DR. GREG AND LISA POPCAK AWARDED FR. RICHARD HOGAN AWARD BY COUPLE TO COUPLE LEAGUE

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Lisa and I are honored and grateful to have been chosen to be the 2016 recipients of the Fr. Richard M. Hogan Award from the Couple to Couple League International (CCLI).  CCLI is internationally recognized for their tireless work in promoting the Catholic vision of love, in particular by educating and supporting couples in the effective use of Natural Family Planning (NFP).

According to CCLI, the Fr. Richard M. Hogan Award is given to those who have excelled in the promotion of NFP in the fields of theology, psychology, sociology, or related social science!

Below is the text of the email that informed us of our award….
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Dear Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak,

I’m very happy to let you know that you and Lisa are the latest recipients of CCL’s Fr. Richard M. Hogan Award, which is given to those who have excelled in the promotion of NFP in the fields of theology, psychology, sociology, or related social science!

We are so grateful for all of the ways you have not only promoted the beauty of the Church’s teachings on marital love and NFP, but also the countless ways you have supported and guided couples in living out this sometimes difficult teaching. 

Your first “The Marriage Counselor” column in Family Foundations was published in the January/February 2001 issue (!), and you have continued that now for over 15 years, and our readers consistently rank your column as one of their favorite parts of the magazine. And that column is just a small part of what you do to promote NFP. Between your professional practice, your many books (often co-authored by Lisa), and your husband-wife radio team (most recently with More2Life), both you and Lisa are tireless supporters, defenders and advocates for living out marriage according to God’s amazing design. Praise God for all of your good work!

Ann Gundlach
Director of Communications
Couple to Couple League International

Promoting NFP Just Means Catholics Don’t Believe in Being Stupid–Period.

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Image Credit: Shutterstock. Used with permission.

Image Credit: Shutterstock. Used with permission.

<Sigh>

The author of this piece  (arguing against universal NFP training in marriage prep) is responding to a piece I wrote last year for NFP Awareness Week.   And, although I know he is completely well-meaning,  he completely missed the point.

To say that couples should NOT be required to learn NFP–as the author of this article does– is, in my mind, the equivalent of saying, “As Catholics, we think it is good and noble for people to be completely ignorant of how the female body actually works unless there is some kind of crisis and then we should learn about it really fast.” This strikes me as incredibly stupid–however well-intentioned it might be. Since when is basic ignorance virtuous or commendable?

Likewise, I’m genuinely mystified that many people really don’t seem to understand what “doing NFP” means. After all this time, why is it that people automatically think that “Requiring couples to learn NFP” automatically means, “couples should be taught from day one that they shouldn’t be having babies.”

What complete and utter rubbish! “Doing NFP” does not mean that AT ALL.

What I try to point out in this article is that NFP is NOT a thing and it certainly isn’t a thing that is intended to be used with one specific purpose in mind. Whether or not many couples use NFP in a single-minded way (i.e. to avoid pregnancy) isn’t relevant at all. NFP, qua NFP, doesn’t presume an intention to prevent or avoid pregnancy. It isn’t a tool, like a hammer, that is really only good for one job. Instead of being some “thing” that should be used in one, proper way, NFP is just information that can be used however you prayerfully choose to use it.


So yes, I do believe that couples should be required to learn NFP inasmuch as I believe that couples should required to learn how the woman’s body works as part of marriage prep so that they can take that information and do with it whatever they discern God wills. I do not believe that there is any virtue in ignorance and unless I am misreading the catechism or scripture, I can’t see a single place where Catholics think ignorance is a good thing. I certainly don’t believe there is any virtue in remaining willfully ignorant until there is some kind of crisis and then suddenly running around like a chicken with your head cut-off trying to learn everything overnight and then getting frustrated because “it didn’t work.” If the former is stupid, then the latter is just stupid times 10. The Catholicism I believe in doesn’t promote stupidity and ignorance.

