May 5, 2008
10 Ways WIves Can Make NFP Easier On Their Husbands
10 Ways Husbands Can Make NFP Easier On Their Wives
I don’t have to worry about NFP, being a spinster, but I learned a lot about men from reading these, and about men-and-women. Read the comment box discussions. Recommended. Much recommended.
May 5, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Having read as much as I could stand, I am so happy that I am Single! I don’t have to worry about this stuff! YAAAAAAAAAAAY! I’d rather be celibate forever than have to have those conversations or deal with those pressures. And if I do get married, I’m thirty-seven!!! I can only have, what, three children max? No fussing about NFP for me.
This is probably no consolation to you youngsters but… YAAAAY!
May 5, 2008 at 7:10 pm
I didn’t read it all but there doesn’t seem to be much acknowledgment that NFP is permissible only for “serious reasons” Humanae Vitae §10. It seems to be treated as the sort of thing one would assume took place more than once in most marriages.
May 5, 2008 at 8:11 pm
You are quite right, Aelianus.
I must say that I am not particularly sympathetic to all these married people wailing about abstinence. I think even the old hideous comparison with being able to smell the sizzling steak but not eat it was employed.
That said, I am sympathetic to those who already have six children. But I am even more sympathetic to the women who are exhausted by their husbands’ clumsy demands and embrace NFP as a way of getting a rest. I wasn’t aware that the sacrament of marriage was a license to unbridled lust. St. Augustine writes of not treating one’s wife like a prostitute.
NFP is probably so difficult and disappointing because practioners want it to be the Pill, only licit.
May 6, 2008 at 12:33 am
I am even more sympathetic to the women who are exhausted by their husbands’ clumsy demands and embrace NFP as a way of getting a rest.
I’m not sure that’s a very happy scenario either way or in the spirit of St Paul’s advice:
“…because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does. Do not refuse one another except perhaps by agreement for a season, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control. I say this by way of concession, not of command.”
May 6, 2008 at 5:48 am
Mfff! you were supposed to be going to sleep!
May 6, 2008 at 7:45 am
that NFP is permissible only for “serious reasons”
Indeed. But what would you classify as “serious reasons”? “We are not going to have more than one or two kids because crying babies are just such a hassle” - probably not. The woman being in serious danger of life if she gets ever pregnant again - I would say yes. But what else? Is a couple positively obliged to have, let’s say, ten children? Being parents does not only mean bringing children to life, but also bringing them up. While some parents obviously are able to do this with ten children or mo-re, I know for certainty that others are not. A very pious couple of my acquaintance had three children after being married for six years or so. Then they decided that for the good of the kids they had they would not have another one just now, as it was all getting far too much for the mother as it was and - I think - she feared to neglect the older ones. Which I think is a good decision in this case. On a-nother line, if a woman in the beginning of her thirties has seven children and has continually been either pregnant or brest-feeding for ten years - would it be mere hedonism if she just felt she nee-ded a break, even if there are no terribly serious health issues involved?
May 6, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Hey, Notburga, that’s not me, that’s Humanae Vitae. It seems to me odd to forgo much more effective birth control in obedience to Humanae Vitae, and then not actually obey Humanae Vitae. I believe the serious reasons are listed there.
As for you, young Aelianus, I note that St. Paul grants a prayer holiday. And yes, you’re right, that is not a happy solution to wives feeling absolutely bored and used in bed.
Perhaps if men understood (as they once did) that over time many women get less interested in sex, they would be more compassionate and also think of clever ways to rekindle that interest.
Meanwhile, women used to understand that having sex with their husbands when they didn’t want to was a duty and the price they paid for the comforts and privileges of being married women. I’m not sure married women should go back to that mentality, though. (Or maybe they should?) Oh heavens, real life is so complicated. HOW do married people cope?
May 6, 2008 at 12:17 pm
The latin is “…seriis causis moralibusque praeceptis observatis…”.
