Tag Archives: Natural Family Planning

NFP Saved My Health—Naturally!

When only seventeen, I experienced my period every other week. My greatly concerned mother took me to see her gynecologist who promptly prescribed the birth control pill. This, the doctor did, though she performed no tests to discover why the frequent menses.

Uninformed about the dangers of hormonal contraception, and desperate for a relief, I happily accepted the medication. About a year later, however, I learned about the negative effects of hormonal contraception. I decided it was not good for me. Returning to the doctor, I asked for an alternative treatment. I was told that there was nothing that could be done for me.

Throughout my college years, I resigned myself to a fate of irregular and painful menstrual cycles. During this time, I had also suffered a number of ovarian cyst ruptures. Unfortunately, I did not dig into the causes of my reproductive health problems until later in marriage preparation when I first started tracking my menstrual cycles through Natural Family Planning (NFP). I worried that my condition would make NFP difficult to practice. And, in fact after I married, the first few months were difficult. My charts were confusing. My husband and I spent hours studying the charts trying to figure out what was going on. I became convinced that something was happening. The clear data empowered me. Not only did I know that there was something wrong, but I knew I could prove it!

After a few months of tracking my cycle, I went to see an NFP trained gynecologist. The doctor reviewed my charts, treated them as medical records, and ordered a number of tests to check my hormone levels. Many medical appointments, charts, and blood draws later, the causes were discovered.

I was diagnosed with both Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (an autoimmune condition). Though my irregular cycles and difficulty charting seemed like a confusing burden at first, they ended up being my saving grace. It was only through NFP that I was able to recognize the physical signs telling me that something was wrong. If I had not charted, I would not have had the necessary medical data to have my PCOS or Hashimoto’s diagnosed. These conditions would have remained unchecked and untreated—thereby doing further damage to my health and life.

While getting the right diagnosis was just the beginning of a lifelong journey with these conditions, I am grateful for the role NFP played. This journey led me to a compassionate and skilled Catholic NaturalProcreativeTechnology™ (NaPro) physician, who walked with me on a journey of infertility caused by my PCOS. When first diagnosed with PCOS I was told by an endocrinologist that conception would be unlikely. If I had not found a NaPro physician who took my NFP charts seriously, offering appropriate and individual treatment, I would not also be able to say that my husband and I conceived our first child—an amazing gift made possible by God’s grace and NFP charting, naturally!

About the Author
Brooke Paris Foley and her husband, Tim, live in Alexandria, Virginia. They are the proud and blessed parents of a baby due in September 2019, who they welcome as a gift from God. Brooke is a Bioethics teacher, a career through which she passionately tries to empower women in their reproductive health journey by teaching them about the medical and moral benefits of Natural Family Planning.

Brooke Paris Foley. This article is printed with the permission of the author. You have her permission to reproduce it in whole or in part, in print and/or electronically, with the following statement: Brooke Paris Foley, “NFP Saved My Health—Naturally!” Used with permission.

Real Couples Share What It’s Like Practicing NFP

You’ve probably heard that the Catholic Church supports Natural Family Planning (NFP) because it’s the only method of family planning that respects God’s design for married love. You may have also heard about the many benefits of NFP—especially the effectiveness for achieving and postponing pregnancy and the lack of side effects. But, sometimes it’s also helpful to hear from couples themselves.

Many couples can speak to how NFP has not only allowed them to achieve or avoid pregnancy but how the NFP lifestyle has changed their marriages and families for the better. Below is a complete round-up of all the stories couples have been generous enough to share with For Your Marriage and the USCCB’s NFP Office. We also link to several videos from across the country that interviewed NFP couples.

Table of Contents:

Articles:

If I had not found a NaPro physician who took my NFP charts seriously, offering appropriate and individual treatment, I would not also be able to say that my husband and I conceived our first child—an amazing gift made possible by God’s grace and NFP charting, naturally!
Brooke Paris Foley – NFP Saved My Health—Naturally!

