Scenario No. 1:
Roger and Lucy are preparing for the sacrament of marriage and have made an appointment to talk privately with their parish Deacon couple, Letty and Carlos. They are excited and happy about their classes with the deacon and his wife but have some personal questions.

Both Roger and Lucy are well educated and life-long practicing Catholics. Both of them have advanced degrees --- Lucy is an orthodontist, Roger a nurse anesthetist --- but neither has studied much Catholic theology since high school. As a result, some questions have arisen during their pre-Cana classes.

For one, they were surprised to learn about the Church's teaching forbidding the use of the birth control pill. They just supposed that as long as they both wanted to have children eventually, there was no problem with using the "pill" periodically during their marriage, especially at the beginning until they got their feet on the ground, professionally and financially.

Lucy has thought a lot about this and asks, "If the intention 'to avoid getting pregnant' is the same for couples who use the pill and those who use natural family planning, why is one way right and the other wrong?" How can Letty and Carlos respond to Lucy?

Scenario No. 2:
Theresa is filled with shame, guilt and confusion. She thinks she needs to go to confession and tell a priest about her situation. But first she has made an appointment to discuss her dilemma with Charlene, her Parish Life Director.

Theresa is 42 years old, has been married for 20 years and has four children. She was raised a Catholic and has raised all her children in the faith even though her husband is not Catholic. He is a good father and is happy to let his wife and children practice their faith. Nevertheless he does not agree with everything the Church teaches.

As Parish Life Director, Charlene has been very supportive of the Church's consistent ethic of life. She has often talked about the sins against life, including contraception, and has scheduled classes for parishioners to learn about natural family planning (NFP).

Theresa accepts the Church's teaching forbidding contraception and has talked to her husband many times about NFP. She even got him to attend one of the couples' training sessions at the parish, but he was never convinced to cooperate. Since Theresa refuses to take birth control pills, he insists on using a condom because he is convinced that it is the only way to avoid another pregnancy.

She is very conflicted. How can she reconcile being a good wife and a good Catholic? What should Charlene say to Theresa about her situation?

More than 'a moral rule'
Helping contemporary Catholics understand the Church's teaching about birth control is a pastoral challenge in almost every Catholic community. Too often, however, the Church's teaching regarding birth control is reduced only to a moral rule, removing it from the sacramental teaching that is its most authentic context.

In truth the Church's teaching regarding birth control is more theologically rich than many might assume. But the Church's teaching on birth control is only fully understood within a comprehensive sacramental theology of marriage and the Church's biblically-based heritage of Christian anthropology which raises up the dignity of the human person.

It might surprise many Catholics to be reminded that the Church does not forbid birth control. In fact, the church encourages responsible parenthood. What the Church forbids is contraception. It might similarly surprise many Catholics that until the 1930s, a little more than 70 years ago, most Christians, including Protestants, accepted that contraception was contrary to Christian discipleship.

For most adult Catholics, the clearest pronouncement by the Church on the immorality of contraception and the call to responsible parenthood in their lifetime is the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, written by Pope Paul VI, who teaches therein that marriage requires of a "husband and wife an awareness of their mission of responsible parenthood." Responsible parenthood is defined as, "either the deliberate and generous decision to raise a numerous family, or the decision, made for grave motives and with due respect for the moral law, to avoid for the time being, or even for an indeterminate period, a new birth" (10).

On the other hand, every contraceptive act is condemned, "…which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" (14).

The Church's teaching on contraception is based in part on a clear understanding of the place accorded to the human generative powers in God's design. "Nonetheless the Church, calling all people back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by their constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. That teaching, often set forth by the Magisterium, is founded upon the inseparable connection, willed by God and unable to be broken by humans on their own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning" (11, 12).

Since both NFP and contraception attempt to separate the unitive and procreative act, how does the Church come to its conclusion that they are very different moral acts? In fact, the answer is found in how they affect the human person in very different ways.