I would say that these have to exist before one even begins to prepare or attempt to employ NFP. One has a positive duty to have children if married. In order to do this one need only ‘do what comes naturally’. There is no need to consider the number unless one already faces serious reasons dispensing one from this duty.
Beyond that I do not know if the magisterium has given any guidance.
May 6, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I was not arguing with you at all, Seraphic, neither with Humanae Vitae. My point was that you can interpret “serious” reasons in a very strict (too strict) way but also in a way including, for example, “having five children younger than six years old”.
Humanae Vitae says further down (§ 16):
My only point was that “psychological condition” does not start with “raving mad/suicidal” but already when you have, for example, the type of woman who at some point needs more than two hours of sleep in one go as she will otherwise no longer be capable to fulfill her duties against her five children during daytime.
May 6, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I quite agree.
Somewhat related, there is some debate around pregnant women who choose to forgo cancer treatment in order to preserve the life of an unborn child. Say a woman has other very young children, who will be deprived of a mother, should this mother die. Should the woman preserve her life at the cost of the unborn baby’s in order to see her other children safely to adulthood? Or should she charge her husband with the responsibility of finding the children a “replacement” mother ASAP? And can anyone, really, fill her place?
This reminds me, also, of the debate around married couples, one of whom has contracted HIV, perhaps from an accident while treating HIV sufferers. Should a spouse risk contracting HIV him- or herself by continuing to nourish the sexual bond/keeping the infected spouse from sin? Should condoms be used (under the rule of double-effect)? Is it cruel to insist that both remain continent until the infected spouse dies?
May 6, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Incidently, isn’t sex troublesome? No wonder Saint Paul wished everyone could be as he was, i.e. unmarried!
Maybe it’s like learning to drive. If you don’t start young, you lose the inclination. I might be up to an invitation by a very witty fellow with a good job, but what if he ceased to be witty? And what if he lost his job, fell into a gloom, and watched television all day? Alack a day! It’s a vale of tears, I tell you.
May 6, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Yes, well, that’s the for better or for worse part, isn’t it?
May 6, 2008 at 5:38 pm
You are not looking at the questions in quite the right way.
The question in regard to a mother with cancer needs to be considered in two different ways. There is an absolute negative prohibition on any act which takes the life of an innocent. Even if only such an act could save the life of the mother then that act is illicit and cannot be performed. On the other hand it may be that the mother’s life could be saved by an act which would lead to the death of the child indirectly this would be licit if it was the only means possible. However, the Mother is not obliged to preserve her life when she may sacrifice it to save the child. Such an act would be highly meritorious because supererogatory. But, from the nature of the second case, there is no answer to the question ‘what must she do?’.
In regard to a spouse with HIV it would be a mortal sin for him or her to engage in sexual acts with the other spouse because this would be to place that person’s life at risk merely for the sake of gratification. Furthermore, it is never permissible to deliberately sterilize the sexual act so there is no question of double effect. As the Compendium teaches:
Ҥ498. What are immoral means of birth control?
Every action - for example, direct sterilization or contraception - is intrinsically immoral which (either in anticipation of the conjugal act, in its accomplishment or in the development of its natural consequences) proposes, as an end or as a means, to hinder procreation.”
As to men thinking of clever ways to rekindle that interest, I not sure what you have in mind but marriage is supposed to be a remedy for concupiscence. If spouses feel over time they are able to follow St Paul’s advice and life in continence this is a good thing not a problem to be solved. It is not however a decision one spouse could take unilaterally.
As the Roman Catechism teaches:
“A third reason [for marriage] has been added, as a consequence of the fall of our first parents. On account of the loss of original innocence the passions began to rise in rebellion against right reason; and man, conscious of his own frailty and unwilling to fight the battles of the flesh, is supplied by marriage with an antidote by which to avoid sins of lust. For fear of fornication, says the Apostle, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband; and a little after, having recommended to married persons a temporary abstinence from the marriage debt, to give themselves to prayer, he adds: Return together again, lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency.”
