He relates, "I started with an analogy. Let us say that you and your fiance are making up a wedding invitation list. There are certain acquaintances of yours that you are not going to invite (obviously you cannot invite everyone you know). There are two things you can do.
The first is the traditional approach: simply do not send these people invitations.
The second approach is not at all conventional but would nonetheless achieve the same effect: send out notices telling them not to come, that their presence at the wedding is undesired."
"Now, put yourself in the shoes of an acquaintence who receives a note telling her not to come to the wedding:"Dear Jan Doe, Tom and I are getting married next month and we want you to know that you are not invited to the wedding. We don't want you, so please don't come."
Would you feel differently receiving such a note as opposed to simply not receiving an invitation?
"People always acknowledge that apart from its unusualness, they would indeed feel differently in getting a "disinvitation." In fact, they admit that they'd feel insulted, whereas not getting an invitation would leave them, at the most, only disappointed.
There is clearly a pretty important moral and psychological difference between these two techniques for achieving the same end..."
"To tie the analogy in with NFP and contraception, I suggested the NFP couple that does not want a child just then, simply does not send out an invitation for a child; that is, they refrain from sexual intercourse, which is an act whose very nature is ordinated to the invitation or invocation of new life. The contracepting couple, on the other hand, by using a contraceptive is sending the message that a new life is undesired."
"Now, enlisting the power of your imagination, put yourself in the osition of the Creator. The abstaining couple who is practicing NFP is acting in such a way that they are not calling upon God's creative act at that time. We cannot imagine God being insulted or dishonored here. The couple is simply not performing an action whose nature is ordained to elicit God's creative act. God is still present, still respected, but no invitation is sent to Him that would invoke His presence in the specific form of His being a Creator of new life. Contrariwise, the contracepting couple, by using contraception, is sending an explicit message to God that His creative presence is not desired. Because He receives a "disinvitation" in the form of a contraceptive signal, we might easily imagine that He would be insulted."
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There is a HUGE difference between sterilizing something fruitful, and not doing the fruitful thing at all.
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2 comments:
Amen Antonia! Clever analogy there too.
I didn't think of NFP until well after I became Catholic. I think it should be far more talked about. There are great books and semminars around but condoms and other methods are more widely publicised.
Thank you for this insight Antonia :)
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