VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Couples who use natural family planning to have only one or two children allow “brief parentheses” in a marriage “willingly made sterile,” said a new document from the Pontifical Council for the Family.

The document, “Family and Human Procreation,” was released in Italian June 6 and was issued to mark the 25th anniversary of the council’s establishment.

Read the whole article for the full effect. I agree with the majority of it, but this appears to be self-contradictory:

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 pregnancy, 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,” it said.

So what does this say to the couple who find that for the good of the entire family, they must limit their family’s size to 2 kids total? The Art of Natural Family Planning talks about how we are called to procreate, but we’re also called to prudence. If the addition of another child would place the rest of the family into a position jeopardizing the welfare of the rest of the family, then that is a serious reason to avoid an additional child.

At my current station in life, making my whopping $33k a year, I am unsure my wife and I can sustain a family of more than 2 kids. Okay, yeah, we could afford more, but we would literally be unable to save a penny. That means no saving for retirement, which would place an undue burden on the kids. It also means no savings for college for the kids…and that means essentially we’d either be condemning them to a life without enough education to even subsist in their adult lives, or a life of paying off high-interest student loans, and I argue that neither of these things are in the best interest of the family.

But then immediately, the document says that if I only have 1 or 2 kids, my wife and I have lived our lives “willingly sterile.” And this is apparently a criticism. Now, granted that this is not an official English translation, so there’s the possibility that CNS is not being 100% faithful to the real meaning an context in their reporting. I look forward to reading the real English translation.

In the context presented here, I have a hard time accepting this. Yeah, I could make $50k-60k a year as a corporate IT guy, but I have been convicted that I need to be reliable and active in my kid’s life, and in order to do that, I have chosen the position handed to me on a silver platter, which pays less but is much lower stress and allows me to maintain a relationship with my kid. I think my number one call is to be a present figure in the life of my children, a positive male role model, and a provider for the material needs of my family. My wife and I are called to be prudent and realistic as we consider how many members our family can support.