May 6, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Yes, but what I am getting at, dear Aelianus, in the rekindlement issue is that there are women who would happily go Josephite, but their husbands do not feel able to do this. Oh please, think the wives, please, I cannot take this anymore. For one thing, you are now 300 lbs, and I have wasted away to almost nothing. I long to be free of my nightly squashing.
Furthermore(and I am exceedingly sorry to have to tell you this sad fact) a marital embrace between an enthusiastic spouse and a decidedly unenthusiastic spouse is a real drag for at least one of the spouses. I am sure there are many women who are resigned to their biological fate and their husbands make up for their wives’ abject boredom and going-along-with-it with gratitude. However, some husbands may be disappointed that their wives do not think that their lovemaking is akin to that of Zeus and other famous figures of the Greek pantheon. So if the libidinous men with generous and philosophical wives want those wives to actually appreciate their marital ministrations, they had better figure out how to go about it. Staying slim and attractive is a start.
I am trying to decide whether or not I would like to be greeted, “Hello, my little remedy for concupiscense!”
May 7, 2008 at 1:46 am
Are you saying that if one spouse isn’t bothered about remedying concupiscence the one who is should be compensated for this by a significant investment in the ars amatoria by the pagan spouse?
“I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
I know you don’t like nuptial theology but it seems to me John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (albeit that it is the expression of his teaching as a private theologian) represents a much more healthy and constructive approach to such difficulties of the married state.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/jp2tb38.htm
May 7, 2008 at 5:16 am
I am confused by your sentence structure. Not sure that a pagan spouse comes into it. I will attempt this again.
CAST:
Catholic Husband: still fighting fires of concupiscence at age of 52 and now weighs 300 lbs.
Catholic Wife: at age 47 and 98 lbs is no longer troubled by concupiscence herself, but a good sport, though she wishes her wifely duties were not so tiring and uncomfortable.
SCENE: A bed.
Catholic Husband: How was it for you?
Catholic Wife: What?
Catholic Husband: How was it for you?
Catholic Wife: (lying) Lovely, thanks.
Catholic Husband: (voicing suspicion that has been slowly growing over the past fifteen years) It wasn’t though, was it?
Catholic Wife: Well, no.
Catholic Husband: (sulks)
End of Act One
Now, there are three solutions that come to mind. One, Josephite marriage–if Catholic Husband agrees. Two, Catholic Husband studies Ars Amatoria or at least loses a hundred pounds for sake of Catholic Wife. Three, Catholic Husband not ask stupid questions like that and is just incredibly grateful to his generous wife.
If he really can’t agree to One, he should combine both Two and Three, complete with very nice presents on their wedding anniversary (as rewards, not bribes) and tearful anniversary speeches about “my beloved Catholic Wife, who has put up with me all these years.” The Ars Amatoria, my dear Aelianus, is not necessarily tips gleaned from Ovid and lad mags but such nice things as doing chores around the house without being asked.
May 7, 2008 at 5:18 am
Cannot believe I am having this conversation with a man. You have to marry me now, or my brothers will utterly rough you up.
May 7, 2008 at 10:43 am
Men used to labour so hard in the ‘vineyard’ that they were too tired to get up to much when they came home.
I’ve just started reading an autobiographical count by a woman who married a farm labourer at the beg. of the last C. Her husband was so tired at the start of their honeymoon that he fell asleep as soon as they hit the sack.
May 7, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Is it just me, or is this discussion not exactly the best incitement to relinquishing the single state in favour of conjugal bliss? I’ve never been so depressed by the prospect of marriage as this exchange has made me.
I mean, there’s being realistic and honest about the prospective challenges of the matrimonial union, but I my nose feels rubbed so comprehensively in the brutal truth that I’ve lost half an inch of the end of it.
B(achelor) A(ngst)
May 7, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I am surprised by these reactions! I didn’t find it depressing or off-putting or or or…
May 7, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Don’t worry, Berenike - it probably is just me.
I’m having a smashing day off so far, as it happens, but this morning I’ve thrown the usual half-dozen offers of marriage I get through the post each day straight into the bin without even reading them properly. I’ll be my usual receptive self anon, I should think.