In sum, my position is that NFP should be taught to every couple NOT so that every couple can avoid having kids. THAT IS NOT WHAT NFP IS REALLY ABOUT BECAUSE NFP, per se, IS NOT “ABOUT” ANYTHING. It is just information that couples have a right to have and, in fact, need, in order to be able to properly discern God’s will.

The article builds on this theme.  I hope it helps clarify what I think versus the calumnies that people regularly spread about me.

To learn more about the TRUTH of the Catholic vision of love and sex, check out Holy Sex! The Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving.

UPDATE: Check out Simcha Fisher’s excellent reflection on how to honestly approach the struggles inherent in NFP.

Dr. Strangelove (OR) How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Natural Family Planning. (Part III in a Series)

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Strangelove

This is the third post in my series titled, The Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Burden of Natural Family Planning which attempts to propose some practical and sensitive avenues for addressing the struggles many couples have with NFP.  Click the links for Part One and Part Two.

It isn’t unusual in NFP circles to run into faithful, devout, well-intentioned people who use NFP but live in a constant state of fear about it.  Sometimes they are concerned about the method for health reasons (e.g., hormonal issues, complicated cycles, PCOS), sometimes for mental health reasons (depression, anxiety or OCD), and sometimes it’s just because they don’t really trust the method or don’t trust their ability to read their fertility signs.

Fear and Loathing in NFP-Land

This anxiety can exact a huge cost both for the person’s sense of well-being and the marital relationship.  Because some couples are nervous about the method not working or “getting it wrong” (especially when they are dealing with serious health issues that make conception inadvisable) these couples often feel an incredible burden that causes them to not only use the most conservative rules for determining infertility, but add a few days on either side “just to be safe.”  This can lead to extra long periods of abstinence, increased marital tension, and a great deal of self-doubt and resentment toward the Church for burdening them with the cross of NFP.  In fact, it isn’t unusual to hear women who feel this way wishing for a medical issue that would require them to have a hysterectomy just so that they could stop having to worry about all of this all the time.

Fear:  Not Part of the Method.

NFP isn’t a cake-walk for anyone.  Sure, there are lots of blessings that can come from practicing it, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.  Likewise, for couples who are new to the method, it is natural to feel a little nervous while you’re learning to trust yourself to really know and understand your signs.  That said,  long term anxiety and resentment over the method is always sign that something is not right and the good news is that it is usually the kind of issue that can be corrected with the right kind of information and help.

Let’s Not Blame the Victim

Now, before I go on, let me make one thing abundantly clear.  I’m not blaming the victim.  I’m not saying that if, in your practice of NFP, you don’t experience the kind of joy that makes you want to break out in song at the site of a thermometer and a ream of graph paper then there is something wrong with you.  What I am saying is that if fear and resentment were an unavoidable part of NFP, especially for couples with health or mental health issues, relationship struggles or other concerns, then all couples who wrestled with these issues would be equally miserable.  The good news is that they are not.  There are, in fact, couples who struggle with health problems, mental health concerns, relationship challenges, and other problems who find NFP to be, at worst, a little inconvenient, and at best, a genuine help to them.  “So what?”  You might say.  “That’s not me.”    I get that.  But again, here’s the good news.

Research on the psychology of happiness shows us that the best way to find a way out of a problem is to look at people who are going through similar things as myself but who, somehow, are managing to be happy–or at least effective–despite their circumstances and ask, “What are they doing differently and how can I learn to do that too?”   One of Satan’s greatest lies is that our suffering is so unique that there is no one who can understand or help us through our own struggles.  Being humble enough to recognize that we can learn something useful from people who are going through similar things as us, but somehow bearing up better than we are can be a real source of hope, strength, growth.  The following represent some of the ways couples who struggle with NFP but do not become oppressed by it deal with their challenges.  Try to read the following with an open heart and ask yourself how you might begin to take advantage of some of the supports that follow.

