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Why would you use this though? I can understand not wanting to do hormonal birth control, but thats not the only option. Im generally open to natural law argumentation, I just dont see why they would treat cycle timing differently from condoms or especially pulling out. The only relevant distinguishing factor is that, as a certain dissident rightist said, the days you cant are the ones youll want it most. I could see any combination of this being good/bad if it does/doesnt cause people to fail, but its not the argument any exception-makers seem to go with.
For secular people, it is largely driven by a dislike of pharmaceuticals. Hormonal contraception can have wacky side effects physically and mentally. IUDs can really hurt during placement and after. Copper IUDs have side effects too, even thought they're technically not hormonal.
People who fall in this bucket might not mind a condom or other barrier-based birth control from time to time, but people seem to like having the option to go au natural. Fertility awareness gives them this option.
Charting also can help diagnose and treat issues with the female reproductive system, if you can find a doctor who is trained to use it (often has the keyword Napro "natural procreation".) Common issues that can be identified and treated through bio-matching hormones that are administered at key phases of the cycle are polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), and other hormonal issues.
From a Catholic perspective (because let's face it, it's pretty much Catholics who see it this way), they look at it deontologically/virtuously versus consequence. If it's a matter of consequences, and Catholics are children-maximizers, the 100% assured way to avoid having kids (abstinence) would be immoral, but it's actually supererogatory.
So a Catholic looks at the actions themselves involved with Fertilty Awareness methods and doesn't see anything wrong with any of them.
Action 1: Know your cycle and communicate it with your husband - I don't see anything contrary to morals here. Self-knowledge is generally considered good, communicating with spouses is good.
Action 2: Have (married) sex on a day you know you are likely to have a kid - Believe it or not, a lot of people use Fertility awareness to increase the likelihood of children. Nothing immoral with that either.
Action 3: Not have sex on a day you know you are likely to have a kid - While there are some activities that are required or else a sin of omission is committed, it is not expected for a couple to have sex every day. Knowing that it is a fertile day doesn't change that. In fact, if someone is life-or-death-should-not-get-pregnant, then the TradCath (prior to Fertility Awareness) recommendation would be to avoid sex entirely.
Action 4: Have sex on a day you know you are unlikely to make a new life - Seems unlikely this action would be bad too. Otherwise there would also be warnings against having sex while pregnant or post-menupause, and there aren't.
I think it's more difficult to explain why hormonal birth control is immoral than it is to explain why Fertility Awareness is moral. But if I had to try to explain it, I would probably point to the reasons why some secular people avoid hormonal birth control - the action itself is purposely damaging the reproductive system, and Catholics are more strict on how much damage you can do to yourself before it becomes immoral.
As far as why barrier methods or pulling out is immoral, it changes the nature of the act, so that an actual act of sexual intercourse isn't happening - instead it's something like mutual masturbation. In Fertility Awareness, an actual act of sexual intercourse is happening.
Can confirm, my wife suffered from terrible unofficial but internet recognized symptoms from Paragard for years. She finally got the damn thing removed after a couple of bouts of intense, labor-like pains that landed her in the ER and surprise, surprise, no more of those or any of her other symptoms.
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Thank you. Most of this seems pretty reasonable, I have some disagreements from action 3 downwards. I think this is a superficial understanding of what an act is, and you would have trouble in other areas of ethics if you set aside background knowledge and intent this much. Consider for example a surgery that ends up lethal: what distinguishes accident from murder, and bad luck from negligence? What is the sin of gluttony, if knowing that youre satiated makes no difference?
You could similarly break the pulling out method down into steps, each of which "surely is allowed": 1) having sex is allowed under the right conditions 2) youre not obligated to keep the penis inside the whole time 3) if you just happen to ejaculate while its outside, thats an involuntary reaction. This assumes you can do it without jerking once outside, but thats possible and I doubt its supposed to make a difference.
From what I remember, the church allows nuns to use the pill in places where theyre at risk of being raped. So its allowed to be used, and even for its contraceptive purpose. Why? Presumably because they dont intend to have sex that way.
Would an intra-vaginal spermicide be allowed? What if its application moves further in time from the intercourse, in the limit to something like a copper IUD without side effects? You cant technology your way out of purposes, and the selling point of natural family planning is that it doesnt feel like technology.
I think you are saying intent matters. Intent does matter (edit: and i think I made that clear in the above comment when I talked about the subject knowing that they were likely/unlikely to get pregnant that day, and my comparisons were to other situations where it was possible/impossible to be pregnant). Someone having sex when not fertile intends to have sexual intercourse. Someone not having sex while fertile intends to avoid pregnancy by avoiding sex - the most normal way to avoid pregnancy imaginable.
I think there is a conflation between sexual intercourse and the possible results of sexual intercourse - or conception. Sexual intercourse is the ejaculation of a penis in a vagina. A lot of its moral significance comes from what sexual intercourse can do - it can make a new human life. But sexual intercourse is not in itself the making of a new life.