BA (fly me)
May 7, 2008 at 12:25 pm
P.S. Aren’t these new avatar-thingies funky?
May 7, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Me again! (Sorry, Laodiceans.) I think the problem was with the way the conversation was set up. It was set up husbands against wives and then, seeing what had happened, wives against husbands. Result: misery.
The good thing about NFP is that it gives something for husbands and wives to resent instead of each other. (Oh dear, I’m trying not to be like that today.) What I mean is, it’s an equally shared responsibility/choice/birth control method. Fertility is the “problem.” And although women are fertile for ten days a month, men are fertile 24/7, so making this about what “the wife” could do was just unfair.
Thousands (or millions?) of married couples in history have been very happy, and their example gives me hope that thousands (or millions) of future married couples will be happy. As for my own cynical picture of the winter of love, I am sure that good communication is the key to preventing such… Oh, and now I’ve used the phrase “good communication.” I’m going for coffee.
May 7, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Dear Benedict Ambrose, this is our special way of promoting vocations to the religious life. Looks inviting in comparison, doesn’t it?
May 7, 2008 at 2:05 pm
As far as I can tell the rules are that if you get married you contract an obligation to have children and only serious reasons can temporarily or permanently dispense you from this obligation. Husbands and wives do not have the right to refuse conjugal relations to each other except for violence or infidelity. You can’t get married if you exclude the intention to have children but you can elect to live in continence thereafter. It is rarely wise to irrevocably bind yourself to do so by a public vow because you or your spouse may not actually be capable of such a permanent revocation. If marriage is lived in a state of grace it will slowly remedy concupiscence. You can speed this up by supererogatory acts and prayer (especially for each other). This may or may not lead to the objectively superior state of continence. It may be that in this present world the conjugal act always de facto entails some element of concupiscence but there is no essential connection. One can reach perfect charity in the married state without entering into a Josephite marriage. None of this is going to happen if one or both parties is not in a state of grace. If one party is unfaithful or violent the other may withdraw bed and board. But the best way to convert people is to pray for them and offer up one’s sufferings for them especially if they are the one inflicting the suffering. Obviously, putting up with violence and infidelity on the part of one’s spouse is supererogatory and may for one reason or another (disease, vulnerable children, seriousness and/or frequency of violence) be imprudent. This could reach the point where one was not morally free to put up with it even if one wanted to. On the lesser scale the faults of one’s spouse are not an excuse for abandoning the married life they are what the married life is there to remedy. Though if one’s spouse is in mortal sin one will have to obtain his or her conversion first. The ‘I’m sorry you are too fat I don’t find you attractive any more’ option is not available to Catholics. You might try the ‘I’m sorry you are too fat from now on we are not eating meat except on Sundays and solemnities’ instead.
May 7, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Indeed, Notburga! But, call it a triumph of hope over (others’
experience if you will, I’m not quite reconciled to the cloister yet.
B(ig) ‘A(rted)
May 7, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I didn’t think it was set up “against” anyone at all. I was very interested that someone had asked a hard but real question with a genuine desire to know, to “help”.
Call me naive if you like!
May 7, 2008 at 2:49 pm
How about “I’m sorry, you’re too fat and I’m in danger of death by squashing”?
May 7, 2008 at 3:56 pm
That might allow refusal of bed and board. See: Fagan v. Metropolitan Police Commissioner [1969] 1 QB 439.
May 7, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Berenike, would you think that the discussion really reflected the general situation amongst married (observant)Catholics? I mean, that the problems addressed are really widespread? Or did only those comment who have related experiences?
May 7, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Notburga: why are you asking me? ?? I have absolutely NO idea! How am I supposed to know?
May 7, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Fatty and Skinny got into bed. Fatty rolled over; Skinny was dead.