1.  Get Ongoing NFP Training and Support.

Even if you think you know everything there is to know about NFP, having well-trained people you can turn to for ongoing support, additional training, or who could even just serve as a sounding board can be tremendously helpful even when you feel like there is nothing else that can be done.  The more you can say you feel oppressed by the practice of NFP, or nervous about it, or feel that your circumstances are uniquely difficult, the more you need to be getting regular consultation and support in practicing NFP effectively and gracefully in your life.  Likewise, don’t feel that you have to be wedded to one person or even one method for support.  One client I worked with became such good friends with her NFP coach that she didn’t want to “disappoint” her friend by seeking help elsewhere even though she didn’t feel that her present level of support was really helping.  The only thing that matters is getting the support, training, and counsel you need, wherever and however you need it.

The truth is, different methods evaluate slightly different signs and slightly different constellations of signs, and they evaluate them using different techniques and tools.  If one style of NFP doesn’t fit your lifestyle, investigate other options.  The more methods you know, the more ways of gathering information you have, the more competent you can be at interpreting your unique fertility signs.

2.  Seek Faithful Medical Support

If you have a health concern that is making the practice of NFP more difficult for you, it can be helpful to seek counsel from a Catholic physician whose practice is consistent with the teachings of the Church.  I am not suggesting that you need to make a radical change in your treatment or even change the primary physicians consulting on your case.  Rather, it might be good to get support from a Catholic physician who can offer you advice on medical approaches that are both consistent with your faith journey and how you might be able to manage your health problems in ways that make practicing NFP easier.  Two good sources for these referrals would be the Catholic Medical Association and the Pope Paul VI Institute.

3.  Seek Faithful Counseling Support

Perhaps you feel that your mental health and your marriage are just fine and you don’t have a particular problem that you need to address in counseling.  That may be true, but counseling isn’t just about solving problems.  It is also about developing strengths.  When a person, or couple, is going through a particularly trying time, it can be helpful to work with a professional therapist who can help you discover how to approach the challenges you are facing in a manner that brings out the best in you.  There is a wide body of research showing that even in the absence of mental health or relationship problems, when a person who is struggling with an unusual stressor seeks professional help, they function better through the difficulty and experience more rapid relief from the difficulty they are encountering.  Of course, if you are dealing with a mental health or relationship issue then all the more reason to seek competent, faithful help early and stick with it until you feel like you have gotten to a better place with both  your practice of NFP and the co-occurring issues.  You can find good resources for faithful counseling at www.CatholicTherapists.com  (a national referrals source) or through our Catholic Tele-Counseling Practice at the Pastoral Solutions Institute.

4.  Seek Prayer Support

Getting good spiritual direction, or at least ongoing prayer support, is essential for remaining faithful under pressure and beating back the dark thoughts that make our attempts to remain faithful more difficult than they ought to be.  Satan does not want God’s people to be faithful.  If we must be faithful, then Satan would prefer we become those “querulous sourpusses” that Pope Francis decried in the Joy of the Gospel.  Getting good spiritual support–whether from a spiritual director, a prayer group, or even your spouse, or a spiritually-mature friend or relation– is essential for preventing this bitter root from growing in you (Heb 12:15).

5.  Avoid All-or-Nothing Thinking

When you are in the grip of fear, resentment, or other strong, emotional reactions, it is easy to fall prey to all-or-nothing thinking that says, “Unless I can see how doing this (whatever ‘this’ may be) can resolve my problems, there is no point doing anything.”

When we are in the middle of a struggle it can be difficult to know what is going to work.  That’s why it’s important to take our cue, not from our feelings, but from what people who are handling things better than we happen to be are doing.  Again, we need to stop thinking our pain is so terrifically unique that the things that help others couldn’t possibly help us.  If you are going through difficulties with NFP and you are not seeking one or more of the forms of support I have outlined in this article, then you simply aren’t getting the help you need.

Again, the truth is, despite the many blessings it affords,  NFP can be a challenge under the best of circumstances. If you are feeling oppressed by the practice of NFP, then that is a sign you need more support, training and guidance, not because you are necessarily doing anything wrong, but so that you can learn to rise to the unique challenges in your life that are making NFP more difficult than it needs to be.  To get more support working through the ways Natural Family Planning might be negatively impacting YOUR marriage, check out my books, When Divorce is NOT An Option:  How to Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Lasting Love  and Holy Sex!  The Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving or contact the Pastoral Solutions Institute  to learn about our Catholic Tele-counseling practice.

