Investigating NFP: Pius XII

"'Personal values' and the need to respect such are a theme which, over the last twenty years or so, has been considered more and more by writers. In many of their works, even the specifically sexual act has its place assigned, that of serving the 'person' of the married couple. The proper and most profound sense of the exercise of conjugal rights would consist in this, that the union of bodies is the expression and the realization of personal and affective union."

"Articles, chapters, entire books, conferences, especially dealing with the 'technique' of love, are composed to spread these ideas, to illustrate them with advice to the newly married as a guide in matrimony, in order that they may not neglect, through stupidity or a false sense of shame or unfounded scruples, that which God, Who also created natural inclinations, offers them. If from their complete reciprocal gift of husband and wife there results a new life, it is a result which remains outside, or, at the most, on the border of 'personal values'; a result which is not denied, but neither is it desired as the center of marital relations."

Pius agrees with those who say that say that sex should be an "expression and the realization of personal and affective union", but he disagrees with their disproportionate focus on "perfecting" the act. That is, he and the Church believe that sex is more than a pleasurable activity. A perverse focus on pleasure treats children as an unfortunte side effect, rather than the primary end of sexual intercourse.

"Now, the truth is that matrimony, as an institution of nature, in virtue of the Creator's will, has not as a primary and intimate end the personal perfection of the married couple but the procreation and upbringing of a new life. The other ends, inasmuch as they are intended by nature, are not equally primary, much less superior to the primary end, but are essentially subordinated to it. This is true of every marriage, even if no offspring result, just as of every eye it can be said that it is destined and formed to see, even if, in abnormal cases arising from special internal or external conditions, it will never be possible to achieve visual perception."

"It was precisely to end the uncertainties and deviations which threatened to diffuse errors regarding the scale of values of the purposes of matrimony and of their reciprocal relations, that a few years ago (March 10, 1944), We Ourselves drew up a declaration on the order of those ends, pointing out what the very internal structure of the natural disposition reveals. We showed what has been handed down by Christian tradition, what the Supreme Pontiffs have repeatedly taught, and what was then in due measure promulgated by the Code of Canon Law. Not long afterwards, to correct opposing opinions, the Holy See, by a public decree, proclaimed that it could not admit the opinion of some recent authors who denied that the primary end of marriage is the procreation and education of the offspring, or teach that the secondary ends are not essentially subordinated to the primary end, but are on an equal footing and independent of it."

The primary and highest end of sexual intercourse, as the natural manifestationof the supernatural reality of Holy Matrimony,is the begetting of children. This is true even for couple who are infertile through no fault of their own. An eye is still primarily ordered to sight even if its owner is blind. In the case of an infertile couple, there is no fertile period in which to conceive. You can’t abuse what you don’t have. However, I think the Church would argue that an infertile couple should adopt or be foster parents in order to fulfill the procreative aspect of marriage.

"Would this lead, perhaps, to Our denying or diminishing what is good and just in personal values resulting from matrimony and its realization? Certainly not, because the Creator has designed that for the procreation of a new life human beings made of flesh and blood, gifted with soul and heart, shall be called upon as men and not as animals deprived of reason to be the authors of their posterity. It is for this end that the Lord desires the union of husband and wife. Indeed, the Holy Scripture says of God that He created man to His image and He created him male and female, and willed—as is repeatedly affirmed in Holy Writ—that 'a man shall leave mother and father, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh'."

"All this is therefore true and desired by God. But, on the other hand, it must not be divorced completely from the primary function of matrimony—the procreation of offspring. Not only the common work of external life, but even all personal enrichment—spiritual and intellectual—all that in married love as such is most spiritual and profound, has been placed by the will of the Creator and of nature at the service of posterity. The perfect married life, of its very nature, also signifies the total devotion of parents to the well-being of their children, and married love in its power and tenderness is itself a condition of the sincerest care of the offspring and the guarantee of its realization."

Again, there are many goods that arise from the sacrament of holy matrimony, and they should not be ignored, but none is greater than the raising of children. Any other arrangements of priorities is disordered.

