e.g., intentionally having sex only when a woman is infertile.
No — intentionally choosing when to have sex is not the same as intentionally sterilizing the act.
Natural infertility is not something humans create; it’s part of the way God designed the female cycle.
“Closing the act to life” refers to a human intervention that alters the act itself — like contraception or sterilization.
Having sex during a naturally infertile time does not close anything. The act remains exactly what God designed it to be: unmodified, unsterilized, and ordered toward life in its nature.
Trust me bud, “the act” is very much the same whether you’re using contraception or not.
The physical motions may be the same, but the moral act is not.
In Catholic moral theology, “the act” doesn’t mean the physical movements — it means the moral object: what you are actually choosing to do.
With NFP, the couple performs the marital act as God designed it, unaltered and unsterilized.
With contraception or sterilization, the couple performs the same physical motions but deliberately changes the act’s procreative structure.
Same physical behavior? Yes.
Same moral act? No — because one act is unmodified, and the other is intentionally closed to life.
God designed the marital act with a procreative structure.
God designed women to have fertile and infertile periods.
NFP respects that structure.
Human contraception and sterilization deliberately alter it.
That’s the difference you keep ignoring.
This is often a debate among faithful Catholic Christians. Is it a sin to abstain from sex for a time? No. And when you do come together, you are open to the possibility of life (even if you do not desire it at that season).
When you separate the pro-creative from the unitive (artificial means of contraception) or the unitive from the procreative (IVF, surrogacy, etc.) then it is intrinsically bad.
I would compare it to a Christian who says, “God says feed the hungry, cloth the naked, visit the imprisoned, and help the sick etc.” This does not mean that you desire for God to put homeless people right outside your home (What some faithful Catholic Christians propose when it comes to the Marital act). Is it wrong for a Christian to move from a place where they see homeless people everyday outside their home to a place where there are fewer chances that they will encounter homeless people, but are open to helping individuals in need if it occurs (faithful Christians who use NFP)? It would be wrong to just kill all the homeless people (abortion and abortifacients). Analogies fall short. How might I present the barrier method to this? You do something unnatural to block the homeless individuals from your home like build a wall or make a hostile environment for them to implant where you live.
Short enough for you?
But are you, when you are intentionally choosing only to have sex when pregnancy is not an outcome? After all, NFP is regularly touted as being 97 to 99 percent effective. There’s nothing procreative about that. Seems like an attempt to wrest from god’s hand the power over life.
I don’t see a distinction between these things. If you do, fine; do what you will. As long contraception stays safe, legal, and available, I don’t have a problem with you on this front, but I’m not inclined to agree with anything the church says on the matter.
As you point out, there is a 3-99 percent chance of getting pregnant, but if God wanted to, He could 100 percent get you pregnant if He wanted to. You are preventing Him form doing so.
In my analogy, if you move somewhere where there it is highly unlikely that you will encounter homeless individuals, it does not mean that it could never happen (unless you have a sniper who takes anyone out any homeless person or you build a wall to keep someone from entering).
I find it ironic that you are arguing the case that some faithful Catholic Christians make, but to justify the use of unnatural and intrinsically evil means of contracepting.
You do not see the difference between being open to life, even in times when life is less likely to occur, and actively using artificial means to prevent life? No difference at all?
Going back to my analogy. Do you see a difference between moving to somewhere where you are less likely to encounter homeless individuals, but open to helping individuals in need and killing homeless people? You see no difference? What about the former and building a wall or creating a hostile environment for homeless individuals to live? No difference?
Perhaps you are only looking at the desired outcome and not at the means, but the means are very important to whether something is moral or immoral. Then again, do you even believe in objective morality?
I do not. Most forms of birth control are similarly effective, btw.
Do you see a difference between moving to somewhere where you are less likely to encounter homeless individuals, but open to helping individuals in need and killing homeless people? You see no difference? What about the former and building a wall or creating a hostile environment for homeless individuals to live? No difference?
Of course I see the difference, but that analogy is totally bogus.
I think a better analogy would be moving specifically to avoid homeless people. You can say that you’re still open to helping people in need, but you intentionally removed yourself from a situation where that was possible.
Perhaps you are only looking at the desired outcome and not at the means, but the means are very important to whether something is moral or immoral. Then again, do you even believe in objective morality?
lol. I think it’s hilarious that a little piece of latex could possibly be the difference between a moral and immoral act.
Let’s take each individually. Some create hostile environment in order to be effective. Some cause chemical abortions (killing human life). And some separate the unitive aspect of the Marital act from the procreative.
Right. Which is still better than killing homeless individuals or actively creating a hostile environment for them.
You are separating the unitive aspect of the act, which goes against God’s design for the act. It is disordered. When Protestant Christians (and sadly some Catholic Christians) embraced contraception, they can no longer see the errors of same-sex acts. Why? Because both remove the unitive and/or the procreative from the act designed by God. What is the difference between a Married couple who uses the barrier method and two same-sex couples doing what they do? There really is no difference. So, what happens is, the “Christian” who contracepts, must now buy the lie that there is nothing wrong with same-sex acts either.
You say that you are not “religious.” Do you believe in God? And if you do not believe in God, what is your reasoning for not believing in God? Is it because God has created certain natural laws and you would rather live as though there is not objective truth? Perhaps it is because you have been hurt by someone in the Church or it is the “hypocrisy” that you see in others, but do not see in yourself. Or maybe you have consumed a lot of anti-thesist content online and find their arguments convincing?