 

CNN (!?!) Loves NFP

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This article isn’t perfect, but the fact that its as good as it is and in CNN is a minor miracle.  Nice to see the world is catching up with those of us who’ve been in the know since Humanae Vitae.  Now if we holysexcould just get the Church to capitalize on this to start promoting our resources….

FAM is frequently referred to as the rhythm method — a system in which women predict their likely fertile days based on the lengths of their cycles. However, FAM advocates say there is a clear distinction. This method is much more careful.

Where’s my orgasm?

Ilene Richman, director of the Fertility Awareness Center, describes it this way, “It’s a process of becoming aware of the signals your body is giving you and keeping track of them.”

Richman explained that after a women ovulates, her basal body temperature, the body’s lowest temperature throughout the day, would rise. In addition, “A woman who cycles naturally, is going to experience a wetness around the time of ovulation,” Richman says.

When women become more fertile, their bodies produce fluids that help give sperm their best chance at fertilizing the egg. Once a woman ovulates, the consistency of that fluid changes. A woman’s cervix will also change positions, based on whether or not she has ovulated.

Charting temperatures, noting fluid consistency, and checking cervix position can seem overwhelming at first. “I think it can be a little difficult to remember it all in the beginning, but it really isn’t that difficult,” explained Kacey. “Once you get it, you fall into a rhythm.”

The CDC and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists are quick to point out that FAM is one of the least-effective methods of birth control.

“You hear about 25%,1 in 4, who use it correctly can expect to get to get pregnant.” says Dr. Nathaniel DeNicola, an OBGYN with the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

Doctors: Think twice about the pill for teen birth control

But FAM supporters, such as Sarah Bly, a fertility awareness instructor, says that number needs to be parsed out further.

“The perfect use rate is 99.6%-99.4% which is really good,” Bly says. Meaning women who are very particular about keeping their health statistics and not missing even a single day. “A lot of statistics that (the doubters quote) are typical use, which include women taking risks,” Bly says.

A German study from 2007 that tracked 900 women over 20 years consistently using FAM methods found that only 2% of those women had an unintended pregnancy.

DeNicola agrees that it can work for some.

“For the right patient, who is really willing to track the days, and are willing to track the temperature,” he says.  READ MORE

If you’d like more information on NFP and how you can celebrate a more grace-filled, passionate, joyful marital sexuality, check out Holy Sex!  The Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving.   And don’t forget to visit the USCCB Office on Natural Family Planning.

 

The Real Problem with NFP–A Continuing Conversation..

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If you enjoyed my post from yesterday, “There’s No Such Thing as NFP”  you’ll appreciate today’s post from Dr. Pia De Solenni’s post that builds on some of the themes I raised.  Here’s a taste…

For quite some time, I’ve been making the case that NFP is pedagogical….NFP, when a couple learns it together, provides a much needed basis for learning how to communicate about vulnerable and deeply private/sensitive topics. What happens in some cases, unfortunately, is that the wife learns and implements it by herself and then her husband sees her as the gatekeeper. She’s keeping him from having sex. If it weren’t for that d****d NFP, they’d be having sex, right? (I remain convinced that many couples who use fertility monitoring devices are in fact looking for a referee in the bedroom. It’s no longer the wife who’s saying that she’s fertile and that it’s not a good time to conceive a child – she’s worn out with that pressure and responsibility which properly belongs to both of them together; it’s now this device that becomes the arbitrator in the bedroom. I’m not opposed to such devices, but I do think it’s important to look at how and why they are used.) This suggests that the couple has deeper issues than NFP.   READ MORE

There is No Such Thing as Natural Family Planning

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The USCCB has proclaimed July 20-26 National NFP Awareness Week.  This is one of a series of posts I’ll be doing to increase awareness of the Catholic vision of love.

