Delete comment from: The Fifth Column
I haven't read extensively in either Love and Responsibility or TOB, but I know that passages in L&R are used by certain Catholics to push for a Malthusian approach to NFP, to say that not only is NFP a "valid option" but that it may be morally requisite in some circumstances. That teaching isn't found anywhere in an official Vatican document ***
But there is one official Vatican document, Humanae Vitae, that suggests something a little bit like that:
"With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time." (HV 10)
I suppose there might be times when NFP could be "morally requisite."
All that said, on the general point of Chris West and John Paul II, I think it's obvious that West and John Paul II have very, very different axes to grind in their discussions of the Theology of the Body. West really needs to lay off TotB -- his interest in it and promotion of it seems unhealthy or unbalanced.
Jun 25, 2009, 5:03:35 PM
Posted to The Bishop, the Pope, and Chris West