Natural Family Planning International

The neo-Malthusian Paul Ehrlich predicted in the late Sixties’ book, The Population Bomb, that by this time much of the world would be decimated by famine.  In fact, he set some doomsday timetables well within the 20th century.  When his predictions repeatedly proved to be wrong, he refused to admit it; he just postponed his doomsday and sold more books.  However, now that informed people recognize that the real world population “problem” is the depopulation of First World countries, they know that doomsday scenarios are simply propaganda to decriminalize anti-people campaigns of the First World against developing countries.  However, there are still many uninformed people, some quite pushy, and what follows may help you when you encounter them.

The sociological argument or rationalization runs something like this.  1. Today there are great sociological difficulties in our world.  2) The economy of the rich nations seems geared for a family of not over three children.  The economy of poor nations leads many to starvation.  3) Man has a duty to better his whole world.  He has created part of the problem by reducing the natural death rate.  4) He has the physical power to limit population through contraception.  5) Therefore it is permissible, perhaps even required, to practice contraception in the present sociological circumstances.

The argument is attractive to those who have been brainwashed by a neo-Malthusian media.  Let us suppose that every statement up to the “Therefore” is true, even though they aren’t.  The problem is that the conclusion is by no means contained in the preceding statements.  The argument assumes what needs to be proved, i.e., it assumes that contraception is a morally permissible way of expressing married love.  To prove to yourself the error of the “therefore” statement, simply substitute other means of population control in statement 4: “He has the physical power to limit population through ________________.”  Fill in abortion, genocide, infanticide, the killing of the incurably sick, the killing of the old, the sterilization of non-contracepting parents, etc.—anything you regard as abhorrent.  Such substitution enables you to see very clearly that what remains to be proved is that any one of these is morally acceptable.  That is, the existence of external pressures is no sure sign at all that either contraception or any other method of population control is morally permissible.

Those who parrot this sort of argument typically point to the change from a farm economy to huge cities.  They point out that having a number of children is not the economic asset in the city that it was on the farm.  That’s true in the short run; we don’t know about the long run even in First World countries with advanced social security systems.  If the systems go bankrupt, it may once again be the case that children are the greatest economic assets of aged parents.  And, while it is true that there has been a mass migration from the farm to the city in North America, it is also true that cities aren’t exactly new.  I suspect that even in the days of ancient Greece and Rome a large family was much more of an asset on the farm than in the city.

The point is this: When an argument describes only a problem and proposes a solution, such an argument says nothing at all about the moral worth of the solution.  The end does not justify the means.  An alleged population problem does not justify any particular means offered as a solution.
John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant

Previous articles have illustrated how some of those who dissent from the teaching of Humanae Vitae have used arguments that would get them laughed out of town if they used them with any subject other than birth control.  This article illustrates another silly argument and then shows that what the Church allows (natural family planning) is truly in accord with the best of science and the scientific method.  The next three paragraphs are quoted almost verbatim from my book, Sex and the Marriage Covenant, pp. 286-287, (Ignatius 2005).

The argument is typically phrased along these lines.  “Until recently man has not known about efficient means of contraception.  New medical knowledge has given us extremely efficient ways of contraception, especially the Pill.  God gave man a brain to use it to control nature.  Therefore God permits contraception, and intelligent man should use the means most efficient for him.”

The worth of the argument is easily seen by substituting another value.  “Until recently man has not known about efficient means of mass killing.  New scientific knowledge has given us extremely efficient ways of mass killing, especially the hydrogen bomb.  God gave man a brain to use it to control nature.  Therefore God permits mass killing and intelligent man should use the means most efficient for him—in this case the H-bomb.”

No one, I hope would subscribe to the “logic” of the second argument.  Everybody, I hope, would say that the argument says nothing about the morality of mass killing and that use of our new scientific knowledge has to be evaluated according to moral principles.  The fact that we know how to do something, even if it has taken the work of geniuses to discover it, does not mean that it is good to do it.  And that is equally true about contraception, the use of the Pill or any other device.  Knowledge of newer and more efficient means of contraception, even though the work of brilliant scientists, is of itself no indication that it is good to practice contraception, either in the older forms such as the Onan’s spilling of the seed (Gn 38:6-10) or the newer forms such as the Pill.  The argument from science is simply no argument.

On the other hand, both forms of natural family planning are in full accord with good science.  Ecological breastfeeding encourages close mother-baby interaction.  It is scientifically beyond question that mother’s milk is the best physical nutrition for infants and that full-time loving care from their mothers is the best emotional nutrition for infants and young children.  It is scientifically well established that ecological breastfeeding spaces babies, on the average, about two years apart.  Systematic natural family planning makes use of our knowledge about human fertility, and the daily observation of the signs of fertility is a classic example of the scientific method—the systematic observation and recording of recurring events.

Please do what you can to let people know about Natural Family Planning so they will have what they need if and when they need it.
John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant

In the mid-Sixties, a pro-contraception argument that appealed to some ivory-tower theorists was called the Argument from the Totality of the Marriage.  In fact, its theological proponents raised this as a principal argument in a Note attached to the report of the Papal Birth Control Commission as follows:  “Not every act which proceeds from man is a complete human act.  The subject of morality for St. Thomas is always the human act whose master is man (determined from a knowledge of the object or end).  But this human act which has one moral specification can be composed of several particular acts if these partial acts do not have some object in itself already morally specified.  And this is the case for matrimonial acts which are composed of several fertile and infertile acts; they constitute one totality because they are referred to one deliberate choice” (emphasis added).
(The wording about the human act means this: Eating a meal is a human act, but each time you automatically pick up a fork during that meal would be only a partial human act.)

Pope Paul specifically rejected this argument in the encyclical, Humanae Vitae.  After a difficult, 83-word sentence, he concluded:  “Consequently it is an error to think that a conjugal act which is deliberately made infecund and so is intrinsically dishonest could be made honest and right by the ensemble of a fecund conjugal life.” (n. 14)

A more blunt reply would have been this: Some people are asking us to believe them that the marriage act is not a complete human act.  They are asking us to believe that each and every marriage act does not have a divinely given purpose.  But they err.  In each marriage act, the married couple are called to reaffirm their original marriage covenant.  Just as each act of receiving Holy Communion is a complete human act, so each marital communion is a complete human act.

The value of an argument is frequently illustrated by substituting a different act while using the same logic.  In this case, use adultery.  The argument would then read that the combination of faithful and adulterous acts make up one totality, and the adulterous acts subsume their morality by the overall fidelity of the spouses.  This line of rationalization would question why adultery is wrong.  And indeed, one of the leaders of dissent later went on record as saying that the biblical norms were simply out of date.

The proponents of this argument also conveniently ignore the world’s interest and even obsession with sex—and with rationalizing every departure from the God-given norms.  This illustrates that it is written large in the heart of man that God has a plan for human sexuality.  Every effort to rationalize perversions of his plan highlights the underlying reality that sex ought to be exclusively a marriage act and that every marriage act has a divinely given purpose to renew their marriage covenant for better and for worse.  And “worse” includes the “imagined worse” of possible pregnancy.

It is hard to believe that such rationalization could actually be taken seriously, but it illustrates how badly the birth control controversy has affected the thinking of otherwise rational people.
John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant