An Analogy with Communication: NFP’s Pseudo-Frustration of a Faculty

An additional case of using a faculty in a natural way while willing its failure to achieve its natural purpose by targeted action can help to explain how NFP is not a perversion of the sexual faculty. It will also help us to begin exploring another important aspect of the problem which will preoccupy us in the following pages.

The sexual faculty can be compared to the faculty of communication. Each has its associated organs and powers and natural, proper ends, and they regard “another” rather than oneself. Each also has its misuses and its perversions. A misuse of communication would be idle speech – speaking when there is insufficient reason to speak such that it is undue, speaking simply for the immoderate pleasure of speaking. Obvious misuses of the sexual faculty would include having relations at an inappropriate time or in an inappropriate place. Contraception, insofar as it is the perversion of a faculty, is analogous to lying. In a lie, the use of the communicative faculty is perverted by introducing falsehood into one’s communication in order to subvert that faculty’s purpose, viz., the communication of truth. Contraception perverts the sexual faculty by destroying the possibility for procreation, the proper and primary end of the sexual act and the exclusive end of the sexual faculty as such.^{55 55} It seems an extension of this analogy to “frivolous contraception” is also possible – where one uses a contraceptive method when it would not be necessary to prevent conception (i.e. using a pill when the woman has had a hysterectomy). This would be like lying for fun, knowing the listener would misunderstand the truth and believe the same falsehood which is communicated by the lie. It seems that one may not presume upon misunderstanding in this way, nor presume upon infertility in this way.

The presumption upon natural (or non-contraceptive) infertility seems to be like telling the truth, perhaps in an obscure way, to gain some good, meanwhile hoping and even knowing that the listener will not understand what is said (a “broad mental reservation”), as opposed to staying silent (abstinence) or telling a lie (contraception or other unnatural vice). One can certainly wish the listener not to understand the truth which one tells, and one can even use deceptive language to avoid this from occurring. Of course, broad mental reservations may not be used indiscriminately: they require sufficient justification. In some cases, one has a clear right to be told the plain truth.

Is NFP the sexual version of ineffective communication, or even of broad mental reservations – licit, despite the intention for the faculty not to achieve its purpose, but requiring sufficient justification? Or is it like “idle speech” of some sort, unjustifiable due to a natural sort of excess and inordinateness? Does the good being sought have anything to do with the act’s lawfulness, unlike with speech except insofar as justification is needed for the use of broad mental reservations?

The position I propose here is that intentionally infertile natural conjugal acts are analogous to broad mental reservations and are in some cases analogous to idle speech. This subsequently requires a double justification for the use of such acts. One the one hand, there must be a compelling reason for not wanting the act to succeed in its chief purpose (procreation), despite using it without perverting the faculty (by contraception).⁵⁶ On the other hand, there must also be an adequate motivation for using the act in this or that particular instance, which I will later argue is contained only in a legitimate need for the relaxation of concupiscence other than to pay the debt when requested. ⁵⁶ It should be noted that the analogy between sexual activity and language was not unknown to St. John Paul II.

An objection might be raised to the analogy with communication, specifically as to its fittingness given that it is not an abuse of the faculty of communication to say something false to “undue matter,” such as an inanimate or unconscious object, or a person who is asleep. However, this simply shows that the analogy has its limitations – speaking to a rock is not actually a use of the communicative faculty on account of communication’s total dependence upon reason, whereas the use of the sexual faculty occurs based merely on biological forces. One could only lie to a rock if he thought the rock could understand him. The communicative faculty is rooted in the intellect, while the sexual faculty is rooted in the body as informed by the vegetative soul. A further difference is that truth-claims have various levels of import (from light to grave) and intentions for lying have varying degrees of goodness and evil (i.e. saving a life, defrauding a bank), while every human life in principle is of equal value in itself and is always of great importance. This is why lies can be venial sins or mortal sins but contraception (and other unnatural vices) are mortal sins.^{57 57} A more complex difficulty with the analogy relates to the intentionality of words, which are useful only by convention, unlike gametes which have power of themselves, though this does not seem to harm the value of the analogy with respect to the most important aspects. The faculty of communication simply works in a somewhat different way than the sexual faculty.

It is important to note that, while linguistic conventions that are strained by an abnormal use of them, as is done in broad mental reservations (such as using the word “house” to refer to one’s family – i.e., “There are no Jews in my house,” meaning, “There are no Jews in my family,”) this is a dimension where analogy breaks down with respect to NFP. One may be inclined to say that NFP is not contraceptive because there is simply less probability of conception, or that conception is still theoretically possible. While these conditions with respect to fertility do obtain, they are not what makes NFP to be non-contraceptive; rather, it is the lack of any action upon the reproductive system in view of interfering with its well-functioning that is the key. Plenty of chemical and even surgical interventions that are clearly contraceptive can and do fail to prevent conception – yet they are still contraceptive. And as science progresses, one could eventually know with functionally perfect certitude that conception on a given day is impossible short of a miracle. The point is that in NFP there is no intervention which perverts the use of the sexual faculty, preventing it from reaching its natural end, there is simply a use of it which intentionally occasions its failure to do so, as with a broad mental reservation.