Sexual intercourse between two married people is morally allowed (and considered a fairly good thing) in Catholicism, even if it does not lead to conception. Intending to avoid making a new child is also morally allowed, in the sense that you can choose not to have sex.
(Edit to add: the reason why this would be wrong is not that there is no likelihood of pregnancy, but because it's not sexual intercourse.)
Perhaps to secular people - but then there are so many smart devices now that will do it for you. To Catholics, the selling point is that you are avoiding having a child by avoiding having sex, which is the most normal way to avoid conception imaginable.
I dont think this is considering intent properly. Theres a difference between doing something despite or because of an effect. I think what Im suggesting here is similar to the doctrine of double effect - and you have been arguing that because the "forseen unintended" case is ok, the "forseen intended" case is too.
How do you think acts and their proper form are determined? I thought that it was to do with purposes. Meanwhile your description taken at face value, without background knowledge of what you want it to mean, sounds like condoms are ok too. I suggest that thats not a coincidence: the principles youre using on this case are much more permissive than those that inform your general view.
Can you explain to me where? The forseen intended case of what? I'm worried that you're ascribing to myself a moral belief I do not hold, something like, "Sex is solely for babies" or something like that.
Let me make an analogy:
The point (telos if we're getting fancy) of a gun is to fire small ballistics.
The point of genitals is to have sexual intercourse.
The reason why firing small ballistics has large moral interest is due to its relation to killing people.
The reason why sexual intercourse has large moral interest is due to its relation to making human life.
Guns were made for the purpose of killing people.
Sexual intercourse exists evolutionaryily for the purpose of having babies.
Firing a gun can be done intentionally to kill people and for target practice/sport, etc.
Sexual intercourse can be done for making babies and for pair bonding and pleasure (for example, post menopause or when the woman is already pregnant.)
Using a gun for a reason other than to shoot ballistic missiles is suspect, because that's not what it's there for. Imagine someone trying to use a gun as a utensil, or to fire a wad of chewed bubblegum. It's weird and not quite right. Maybe not immoral, because a gun is just a human artificat made my humans to carry out our will. But it's weird, isn't it?
And perhaps if the gun was made by hand by someone who wanted a work of art at firing ballistics, the maker would weep to see the person they sold it to using it as a prop to keep up their wobbly chair. The maker wouldn't necessarily be upset to see the gun in a holster or on a wall, or to find out it never killed anybody. But they would be upset to find out someone poured maple syrup down the barrel.
Using genitals for reasons that do not end with sexual intercourse is suspect because that's just not what they are there for. The disconnect between a Catholic and some others is that non-Catholics might think of their bodies as their own, like in the sense of an artificat. It's another thing the nebulous "you" can manipulate. Catholics don't see our bodies as artifacts. They are something given to us, the physical expression of our eternal souls, and we can make our creator weep with what we do with ourselves.
If you're wearing a condom, you aren't having sexual intercourse in the sense a Catholic defines it. The penis is not ejaculating in a vagina. It's more like a kind of mutual masturbation. Please notice that I have not once argued that contraceptives are wrong because it avoids conception or that there is anything wrong about intending to avoid conception.
That said, I don't think the Catholic position on sexual morality will necessarily make sense to outsiders, in the sense most will feel they will feel the need to bind their consciences to it. As weird as it is, I have seen more than one person convert specifically because they felt the Catholics were correct on sex so strongly that the Church couldn't help but be correct in other things - but this is not the common path. Most people need to accept the Catholic claim on other things before accepting this one.
This reads, to me, like youre taking situations where non-conception is forseeable but not intended (pregnant, post-menopause), and arguing that its therefore ok with intent also.
The question is, what tells us that the sexual intercourse thats the point is exactly "ejaculation of a penis in a vagina" and not some related different concept with different boundaries? I think that would be very difficult to explain without tying it to the purpose of sexual intercourse. Im expecting something like "the evolutionary purpose of sexual intercourse is making babies, penis ejaculating in vagina is neccesary for that, therefore its nessecary to proper sexual intercourse".
Target practice generally still requires firing small ballistics. Pair bonding and pleasure dont require penis ejaculating in vagina. In fact, target practice doesnt always require them: there are "dry fire" drills to train the gross mechanics of handling the gun, and there are cartridge-shaped devices that make the gun shoot laser instead, to let you train things that wouldnt be safe with real bullets. Do you feel these violate the purpose of the gun? If no, why?
I think thats not how people use words, generally. "Penis ejaculating in vagina", as an ordinary english description, does not actually exclude using a condom. Your conclusion that it doesnt count does not derive from trying to apply that description, but from your knowledge of catholic ethics and what the answer is supposed to be. I think youve given a description that doesnt really describe your beliefs, and not noticed because its too intuitive for you.
I know. Im arguing that your reasoning against typical methods of contraception doesnt actually work, and that something more like the above would be needed. And I dont mean "work" in the sense that I dont feel bound by it, I mean you yourself would not be able to figure out which methods are and arent allowed based on the reasons you give, if you didnt already know what the answer was supposed to be.
Can you argue that it is not ok to intentionally avoid conception?