'A desire to work in harmony'
Deacon Carlos and his wife Letty can respond to Roger and Lucy with the words of the U.S. Bishops in their pastoral statement of Nov. 14, 2006, "Married Love and the Gift of Life," which states (on page 7):

"The Church's support for NFP [natural family planning] is not based on its being 'natural' as opposed to artificial. Rather, NFP respects the God-given power to love a new human life into being even when we are not actively seeking to exercise that power. However, because NFP does not change the human body in any way, or upset its balance with potentially harmful drugs or devices, people of other faiths or of no religious affiliation have also come to accept and use it from a desire to work in harmony with their bodies. They have also found that it leads couples to show greater attentiveness to and respect for each other."

Regarding the intention of Roger and Lucy to use contraception "only every once in a while," they can be reminded of the fundamental moral principle that it is never right to do something evil even with the intention that good will follow from that act. Contraception remains objectively immoral. While the Church does not teach that a couple must "seek" to have a child from each and every act of intercourse, it does teach them not to suppress that life-giving power that is an essential element of their marriage vows:

"When couples use contraception … they suppress their fertility, asserting that they alone have ultimate control over this power to create a new human life. With NFP, spouses respect God's design for life and love" ("Married Love," p. 7).

'Special' difficulties
But we still are left to respond to Theresa and her very real spiritual pain in our second scenario. What happens when one's spouse refuses to participate in NFP, especially one who may not accept the Church's teaching in conscience?

In fact, this question was addressed directly by the Pontifical Council for the Family. The Pontifical Council recognized that there may be special difficulties presented by a Catholic spouse like Theresa who "cooperates in the sin of a spouse who voluntarily renders the unitive act infecund."

The response to Theresa is that her cooperation with her husband, even when he uses a condom, may be morally acceptable under three conditions according to the Vade Mecum for Confessors Concerning Some Aspects of the Morality of Conjugal Life (1997):

---When the action of the cooperating spouse is not wrong in itself. For example, as in the case above, Theresa is doing nothing to herself to make the act infertile; rather, her husband is.

---When proportionally grave reasons exist for cooperating in the sin of the spouse. In our case, Theresa is working hard to keep her marriage intact, to protect the marriage bond.

---When one is seeking to help the other spouse to desist from such conduct (although not necessarily in that moment nor on every single occasion). Again, Theresa clearly did what she could and worked hard to move her husband to accept NFP, and presumably continues to do so.

It should be remarked that this question of licit cooperation in a contraceptive act as outlined above would have to be carefully reevaluated if the contraceptive means might lead to any kind of abortions, even unintentional ones (as might be the case with birth control pills and certainly is the case with Intra Uterine Devices).

The abortive effect
Finally, it needs to be mentioned that there is growing awareness that certain "contraceptives" like the birth control pill may actually have an abortive effect. It is becoming clear that hormonal methods not only suppress ovulation to prevent fertilization, and so are definitely contraceptive, but that also, at times, the contraceptive action fails and fertilization can and does take place. When this happens, these same contraceptives then work to make it impossible for the new life to implant in the uterus and thus cause an early abortion.

This effect is much more likely in the case of hormone regimens designed to be ingested after intercourse like the "morning-after" pill. When such methods are used after fertilization has already taken place, their only possible effect is abortive.

The decision by a married couple to use Natural Family Planning is a deeply spiritual commitment. It challenges couples to accept each other as they are, to accept children as a gift from God and identify themselves as intimately involved with God as willing partners in bringing new life forth. It also means that a couple recognizes God's supreme place in their lives and in the world:

"You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body" (I Cor 6: 19-20).

As the bishops state in the conclusion of "Married Love and the Gift of Life":

"The Church's teaching on marital sexuality is an invitation for men and women --- an invitation to let God be God, to receive the gift of God's love and care, and to let this gift inform and transform us, so we may share that love with each other and with the world."

Vincentian Father Richard Benson is academic dean and professor of moral theology at St. John's Seminary, Camarillo. His column appears monthly in The Tidings.