1. Why Natural Family Planning?
2. Why Couples choose Natural Family Planning?
3. What is Responsible Parenthood?
Why Natural Family Planning?
Married sexuality and family planning are issues that should be studied carefully and reflected on prayerfully. One wouldn’t want to invest hard-earned money in the stock market without seriously studying the fund performance. Or, one wouldn’t consent to a serious medical procedure without first researching and consulting with specialists. Marriage and family are serious obligations with eternal consequences and need proper care and attention.
Natural Family Planning (NFP) empowers couples with knowledge of their fertility. What an awesome privilege it is to share with God in the creation of new life! Fertility can be viewed as a gift to be understood, not a “problem” to be eliminated. The Church’s approach to family planning is a balanced one, encouraging couples to be generous with their love by welcoming children into the world, while not being careless in deciding on the size of their families.
Fertility awareness involves learning simple biological signs that are easily detected, indicating a woman’s fertility. Natural Family Planning is the ability to interpret those signs of fertility to determine the times of fertility and infertility in a woman’s menstrual cycle. Responsible parenthood is the virtuous choice of the couple whether to plan for a new life or abstain to prevent conception in that cycle.
Couples who choose to use Natural Family Planning experience many benefits and blessings. Some of the benefits are briefly listed below. For more details on each benefit, click on the left side bar: Benefits of NFP.
BENEFITS of Fertility Awareness with NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING
- EASY To learn and use
- EFFECTIVE
- HELPFUL To couples desiring pregnancy
- LIFE RESPECTING
- MORALLY ACCEPTABLE
- ECOLOGICAL
- COMMUNICATION ENHANCING
- GOOD FOR MARRIAGES
- GOOD FOR CHILDREN
- INEXPENSIVE
A Dozen Differences Between Natural Family Planning and Contraception
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Natural Family Planning (NFP)
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Contraception
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What is Responsible Parenthood?
Responsible parenthood concerns the consideration of the factors or conditions, which have a bearing on family size. When considering physical, economic, psychological and sociological factors, couples are responsible to God, to themselves, to their families and to society, in that order. Natural Family Planning assists couples in making generous and responsible decisions regarding family size.
NFP is personalized. Every woman learns how to understand her own body and its cycles, through one or more simple biological signs. With her husband, the two of them discuss and record their observations, gaining an awareness of and new appreciation for their shared fertility. If a couple wants to conceive, they have intercourse on fertile days. If they need to postpone pregnancy, they wait until the infertile times. The average woman is fertile from 8-12 days a month.
Responsible parenthood involves self-mastery and an understanding, as well as a proper ordering, of one’s drives or passions. Natural Family Planning fosters self-control and helps couples accept more fully the responsibility God gives with regard to procreation.
Catholic Church teaching does not say that a couple must intend to have a child in each and every marriage act. Should intercourse take place during the fertile time, when conception is possible, the couple must respect this possibility and must not frustrate it through contraceptive measures. The life-giving potential of the marital act must not be deliberately removed. With the use of Natural Family Planning, unlike contraception, nothing is done before, during or after the martial act to render the act sterile, incomplete or to prevent implantation of a fertilized ovum.
Why is NFP the only method of birth regulation approved by the Catholic Church?
Although there are many compelling reasons for couples to limit or space childbirth, only those family planning methods which uphold the dignity of the woman and the marriage, and that don’t separate the love and life-giving aspects of sexual union, are acceptable.
In the book of Genesis it is revealed that God designed marriage for a twofold purpose: to communicate life and love. In the first creation account, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.” And, then comes the very first command given by God: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” God’s purpose for marriage is that it be life-giving.
In the second account of creation, we learn that the other purpose God has for marriage is that it be love-giving…. “It is not good for the man to be alone.” God intended for husband and wife to be intimate friends, supporting each other with forever and faithful love. Love and Life: The two purposes of marriage are so interconnected that they must never be separated. With NFP, both the loving and life-giving aspects are respected every time the spouses are joined together in the marital act.
NFP is true family planning because couples are taught to identify, chart, and interpret the
signs of fertility so that they can either avoid or achieve pregnancy in a safe, healthy, and effective way.
The church has always taught that every act of sexual intercourse must be open to life. However, since times of infertility are a part of each woman’s cycle by God’s design, it is perfectly acceptable to have intercourse during these times. But, some ask, “What’s the difference? Why would God care if we practiced NFP or used contraception? The result is the same.” Contraception is the choice to engage in an act of intercourse, but render it sterile, thus separating the Life and Love meanings of the act. Contraception is a contradiction of the wedding vows: it contradicts the free, total, faithful and fruitful love promised between the spouses. Sexual intercourse with Natural Family Planning is a renewal of the weddings vows and does nothing to sterilize an act of intercourse.