July 21, 2025
Get free PDF of New Questions, Old Answers: Catholic Morality and Natural Family Planning https://profide.io/nfp/
Articles on marriage debt
https://christianrenaissancemovement.com/2023/02/23/thoughts-on-the-marital-debt/
The way natural family planning is commonly taught does not adequately reflect the church perennial teachings of marital relationships, sexual asceticism, and the good purpose of contensence. Certainly, it’s wrong to say that NFP critics are the same as birth control. The church believes it is legal to use it under certain circumstances. However, the marriage preparation program and typical presentations by popular Catholic speakers actually resulted in encouraging couples towards habitual sin.
NFP discussions often fall into confusion as they cannot distinguish between two separate moral issues: avoiding marital relationships during fertile periods and engaging them, particularly during infertility. Regarding the first issue, the church said there must be sufficient reasons to deliberately avoid reproduction over a long period of time. But the second issue involves moral doctrines that we have virtually never heard of today. It is a venerial crime to have a particular purpose that must be intended in an act of a married couple, particularly a married couple. Purely for joy (Solam Boluptatemwith the phrase “Innocent Xi” of the Pope). The latter is without exception the teachings of all fathers and doctors in the church.
Considering this moral doctrine raises questions when one considers the encouragement of asceticism in the traditional marriage of the Church (and St. Paul).
Recreation Particularly related While trying to avoid conception? This question can be answered by questions about the essential end of sexual intercourse, about the meaning “purely for pleasure.”
The stakes in question are low in the sense that this is generally a matter of sin, In the sense that it endures an understanding of the very purpose of marriage and sexuality, and that habitual and intentional baerie sin is incompatible with the growth of the sacredness of marriage.
Moral theologian Eamon Clark joins the podcast to discuss his groundbreaking book (the first of this topic since the 1940s). New Questions, Old Answers: Catholic Morality and Natural Family Planning. His conclusion occupy the middle ground between the very strict positions of some of the great Catholic authorities of the past and the looseness and sensualism presented by today’s well-acclaimed and well-meaning popular speakers.
While this discussion is emotionally challenging, mentally and perhaps for many listeners, I would recommend you open your heart and listen. Because even if you no longer agree with some of the specific conclusions, you are still better informed of the teachings of the Church and have the ability to consider for yourself the ways in which you can seek greater holiness in marriage. I highly recommend Eamonn’s book, especially for anyone involved in running a marriage preparation program.
Eamonn Clark is a licensed moral theologian of the Catholic Church. He has STB and STL from the Holy College of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.
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Source: The Catholic Culture Podcast – catholicculturepodcast.libsyn.com
