My interest in the Catholic theology of marriage started in 1958 when I nursed a woman who, owing to a blood incompatibility with her husband, had had six stillbirths at five months’ gestation. She was advised to be sterilised to avoid this hideous physiological and psychological trauma. Her priest told her that this would be mortal sin and that she must live as brother and sister with her husband. She said to me, “I am his wife not his sister.”
This raised a very profound question not recognised or addressed by official teaching which Pope Francis has sadly reiterated in the Philippines, that intercourse must be open to life. This woman was saying that “marriage must be open to intercourse”. Contraception, or in extreme cases sterilisation, allows the couple to act continuously as husband and wife, whereas natural family planning (NFP) demands, maybe for quite long periods in the month, that the couple must act as brother and sister.
What I have never seen discussed anywhere, and which I have tried to draw to Magisterial attention is the question “What right have you to impose intermittent mandatory celibacy within marriage [deciding] when a responsible couple should not be open to conception?”
Jesus Christ said, “The two shall be one flesh, therefore are they no longer two but one flesh.” Is he referring to intercourse or not? If he is, then the Magisterium, by imposing continence on a couple, is in a very real way “putting asunder what God has joined together.” I believe this is why almost all married Catholics instinctively reject “official teaching”.
I do not believe from what he says that Pope Francis, convinced as he says by the efficacy of modern NFP ovulation detection methods, has even thought of that question.
Elizabeth Price, Maidstone, Kent
In commenting on the Pope 's in flight interview about family size, your editorial (The Tablet, 24 January) refers to "the papally approved three" which appears to be the type of misinterpretation of the Holy Father's words by the media roundly condemned by the Sostituto of the Secretary of State. In an interview with Avvenire the official paper of the Italian hierarchy on 22 January, Archbishop Becciu stated: "The number three only refers to the minimum number that would assure the stability of population, as indicated by sociologists and demographers. In no way did the Pope want to say that it represented the 'just’'number of children for each married couple."
Edmund P Adamus, Director for marriage and family life, Westminster diocese
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