Wow

I've had such a voluminous response, all of it thought-provoking, some of it sorrowful.

One reader chose to respond via email. She yearns for a pastoral response that does not declare one choice wrong but conforms to the free will of the couple in exercising their own choices. Unfortunately this is the very definition of a moral relativism that seeks acceptance of all things for the sake of people's feelings rather than a loving objectivity which promotes the common good. One requires the sacrifice of the individual and the other necessarily results in the detriment of the whole people.

As you can observe in the comments, one reader found unfolding complications while another discerned essential truths.

In the end, I like my Beloved's response the best: choosing NFP is choosing the more beautiful way. God is Beautiful. As a result sex is beautiful. We are beautiful. NFP more entirely conforms the man and woman to Beauty than artificial contraception ever can. Why do artificially and chemically what the body can do naturally of its own accord? Why divorce the woman from her own body's natural rhythms when the man can learn to sing in harmony? Why control or force what one can simply allow instead?

In this Catholic morality becomes very Taoist, don't you think?
[Appropriately this image came from joyofsects.com]