I figure that's the argument that you're used to expecting, so it's throwing you off that I'm not making it. There are lots of people who will use the Aristotelian-Thomistic Perverted Faculty argument, and you can go talk to those people if you like. Other Catholics like Pope St. John Paul II argue from "the personalistic norm" and semiotics. There isn't an official argumentation that Catholics have to use to defend sexual morality.
If you don't think sexual intercourse is the ejaculation of a penis in a vagina, what do you think sexual intercourse is? I think the definition of sexual intercourse is apparent by looking at the genitals and what they do together, just as you can look at a gun, a bullet, and someone firing a bullet and saying, "yeah, this is how they go together." You don't necessarily need someone to shoot and kill another person with the bullet to figure out that guns are for shooting. You don't necessarily need to have sexual intercourse and have a baby to figure out genitals are for sexual intercourse. The knowledge that these things can be consequences of the action might inform your understanding of the action, but the actions can be analyzed separate from their consequences.
True, there are cuddles and other things that can make pair bonding happen. In this part of the analogy, I'm just listing things that are known possible consequences of the action in question. Some possible consequences/results of shooting a gun is that it will hit or miss a target and that will create a feedback loop to help the shooter improve their aim. Some possible consequences/results of sexual intercourse is that it will make a baby or improve pair bonding. This is not an exhausted list of possible consequences of shooting a gun or having sexual intercourse.
The examples are Unidirectional and I'm not making the opposite argument that target practice necessitates the shooting of a gun or something like that. I'm not arguing that the consequences of the actions necessitates how the actions happen or anything like that.
Where does the ejaculate go? A vagina or a condom? If you poke holes in the condom so that ejaculate leaves the condom, then wearing a condom is fine in Catholic ethics.
No, because my point is about a problem with a combination of your views, not which direction to resolve it.
Theres a general sense of "this thing goes in here" that I think is apparent. But just from looking at it, I couldnt tell that "oral sex to right before orgasm, then sticking it in" is fine but "Sex with a condom" isnt. Those would be question marks, to be filled in by a more formal understanding. If you think its obvious, that might be because you know the answer already.
First, your descriptions says "in", not "into", so technically it doesnt matter. But I would say that if it is in the condom, it is also in the vagina. Yes, you can ask questions which sound similar to your original formulation and lead to different intuitions, because language can be sensitive to details like that - but again, you wouldnt know where and which of these reformulations to use, if you didnt already know the answer. And then what about a diaphragm? There it definitely goes into the vagina, just not the part where an egg might be.
I notice that youre mostly not answering my examples about what might or might not count. There are a lot of contraceptive methods, even if we only consider the ones that are actually used in the real world - but apparently none of them are acceptable to the church, no matter how close to conception their mechanism of action is, except various forms of "not having sex". Its very unlikely for a principle to act this precisely, without somehow refering to conception - this is why Im expecting some argument along those lines, not just because of what Im familiar with.
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Your metaphor is subtly broken, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.
No, by that logic, it's "using/having a gun for a reason other than shooting to kill [its primary purpose] is suspect" (so 'I'm just here to shoot targets because it's fun' is immoral and weird).
Thus, by that same logic,
"having sex for pair bonding and pleasure" is suspect.
Which is the Catholic position on sex.
It appeals to people who are given to being addicted to seeking sex, and Catholic Christianity treats everyone (both men and women, but the emphasis is traditionally more on men) as being in this condition by default. It makes sense that Catholicism draws in people that are aware they have problems with sex in this way, hence the assertion everyone does and that it's Godly for you to behave as if you were addicted to sex at all times[2].
Other denominations of Christianity, in particular the more Charismatic strains, treat dancing and alcohol/other drugs this way as well. Catholicism has a more measured response to the latter, but not for sex.
[1] Which forms one of the two prongs of the stereotypical Blue viewpoint on guns. They can't just be telling the truth, it has to be for some nefarious purpose. You'll recognize that rejecting that's true is also the [classical] liberal refutation of the Christian party line on the gays (and on those readings of 'fornication' and 'sexual morality' more generally).
[2] And if you're one of those men who tends to treat their partners like a human fleshlight during sex, then the smuggled assumption of "and that's bad" becomes trivially correct. Some (many?) men legitimately do have problems with this [source: I read the posts here], and when they do, following that rule is probably better for both them and their wives (and it forces them to have buy-in to the relationship through childbirth).
Of course, there's another answer in "well, just don't do sex that way lol" (and this approach is hinted at in a few other Pauline letters), but having "don't be fucking stupid lol" as the rule is about as effective as abstinence-based sex ed is at avoiding pregnancy for most people who [spiritually] require the structure of Catholicism in the first place, so...
Which passages do you have in mind?
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Where is this coming from? I really don't know what you are arguing against.
The disconnect is that you conflate sexual intercourse (i.e. PIV) with "firing the gun", when under your metaphor PIV would be shooting to kill (fulfilling the act's primary purpose) and non-procreative sex would be target practice (fulfilling a secondary, recreational purpose).
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