At the Theology of the Body Congress last week, I participated in a panel discussion on Natural Family Planning.  I began my comments by asserting, to the surprise of the audience, that the most important thing to remember in discussions about NFP is that there is really no such thing as “NFP.”

<insert sound of record scratch here>

Let me explain.

Don’t Thing-i-fy NFP

NFP isn’t a thing.  I can’t hold it in my hand, or put it in a drawer, or carry it around in a shopping bag.  It isn’t a drug that we take.  It isn’t even a tool (although it often involves “tools” like charts and thermometers or fertility monitors and the like).  NFP isn’t a tangible thing at all. Rather NFP is simply information that allows couples to communicate and pray about how marital intimacy can help them grow in holiness and receptivity to God’s will. 

I think this is a profoundly important thing to realize.  For instance…

~When dioceses, or pastors don’t require couples to complete training in NFP what they are really doing is failing to require a couple to learn how to gather the information they need to communicate and pray about how their marital intimacy can help them grow in holiness and receptivity to God’s will.   I can imagine a lot of clergy saying with a straight face, “We don’t insist on NFP training.”  I think it would be a little more difficult for a bishop or pastor to confidently and comfortably say, “We don’t require our couples to learn to communicate and pray together about how their marital intimacy can help them grow in holiness.”

~Similarly, when people say, “NFP is hard” they’re absolutely right–but not for the reasons they think.  They are not right because NFP is hard.  They are right because communication is hard.  Couple prayer is hard.  Getting marital intimacy right is hard, and growing in holiness and receptivity to God’s will is very hard.  NFP simply insists that couples cannot get by with ignoring these things.  Sadly, many couples really do think they can make it without doing these things–and the high divorce rate attests to their error in logic.  NFP makes couples do work that would otherwise just be easier to pretend we didn’t have to do.  I completely agree that doing this work isn’t always fun.  But every day in my counseling practice, I see the bad fruit that comes from not attending to this challenging, yet still rewarding work.

~When couples say, “We don’t have serious reasons for using NFP” they are communicating a deep and profound misunderstanding of what NFP is because, again, they are thinking of it as a thing.  It isn’t a thing.  It is only information that allows a couple to communicate and pray about how their marital intimacy can help them grow in holiness and receptivity to God’s will.  Couples who say that they don’t have reasons to use it are really saying–probably without meaning to–that they believe they are exempt from communicating and praying about how their marital intimacy can help them grow in holiness or receptivity to God’s will.  Who can really say that?

Incidentally,  I don’t mean to suggest that couples who don’t use NFP have no process in place for communicating and praying about how their marital intimacy can help them grow in holiness and receptivity to God’s will, but I think any couple who isn’t using NFP needs to ask themselves some hard questions about what that process actually is.  And, just to be clear, singing, “Que sera, sera” is not an acceptable process.  It’s not an OK way to be a godly steward of your money.  It’s not an OK way to be a godly steward of your home.  And it is surely not an OK way to be a godly steward of your marriage and sexuality.

NFP: Facilitating the Universal Call to Holiness:

Again, none of this is to take away from the fact that living the Catholic vision of love is hard work.  I know from both professional and personal experience that it truly takes a lot of effort and struggle.  But that isn’t NFP’s fault.  That’s simply the struggle that every couple faces to learn to communicate, pray together, get marital intimacy right, and grow in holiness and openness to God’s will together.  All of that is hard work.  NFP actually makes that work more do-able.

Becoming A Prophetic Witness to Love

The sooner we, as a Church, can stop arguing about whether we should require couples to learn NFP, or whether couples should use NFP, the sooner we can dedicate our time, energy and resources to helping couples actually do the work of NFP; that is,  communicating and praying about how their marital intimacy can help them grow in holiness and receptivity to God’s will.  When we can do this, the Church will finally be able to show the world that we have what everyone is looking for; the plan for creating a free, total, faithful, and fruitful love that can stand the test of time, warm our hearts, and transform the world by its example.   And that, would be a very good thing.

If you’d like to learn more about how the Catholic vision of love can transform your marriage, check out Holy Sex!  The Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving.