Is your temperature rising? Because it's National NFP Awareness Week, when the Catholic Church's focus on Natural Family Planning reaches its peak. (Apologies if my subtle fertility awareness puns are a little tacky or somewhat of a stretch.)
Natural Family Planning - also known simply as fertility awareness - is a scientific, effective, safe, and moral means of postponing or achieving pregnancy without artificial drugs, devices, or surgical procedures. It involves learning to monitor and respond to the female body's natural signs of fertility, such as temperature and cervical mucus. Because healthy men of reproductive age are fertile every day of the month, there aren't really any male signs of fertility to track. If a couple wants to postpone pregnancy, they abstain during the wife's fertile times. If they want to become pregnant or are open to the possibility, they don't abstain during fertile times. You can learn various methods of NFP from a number of different organizations, including Family of the Americas, The Couple to Couple League, and Fertility Care Centers of America.
Because they're chemical-free and effective, fertility awareness methods are gaining some traction among individuals who, without any religious motivation, embrace a more natural, health-conscious lifestyle. You don't have to be Catholic to appreciate both the harmful effects of artificial contraception and the beauty of God's plan for our fertility. Today there are even a number of mainstream apps available today to help couples learn to track and understand the female body's signs of fertility.The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops does schedule an annual (barely noticed) NFP awareness week each year, but Natural Family Planning doesn't generally get the attention that it deserves among Catholics. Priests understandably find it to be a challenging topic to introduce into homilies, and parishes typically haven't figured out how to make it part of normal parish life. Marriage preparation is just about the only time when the average Catholic (hopefully) hears about NFP. Perhaps not surprisingly, a large majority of lay Catholics simply use artificial birth control instead of Natural Family Planning.
My wife Nicole and I learned about and began using Natural Family Planning just over seventeen years ago for one simple reason: The Catholic Church has always taught and continues to teach that artificial means of contraception are morally unacceptable. Listening to the audio presentation Contraception: Why Not by Dr. Janet Smith sealed the deal for us. Nicole and I were "high school sweethearts" who became serious about the Catholic faith in college and realized that good Catholics cannot simply pick and choose the Catholic doctrines that they like and reject the ones that they don't. Either you believe that the Catholic Church teaches with the authority of Jesus Christ or you don't. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, explains Catholic teaching on contraception quite clearly:
Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil (CCC 2370).
The Catholic Church's teaching in this area may seem perplexing in our modern world. Doesn't the Church understand the importance of sex?
In reality, the Catholic Church's teaching on contraception - and sexual morality in general - is based on a profound awareness of the God-given dignity of sex. While our post-sexual-revolution culture regards sex as little more than a form of recreation or self-fulfillment, Scripture and Tradition reveal it to be an altogether unique act by which a husband and wife both (1) unite themselves to one another and (2) bring new life into the world. The Catholic Church has repeatedly reaffirmed that we cannot reject either the unitive or the procreative purpose of sex without completely distorting its God-given meaning.
Without question, Natural Family Planning has been a great blessing to my wife Nicole and me. Because of various health issues, there have been times in our marriage when it has been extremely important for Nicole not to get pregnant, and Natural Family Planning has enabled us to do so with complete confidence and effectiveness. Yes, periodic abstinence can be challenging, but even these times of self-restraint can be a great blessing: As one of my high school biology teachers was fond of repeating during awkward sex-ed presentations, "Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder."
If you, like most Catholics, are not too familiar with the Catholic Church's teachings on sexual morality in general or contraception in particular, this is a good week to begin to learn. Resources that I've enjoyed over the years include, in no particular order: