NFP Week – So What?

It’s NFP week for Catholics in the United States.  Some people may ask what’s NFP and why is there an “NFP week”?

NFP stands for natural family planning.  The fact that some people don’t know what NFP is or what it is about is the reason the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has a week focusing on NFP.  It is part of the USCCB’s Natural Family Planning Program.  (You can see material put out daily this week on NFP on the USCCB’s Facebook page.)

It is important for us to talk about NFP this week and throughout the year.  Why?  In a world where people are free to make choices, they need to know what their choices are and what the consequences the choices come with.  Our concern is for the salvation of souls.

If you would like to read specific arguments against artificial contraception and in favor of natural family planning, please see the article I wrote last year, “Cooperating With the Way God Created Reproductivity.”

Today, in the context of why we need to have NFP week, I want to talk about how society perceives contraception and the incomplete understanding society has of NFP.

People today want things to be quick and easy.  They also want to be able to limit the number of children they have while having “sex” whenever they want.  I put sex in quotations because the physical act of sex is meant as created by God to be a profound experience of intimacy between a husband and wife.  For many people, what they seek is the physical pleasure of sex rather than intimacy.  They engage in “hook up sex” with people they don’t know and talk about “friends with benefits,” meaning they have sex with friends, again not seeking intimacy, for the physical pleasure of sex. 

This saddens me because it makes people objects of physical pleasure rather than persons with dignity given by God when life begins at conception.

It has gone so far that in 2020 in a forum on the morality of abortion, I literally heard a person say they think abortion is okay because sometimes people just need to have sex to blow off steam in a stressful world.  They said abortion is necessary in case the girl gets pregnant.

As I see it, these people are looking for “sex without consequences.”  The consequence they most want to avoid is pregnancy.  In this mentality, artificial contraception is seen by many as standard practice and common sense.

These attitudes, along with the sexual revolution, have led to a contraceptive mentality.  In this way of thinking, children are something to be avoided.  This leads people down a slippery slope where people say no to life in general.  They seemingly cast off the Fifth Commandment thou shall not kill such that abortion simply becomes the next step in avoiding having children when artificial contraception fails.

Society is right when it says parents have the right to limit the number of children they have.  One can read in paragraph 16 of Humanae Vitae that our Catholic Church agrees with this one statement. 

The moral question at stake is not whether or not parents have a right to limit the number of children they have.  Rather, the moral question is the means they use to control the number of children they have. 

For many, artificial contraception is the quick and easy answer.  It is not expensive and it is over 90% effective when used correctly.  What it is not is natural.  It forces a woman’s body to function in a way it is not intended to.  It says no to the gift of fertility.

On the other hand, NFP is natural.  It does not rely on putting artificial conception into a woman’s body.  It cooperates with the way God created a woman’s fertility to be.  God did not make human women in such a way that they are fertile all the time.  In actuality women are typically only fertile about six days a month.  That means 80% of the time a woman is not fertile.  Our Catholic faith says that it can be morally acceptable for a couple to abstain from sex to avoid having children during a woman’s fertile period to limit the number of children they have. 

Some people do not see a difference between artificial contraception and NFP when it comes to limiting the number of children they have.  They only see the objective, not having children, and are not concerned about the means.  The difference between artificial conception and NFP is the former says no to God’s plan for creation while the latter cooperates with God’s plan.

Artificial conception seems easy (see “Cooperating With the Way God Created Reproductivity” for the concern about long term effects).  NFP requires effort.  The woman needs to monitor her fertility cycle.  Both the husband and wife need (assumes the Sixth Commandment forbidding sex outside marriage is followed) to be willing to say “no” to sex, even when it is meant as intimacy rather than just sex, when the wife is fertile.  If the couple sees things as God sees them, then they know it is worth the effort.

I will end with a comment to anyone who used artificial conception in the past but no longer do and have come to see the immorality of it.  Yes, what you did is not what God intends.  Know that God is merciful.  Offer your past use of artificial conception to him in the Sacrament of Reconciliation with a contrite heart and God will forgive you.

Peace,

Fr. Jeff