods of civilization and in the process of evangelization and sanctification. Perhaps one line best sums up the thrust of the document: "The future of humanity passes by way of the family".

John Paul II teaches that far from fostering sensuality, the proper practice of NFP will enhance the loving relationship of the spouses and make their acts of sexual intercourse ones more expressive of love and acts more authentically expressive of total self-giving. The use of NFP, far from bringing about a state of sensuality, is more likely to assist one in gaining control of one’s sexual appetites, in appreciating the deeper meanings of sexual intercourse and in being better able to express them. Throughout his writings, John Paul II speaks to this point. Consider this passage:

If conjugal chastity (and chastity in general) is manifested at first as the capacity to resist the concupiscence of the flesh, it later gradually reveals itself as a singular capacity to perceive, love and practice those meanings of the "language of the body" which remain altogether unknown to concupiscence itself and which progressively enrich the marital dialogue of the couple, purifying it, deepening it, and at the same time simplifying it. Therefore, that asceticism of continence, of which the encyclical speaks (HV 12), does not impoverish "affective manifestations," but rather makes them spiritually more intense and enriches.

Those who have the virtue of self-mastery are better able to ensure that their acts of sexual intercourse are more truly acts of love-making rather than acts designed merely to satisfy sexual urges.

The Pope in the previously referenced section from Familiaris Consortio is telling us that the sexual act is sacred, intended only within the confines of a Holy Sacrament. It does not treat man and wife as instruments to be used solely for their self-pleasure in a biological sense but is indicative of the intrinsic self worth of man and wife as creations of the Almighty in accord with His Divine Plan for procreating Heaven, not earth. This is a supernatural dignity that far transcends any natural counterparts. Accordingly, man and wife in fulfilling their obligations to God must further map this supernatural dignity to the fruits of their consummated marriage by adhering to God’s Natural Law, which totally excludes any type of artificiality in relation to the proper understanding of the sexual act. We do not "use" our spouses in a selfish sense; we are in communion with them, what the Pope refers to as entering into a dialogue with them, in the most self-giving sense recognizing the supernatural goods of marriage for which the Sacrament was primarily instituted.

The Church recognizes that faith enables reason and reason reinforces faith in its teaching on NFP. It is this Grace enabled Faith that allows us to see the "big picture" in regards to what here-to-fore have been held to be very difficult questions, but are really not so if we allow God’s light through His Church to shine into our lives as married couples. Per the title of one of Professor Smith’s publications, Humanae Vitae definitely needs to be revisited along with all of the other magnificent teaching documents from the Church on sexuality. The reward for a careful reading and adherence to the Magisterium of Holy Mother Church is eternal life. The consequences for ignoring these teachings are never more manifest than in daily news reports that show the culture-of-death in control of almost all of our major institutions, to include our government. What should give us all pause to think is that this control leads to a final consequence, too horrible to contemplate, eternal death. There is much talk about being pro-choice these days. God Almighty in His infinite mercy allows us the ultimate of choices, to be with Him or against Him. His equally infinite justice, which of necessity must follow else the entire concept of mercy is meaningless, awaits those who choose poorly.