Souls In Heaven

[ImageTrinity]

I've talked to a few Catholic couples recently who feel that using NFP to prevent pregnancy is a sin under any circumstances. Their opinion is that the souls of future children exist in the mind of God and are simply waiting to be given a body. I am very sure this is not Church teaching but haven't been able to find authoritative teaching to the contrary. Help please?

[phatcatholic]

Souls of future children exist in potency in the mind of God, but they are not actualized until they are joined with a human nature at the moment of conception. When the Catechism refers to the soul being created "immediately", this is what is meant.

 

366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not "produced" by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.

 

382 "Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity" (GS 14 § 1). The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God.