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“Complicate my life with technology, please.”

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3 comments on “Complicate my life with technology, please.”

Jennifer Fitz has a fresh take on the "how-is-NFP-different-from-contraception" thing.

No no no.  NFP is not contraception.  It is not like contraception, it does not do what contraception does, it has nothing to do with contraception.   Ask a happy contraceptor to use NFP, he’ll quickly confirm this for you.

NFP is a form of abstinence.  It’s a method for not having sex. 

I realize that doesn't make it sound very fun, but go read the whole thing.  

Readers of mine who are not even Catholic may find it very bizarre that, among Catholics who are aware of and accept Church teaching against contraception, there is a substantial contingent who are deeply suspicious even of couples discerning that they ought to use NFP at all.

Yes, it's a fringe group.  But Catholics-who-are-aware-of-and-accept-Church-teaching-against-contraception is already a fringe group.  So the fringe group within the fringe group can seem fairly substantial.

 And if you're firmly within the larger fringe (as in my position, which is that we can have interesting hypothetical discussions about "sufficiently serious reasons" all day, but when it comes to real couples in real marriages, it is their own damn business whether to abstain from sex today or not) it is exhausting to keep having a public debate over and over again about what is essentially a matter of private discernment.  Nevertheless, I soldier on.

Anyway, I like Jennifer's take.  Worth reading.

Comments

3 responses to ““Complicate my life with technology, please.””

  1. Christy P. Avatar
    Christy P.

    If you are willing to put up with a (probably) longer period of abstinence than observational methods, there’s an app for NFP, courtesy of Cyclebeads…

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  2. Donna Jannuzzi Avatar
    Donna Jannuzzi

    I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately too. I read Jennifer Fulweiler’s article and I read something recently from Danielle Bean about how hard it is to practice NFP. And it wasn’t the articles themselves that upset me, but some of the comments. I’m with you in the larger fringe. What me and my husband do, or don’t do, is no one else’s business. I abhor the judgmental attitudes of some of my fellow Catholics who think they know my heart better than I do. To me that fight is so exhausting that I don’t even bother taking it up.

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  3. Jennifer Fitz Avatar
    Jennifer Fitz

    I was thinking after I wrote this, that prior to NFP & contraception, I think maybe people didn’t talk so much about whether they were having sex?
    (And I usually don’t. Really. I’m frequently alarmed by the things casual acquaintances will share with me. Despite knowing “what causes it”, I don’t ever make assumptions about people’s private lives based on how many children they do or don’t have, who they live with, etc.)

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