VATICAN CITY (CNS): Couples who use natural family planning to have only one or two children are criticised for making their marriage “willingly sterile”, in a new document from the Pontifical Council for the Family.
The document, “Family and Human Procreation”, was released in Italian on June 6 and was issued to mark the 25th anniversary of the council’s establishment.
“Never before has the natural institution of matrimony and family been victim of such violent attacks,” said the document, signed by council president, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo.
The cardinal said “radical currents” are not simply promoting acceptance of new models of the family, but actually are proposing them as positive alternatives to the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman open to having children.
While various factors are contributing to the problem, the document said, the root of the crisis is a lack of recognition of God as the creator of all human life.
When for the good of the entire family it is best to avoid having another child, couples can abstain from sexual intercourse during fertile periods to avoid a preganancy,” it said.
However, using natural family planning to have only one or a maximum of two children “is nothing other than a kind of series of brief parentheses within an entire conjugal life willingly made sterile”.
