Denver, Colo., Jul 24, 2018 / 01:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Ramping up to the 50th anniversary of Humanae vitae, a Catholic professor analyzed the encyclical’s guidance on responsible parenthood- discussing when a couple might be open to more children, and when they might choose to delay openness to new life.
Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical explained that “with regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time.”
The encyclical said that couples may never licitly use artificial contraception, though couples may use their awareness of a woman’s natural fertility cycle to determine whether to engage in potentially procreative acts; this is ordinarily referred to as “natural family planning,” or NFP.
But what is a “serious reason?” How should couples discern when to be open to children, and when it might be prudent to wait?
Dr. Kevin Miller, a professor of Franciscan University of Steubenville and a bioethics consultant for the online NFP program of Marquette University College of Nursing Institute for Natural Family Planning, discussed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical with CNA.
Miller said that he has very rarely witnessed examples of practicing Catholics- those using natural family planning methods- abstaining selfishly from procreation. More often, he said, he has seen couples struggle with scrupulosity about openness to new life.
“I sometimes run into this idea that there is this crisis in the Church today of couples using NFP for bad reasons, for selfish reasons, or for inadequate reasons to avoid procreation. Honestly, I’m not seeing that.”
“When I’m dealing with people who are using NFP, I actually witness more cases in which there is a significant underestimation of the seriousness of a situation than I do situations in which there is a problem of overestimating the seriousness of the situation.”
“Serious reasons” for using NFP to avoid conception, Miller said, are not limited to life-and-death situations.
The professor said that years before Humanae vitae’s publication, Pope Pius XII issued two addresses: one to Italian midwives and one to an Italian family association. He said the statements, both released in 1951, further clarify the Church’s use of the word “serious” in this context.
“Humanae vitae uses that language- ‘serious reasons.’ I think it ought to be interpreted in continuity with what Pope Pius XII had said 17 years earlier.”
Pius “referred to ‘serious reasons that not rarely occur,’” said Miller.
Reasons can be “serious in the sense of not just a trivial reason…[but Pope Pius XII] indicates that that can happen commonly,” he said.
Miller also pointed to the language used by John Paul II regarding family planning. He said the late pope’s word choice leaned towards “unselfish reasons.”
“In other words, you get the idea that if a reason is an unselfish one, if it doesn’t have to do with hedonistic wishes or something like that, then it’s probably a serious reason.”
In his encyclical, Pope Paul VI gave four broad categories that qualify as serious reasons to avoid potentially procreative acts – medical, psychological, economic, and social reasons.
Miller said if the medical or psychological risks of pregnancy are more than trivial, they qualify as serious reasons. This could mean a physical or mental strain on the mother, he said, but also health issues for other members of the family.
Using NFP to attempt avoiding or delaying pregnancy is acceptable “if having another child, at least for a time, is going to impose significant health risks on typically the mother, but possibly on some other family member,” he said.
“Maybe there is already a child in the family who has health problems who would be harder to afford to care for that child if you have another child,” he added.
Miller also pointed to the economic factors that could qualify as serious reasons to delay pregnancy through natural family planning, among them the likelihood that additional children would restrict a family’s basic necessities, including food, shelter, clothing, and education.
“One way I like to look at it would be to say if having another child would put the family in the sort of economic situation that if it were the result of, let’s say, a low wage would be called an unjust situation by the Church. I would say that counts as a serious economic reason for using natural family planning.”
He said the last category, social reasons, is not as clearly defined by the Church, but he said it might include those situations in which a family could better serve the common good by having a “somewhat of a smaller family.”
“Some families, in response to the teachings of the Church in places like Familaris consortio, wish to serve society in some special way, maybe like reach out to the needy in society,” said Miller.
These reasons, he said, certainly do not require couples to refrain from procreation, he said, noting there is no flowchart or algorithm for decision-making.
Rather, he said the decision should be made with honesty and prayer, using moral reasoning over moral rationalizing.
“First of all a couple has to make sure they are being honest with themselves, make sure they are reasoning honestly about their situation and not rationalizing,” he said. “Secondly, I would also say…do your moral reasoning in light of your relationship with God. It should be a prayerful as well as an intellectually honest discernment.”
Miller cautioned that couples ought “not to be scrupulous in these matters” if prayer and honesty accompany their decision. He said that unlike artificial contraception, NFP calls couples naturally to be sacrificial.
“I would also even say that, if a couple used natural family planning, the self-mastery and the discipline, that the Church has said comes with use of natural family planning, the more it is likely that as time goes by they will develop even more the virtues of generosity and selflessness.”
[…]
““As a founding principle of our country, we have always welcomed immigrant and refugee populations, and through the social services and good works of the Church, we have accompanied our brothers and sisters in integrating to daily American life,” Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the US bishops’ Comittee on Migration, said Jan. 2.”
Someone needs to take a remedial US history class.