May 7, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Let it be known, that the Glaswegian holds the prize for Person Who Has Made Me Laugh Harder Than I Have Ever Laughed In My Life - I was paralysed, bent over clutching a gutter pipe, aching, unable to breathe, my stomach muscles in spasms - this was a couple of years ago, a sunny day on a Glasgow street, and was caused by a long build-up topped with an anecdote about a Catholic university and a mushroom factory.
May 7, 2008 at 8:33 pm
You know, I’m laughing just listening to that description. Could just be low blood-sugar in my case though…
May 8, 2008 at 12:56 pm
JPII’s theology of the body is a treasure: a breakthrough for humanity’s happiness no less promising than the rule of law, philosophy, science, human rights, technological developments, sacred art, music, (proper) architecture. All of these things when done well raise the soul to God. So does the theology of the body, when lived by married or celibates (because it is for both). And all these great gifts, if you follow the argument of Thomas E. Woods (http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2005/oct2005p12_2079.html), are–at their highest or purest–gifts of the Holy Catholic Church.
i think this whole NFP discussion is darn worthwhile, no matter how messy it gets (well, almost).
May 8, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Husbands and wives do not have the right to refuse conjugal relations to each other except for violence or infidelity.
…Or illness, surely?
Goodness. Parts of this conversation sound like Stephen Hawking giving a masterclass in downhill skiing.
Lighten up, chaps.
May 8, 2008 at 4:04 pm
More Paraplegic Skiing….
If one was ill enough that it would be injurious to oneself or one’s spouse to engage in marital relations then it would be sinful to do so and so no request to do so would bind morally. If one was not quite that ill but one’s spouse insisted the spouse could well be sinning by doing so but it is not clear that one would be morally at liberty to refuse. Not, of course, that that would entitle the obnoxious spouse to employ force to get his or her way. Of course if they did that would immediately entitle the ill spouse to suspend conjugal relations.
1Cor 7:1-4 “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. It is well for a man not to touch a woman. But because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does.”
CCC§2383 “The separation of spouses while maintaining the marriage bond can be legitimate in certain cases provided for by canon law. If civil divorce remains the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the care of the children, or the protection of inheritance, it can be tolerated and does not constitute a moral offense.”
CIC “Can. 1151 Spouses have the duty and right to preserve conjugal living unless a legitimate cause excuses them.
Can. 1152 §1. Although it is earnestly recommended that a spouse, moved by Christian charity and concerned for the good of the family, not refuse forgiveness to an adulterous partner and not disrupt conjugal life, nevertheless, if the spouse did not condone the fault of the other expressly or tacitly, the spouse has the right to sever conjugal living unless the spouse consented to the adultery, gave cause for it, or also committed adultery.
§2. Tacit condonation exists if the innocent spouse has had marital relations voluntarily with the other spouse after having become certain of the adultery. It is presumed, moreover, if the spouse observed conjugal living for six months and did not make recourse to the ecclesiastical or civil authority.
§3. If the innocent spouse has severed conjugal living voluntarily, the spouse is to introduce a cause for separation within six months to the competent ecclesiastical authority which, after having investigated all the circumstances, is to consider carefully whether the innocent spouse can be moved to forgive the fault and not to prolong the separation permanently.
Can. 1153 §1. If either of the spouses causes grave mental or physical danger to the other spouse or to the offspring or otherwise renders common life too difficult, that spouse gives the other a legitimate cause for leaving, either by decree of the local ordinary or even on his or her own authority if there is danger in delay.
§2. In all cases, when the cause for the separation ceases, conjugal living must be restored unless ecclesiastical authority has established otherwise.
Can. 1154 After the separation of the spouses has taken place, the adequate support and education of the children must always be suitably provided.
Can. 1155 The innocent spouse laudably can readmit the other spouse to conjugal life; in this case the innocent spouse renounces the right to separate.”
May 8, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Stephen Hawking on a doughnut! Ho, ho, ho, speaking as the divorced/annulled member of the readership, I have actually experienced both NFP and marriage and can attest to the ickiness of both. Not to trash either absolutely, but if wrongly approached, and in a spirit of selfishness, both can lead to unhappiness.