"To reduce the common life of husband and wife and the conjugal act to a mere organic function for the transmission of seed would be but to convert the domestic hearth, the family sanctuary, into a biological laboratory. Therefore, in Our allocution of September 29, 1949, to the International Congress of Catholic Doctors, We expressly excluded artificial insemination in marriage. The conjugal act, in its natural structure, is a personal action, a simultaneous and immediate cooperation of husband and wife, which by the very nature of the agents and the propriety of the act, is the expression of the reciprocal gift, which, according to Holy Writ, effects the union 'in one flesh'."

"That is much more than the union of two genes, which can be effected even by artificial means, that is, without the natural action of husband and wife. The conjugal act, ordained and desired by nature, is a personal cooperation, to which husband and wife, when contracting marriage, exchange the right."

"Therefore, when this act in its natural form is from the beginning perpetually impossible, the object of the matrimonial contract is essentially vitiated. This is what we said on that occasion: 'Let it not be forgotten: only the procreation of a new life according to the will and the design of the Creator carries with it in a stupendous degree of perfection the intended ends. It is at the same time in conformity with the spiritual and bodily nature and the dignity of the married couple, in conformity with the happy and normal development of the child'."

Humans are more than machines, more than baby factories. Procreation, that is participating in the created order as co-creators, is more than the joining of genes into another human animal. Thus, the conjugal act is the only permissable means of conception.

"To exalt beyond measure, as it is often done today, the generative function, even in the just and moral form of married life, is therefore not only an error and an aberration; it also bears with itself the danger of intellectual and affective error, capable of preventing and stifling good and lofty sentiments, especially in youth which is still without experience and ignorant of life's delusions. For what normal man, healthy in body and soul, would like to belong to the number of those deficient in character and spirit?"

These are good words to remember if someone wholly convinced that any delay of childbearing is wrong should happen to disparage you if you have not yet had a child (or not had "enough" children). Don't judge other people's motives for postponing conception. That is a very different thing, though, than objectively assessing the nature of "serious" and "grave" reasons and thereby troubling someone's conscience, so long as we are careful to not be stumbling blocks to each other.