SOL,
Which part of US history did you think they need a remedial class on?
Who are most Americans originally if not immigrants?
I’d agree it’s not correct to say that we have always, at all times welcomed immigrants and refugees but we certainly have done that selectively. And Catholics have for the greater part been among the groups of immigrants not warmly welcomed.
We need immigration to counteract the current birth dearth but we don’t have to have open borders or risk our national security. There should be a reasonable and humane approach to immigration.
Has it occurred to you that mass immigration is a cause of the drop in birthrates? By driving up the cost of living (housing, heath care, taxes, etc.), while depressing wages, it makes family formation so much more difficult.
Tony,
Birthrates are plummeting globally with or without immigration. Even government incentives to have a replacement level birthrate have failed.
Hungary is offering tax incentives for families and hopefully they’ll have some success.
Mrscracker,
The founding American people were not immigrants but colonists/settlers. They didn’t enter into a pre-existing polity and receive citizenship or some other form of membership from another people. The whole “America is a land of immigrants” myth was created by leftist subversives even if used by 20th ce nationalists for their own purposes after the fact, more than 3 centuries after the first British colonists started settling this country. Many of the founding fathers after the revolution even explicitly wrote on the question of whether anyone non-British should be allowed to immigrate to the US.
This original Anglo-American (and Protestant Christian) heritage and identity is what the left is trying to erase and unfortunately too many Catholic bishops are assisting in this, even if the bishops seek to replace it with some vague “Catholic” identity.
This system is currently in a stage of collapse, and continued immigration will further destabilization and increase the likelihood of wide-scale violence, regardless of how necessary believers in infinite economic growth say immigrants are for that.
SOL,
Good morning!
My daddy’s side of the family has been here for 400 years. I went to the UK a few years ago and visited the parish church of a 17th century colonial ancestor. In his memorial he’s referred to as “Henry the Immigrant” because he migrated to the American Colonies.
🙂
You know, the longer your ancestors have lived in North America the more likely you are to find non Anglo Saxon ancestry or ancestors who came as convicts. The American colonies were a dumping ground for thousands of British convicts until the Revolutionary War. After that, the British had to turn to Australia and Tasmania to dump their unwanted.
Beyond chattel slavery, folks of African ancestry have been here for 400 plus years. Many were free people of color and many intermarried with white colonists.
And of course, our American Indians have their own perspectives on immigration.
History is complicated and the more you look at it, the more humble you feel. Most of us have very modest beginnings and sometimes, we find very surprising narratives along the way.
Your argument seems to be that, since we are all the descendants of immigrants (in the broadest sense of the word), there is no justification for this nation (or really, any nation) to have a restrictive immigration policy. Apparently, this Ellis Island sentimentalism must override all other political, social, cultural and economic considerations. Does a country have a right to try to maintain its ethnic and cultural balance by limiting who is allowed in?
More mindless, liberal rubbish from bishops who seem utterly incapable of, not to mention unwilling to, speak in anything other than left wing cliches. Will they ever declare solidarity with the American people?
Looked up the bishop in question.
Wikipedia: Mario Eduardo Dorsonville-Rodríguez (born October 31, 1960) is a Colombian-born bishop of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Like Jose Gomez, another immigrant who is presumptuous enough to lecture Americans about American history and identity.
Thanks for the information. I suppose the good bishop has admonished the elites in Colombia on the need to clean up the corruption and to improve the nation’s economy that has apparently created such intolerable conditions.
Wish the bishops (and the nuns!!) would show a little solidarity with the dyslexic/dyscalculaic/etc community.
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Just because dyslexics frequently have high intelligence does not mean they all go to MIT and walk out with $75,000 starting income.
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Many suffer socially as well as educationally and the job situation upon adulthood can look bleak. As many prisoners are dyslexic, I think it is a good bet if it was caught early in school, we’d have fewer children in trouble and fewer adults in prison.
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I mean no ill will toward those looking for a better life, but we have plenty of hurting children/adults who were born here. Don’t they deserve the same concern?
Tony,
North Americans, with the exception of those descended from our Indian tribes, are all the product of quite diverse immigrant populations from the past 400-500 years. I dislike the term “diverse ” because it’s become a cliche, but it really does describe our immigrant history.
I don’t think race or ethnicity should even enter into a Catholic conversation regarding what to conserve in America. Color and ethnicity simply don’t signify but culture does.
A Judeo Christian culture is what conservative Christians and others should be concerned about preserving. Not Anglo Saxonism. Culture, not color is what’s critical.
And yes, I strongly believe that sovereign nations have a right to secure their borders and enforce immigration laws. And preserve their unique cultures. But you have to have enough population to ensure a functioning society to pass that culture down to. Societies that are ageing and not reproducing themselves won’t be capable of that and will eventually be replaced.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Immigrants – they are ambassadors of the Good News.
All of them? How so? In what way?