NFP asks us to always have before us the deepest questions of our shared life together: Are we open to welcoming new life to our family now? Should we be? What might God be inviting us to?
Josh and Stacey Noem – 5 Ways NFP Has Benefited our Marriage

My husband, Frank, and I have learned that our sexual union should be focused on giving rather than getting. NFP provided the environment to live this out.
Jennifer and Frank – Signs of Grace

Unlike contraception, which usually places full burden of family planning on the woman, NFP promotes shared responsibility of the fertility of both the husband and wife. It lends a spirit of togetherness to a marriage.
Jennifer and John Campbell – Connections: Living Natural Family Planning

Before having children, Misty had been an atheist and I had been an agnostic. With our first child, the miracle of life spurred a spiritual awakening in us… Even after our conversion, however, NFP grew our relationship with each other and with God in ways we never expected.
Tom and Misty Mealey – Be Her Joseph

I found that the chastity required to get through the periods of abstinence caused profound changes in me… I became grateful for all God had given me, most of all for my wife.
Fletcher Doyle – My Slogan: “Practice Saved Sex

Children do require lots of work, and pregnancy demands its own set of sacrifices, but NFP has helped me meet these challenges by leading me to the realization that children are God’s blessings.
Dawn Farias – How Natural Family Planning Changed My Life

When ill health strikes family members, it adds a dimension of life challenges that spouses never anticipate.
Andrew and Anna Martin – Hard Decisions and Life-Giving Missions

NFP is not moral birth control; rather, it is a complete way of life honoring one’s spouse’s sexuality and fertility. It is loving naturally – the way God designed it.
Michael and Alysha Chambers – NFP, the Theology of the Body, and Our Marriage

In living God’s plan for marriage we found that this “openness” led us also to adoption.
Jennifer and Mike Dress – The Many Dimensions of Openness to Life

Looking back, the most important thing in this whole experience remains our conviction that NFP is a way for us to cooperate with God’s plan. When our plan and God’s plan seemed different, we felt anxious but also hopeful because we knew that God is faithful.
Josh and Stacey Noem – The Week We Were Pregnant

Videos:

For Further Reading:

How to Learn NFP Online

Most NFP instructors will agree that the best way to learn NFP is to meet with an instructor. There’s nothing like meeting face to face for getting the best information and having your questions answered.

But if there’s some reason you can’t take a class in your local area (did you know our Find Support locator can help you find local NFP classes?), below are some resources that meet the USCCB’s Standards for Diocesan NFP Ministry that also offer online programs. Most have classes in both English and Spanish and include the option to talk with a qualified instructor(s) over video chat or phone.

To learn more about NFP check out our page – What is NFP?

Online NFP Resources
Billings Ovulation Method Association
Couple to Couple League
Marquette University College of Nursing Institute for NFP
SymptoPro Fertility Education

Distance Learning
Family of the Americas
Offers a client correspondence course via the US Postal system, with an interactive CD program as part of the curriculum.

For more detailed information on the above Online/Distance Learning options for learning NFP, please visit our NFP Page on USCCB.org.

NFP, the Theology of the Body, and Our Marriage

Many will tell you that the responsibility of being permanently faithful to one person is too great and that being open to life is too much of a burden. They say contraception brings with it freedom and life; however, we have found that it is in openness to God, to each other, and to new life that true freedom is obtained. This is what living Natural Family Planning (NFP) can help couples to experience.

Alysha was in college when she first heard NFP mentioned. All she knew then was that it existed and the Catholic Church considered it a good thing. Michael, a convert to Catholicism, grew up believing that contraception was good and that all couples should use it. Our first real understanding of what NFP is, and what the Church teaches came during our marriage preparation program. We learned that NFP at its core is simply knowledge of the physical changes one can observe in the woman’s fertility cycle. It gives couples a way to measure and chart their fertility signs. We also learned how responsible parenthood is the virtuous application of this fertility knowledge.

