Not wanting more children

[havok579257]

Wife and I have 4 children. Wife does not want anymore children because she feels 4 is a lot.  We comprimised on the 4. She onlyt wanted 2-3.  Anyways we use NFP for avoiding pregnancy currently since we have a 7 months old baby. Anyways what does the church teach about using NFP indefinatly (at least 10 more years until she hits menapause) because you don't want to have more children and think 4 is enough. Its not a money issue or the classic "serious reason" you always read about.  Its just the fact that someone thinks 4 is enough and 4 is a lot to handle.  I understand using NFP when is comes to serious reasons like health, finances and such.  Although does the church have a stance on using NFP to not concieve indefinatly because someone just does not want more children?

[cappie]

This may be helpful...

Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae vitae (1968), while condemning the use of all contraceptive methods for even grave (gravia) reasons, declared licit the recourse to the infertile periods if the spouses have good (just and seria) reasons to postpone even indefinitely another pregnancy (HV, no.16 &10; the language here is similar to Gaudium et Spes, no.10).  But first those spouses are commended who, with prudent deliberation and generosity, choose to accept a large family.  The spouses are to consider their responsibilities towards God, themselves, the family, and human society.  Each of these factors may be taken into account in right order in determining “serious and just reasons.”

In other words, the spouses are to discern together first, what is God’s plan for their family here and now, then their own physical and emotional resources for accepting another child, the needs of other family members, and lastly the good of the human society in which they live.  The pope gives special encouragement to scientists to perfect the natural methods (HV, no.24), declaring that the discipline of chastity exercised in periodic continence enhances married life provided the spouses value the true blessings of family (HV, no.21). 

St John Paul II is faithful to the guidelines of Humanae vitae.  In the Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris consortio, he calls the fundamental task of the family “to serve life, to actualize in history the original blessing of the Creator–of transmitting by procreation the divine image from person to person” (FC, no.28). The Holy Father praises large families; however, he also states,

. . . the fruitfulness of conjugal love is not restricted solely to the procreation of children…it is enlarged and enriched by all those fruits of moral, spiritual and supernatural life which the father and mother are called to hand on to their children, and through the children to the Church and to the world.  (FC, no.28)

 St John Paul II is at pains to counter those who would interpret too narrowly the Church’s teaching on the licitness of natural methods, adopting a form of providentialism, citing both Gaudium et spes no. 50 and Humanae vitae no.10: God the Creator invites the spouses not to be passive operators, but rather ‘cooperators or almost interpreters’ of His plan. [5]

The spouses are to exercise the virtue of prudence in a considered assessment of the well-being of the whole family.  Reason and will are not to be abandoned in favor of a passive submission to physiological processes.  Husband and wife are called to stewardship of all their gifts, especially fertility, which concerns the birth of a new human person made in the image of God and destined to union with Him for all eternity.

http://www.foryourmarriage.org/when-can-we-use-nfp/