Per Christum Catholic Blog

For our wedding preparation, our priest required Jennifer and I to take three classes on Natural Family Planning with The Couple-to-Couple League. They went well, and we learned a lot. I am glad he required us to take classes, because we were planning on doing it anyway.

Natural Family Planning, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is using the wife’s normal biological cycle of fertility and infertility to space births for just reasons. Before I explain what NFP is, let me explain what it is not. It is not artificial conception, universally condemned by the Church Fathers and Christians of all stripes until Anglicans allowed its use in the 1930s. Since then, most other mainline Protestant denominations have followed the Anglican Communion’s lead in allowing artificial contraception. The Catholic Church (and most Orthodox Churches) still oppose artificial contraception (except for medical reasons).

I admit, when I was considering becoming Catholic, Catholic opposition to contraception was pretty frightening. Growing up evangelical, and spending over four years in the Episcopal church, I found that one thing both groups agreed on was contraception. Even Anglican “conservatives” for the most part accept the use of artificial contraception, even though in the 1930s, the Anglican church did a “new thing” by allowing contraception, much like it did in 2003 when practicing homosexual Gene Robinson was consecrated bishop of New Hampshire. While I do not believe allowing contraception necessarily led to the mainlines’ general acceptance of abortion, I do think approving contraception signaled a major theological shift in the way the mainlines viewed the sex act. Related to this, my current main issue with contraception (besides of course the theological and historical objections) is that it objectifies women, allowing men total sexual access to women without consequence and without concern for the woman (or man’s) personhood. Is it any wonder many men don’t stick around as fathers these days? Could it be that our contracepting culture has taught men that women are there simply there for man’s sexual pleasure? When Pope Paul VI, in 1968, issued the controversial encyclical Humanae Vitae, which upheld the Church’s prohibition against artificial contraception, critics raged. However, time as shown that the late pontiff was dead-on accurate. As Jonathan summarizes:

Paul VI predicted that declaring birth control moral would a) cause a rise in “conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality,” b) result in men selfishly using women with no concern for their welfare c) present a “dangerous weapon. . .in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies” and d) humans would believe that they have “unlimited dominion over their bodies.” Wow, did he get it right or what?

Despite the Church’s opposition to artificial contraception, natural family planning is permitted for just reasons, because even though it avoids pregnancy, it does so using the natural female cycles created by God. For a good article that discusses why NFP is not simply “Catholic contraception” see Is Natural Family Planning a Heresy? At any rate, the method the CCL teaches is called the “sympto-thermal method” and uses a variety of measurements to determine when a woman is fertile, and when she is not. This includes taking temperature and recording the nature of the vaginal mucus. When used properly, it is around 99% effective in preventing pregnancy, accomplished without the use of synthetic chemicals (but requiring a little effort — and occasional abstinence!). Several small studies have shown that the divorce rate of couples that use NFP is 3%, although the studies are small, and this could be because of other factors (strong opposition to divorce of NFP users, etc). For more information, visit the Couple-to-Couple League, or check out their publication, The Art of Natural Family Planning. Jennifer and I are currently helping the CCL test NFP charting software, which I hope will be available to everybody soon!

I think the more NFP is promoted, the more you will find married Catholics and even non-Catholics, embracing it as a drugless, natural, and moral, alternative to artificial contraception.