One unexpected aspect of NFP that impressed us was how it fosters communication between spouses. Couples practicing NFP discuss the future of their family with every cycle. Knowing how to discuss such important matters has proven a great blessing to many marriages. Michael decided that blessing, by itself, was enough of a reason to learn NFP.

Another theme we discussed in marriage preparation was the Theology of the Body. It helped us understand who we are and how God created us. It is through our bodies that we express who we are spiritually. Also, because we were made in the image and likeness of God, our bodies are supposed to reflect who God is which means we are to act as He acts. How does God act? He loves. God’s love is a total gift of self. God’s love is life-giving. As husband and wife one way we love like God is through our sexuality. If NFP is studied in this context, our appreciation of each other as man and woman increases because the uniqueness and dignity that God has imprinted in our bodies is revealed. It was at this point that Michael realized NFP was not moral birth control; rather, it is a complete way of life honoring one’s spouse’s sexuality and fertility. It is loving naturally – the way God designed it.

In studying NFP in the context of the Theology of the Body, both of us have become more open to each other, to God, and to children. We truly believe that “children are the crown of marriage” and we pray that God will bless us with children some day. Until then, we will “make our plans but hold them lightly.” For us, that means planning to use NFP both when we are attempting or delaying pregnancy, all the while striving to hear and do God’s will!

Michael and Alysha Chambers, Diocese of Arlington, Va., were married September 24, 2005. This article first appeared in the Couple to Couple League’s Family Foundations (Jan/Feb. 2006). It has been edited to fit this publication and is printed with permission.

The Many Dimensions of Openness to Life

Pro-life. Open to life. Welcoming life.These are all descriptions about my marriage with my husband Michael. Although Michael and I didn’t know it when we married in 1995, God would call us to be open to life in an unconventional way.

Michael and I married after taking a series of Natural Family Planning (NFP) classes offered by our diocese. Our NFP teachers were terrific. We appreciated how they took the time to thoroughly explain the method in our classes. Once married, we happily planned our first pregnancy which unfortunately ended in miscarriage. Our second child was born in 1997, and our next two children were spaced every two years, because I breastfed them into toddlerhood, as we had studied in our NFP classes.

Practicing NFP in our marriage so inspired us that we joined our parish’s Pre-Cana team. We have been happy to speak to the engaged couples about NFP. We also found great pleasure in rearing our babies in a life-giving way. We found that this pleasure spilled over to our toddlers as they enjoyed the addition of each new baby.

As our youngest turned five, the call to give birth again wasn’t as clear as it had been in the past. In fact, my husband and I sensed that we felt a different calling. We looked into international adoption. We prayed that if God wanted us to welcome children whose parents could no longer care for them, He would “open the doors”and show us the path. As we discerned, we saw that every step to take was laid in front of us. In just about a year after we began our paperwork, we left for Ethiopia to bring home a wonderful, spirited, creative, ambitious three year old boy. Since arriving in our family, our three older children have surrounded their baby brother, Ejigu, with unconditional love, patience and joy. Michael and I had greatly underestimated their capacity to love and accept a sibling that looks very little like them. Today, Ejigu tags along to all their activities, attends a preschool CCD class, sings in the parish youth choir that I direct, and helps with household chores like his siblings. In turn, his siblings would probably walk through fire for him!

Mike and had always thought we would have several children of our own. Practicing “openness to life ”as our parents did, was our intention. In living God’s plan for marriage however, we found that this “openness” led us also to adoption. After being so richly blessed with our children, we felt an amazing need to look beyond our means and welcome a child whose parents couldn’t provide for him. Our little Ejigu, now three and a half, bore the pain of losing both parents to death and leaving the early attachments of his first home. We feel an amazing honor to continue parenting him as his birth parents would have wanted. In our practice of NFP, we realized that welcoming life has many dimensions. Listening to God’s call is at its heart!

Jennifer and Michael Drees and their children (Emily, Elizabeth, Dominic and Ejigu) are from the Diocese of Camden.

How Natural Family Planning Changed My Life

As a child I was baptized Catholic, but essentially grew up with no religious practice. As a married adult, I reentered the Church, and soon after felt a tugging at my heart to stop practicing contraception. At that time, I did not know about Natural Family Planning (NFP). More basic, I did not know about Church teachings on the moral practice of family planning. What I would learn about God’s design for my married life and through the practice of NFP would change my life.

True Freedom and Openness to Life
When my husband, Ariel and I took an NFP class, I have to admit that I was scared. Giving up control was frightening! It was one thing to be committed to an ideal, but something quite different to follow through on it. It definitely involved a leap of faith! Over time and with some experience, I began to appreciate the gift and beauty of NFP.

In practicing NFP, my husband and I must decide if we, as a couple, are ready to embrace the possibility of a new life in each menstrual cycle. When we had used contraception, we ignored this reality. With NFP we could not ignore how God made us— as a man and a woman. NFP helped us understand the relationship that God designed between the marital act and procreation. It has made us “open to life.” It even brought our last two children into the family!

The Gift of Self
In using NFP over the years both my husband and I now see that we give ourselves to each other fully in the marital act. For us, the idea of contraception has become almost vulgar. It cheapens the marital act. Contraception seems to say: “I love you, honey, but I don’t love you THAT much.”

NFP also guards against the objectification of the woman in the relationship. Contraception often keeps the woman in a defensive position because it allows “intimacy on demand.” NFP does not allow this because of the practice of periodic abstinence when not seeking a pregnancy. A deeper equality between husband and wife can be nurtured with NFP. NFP begins the process of this awareness.

Growing Together in Holiness
The sacrifices that NFP entails have only served to make me a better person and more devoted to the Lord. Without knowing it, using contraception promotes the idea that children are a burden. Children do require lots of work, and pregnancy demands its own set of sacrifices, but NFP has helped me meet these challenges by leading me to the realization that children are God’s blessings. I am constantly forced to pray, change, make concessions and find solutions to the selfishness and laziness that come up often when meeting the needs of others.

Today, I am confident that had I not been open to life in the practice of NFP, I would not have needed to depend on God, and not have grown as a person. This growth benefits my family and the people I meet in everyday life. Jesus calls us to serve others. Marriage and parenthood are ways we can immediately apply this call in our lives. NFP has led me to be more open to life, more aware of God’s design for intimacy in marriage, more dependent on Him to fulfill these plans. It has strengthened my relationship with my husband, given me personal insight and it has given our children life!

Dawn and her husband, Ariel Farias have four children and live in the Archdiocese of San Antonio.

Hard Decisions and Life-Giving Missions

My wife, Anna, and I are not the typical NFP couple. Our current life is not the typical family life either. We have had the unexpected challenge of sickness change our family life and our mission as a married couple.

Anna and I are both Secular Franciscans. We are called as a couple to “to observe the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ by following the example of Saint Francis of Assisi” by simplifying our material needs, being a leaven in our society, and seeing Franciscan universal kinship with all of creation. Our family includes our three children Penelope, Seth and Rose and my ninety-three-year-old father-in-law. Rose, our youngest, has a rare genetic condition known as Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome (VCFS). My father-in-law has Alzheimer’s disease.

Rose’s VCFS can cause over two-hundred heath complications. From heart defects to schizophrenia, the complications are an ever present source of concern for Anna and myself. Usually a child does not have all two-hundred illnesses, but typically a cluster of a dozen or so health problems will result. For Rose,the first two years of her life found our family living at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. In that time, Rose received two open heart surgeries among the many conditions treated. Today we have more than your average number of doctor visits since we have to stay vigilant with regard to Rose’s health.

