[Question:]{.underline} Can couples decide for themselves when they are able to use NFP?
[Answer:]{.underline} Natural family planning is the intentional and exclusive use of the sterile part of a woman’s menstrual cycle for marriage relationships, in such a way that a child is not conceived. The Catholic principles for the resolution of this question are to be found in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which states that “the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of children”, so that if anybody would deliberately exclude the right to acts in themselves apt to engender children (Canon 1081, 2), including by the use of NFP, then the marriage would not only be illicit, but also invalid, as Pope Pius XII declared in his discourse to midwives of October 20, 1951.
The Pope goes on to explain that if the limitation of marriage to the sterile periods alone refers not to the right, but only to the use of marriage, then it clearly does not invalidate the marriage. The question of the licitness or morality of such a practice is going to depend upon the intentions of the married couple:
“The moral licitness of spouses acting in such a way is to be affirmed or denied inasmuch as the intention to constantly observe these periods is founded or not on sufficient and certain moral motives. The simple fact that the spouses do not pervert the natural act and that they are ready to accept a child who, despite their precautions would come into the world, does not suffice alone to guarantee the rectitude of the intentions and the absolute morality of the motives themselves.
The reason for this is the marriage obliges to a state of life which, if it confers certain rights, also imposes the accomplishment of a positive work in relationship with the same state [= children]. In this case, the following general principle can be applied, according to which a positive duty can be omitted if grave reasons, independent of the good will of those who are bound, establish that the fulfillment of this duty is inopportune…and cannot in justice be demanded”.(Ib.)
The Pope’s conclusion is very simple. A grave reason is required to exempt a couple from their duty of contributing to the good of society and the Church by having children. A light motive, or some personal reasons, such as the inconvenience of a pregnancy, or the desire to pursue professional formation, or to space out children, does not suffice. The Popes continues: “To always and deliberately use marriage in such a way as to exempt oneself from its first duty without a GRAVE reason would be to sin against the very meaning of conjugal life” (Ib.)
The Pope goes on to list the “serious reasons” that can exempt a couple from this positive obligation of having children, and can thus be used as the grave reason for the exclusive use of the sterile period or NFP, which he lists as “medical, eugenic, economic and social” reasons, emphasizing that if these or “similar grave reasons” do not exist “according to a just and reasonable judgment”, then the use of NPF is illicit and sinful.
From these considerations follow two important reasons why the spouses themselves cannot determine with certitude whether or not the method of NFP is licit in their particular case:
i) Nobody is a good judge in his own case, on account of the natural tendency to give undue weight to personal considerations, which are of a light nature and consequently not sufficient to justify the use of NFP. When the Popes requires “a just and reasonable judgment”, he is asking for an expert in judging moral questions. This is the role of the priest, and in particular a pastor of souls, whose duty it is to direct his faithful on how to best live their Catholic lives, and how to avoid both mortal and venial sin. It would be, to say the least, presumptuous, for an individual or couple to think that they could make such a judgment on their own. As the saying goes; ‘A person who choses himself for a spiritual director, choses a fool’.
ii) Matrimony is a sacrament instituted for the good of society and not for the two spouses themselves. The positive duty, from which a couple can only be exempted for grave reasons, concerns society as a whole. It is not something that concerns just the couple, but being a sacrament is under the jurisdiction of the Church. Given that the exemption from this duty concerns society as a whole, it is not a decision for a couple to think that they can make without reference to anybody else. The advice of medical, psychological and financial professionals may very well be required, as to the existence of a grave reason, and finally of the priest in making the decision of prudence.
The priest’s authority in such a case is not a strictly canonical one, as given to him by the Church’s law. It is a moral authority, as of the confessor or spiritual director, who guides a person how to save his soul, either in the confessional or outside in spiritual direction.
The attitude of the post-conciliar church to this question is radically different. A small difference in principles leads to a great difference in conclusions. The difference in principle concerns the ends of marriage, expressed in precisely the opposite order as in the traditional code, and without any hierarchy of primary and secondary: “Marriage … is ordered to the good of the spouses and to the engendering and education of children” (Cn 1055, 1 of the 1983 Code). The consequence of this is that the marriage consent is no longer defined as being ordered to acts in themselves apt to engender children, but simply as a mutual giving (Canon 1057, 2). The ordering of marriage primarily to the good of society is entirely omitted, due to a new and personalist conception of marriage - as if it were primarily for the two individuals themselves. According to this conception NFP is always permissible and never illicit, and no reason is required to use it - personal preference sufficing.
Is it possible to reconcile these apparently contradictory opinions, according to the hermeneutics of continuity that Pope Benedict XVI has made the goal of his Papacy? In order to have a clear idea, let us simply listen to what Pope Pius XII had to say a little later on in the above-mentioned address to midwives, speaking of the contary error of personalism, that inverts the two ends of marriage, placing the good of the spouses as the first end, and that of children as a secondary end:
“This manner of judging…is a grave inversion of the order of values and of ends that the Creator himself established. We are faced with with spreading of a collection of ideas and feelings directly opposed to the clarity, profoundness and seriousness of Catholic thought…The truth is that marriage, as a natural institution, in virtue of the will of the Creator, as for its first and intimate end, not the personal perfection of the spouses, but the procreation and education of new life. The other ends, which doubtless also willed by nature, are not on the same level as the first end, much less on a superior level, for they are essentially subordinate to it…”
“It was precisely to cut short all uncertainty and all the deviations that threatened to spread their errors with respect to the hierarchy of the end of marriage and their reciprocal relationships, that we ourselves made a declaration on the order of these ends (March 10, 1944)…and that the Holy See in a public decree declared that one cannot hold the opinion of certain recent authors, who deny that the primary purpose of marriage is the procreation and education of children, nor that of those who teach that the secondary ends are not essentially subordinate to the primary end, but equivalent and by the very fact independent ends” (April 1, 1944).
There can be little doubt that the post-conciliar church has embraced this error of personalism that falls directly under the condemnation of the Holy Office from just 20 years before Vatican II, that the two are irreconcilably opposed, that a hermeneutics of continuity is impossible and that one has to chose. If one choses NFP for personal or light reasons, or if one denies the need for a prudent judge to help in discerning truly grave reasons that exempt from one’s duty towards society, than one has opted for the post-conciliar church, and can no longer truly call one’s way of thinking profoundly or even truly Catholic.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.