Contraception Vs. Natural Family Planning
Fr. Brian Carpenter
Originally posted on 4/25/2010

I was recently asked by a reader of this site to offer some insight as to why the Church condones Natural Family Planning but remains opposed to more commonly used methods of birth control, such as condoms and pills. This issue is quite complex, so I will try my best to explain Catholic Teaching on this topic.

To understand this teaching, it is important to have a theological understanding of human sexuality. Unlike what our secular society may claim, sex is not merely about fun, nor is it something to be taken lightly. It is indeed sacred. This is why sexual intercourse is to be reserved to a man and woman in a committed marital relationship. In marriage, the husband and wife are to be images of God’s love. Sexual union is one expression of this. God’s love as we know is total self giving, in marriage husband and wife are to give themselves completely to their spouse. In this way, they reflect the self-giving love of God. Furthermore, God’s self-giving love is procreative. In the life of the Trinity, we can say that the love between the Father and Son is so powerful that “creates” (and I am using this term by analogy, not in a heretical sense) another person – namely the Holy Spirit. While technically not created, the Holy Spirit can be described by the bond of love between the Father and Son, a bond so strong that it is indeed properly a third Person in the Trinitarian relationship.
In marriage, the self-giving love of a couple is to image the self-giving love of God. And indeed, our human sexuality makes this possible. Not only does a couple become physically united, but also there is an opportunity for procreation, that is, to have children. With this understanding in mind, let us now explore the issue at hand – family planning.

The Catholic Church has no problem with the notion of family planning per se. However, like many things in life, She recognizes that there are moral and immoral ways to go about planning a family. Because the Church highly values human sexuality as a gift by which we can model and reflect the love of God to the world, she has articulated certain principles to uphold the dignity of the conjugal act. The first is that this act is to reflect God’s mutual self-giving love. Any form of sex that does not do this makes a mockery of something that is quite sacred. This is why the Church has been very outspoken about issues such as rape, prostitution and lately internet pornography. Each of these violates the dignity of individuals, and the sacred nature of human sexuality. In no way do they reflect mutual self-giving love.

The issue when it comes to methods of artificial contraception is that artificial contraception, too, fails to reflect self-giving love. This is even true if it is used within the context of marriage. You may wonder how this can be. The answer is quite simple, by using artificial contraception in the context of marriage, a couple is NOT engaging in self-giving, but a form of withholding. The act ceases to be about total self-gift, and instead says something to the effect of, “I give you everything except this one intimate aspect of my life – my fertility.” By withholding fertility from one another, the couple fails to become total gift, and instead becomes partial gift. In doing so, they have changed the meaning of the marital act. It ceases to be about total self-gift, and now has introduced an element of selfishness. By doing this, it takes something that is sacred, human sexuality, and profanes it. That is to say, it defaces the image of total self-gift by introducing selfishness, or at the very least, self-withholding.

So why is Natural Family Planning (NFP) different. It is different because it never seeks to rewrite the meaning of the marital act. Rather, it works by restraining from sex at certain times, and engaging in it at other times. While you can read many reports on the benefits of NFP, to use such reports as claims of its moral goodness would be misguided. The benefit of using NFP over artificial contraception has nothing to do with its moral value (nor do failure rates or side effects of artificial birth control have anything to do with is moral value). The real issue is one of theology, and what we are theologically expressing when we engage in certain acts. NFP is a method that allows a couple to space children, while engaging in sexual intercourse in such a way that when they do not reconstruct the meaning of the act in which they are engaging. Artificial contraception is much akin to “playing house” in that there seems to be a desire for intimacy, but this desire is make-believe. By this I mean that it lacks the quality of total self-giving, and as such is an incomplete desire for intimacy, or a desire that is partially tarnished by self-withholding.

Some may object that NFP can be a form of self-withholding as well, as it involves refraining from intercourse at times. It is true that NFP can be used in immoral ways, such as if a couple were to use it to avoid having children all together (one of the purposes of Marriage is to allow for the birth of children God willing (not couple willing)). However, it can also be used morally. If a couple is using this to space children rather than to say “we will never have children” then the couple is engaging this in a moral manner. How can this be if they are avoiding sexual intercourse all together in order to avoid having children? The answer is quite simple. A couple that is using NFP is not avoiding sexual intercourse all together; they are only avoiding it at certain times. There is no moral mandate for a couple to have sexual intercourse on a daily basis. So by refraining from sexual intercourse on certain days, the couple is not changing the meaning of an act. That is to say the couple that chooses to not engage in sexual intercourse today is not changing the meaning of sexual union. They are not introducing selfishness into the marital act. The couple using artificial birth control does just that. For this reason the Church condemns artificial birth control, and proposes that couples interested in spacing the birth of children consider Natural Family Planning as a morally viable alternative.

If you would like more information about NFP, visit the US Bishop's Website for Natural Family Planning.