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About Funky Dung

Who is Funky Dung? 29-year-old grad student in Intelligent Systems (A.I.) at the University of Pittsburgh. I consider myself to be politically moderate and independent and somewhere between a traditional and neo-traditional Catholic. I was raised Lutheran, spent a number of years as an agnostic, and joined the Catholic Church at the 2000 Easter Vigil. Why Funky Dung? I haven't been asked this question nearly as many times as you or I might expect. Funky Dung is a reference to an obscure Pink Floyd song. On the album Atom Heart Mother, there is a track called Atom Heart Mother Suite. It's broken up into movements, like a symphony, and one of the movements is called Funky Dung. I picked that nickname a long time ago (while I was still in high school I think), shortly after getting an internet connection for the first time. To me it means "cool/neat/groovy/spiffy stuff/crap/shiznit", as in "That's some cool stuff, dude!" Whence Ales Rarus? I used to enjoy making people guess what this means, but I've decided to relent and make it known to all. Ales Rarus is a Latin play on words. "Avis rarus" means "a rare bird" and carries similar meaning to "an odd fellow". "Ales" is another Latin word for bird that carries connotations of omens, signs of the times, and/or augery. If you want to get technical, both "avis" and "ales" are feminine (requiring "rara", but they can be made masculine in poetry (which tends to breaks lots of rules). I decided I'd rather have a masculine name in Latin. ;) Yeah, I'm a nerd. So what? :-P Wherefore blog? It is my intention to "teach in order to lead others to faith" by being always "on the lookout for occasions of announcing Christ by word, either to unbelievers . . . or to the faithful" through the "use of the communications media". I also act knowing that I "have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors [my] opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and [I] have a right to make [my] opinion known to the other Christian faithful, with due regard to the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward [my and their] pastors, and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of persons." (adapted from CCC 904-907) Statement of Faith I have been baptized and confirmed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I, therefore, renounce Satan; I renounce all his works; I renounce all his allurements. I hold and profess all that is contained in the Apostles' Creed, the Niceno- Constantinopolitan Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. Having been buried with Christ unto death and raised up with him unto a new life, I promise to live no longer for myself or for that world which is the enemy of God but for him who died for me and rose again, serving God, my heavenly Father, faithfully and unto death in the holy Catholic Church. I am obedient to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. That is, I promote and defend authentic Catholic Teaching and Faith in union with Christ and His Church and in union with the Holy Father, the Bishop of Rome, the Successor of St. Peter. Thanks be unto Thee, O my God, for all Thy infinite goodness, and, especially, for the love Thou hast shown unto me at my Confirmation. I Give Thee thanks that Thou didst then send down Thy Holy Spirit unto my soul with all His gifts and graces. May He take full possession of me for ever. May His divine unction cause my face to shine. May His heavenly wisdom reign in my heart. May His understanding enlighten my darkness. May His counsel guide me. May His knowledge instruct me. May His piety make me fervent. May His divine fear keep me from all evil. Drive from my soul, O Lord, all that may defile it. Give me grace to be Thy faithful soldier, that having fought the good fight of faith, I may be brought to the crown of everlasting life, through the merits of Thy dearly beloved Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Behind the Curtain: an Interview With Funky Dung (Thursday, March 03, 2005) I try to avoid most memes that make their way 'round the blogosphere (We really do need a better name, don't we?), but some are worth participating in. Take for instance the "interview game" that's the talk o' the 'sphere. I think it's a great way to get to know the people in neighborhood. Who are the people in your neighborhood? In your neighborhod? In your neigh-bor-hoo-ood...*smack* Sorry, Sesame Street flashback. Anyhow, I saw Jeff "Curt Jester" Miller's answers and figured since he's a regular reader of mine he'd be a good interviewer. Without further ado, here are my answers to his questions. 1. Being that your pseudonym Funky Dung was chosen from a Pink Floyd track on Atom Heart Mother, what is you favorite Pink Floyd song and why? Wow. That's a tuffy. It's hard to pick out a single favorite. Pink Floyd isn't really a band known for singles. They mostly did album rock and my appreciation of them is mostly of a gestalt nature. If I had to pick one, though, it'd be "Comfortably Numb". I get chills up my spine every time I hear it and if it's been long enough since the last time, I get midty-eyed. I really don't know why. That's a rather unsatisfying answer for an interview, so here are the lyrics to a Rush song. It's not their best piece of music, but the lyrics describe me pretty well.

New World Man He's a rebel and a runner He's a signal turning green He's a restless young romantic Wants to run the big machine He's got a problem with his poisons But you know he'll find a cure He's cleaning up his systems To keep his nature pure Learning to match the beat of the old world man Learning to catch the heat of the third world man He's got to make his own mistakes And learn to mend the mess he makes He's old enough to know what's right But young enough not to choose it He's noble enough to win the world But weak enough to lose it --- He's a new world man... He's a radio receiver Tuned to factories and farms He's a writer and arranger And a young boy bearing arms He's got a problem with his power With weapons on patrol He's got to walk a fine line And keep his self-control Trying to save the day for the old world man Trying to pave the way for the third world man He's not concerned with yesterday He knows constant change is here today He's noble enough to know what's right But weak enough not to choose it He's wise enough to win the world But fool enough to lose it --- He's a new world man...
2. What do you consider your most important turning point from agnosticism to the Catholic Church. At some point in '99, I started attending RCIA at the Pittsburgh Oratory. I mostly went to ask a lot of obnoxious Protestant questions. Or at least that's what I told myself. I think deep down I wanted desperately to have faith again. At that point I think I'd decided that if any variety of Christianity had the Truth, the Catholic Church did. Protestantism's wholesale rejection of 1500 years of tradition didn't sit well with me, even as a former Lutheran. During class one week, Sister Bernadette Young (who runs the program) passed out thin booklet called "Handbook for Today's Catholic". One paragraph in that book spoke to me and I nearly cried as I read it.
"A person who is seeking deeper insight into reality may sometimes have doubts, even about God himself. Such doubts do not necessarily indicate lack of faith. They may be just the opposite - a sign of growing faith. Faith is alive and dynamic. It seeks, through grace, to penetrate into the very mystery of God. If a particular doctrine of faith no longer 'makes sense' to a person, the person should go right on seeking. To know what a doctrine says is one thing. To gain insight into its meaning through the gift of understanding is something else. When in doubt, 'Seek and you will find.' The person who seeks y reading, discussing, thinking, or praying eventually sees the light. The person who talks to God even when God is 'not there' is alive with faith."
At the end of class I told Sr. Bernadette that I wanted to enter the Church at the next Easter vigil. 3. If you were a tree what kind of, oh sorry about that .. what is the PODest thing you have ever done? I set up WikiIndex, a clearinghouse for reviews of theological books, good, bad, and ugly. It has a long way to go, but it'll be cool when it's finished. :) 4. What is your favorite quote from Venerable John Henry Newman? "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt." 5. If you could ban one hymn from existence, what would it be? That's a tough one. As a member of the Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas, there are obviously a lot of songs that grate on my nerves. If I had to pick one, though, I'd probably pick "Sing of the Lord's Goodness" by Ernie Sands.

