CathInfo.com

Wow, we have a high number of lay popes in this thread. It would appear many people feel strongly about this issue, for various personal reasons. I clicked on Yeti's link -- the only contribution from an actual priest in this thread -- to see what he had to say about the issue. He made many good points, and I found his arguments convincing. And I'm not normally a fan of Fr. Cekada.

Note the bolded part in Fr. Cekada's introduction. That part is absolutely true. Moral theology IS very complex and that is why we mock "armchair theologians" and "lay popes" who attempt to pontificate with less than a Cracker-Jack-box degree in Moral Theology. They push something as dogmatic, when it's mere opinion, like "Which is better, Pepsi or Coke?" and about as worthless. EVERYONE has their own opinion. And unless you have a theology degree, these private, laymans' opinions are EQUALLY VALID.

My advice stands: ask your TRADITIONALLY-TRAINED, valid Traditional Catholic priest (privately) about this issue, if this question affects or interests you.

Following random armchair theologians on CathInfo, your chapel, or anyplace else is worse than simply following what you FEEL is right. At least in the latter case, you could say you were following your conscience or something.


Natural Family Planning: On Recent Condemnations of NFP
Rev. Anthony Cekada
NOTE: In Fall, 1998 the “Voice Crying in the Wilderness” newsletter, a widely-circulated traditionalist periodical, published an article condemning Natural Family Planning (NFP).The following is a letter to the Editor, written by Father Anthony Cekada. In addition to offering the traditional Latin Mass in Cincinnati and Columbus, Father Cekada is professor of canon law and pastoral theology at Most Holy Trinity Seminary, Warren, Michigan.
To the Editor:
This afternoon I spoke with a parishioner who was very upset over your article on Natural Family Planning (NFP).
            I had to assure her (as I will probably have to assure others) that your comments were —and there is no diplomatic way to put this — presumptuous, ignorant and dangerous.
            First, you have no business even offering an opinion on the morality of NFP, still less condemning it as sinful in a publication that you send out to tens of thousands of people.
            One may indeed (as you do in other articles) catalogue, dissect and condemn the Modernists’ doctrinal errors, since so many of them are obvious and have already been condemned. But the morality of NFP is an issue for moral theology — the branch of theology which analyzes right and wrong, virtue and sin.
            The subject matter of moral theology is vast and enormously complex, covering all the general principles of morality and all their particular applications. In the seminary moral theology is one of the major courses. It requires three or four years’ worth of classes conducted several times a week to cover all the material.
          Despite the length of this course, it can  only impart to the priest-to-be the mere “basics” for the confessional and counselling. Priests who wrote on moral issues before Vatican II — and it was only priests who were permitted to become moral theologians — always had advanced degrees. Their books were carefully checked by their religious superiors and diocesan censors.
            If moral theologians did any speculative writing, it never appeared in popular publications such as yours.
            You have no training in, and no experience dealing with, a complex moral question like NFP. We traditional Catholic priests have studied moral theology and we apply it in the confessional and in counselling. Leave such matters to us — and leave our people alone.
            Second, although moral theology manuals emphasize that NFP is not a topic one should discuss in sermons or mass-circulation publications, The Angelus, The Remnant, and your own publication have spread some dangerous errors on the issue, and it is necessary that someone correct them, lest Catholics wrongly conclude they are committing mortal sin.
The moral aspect of NFP and periodic continence may be summed up as follows:

1.      General Principles.

• Spouses are free to choose whatever time they want to exercise their marriage right or abstain from exercising their marriage right by mutual consent.
• Conversely, they are not obliged to exercise their right during fertile periods, or abstain during sterile periods.
• Deliberately to limit marital relations to sterile periods to avoid conception is morally lawful in actual practice, provided the requisite conditions are met.
• Family limitation without good and sufficient reason involves a degree of moral fault.
• Periodic continence is morally permissible because it fulfills the other ends of marriage (mutual love and fidelity, alleviation of concupiscence) and because it does not physically hinder the natural processes of conception.

2.      Requisite Conditions.

• Mutual consent or willingness of the spouses.
• Ability properly to observe periodic continence without danger of sin.
• Sufficient justification or cause, just and grave, either medical, eugenic, economic, or social, which justifications are outlined by various theologians.

3.      Gravity of the Various Obligations.

• The issues involved with NFP were not fully discussed by pre-Vatican II theologians.
• The gravity of an obligation (if any) to exercise the marriage right during fertile periods was not clearly established.
• Neither was the gravity of the unjustifiable use of periodic abstinence.

Do not presume that the defection of the post-Vatican II hierarchy gives you the right to settle all this, and then tell Catholic couples they are committing sin. Your article was ill-advised and very harmful. I suggest you issue a retraction and an apology to your readers.

Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii (# 59), Dec. 31, 1930: “For in matrimony as well as in the use of the matrimonial right there are also secondary ends, such as mutual aid, the cultivating of mutual love, and the quieting of concupiscence which husband and wife are not forbidden to consider SO LONG AS THEY ARE SUBORDINATED TO THE PRIMARY END and so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved.”

Casti Connubii is part of the Magisterium. The Magisterium teaches Catholics directly, therefore, we do not need to consult theologians who two years later all apostatized with V2.

As I said already, there is no circuмstance in which the primary ends of marriage can be subordinated to the secondary, which NFP necessarily does. If you must not have a baby you must abstain and can't risk getting pregnant in spite of your unnatural birth control scheme (NFP).

Pope Pius XII taught that natural family planning is permissible under certain conditions. This teaching was addressed to midwives initially, but was later placed in the AAS, by which it was addressed to the universal Church. All Catholics must assent to papal teaching on faith or morals when it is addressed to the universal Church.

But Pope Pius XII was not the first pope to teach this. It was addressed by the Holy Office as far  back as the mid-19th century.

Fr. Cekada also refuted this absurd idea that NFP is a form of contraception.

And from the first article I quoted above:


Indeed.

Total hogwash.  Pius XII was clearly speculating in front of a bunch of midwives, and you can see from his language that he was not teaching or imposing any kind of teaching on anyone.  And the Holy Office verdict has been grossly misinterpreted.  We've gone through both of these before.

Cekada is dead wrong, as he his about other things.

We have only one Magisterial teaching on the subject, in Casti Conubii, where Pius XI clearly taught that it would be sinful to subordinate the primary ends of marriage to the secondary, and not a single individual who regurgitates Pius XII's speculation has ever expalined how engaging in marital relations for the secondary ends while deliberately attempting to exclude the primary does not constitute such an inversion of the ends.  If that doesn't invert the ends, then nothing does.

Pius XII did lots of things, like install Bugnini to begin his liturgical experimentations, opened the door to evolution, permitted the first Ecuмenical gatherings, and appointed nearly every single Modernist bishop who later brought us the glories of Vatican II.  Pius XII actively helped usher in the Vatican II era.