With the addition of my father-in-law to the family, the challenge of Alzheimer’s disease has had a great impact on our daily lives. Just as Francis’ great conversion occurred when he saw Christ in the leper, so our family is seeing the poor and crucified Christ in my father-in-law as he declines.

When ill health strikes family members, it adds a dimension of life challenges that spouses never anticipate! In fact, Anna and I believed that our mission as a married couple has expanded because of the needs of Rose and Grandpa. This understanding has impacted how we live the NFP lifestyle.

We have tried many NFP methods. After Rose’s birth, and due to the health care challenges that we now face, Anna and I discerned that God has given us a new mission—the caring for the special needs of Rose and Grandpa. Anna and I have discerned that we cannot have more children. This led us to search for an NFP method that could provide the most information about our combined fertility. We found that the Marquette Model satisfied this need.

The Marquette Method has been an answer to our prayers. After an email conversation with Dr. Fehring (director of the NFP Institute at Marquette University), we adopted a conservative version of the Marquette Method. The method helps us identify the post-ovulatory time in the woman’s cycle that is consistently infertile. For us, it is only about ten days which isn’t much in a busy family!

As Secular Franciscans our rule calls us to acquire purity of heart and for those who are married to live out the grace of matrimony bearing witness to the “love of Christ for his Church.” I am convinced that no NFP method will work correctly in a marriage unless purity of heart has a central place in the couple’s discernment process. For us,we needed an NFP method which would allow us to carry out our mission of caring for our daughter and father-in-law and still allow us to live the grace of matrimony in its fullest sense.It was a hard decision, but one made with trust and generosity!

Andrew Martin and his family live in the Archdiocese of Washington.

Natural Family Planning FAQs

What does the Catholic Church teach about married love?

Marriage is an intimate, lifelong partnership in which husbands and wives give and receive love unselfishly. The sexual relationship expresses their married love and shows what it means to become “one body” (Genesis 2:24) and “one flesh” (Mark 10:8, Matthew 19:6). The sexual union is meant to express the full meaning of a couple’s love, its power to bind them together “the unitive aspect of marriage “and “its openness to new life” the procreative aspect.

What does this have to do with contraception?

The Church believes that God has established an inseparable bond between the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage. The couple has promised to give themselves to each other, and this mutual self-giving includes the gift of their fertility. This means that each sexual act in a marriage needs to be open to the possibility of conceiving a child. “Thus, artificial contraception is contrary to God’s will for marriage because it separates the act of conception from sexual union” (United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, p. 409).

A couple need not desire to conceive a child in every act of intercourse. But they should never suppress the life-giving power that is part of what they pledged in their marriage vows.

Are couples expected to leave their family size entirely to chance?

No. Serious circumstances “financial, physical, psychological, or those involving responsibilities to other family members” may affect the number and spacing of children. The Church understands this, while encouraging couples to take a generous view of children.

What should a couple do if they have a good reason to avoid having a child?

A married couple can engage in intercourse during the naturally infertile times in a woman’s cycle, or after childbearing years, without violating the meaning of marital intercourse. This is the principle behind natural family planning (NFP).

What is Natural Family Planning?

Natural family planning is a general name for family planning methods based on a woman’s menstrual cycle. NFP methods are based on day-to-day observations of the naturally occurring signs of the fertile and infertile phases of the menstrual cycle. It takes into account the uniqueness of each woman. A man is fertile throughout his life, while a woman is fertile for only a few days each cycle during the childbearing years. A woman experiences clear, observable signs that show when she is fertile and infertile. To avoid pregnancy, the couple abstains from intercourse during the fertile phase. Couples can also use NFP to achieve pregnancy because it identifies the time of ovulation.

Who can use NFP?

Any married couple can use NFP. A woman need not have regular cycles. The key to successful NFP use is cooperation and communication between husband and wife.

How effective is NFP?

