De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Right, now I have your attention... Caroline Farrow has written a really interesting reflection on the Catholic theology of the family and fertility. It raises many important points which will resonate with Catholics who are in engaged in the melee of family life. For example, the term Natural Family Planning could have negative connotations with contraceptive over-tones. Indeed, it is a fact that such secular institutions as the NHS and the BBC both refer to NFP as a method of contraception. Caroline points out that some non-Catholics consider that NFP is a method of contraception and to say it is not is merely to enagage in semantics. Of course, Catholics argue that there is nothing in any way contraceptive about natural family planning because a couple practicing NFP do nothing at all to prevent procreation or to render the act infertile either before, during, or after sexual intercourse has taken place . The sexual act may in fact be infertile (i.e. it may not be possib...

The Church has always extolled fertility as a good of marriage despite this being somewhat contrary to the modern secular understanding of fertility as either a nuisance, some sort of disease to be treated with medication, or alternatively as a ‘right’. Today it sometimes appears that we spend the first half our lives desperately trying to avoid pregnancy, and the second half trying desperately to conceive. The perspective offered by the Catholic Church may be one you actually find refreshing, surprising, relevant and clear, especially when explained through the lens of modern teaching. The ‘good’ of fertility consistently upheld and taught by the Church speaks to our physical reality, without making excuses, acknowledging the complimentarity of our bodies and the good of the sexual inclination we experience. Through these realities, a husband and wife, as sexually differentiated beings, are able to unite themselves to one another in the deepest way possible in the conjugal act...