Childless
I have children, actually. Plural.
2 Likes
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.
1 Like
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.
1 Like
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?
No — because in Catholic moral theology, the sinfulness of lying is located in the moral object itself, not in whether the statement accidentally turns out to be true.
Lying is wrong because the chosen act is “asserting as true what I believe to be false.” That remains sinful even if the statement later turns out to be factually correct.
But your analogy assumes that the intention to avoid pregnancy is sinful in itself. It isn’t. The Church explicitly teaches that avoiding pregnancy can be a morally legitimate intention.
The moral difference lies in the means chosen:
-
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 object? No.
That’s why your lying analogy doesn’t parallel the situation — it treats a morally neutral intention (“avoid pregnancy”) as if it were equivalent to an intrinsically disordered act (“asserting what I believe to be false”).
So if two Catholics got married but never intended to have children, that’s not sinful?
Marriage is ordered to procreation, so if two Catholics enter marriage while positively excluding children, yes — that is sinful and it actually invalidates the marriage.
But that is completely different from a validly married couple prudently avoiding pregnancy for serious reasons. Avoiding pregnancy is not sinful in itself.
The moral object is different:
-
NFP = abstaining or engaging in the marital act unaltered
-
Contraception = performing the act while deliberately altering its procreative structure.
So your scenario is about rejecting the procreative good of marriage — not about NFP.
In both cases the moral act is the same and on each occasion the intent is the same: to have sex and avoid pregnancy.
Or is it a difference of degrees? In which case, I have to ask exactly where it becomes sinful to avoid pregnancy. A year? Five years?
The moral act is not “have sex and avoid pregnancy.”
The moral act is either:
-
abstaining or engaging in the marital act unaltered (NFP), or
-
performing the act while deliberately altering its procreative structure (contraception or sterilization).
Avoiding pregnancy is an intention, not a moral object.
The morality depends on the means, not the length of time.
So using NFP to make sure you never get pregnant is not sinful then? Which is it?
The moral act is not “have sex and avoid pregnancy.”
The moral act is either:
-
abstaining or engaging in the marital act unaltered (NFP), or
-
performing the act while deliberately altering its procreative structure (contraception or sterilization).
And importantly, NFP never “ensures” one doesn’t get pregnant unless the couple abstains. NFP does not block, suppress, or alter fertility; contraception and sterilization do.
Avoiding pregnancy is an intention, not a moral object.
The morality depends on the means, not the length of time.
What do you think the moral object is in NFP versus contraception and sterilization?
I’m just trying to get this straight here. If a couple uses NFP to avoid pregnancy entirely and never have children, then the moral object is the same as a couple using NFP to merely defer pregnancy, right? So the difference between a sin and a neutral act is the intent, right?
And importantly, NFP never “ensures” one doesn’t get pregnant unless the couple abstains
It’s as effective as other forms of birth control, so that’s not really a valid argument.
What do you think the moral object is in NFP versus contraception and sterilization?
It’s all the same to me. You’re the one making the arbitrary distinction.
1 Like
No — the moral object is the same in both cases because the act is the same: abstaining or engaging in the marital act unaltered.
What changes is not the moral object but the circumstances and the intention, which determine whether the use of NFP is prudent or selfish.
The sin is not “avoiding pregnancy.” The sin is either:
-
positively excluding children in the marital consent, or
-
choosing disordered means like contraception or sterilization.
And effectiveness is irrelevant to the moral species.
NFP does not block, suppress, or alter fertility; contraception and sterilization do — even if both can fail.
So no, the difference is not intent.
The difference is the moral object:
-
NFP = abstaining or engaging in the act unaltered
-
contraception/sterilization = deliberately altering the act’s procreative structure.
Avoiding pregnancy is an intention, not the moral object.
The morality depends on the means, not the duration or the effectiveness.
It’s only “all the same” to you because you don’t accept the moral framework that defines the distinction.
In Catholic moral theology, the moral object is the chosen act itself — not the intention and not the outcome.
So within that framework, NFP and contraception/sterilization are different moral acts because the chosen act is different:
-
NFP = abstaining or engaging in the marital act unaltered
-
contraception/sterilization = performing the act while deliberately altering its procreative structure
You don’t have to agree with that framework, but it isn’t arbitrary.
It’s simply a different moral system than the one you’re using.
You keep dodging my question. A couple using NFP to avoid pregnancy indefinitely. The moral object is “unaltered” sex. That’s a sin, right? You said earlier that a couple with no intent to have children is sinning.
Another couple using NFP to merely put off having kids until they’re ready has the same moral object when they have sex. But that’s not a sin, right?
So what’s the difference?
1 Like
No — the difference is not the intent.
In both cases the moral object of NFP is the same: abstaining or engaging in the marital act unaltered.
What makes the first couple’s situation sinful is not the act, but the will to exclude children entirely — which contradicts the meaning of marriage itself.
What makes the second couple’s situation morally acceptable is that they remain open to children in principle, even if they prudently delay for a time.
So, the moral object is the same in both cases.
What differs is whether the couple rejects the good of children in their marital consent, not whether they use NFP.
What makes the first couple’s situation sinful is not the act, but the will to exclude children entirely — which contradicts the meaning of marriage itself.
That sounds exactly like intent to me.
1 Like
It sounds like intent, but it isn’t the same thing.
The will to exclude children entirely is not an intention attached to a particular sexual act.
It is a defect in the marital consent itself — a rejection of one of the essential goods of marriage.
That’s why it’s sinful even if the couple never has sex, never uses NFP, and never uses contraception.
Intentions apply to individual acts.
Consent applies to the very nature of the marriage.
So the moral object of each NFP act is still the same (abstaining or engaging in the act unaltered).
What differs is whether the couple’s marital consent rejects the procreative good entirely — and that is a separate moral issue from NFP.
If a couple vows never to have children, that sin exists even if they never have sex at all — because the sin is in the marital consent.
That proves the sin is not in the sexual act.
It is in the marital consent.
This is why the Church says the marriage is invalid:
the couple is refusing one of the essential goods.
You’re free to think the Catholic framework is nonsense, but that’s not an argument.
You asked what the difference is, and I explained it using the actual categories Catholic moral theology uses: moral object, intention, and consent.
If you reject the framework itself, then of course the distinctions won’t make sense to you — but that doesn’t make them arbitrary or incoherent.
1 Like
Whatever you have to do keep those plates spinning, I guess
1 Like