25 thoughts on “Investigating NFP: Pius XII

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  4. Squat

    I’m also reading some Pius XII encyclicals and addresses and found this in an address to a concourse of women of Catholic Action and all their helpers from all the Dioceses of Italy reguarding the raising of children on The Feast of Christ the King, Oct.26,1941.

    “Train their hearts. Frequently the decision of a man’s destiny, the ruin of his character, or a grave danger threatening him, may be traced to his childish years when his heart was spoiled by the fond flatter, silly fussing, and foolish indulgence of misguided parents. The impressionable little heart became accustomed to see all things revolve and gravitate around it, to find all things yeilding to its will and caprice, and so there took root in it that boundless egoism of which parents themselves were later to become the first victims! All this is often the just penalty of the selfishness of parents who deny their only child the joy of having little brothers and sisters who, sharing in the mother’s love, would have accustomed him to think of others besides himself”

  5. Sean

    I’ve enjoyed reading these posts and comments. It has certainly been enlightening. But I have a suggestion for a new topic, once this one has been sufficiently beaten into submission… What about folks who are single? And I mean single for a long time, single beyond the point at which they are likely to have children, maybe single for life? The Bible says “be fruitful and multiply”, yet the Bible also says if you can do it, its better not to marry.

    Some of us have managed to hit 40 without being married, and without the supernatural graces of ordination or religious vows helping us along. Single folks are single for tons of different reasons… some good, some bad. And I’ve even heard “singleness” referred to as a vocation like marriage or the priesthood. I have a hard time accepting the “single as vocation” concept outside of vowed or ordained religious life.

    But anyway, I’d be interested in some discussion on that topic… if anyone else is. If not, I’ll happily read whatever topic’s up next. 🙂

  6. Stuff

    Just a couple quick thoughts:

    I’m not entirely sure about the use of the word “eugenics,” and maybe someone with more specifically medical training would know more, but I’m pretty sure that there are very rare instances in which both parents are carriers of recessive genes that can cause miscarriage and/or extremely serious disease in almost every pregnancy. Or, at least, this may have been the case at the time of Pius’ writings of these documents. In such a case, I think the Church’s stance on “eugenics” is such that if you are absolutely certain to only miscarry or that every child you bear will die within a few years of birth, your circumstances are grave enough to postpone conception pending medical advances or whatever. Again, just a thought, no real backing.

    Also, as much as we all like finding hard data to support conclusions, I don’t think any exists for Pius’ assertions about the relationship between large families and individual/societal health. I will mention here that I toyed with the idea of writing a report on the effects of birth order/family size in my pre-pharmacy days (trying out of mainly pride and vanity to prove that my family of 5 kids, as disfunctional as we are, is still healthier than yours with 1 or 2 ;)). I found that most of the psychology studies that were done were performed from the viewpoint of proving that small families were just as good as large families, not the other way around. My conclusion is that we only study things that are not familiar, or not the norm. For such a long period of history, large families were considered normal and healthy, so no one felt they needed to prove that; it’s only when people started trying to limit family size that we had to prove it was O.K.

