What is the difference between nfp and contraception

Both have the intent to regulate births, and responsible parenthood allows couples not to have more children than they can care for. However, the good intent of a couple is not sufficient to determine the morality of their act. For example, if two women wanted to avoid becoming overweight, one might go on a diet, and the other might binge and purge bulimia. Both may stay slim, but one exercises the virtue of temperance, while the other succumbs to gluttony and unnatural, unhealthy behavior. But when they do join as one flesh, they must not frustrate the purpose God designed that act to have.

The reason the Church denounces contraception is not because it is artificial. After all, the Church allows the use of countless artificial drugs and other technological advances that medicine can offer man. However, these are to be used to heal dysfunction and promote the proper functioning of the body as God designed it. The focus of Dr. Marra's argument is based on the teachings of Dietrich von Hildebrand and the documents of Vatican II's response to Christian marriage.

Humanae Vitae and St. Paul VI's Prophetic Words Mary Eberstadt In this presentation given at the fiftieth anniversary symposium of Humanae vitae , Mary Eberstadt reflects upon negative contemporary trends which attest to St.

Paul VI's prophetic cautions about a culture which accepts contraception. Charles J. Chaput, OFM, Cap. The presentation given at the fiftieth anniversary symposium of Humanae vitae, reflects upon the negative consequences of a culture which accepts contraception. In contrast, Archbishop Chaput points to the healing balm that is available to a people who live according to God's plan for married love and the gift of life.

Please note that the presentation begins after a short prayer and brief welcome by two previous speakers. You need both sides for them to be scissors.

If you take one side away, are they even being scissors anymore? Since life and love together make up the very essence of sex, contraception is only moral if it respects sex by keeping those main components unified. C ontraception fundamentally splits the essence of sex by separating life from love; it only ever seeks to avoid pregnancy. Contraception is embracing the act of sex while frustrating it and subverting it at the same ti me.

It is based on sexual self-control, which is necessary for a healthy marriage. There are times in any marriage when spouses have to put aside their desire for sex because of sickness, fatigue, travel, or other reasons. In a healthy marriage, love is shown in many ways, and not all these ways of showing love are physical.

In fact, to refrain from sex when necessary is itself an act of love. Because in effect the spouses then say to each other, "I did not marry you just for sexual pleasure. I married you because I love you.

You are a person, not an object. When I have sex with you, it is because I freely choose to show you my love, not because I need to satisfy an urge.

This actually can strengthen the couple's sexual life. When the spouses know that they can abstain for good reasons, they also come to trust each other more, and avoid the risk of treating each other primarily as objects of sexual pleasure rather than persons. Artificial birth control, on the other hand, gives free reign to the temptation to make pleasure the dominant element, rather than virtue. It encourages couples to think that sexual self-control is not necessary.

It can encourage them to become slaves to pleasure. Both spouses need to know when the fertile days of the woman's cycle have arrived, and then decide together what to do depending on whether they are trying to avoid or achieve pregnancy. To think that such communication and cooperation make the sexual act less pleasurable because less spontaneous is simply not true. To know with certainty what stage of the cycle one is in can increase the pleasure and spontaneity of the act, since the spouses can ignore worries about contraceptive failure or side-effects of the pill.

Artificial birth control, besides introducing these worries, also puts the "contraceptive burden" on the shoulders of ONE, not both, spouses.

It makes it possible for a spouse to cut off the fertility of the act, even without the consent of the other spouse. It can introduce division into the marriage.