Or is it that you do believe in God, but more in a new-agey type of god-force; not as a Person, but more as energy that unites all, in spite of morality? So, it doesn’t really matter if you kill human beings, because the energy will just manifest itself somewhere else, because the energy is constant. Or do you believe in a sort of morality, like karma, that is more based on how you make others feel, but is less defined, and more subjective? And if any of these, why do you hold these views?
What I am getting at here is that I am not convinced that you really see something wrong with couples who practice NFP, but that you are only seeing a hypocrisy, because you want to justify other such behaviors. Am I wrong? And if I am wrong, what makes me wrong? If everything is subject and there is no objective truth, then who are you to tell me I am wrong?
Of course I don’t see anything wrong with NFP. I think it’s a little backwards, given all the other options available for contraception, but ultimately it’s just the hypocrisy of it that bugs me.
Whatever “other behaviors” you have on your mind is your business. I don’t have any interest in “justifying” them because they don’t need any justification. They just are.
There is no hypocrisy. The difference is that NFP is not playing God, but rather cooperating with God’s design, where as the alternatives are playing gods and are contrary to God’s design.
As far as NFP being backwards, some say the same thing about breast-feeing, but it used to be the “progressives” wo argued in favor of the natural over the unnatural when it comes to the feeding of babies. That pendulum has swung back the other way, however. But, what someone believes about something does not change the truth of something (objective truth).
There are some who believe that it is morally acceptable for scientists/bilogists to inject lone-star ticks (which are native to Texas) with a disease-causing substance that makes human beings allergic to eating meat and air-dropping them in other regions of the Country (in the name of climate change). This is both unnatural and immoral (even if they believe the ends are justified). By the way, lone star ticks are different than deer ticks that are natural to our area. Lone star ticks hunt their prey, where as deer ticks wait for an animal or human to walk by and pick them up before they find an area to feed.
When human beings play gods, they do not realize the destruction they are causing. What you believe is progressive is truly regressive. Human beings have been trying to play gods since the fall in the Garden of Eden.
What the hell are you talking about? Lone Star ticks naturally pass Alpha Gal to their hosts; no one is injecting it into them. They are spreading naturally because of climate change.
I have to seriously question your reading comprehension and critical thinking skills.
There is an actual video (not A.i. generated) of a biologist name Dr. S. Matthew Liao justifying using “human engineering” to achieve ends in the name of climate change.
You are correct in that the lone star ticks are not being injected, but rather already carry Alpha Gal. After re-watching the video, Dr. Liao states this as fact. I will admit that I was incorrect in my claim, because I believe in the truth.
In spite of my error, do you believe it would be morally okay for biologists to inject ticks to genetically manipulate human behavior involuntarily?
Hypothetical: Let’s say that we know that there is an insect that when it bites a human being, they may become allergic to atheism. I would still be against using such means to convert individuals involuntarily to theism.
Side-note: Climate Change has become a religion in of itself. I know you said that you are not religious, but you might be after all?
Here is another video of Dr. Liao giving a TedTalk 8 years ago arguing in favor of such genetic modification, though back then he presented it as voluntary (“like a nicotine patch”), but in the video from two years ago, he talked about individuals who are unwilling to comply.
Look at what they did during Covid (which was likely caused by gain-of-function, but I digress). Getting injected with messenger RNA was at first voluntary, though they tried to use enticements, fear, and shame to get individuals to get injected. Then they tried to make it mandatory. Now there is talks of slipping it into our foods unknowingly. This is evil.
Let’s say you buy into the over-population hoax that was popularized in the 60’s and 70’s, would you be okay with biologists putting things in our food that cause sterilization? Or injecting insects with a substance that sterilizes human beings?
First, they (the so-called “experts” and “wealthy elites”) make it voluntary, then they make it mandatory, and then they do it secretly (and claim it was voluntary, because you made the choice to eat certain foods that they genetically modified or you chose to go out in the wilderness and got bit by an insect that we injected or relocated to your area). I know you think that you are more wise and intelligent, and you can believe what you want, but you will be the one who grows old, childless, and enslaved.
Childless
I have children, actually. Plural.
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What you’re saying is nonsense. NFP is intent on avoiding conception. No different from AFP. What is it that you’re not intelligent enough to understand about this?
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Avoiding pregnancy is an intention.
But intention alone does not determine the moral act — the moral object does.
With NFP, the couple either abstains or engages in the marital act unaltered.
With contraception or sterilization, the couple performs the act while deliberately altering its procreative structure.
Same intention? Possibly.
Same moral act? No.
And no — even a vasectomy cannot prevent God from giving life.
Scripture shows repeatedly that God is sovereign over fertility.
The moral issue is not whether humans can stop God — they can’t — but whether they choose to cooperate with His design or deliberately alter the act He created.
So, if all you have is a category mistake and an ad hominem, then there isn’t anything meaningful left to discuss.
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One more time; what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. You can engage in all the incoherent word salad you want. It doesn’t change the fact.
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Labeling standard philosophical distinctions as “word salad” just confirms you don’t have a logical counterargument
So if it’s not sinful despite the intent, does that logic hold true for other sins? If I intended to tell a lie not what I say turns out to be actually true, I haven’t sinned right?