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.  

Ad Contra Providentialists–Natural Family Planning Awareness Week

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It’s NFP Awareness Week according to the USCCB and several Patheos bloggers are taking a look at the topic.  Simcha is doing a massive give-away contest over at her place.  Tom McDonald has a solid post on the havoc the Pill is wreaking on the environment.

Others are taking notice as well.   It is strange to me that with so few people actually practicing it (about 2% of Catholics) NFP Catholics still come under fire from far right providentialists who believe that it is morally suspect to attempt to consciously do anything to plan one’s family.   The Personalist Project’s Katie van Schaijik responds to the providentialists and gets it exactly right.    As a very orthodox theologian friend of mine put it, “in truth, providentialism is very hard to defend from a Catholic perspective.”  Here’s a sample of Katherine’s argument.  By all means, though, you should go and read the rest.

…the real problem with providentialism is something very different; something deep and far-reaching—going, in fact, to the innermost heart of our Faith. In brief, providentialism represents and perpetuates a false view of human sexuality, of marriage and of the Christian moral life—a view that malforms consciences, grievously burdens families, and misrepresents the Church to the world.

Serious charges, I am aware. Please bear with me while I explain.

First, let me repeat a key distinction, helpfully enunciated by Dr. Smith in the course of her talk. There are two critically different kinds of providentialists, which in shorthand we may call personal providentialists and theoretical providentialists. The problem I am speaking of is only with the latter. It has nothing at all to do with those spouses who, taking into prayerful account the unique inward and outward circumstances of their married life, freely and generously open themselves to as many children as come to them.3 In fact, I’ll even grant gladly that the Church has a “preferential love” for such families, just as she has for the poor. (What Catholic heart can resist them?) The problem is not with these, but with those who “add to God’s law” by seeking to impose an obligation on all married couples that is not to be found in the teachings of the Church, viz., that unless prevented by nature or emergencies, all married couples ought to have large families; and, correlatively, no couple should make use of NFP, except in very rare cases, and then only with sincere regret and extreme caution.4 (NB: This kind of providentialist can be found among priests, teachers and single lay Catholics, as well as married couples. It is not unknown among college students.)

What does the Church really say?

The teaching of the Church with respect to family planning is straightforward, clear and easily summarized.

1)   Spouses must be willing to accept children lovingly.

2)   Spouses may not practice contraception.

3)   Taking into consideration a whole range and variety of factors, including physical, economic, psychological and sociological factors, spouses may do well to practice Natural Family Planning to space children and/or limit family size, provided that they do so with due moral seriousness—with a generous, responsible and prayerful sense of what they owe to God, to one another, to their children and to society.

That’s all.  (go read the rest)

Admittedly, this can be a difficult topic to sort out for oneself, especially when so few pastors are prepared to speak to this issue in any kind of an informed way.  If you would like to learn more about the Catholic vision of love, what the Church actually teaches and how to respond to the obstacles couples often face in living the truth of that teaching in their lives, check out Holy Sex!  A Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving.    As one reader put it, “This book courageously and unashamedly explores the true source, meaning, and purpose of our sexuality. It explodes the myth that the Church and sex are nearly mutually exclusive, and reveals the dignity and reverence that the Church places upon sex and sexuality not only for procreation but just as importantly for its absolute integral importance for creating and nurturing a deep, true, spiritual marital relationship. This book shows us that physical pleasure is indeed very good and highly encouraged by the Church in the marital relationship. Not in the same way that physical pleasure is presented to us in the thin veneer of eroticism that society inundates us with, but as a beautiful part of something much deeper and more meaningful.”

Speaking of NFP, The Atlantic Discovers Something Faithful Catholics Have Known All Along

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There was a terrific article in The Atlantic last week on the growing awareness and promotion of Natural Family Planning by secular medical professionals (who prefer to refer to it as Fertility Awareness Based Methods–FABM).  Really good piece.

 …surveys  conducted by physicians at the University of Utah show that when natural fertility-awareness methods are described to women, 25 percent say they would strongly consider using one as their means of birth control. But thanks to its glaring image problem and a set of just-as-formidable infrastructural hindrances, ignorance of fertility awareness-based methods is widespread. If more women looking for a non-hormonal, non-barrier, non-surgical form of birth control knew about FABM, then more of them could be practicing it to its utmost effectiveness—rather than doing it in the dark.

These fertility awareness models actually can work, and work well. A recent 20-year German study asked 900 women to track their fertility every day by monitoring their body temperature and cervical mucus, and use that information to avoid pregnancy. The study’s researchers found this to be 98.2 percent effective—comparable with the pill, and a far cry from the 82 percent effectiveness rate of the withdrawal method.

In January, a group of physicians organized through the Family Medicine Education Consortium published a review looking into the efficacy of various FABMs. They combed through all the relevant research published since 1980, and concluded that “when correctly used to avoid pregnancy, modern fertility awareness-based methods have unintended pregnancy rates of less than five (per 100 women years).” (A woman year is one year in the reproductive life of a woman.)  Their effectiveness levels, in other words, are “comparable to those of commonly used contraceptives,” the study’s authors add.   READ THE REST OF THIS EXCELLENT PIECE HERE.

