God made marriage. God Himself created the marriage relationship and ordered sexuality exclusively toward marriage. The Bible and sacred Tradition make it clear that God intends sexual intercourse to be, at least implicitly, a renewal of the marriage covenant. That is, in God’s plan, sexual union is exclusively a marriage act that 1) reflects and renews, at least minimally, the faith and committed love of the marriage covenant and 2) is not deliberately closed to the transmission of life. Pope John Paul II incorporated this basic understanding of the marriage act into his Letter to Families ten years after he completed the lectures that make up his Theology of the Body. “In the conjugal act, husband and wife are called to confirm in a responsible way the mutual gift of self which they have made to each other in the marriage covenant” (n.12.12, his italics). In practice, these concepts are easily expanded to explain more fully the marriage covenant. Every engaged and married couple deserves to learn this basic understanding of the marriage covenant and how it applies to love and sexuality.
God made marriage for family. The right kind of NFP course will help couples understand that marriage is for family and that they are called to be generous in having children. NFP is not “Catholic birth control.” Specifically, the NFP course should transmit standard Catholic teaching that couples need a sufficiently serious reason to postpone or avoid pregnancy in order to use systematic NFP. Some NFP promoters want to avoid the term “serious reason” (HV 10 and 16) and substitute “just cause” (HV 16). While both terms are used in Humanae Vitae, I think that in the present circumstances “just cause” is psychologically inadequate if used separately instead of as a supplement to “serious reason.” “Just cause” terminology carries the risk of sounding like “just ’cuz” as in “just ’cuz we don’t want the inconvenience of kids or more kids.”
What about the decision to do ecological breastfeeding? Aside from wanting to do what’s best for the child, no reasons are needed to use ecological breastfeeding with the hopes of a year or more of natural infertility. In fact, considering all the health benefits of EBF to mother and baby, breastfeeding ought to be the default decision—the normal standard of care, and couples should need a sufficiently serious reason not to breastfeed.
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John F. Kippley
Battle-Scarred: Justice Can Be Elusive