    One last thought about large families being willing to “sacrifice” one or more children to religious vocations. While I think you make a valid point, I don’t think yours outweighs the Pope’s: when you look at the families of saints, they’re usually big and there are usually a bunch of them that are at least Blessed, whatever they’re vocation. We just watched the movie “Therese,” by the way, and every single one of the daughters of the Martin family was a religious.:)

    Hmmmm…if that was the last thought, I guess this one is an afterthought!
    Sean, there is a whole big section entitled “Virginity for the Sake of the Kingdom” in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body that might be helpful to you. I think your situation is worth discussing, too!

  7. Jerry

    Sean, I’d also recommend checking out some of the literature surrounding Opus Dei and its founder, Jose Maria Escriva. BYOCT (Bring your own conspiracy theories)

  8. Spacemouse

    Re the Eugenics issue:

    It’d be nice if someone with a background in the original language (Italian, in this case, since it’s an address to Midwives?) could look at the word that’s translated as “eugenic.” Going from the English, eugenic can simply mean “Relating or adapted to the production of good or improved offspring.” The Church doesn’t forbid couples to seek to have healthy (“good”) offspring: genetic screening and in-utero diagnosis ARE allowed for that very purpose. The Church does forbid parents to abort children with genetic conditions, of course, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Presumably, as Stuff points out, we’re just talking about parents avoiding conception because of genetic abnormalities likely to affect their children. With genetic counseling, it is indeed possible to get a good idea (ahead of time) what the odds are that a couple will have children with various disorders.

    In such a case, I think the Church’s stance on “eugenics” is such that if you are absolutely certain to only miscarry or that every child you bear will die within a few years of birth, your circumstances are grave enough to postpone conception pending medical advances or whatever. Again, just a thought, no real backing.

    This was pretty close to what I was going to say, except that I don’t know that you have to be “absolutely certain” that all the offspring will be miscarried/will die shortly after birth. I don’t think there are hard and fast rules, but I think a strong likelyhood of producing children with serious diseases is sufficient to justify avoiding conception.

    The fact that there aren’t hard guidelines saying “there must be more than a 50% likelyhood that the child will die” or “there must be a 99% chance that the child will die” may seem frustrating, but different couples have different breaking points. One couple might be willing to conceive, bear, and lose several children because of the hope that a healthy child might arrive. Another couple simply might be so broken hearted over one lost child that they could not face the probability that their next one would be similarly lost. For the second couple, a mere probability (rather than a certainty) that a future child would be lost may constitute a grave reason.

    Like Stuff, though, I don’t have anything “hard” to back that theory up with. It’s just the impression I’ve gathered from what I’ve read.

  9. sibert

    On NFP, various addresses, and the aggregate of Catholic traditional writings:
    “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that THE BIRDS OF THE AIR COME and NEST IN ITS BRANCHES.”
    Examine the symbolism of birds in the Bible…

  10. Louise

    On the “eugenics” thing. I have a good friend who has four children. She and her husband use NFP and will be trying not to conceive any more children, because she now has a number of very serious medical problems which require her to take lots of prescribed medication which is seriously harmful to a growing baby in utero.

    If a child is conceived while she is taking such medication, there is a serious risk to the child’s life either in utero or after it is born. I think that in her situation, they are right to use NFP. It goes without saying, that if they do conceive, they will accept the child with love.

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  12. Tom Smith

    “And I’ve even heard ‘singleness’ referred to as a vocation like marriage or the priesthood. I have a hard time accepting the ‘single as vocation’ concept outside of vowed or ordained religious life.”