NFP can be very effective, depending on how strongly motivated the couple is and whether they follow the rules of the method. Couples who carefully follow all the rules to avoid pregnancy can achieve a success rate of 97-98%.

“The key to successful NFP use is cooperation and communication between husband and wife.”

What are the benefits of using NFP?

  • Shared responsibility by husband and wife
  • Virtually cost-free
  • No harmful side effects
  • Can be used throughout the childbearing years
  • Can be used in special circumstances such as post-partum, breastfeeding, and premenopause

How can we learn to use NFP?

The best way to learn NFP is from a qualified instructor-one who is certified from an NFP teacher training program. Your Diocesan NFP Coordinator can help you to find an NFP class in your area.

To learn NFP in a correspondence course or online, see this NFP provider list.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops maintains a list of additional correspondence courses.

For more information:

For Further Reading:

Church Teachings

Is it true that an annulment does not affect the legitimacy of a married couple’s children? Or that Natural Family Planning can be an effective method for regulating the number and spacing of children? (The answer to both questions is “YES.”)

“Perhaps you know the ‘bottom line’ but don’t understand why the Church teaches as it does?”

Many couples wonder what, exactly, the Catholic Church teaches about important moral issues, like:

These articles offer helpful FAQs about the Church’s teaching. If you’d like to learn more about any of these teachings, or other parts of the Catholic faith, here are definitive sources for information about Catholic teaching:

When Can We Use NFP?

What the Church teaches on the moral spacing and limiting of births by spouses
Catholic spouses who strive to live Church teaching on responsible parenthood are sometimes confused by what the Church means by “serious” or “grave” reasons for the use of Natural Family Planning (NFP). This article will address that issue.

NFP enables spouses to space births according to the naturally-occurring phases of fertility and infertility in the menstrual cycle. The Church has accepted this innovation of the 20th century as a morally acceptable means of spacing and limiting births in married life. The contemporary Church document, Humanae vitae, which articulated the reasons why NFP is acceptable, uses the words “serious” and “grave” to indicate the distinctions which spouses need to consider as they seek to plan their families according to God’s will. Catholic couples need to understand the meaning behind these words.

Historical Overview
The Church has always recognized the legitimacy of abstaining from sexual intercourse when both spouses consent for a limited time and for religious reasons (cf. 1 Cor. 7:5). When Pius XI condemned contraception in his encyclical on marriage, Casti connubii (Dec 31, 1930), he did not address the licitness of the Rhythm method which had only recently been discovered but did allow married couples the use of their conjugal rights “in the proper manner” when new life could not be brought forth either because of timing or defects of nature (no. 59). It was not until Pius XII that explicit pronouncements were made. By that time the Basal Body Temperature method (BBT) was becoming increasingly known and used among Catholics.

Pius XII, in an address to Italian midwives in October 1951, declared licit the use of the sterile period for serious reasons, but if the couple was confining intercourse to those days exclusively, their conduct needed to be examined. In that case, it was not enough to be ready to accept a pregnancy if one should occur. For the practice to be moral there must be serious reasons independent of the couple’s goodwill. Otherwise to do so “would be a sin against the very meaning of conjugal life.” At the same time, Pius XII advised midwives to obtain a thorough knowledge of the biological and technical aspects of the theory.

Among the serious reasons for use even for an indefinite period, Pius XII cited “medical, eugenic, economic and social implication.” [1] Only one month later in another address, the pope affirmed “the legitimacy and, at the same time, the limits–in truth very wide–of a regulation of offspring, which, unlike so-called ‘birth control,’ is compatible with the law of God,” and he hoped that science would provide a more secure basis for the method. [2]

The advent of the anovulant pill in the 1960s and pressure from within the Church itself to change its teaching on contraception in the name of enhancing the unitive dimension of marriage led to lively debates in Vatican Council II. While Pope Paul VI reserved the question of whether the anovulant pill was a contraceptive until after the Council, the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world, Gaudium et Spes, reaffirmed that “marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordered to the procreation and education of children” (no. 48), and that the aim and meaning of conjugal life is to cooperate with the Creator in enlarging God’s family. As cooperators with the Creator, they are “interpreters of his love” (no. 50).

