Natural Family Planning

(p.115)…The contraception debate is not between an out-dated Church whose ideals are unrealistic and a modern, secular world that has no ideals but is hard-nosed and realistic. The debate is between the Church, whose ideals are realistic (in the sense thatthey can, with effort, be realized) and a world whose ideals are not. Contraception advocates are not without ideals. It is simply that their ideals cannot be realized through the contraceptive means that they propose. To believe that contraception will bring about a greater two-in-one-flesh intimacy is to believe in an impossibility.

An ideal may be difficult, but it should not be dismissed simply because it is an ideal. …

It is precisely because the Church's teaching is based on the natural law that her ideals are both realistic and realizable. By contrast, the ideals of the world are often based on dreams that have no relationship with either nature or the natural law. Such dreams are fundamentally unrealistic.