    Even though one inevitably sounds like an ass by saying this, I agree that it’s hard to see how there’d be a vocation to the single state. There are a few reasons that I don’t think that there exists a call to the single life. First, the three recognized vocations (priesthood, religious life, and matrimony) require one to take positive action (be it ordination, the vowing of the evangelical counsels, or nuptial vows) to enter, whereas all one need do to exercise single life is chill. Also, all three of the recognized vocations require a public profession of one’s desire to receive the status of that state of life (ordination, solemn profession of vows, or profession of marital vows). The approbation of the Church is required to enter the priesthood, religious life, or marriage, but not single life. Last, there is always a period of discernment before entering the priesthood (seminary training), religious life (one’s novitiate), and marriage (dating, pre-marital spiritual guidance), but not single life.

    We see that the single life does not share any of these things with the three known vocations; that’s why I think it’s rather clear that the single state does not represent a true vocation.

  13. edey

    do they have to take any kind of action? do they have a public profession of vows? do they have a period of discernment? as far as i know, they don’t have a public profession of vows, but they might have the other two. enlighten me.

  14. Spacemouse

    I know this is a late comment, but I’ve been meaning to comment on the “not rare” issue, since I do think this is crucial.

    If you spend any time at all dealing with probability and statistics, you’ll realize that “rare” and “not rare” are very vague concepts that need to be represented by numbers to be meaningful. Saying that difficulties “not rarely arise” only tells us that they might not be statistical outliers, which doesn’t tell us much.

    I think it’s worth asking whether Pius XII was a statistician, though. That is: is there any indication that he used the expression “not rare” (or rather, whatever the original was) in a statistical sense? I ask because if you look in a thesaurus, “uncommon” is listed as a synonym for “rare.” In English, the expression “not uncommon” would be a way of saying “common.” In other words, the reason that some people read “not rare” to mean that serious/grave reasons are common is because that’s what “not rare” DOES mean in normal English useage. I submit that an unbiased reader -one who came to the document with no opinion as to how common grave reasons are- would read “not rare” as roughly synonymous with “not uncommon.” (Perhaps there’s a rare to experiment on readers to find out?)

    It’s always possible that the translation is at fault, but to suggest that “not rare” simply means “not a statistical outlier” and that it’s thus possible that grave reasons are still pretty uncommon seems to me to be grasping at linguistic straws, unless there’s a reason for thinking that the translator had the statistical meaning rather than the commonly accepted meaning of the words in mind when he chose the phrase “not rare” instead of “not uncommon.”

    It’s true that “not uncommon” would still be vague, in that it wouldn’t give any indication of how much of the time an “average” couple might spend avoiding conception- but perhaps the vagueness is there because that Pius XII knew that it wasn’t possible for him (or any theologian) to predict how many times in the average couple’s life they’d have grave reasons to avoid.

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  16. Jeremy Pierce

    For some women, pregnancy and/or childbirth could be fatal. How should they procede? Well, the answer seems to be that they should entirely refrain from the marital act. NFP is not perfect birth control. In fact, any such method might be forbidden by the Church as being hostile to fertility. Therefore, such an at-risk woman might unwittingly conceive and endanger her life and/or the life of her child.

    Getting on a plane could be fatal. So could going for a walk. In a case with similar chances of conception to the risk of dying on the highway in an accident, would you say that it thus makes it wrong to get on the highway? Or isn’t it just better to say that some things in life are worth doing, even if there’s a small chance of risking something serious happening?

  17. Funky Dung

    That’s not quite the meaning I intended. My point was that if the danger of death for mother or child is great enough that one would periodically abstain (during fertile periods), one should totally abstain or not abstain at all (assuming that this health problem is the only grave reason for avoiding conception). That is, if you are so concerned about the health problem that you feel the need to rely on the 98%+ pregnancy avoidance success rate of correctly-used NFP, either you have underestimated the threat and should avoid intercourse entirely or you have overestimated it and should not be periodically abstaining. If it’s “a risk you are willing to take”, you’re essentially playing Russian roullete with one or more lives at stake. It’d be bad enough to endanger the mother’s life like that, but to play games with a child’s life is unconscionable.

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