Spouses will thoughtfully take into account both their own welfare and that of their children, those already born and those which may be foreseen. For this accounting, they will reckon with both the material and spiritual conditions of the times as well as of their state of life. Finally, they will consult the interests of the family group, of temporal society, and of the Church herself (See GS, no.50).

Grave and Serious
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 the 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 the family (HV, no.21).

John Paul II
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 [3]; 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)

John Paul II takes every opportunity to encourage the development of NFP as a way of spacing births. [4] “When,” he says “by means of recourse to the periods of infertility, the couple respects the inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative meanings of human sexuality, they are acting as ‘ministers’ of God’s plan” (FC, no.32). 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 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.

NFP proponent Rev. Anthony Zimmerman likens the spouses’ co-creation to God’s creation of the world in Genesis (1:1 to 2:3). After each new creation, God “saw that it was good” and paused before a new act of creation. After making man and woman on the sixth day, he declared everything “very good” and rested from further creation. In the same way, NFP parents pause between each birth and when their family is complete according to God’s plan for them (which is likely to vary with each family), rest from any further work of co-creation. [6]

More than his predecessors, John Paul II saw the benefits of natural methods to the couple and family. He appreciates the way they offer spouses the possibility not only to space children but also to identify the most opportune time to conceive a child. In addition, they call for dialogue and mutual sensitivity to one another. “Thus,” he says, “periodic continence…requires a profound understanding of the person and love.”

The way of living which follows from the exercise of periodic continence leads the couple to deepen their knowledge of each other and achieve a harmony of body, mind, and spirit which strengthens and encourages them on their journey together through life. It is marked by constant dialogue and enriched by the tenderness of affection which constitutes the heart of human sexuality. [7]

A Final Word
In summary, all the papal documents addressing the issue of marriage and procreation in the 20th century affirm that marriage and conjugal love are ordered to the procreation and education of children. While contraception cannot be used even in grave circumstances, natural methods of fertility regulation are licit when the couple has serious reasons. Children are a gift to be joyfully received as the crowning glory of family life (GS, no. 48). All modern popes have endorsed the development and use of natural methods of family planning as an aid to living responsible parenthood. John Paul II especially sees them as enabling the spouses to become a total gift to one another.

Notes
[1] Pius XII, Moral Questions Affecting Married Life: Addresses given October 29, 1951, to the Italian Catholic Union of midwives and November 26, 1951, to the National Congress of the Family Front and the Association of Large Families, National Catholic Welfare Conference, Washington, DC.

[2] Ibid

[3] John Paul II, “Homily at Capitol Mall, Oct 7, 1979,” in Pilgrim of Peace: Homilies and Addresses of his Holiness, Pope John Paul II on the Occasion of his Visit to the United States, USCC, 1979: 175-179.

[4] See, for example, “Pope to Two International Groups of Researchers,” L’Osservatore Romano (Weekly Edition) Dec. 3, 1979, and “To Study Group on Natural Regulation of Fertility: The Church is grateful for the help you offer married couples,” L’Osservatore Romano, July 12, 1982.

[5] “Papal audience to participants of NFP course in Rome, December 14, 1990,” L’Osservatore Romano (weekly edition) Dec. 17, 1990.

[6] Rev. Anthony Zimmerman, “Newlyweds and NFP,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review, October 1986, 21-31.

[7] Address to “The Natural Regulation of Fertility: The Authentic Alternative,” conference, Rome, Dec. 9-11, 1992.

Copyright © 1999, Diocesan Development Program for Natural Family Planning, National Conference of Catholic Bishops (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops). Used with permission on www.foryourmarriage.org.