If you’d like more information on how the Catholic vision of love and sex can make your marriage more passionate, joyful, and intimate, check out Holy Sex!  A Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind Blowing, Infallible Loving.

Real Catholic Love and Sex Takes on the Ultra-Traditionalists on NFP So I Don’t Have To

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Really good piece over at Real Catholic Love and Sex on the struggle of ultra-traditionalists to accept Natural Family Planning.   Here’s a taste.

Ultra-traditionalist Catholics don’t get a pass on this any more than “Catholics for Choice”. “More Catholic than the Pope” is simply another form of protest and yet another way of being “Protestant”.

Taking a closer look at the critiques, those who think promotion of NFP is a deviation from “traditional” Catholic teaching have often misunderstood the actual traditional teaching by reading older documents anachronistically and out of context.

Likewise, just because someone has misunderstood Catholic teaching, past or present, doesn’t make it controversial either. That is why we have pastors, bishops, and the entire magisterium of the Church to help us on our journey of faith. Unlike other traditions, we do not have the burden of every person having to define his or her own doctrines and his or her own understanding of the faith.

Finally, if you are looking for genuine controversy in this area—as in where priests, bishops, and theologians have actual disagreements—it was never over whether NFP is licit, it was over whether contraception is licit. The question of the licitness of NFP was settled by a brief statement from the Holy Office. The question of whether contraception remained illicit given social changes and advancements in scientific knowledge required a Papal Commission that lasted several years. Furthermore, promotion of NFP has always been associated with the more conservative and faithful elements of Catholicism, not the more liberal and dissident ones.   GO READ THE REST HERE.

And if you’d like more information on how the Catholic vision of love and sex can make your marriage more passionate, joyful, and intimate, check out Holy Sex!  A Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind Blowing, Infallible Loving.

So, Natural Family Planning is Based on SCIENCE!?! OMG!

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Frank Weathers points us to the website RealClearScience in which a science-geek is shocked to discover that the Church’s retrograde, woman-hating, dogmatic, and theocratic attitudes on contraception are actually…(wait for it) SCIENTIFIC!    And what’s more, NFP actually….WORKS WELL!?!

(Pause to allow for recovery from fainting spell)

I’m picking on the guy a little because he still can’t manage to hide his knee-jerk anti-Catholicism, but at least he had the decency to investigate his biases.  That’s how it starts, people.  Discover the Church is right about something like this one day, and find yourself signing up for RCIA the next.  All my readers who are hip to the Church’s teaching on NFP should wander on over to Real Clear Science and show Ross some love.  Seriously.  The guy is actually trying to understand.  Give him the props and support he deserves.

Natural Family Planning and the Dignity of Women

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(Here’s an advanced look at my next Family Foundations column).

The dignity of women is under assault like never before.  Thanks to the internet, pornography is more accessible than ever.  Young women, especially, are buying wholesale into the porn culture.  It’s become so pervasive that, surprisingly, many secular publications have recently been complaining about the negative effect pornography has had on relationships from a man’s perspective.  Men are beginning to report feeling put-off, intimidated, or even turned off by the behavior of women who have been “socialized” by porn.  One recent article in the London Telegraph decried the “striptease culture” we are living in and advocated measures that could encourage young women to discover their dignity.    According to a recent Reuters report, 30% of young adults have sent nude pictures of themselves to a boyfriend or girlfriend .  In fact, some studies show that among those who engage in sexting, women are almost as likely to ask for a nude picture of their boyfriend as they are to send a nude picture of themselves.

 

NFP:  Challenging the Culture of Use

In light of all this, is there any more prophetic way to engage the culture than to promote Natural Family Planning?   At the beginning of the sexual revolution, women were told that the key to overcoming male oppression and gaining power in relationships was to “embrace their sexuality.”    The problem is that this phrase is deceptive.  The secular vision of embracing one’s sexuality is allowing oneself to be viewed and used as an object and the more one does this, the less power one really has. The more one embraces this attitude, the more used, lonely, and powerless one is likely to feel.

But NFP promotes a vision of sexuality that is worthy of embracing; a vision where the body is a gift; a vision that believes men and women are first and foremost sons and daughters of God; a vision that understands that sex is not merely recreation, but a re-creation of the promises a couple makes on their wedding day to spend their lifetime together creating and celebrating a love that is free, total, faithful and fruitful.

As with most things worth doing, NFP isn’t easy.  It requires sacrifice and struggle.  It can be helpful, though, to remember what we are sacrificing and struggling for.  I would never want my wife to think that she was anything less than my partner, my best friend and my equal.  In my mind, those things are worth fighting for.  If NFP is a struggle, it is only because I must sometimes struggle against those fallen aspects of myself that want to make me treat her as something less than my partner, my best friend, my equal.  The challenge of NFP is a challenge worth taking up because it asks me to consider whether or not I am truly approaching my wife in love.

Likewise, for the woman, the challenge of NFP asks her to embrace her dignity.  Charting her signs helps her get in touch with how wonderfully she is made (Ps 139:14).  It helps redeem the dignity of her body in her mind.  It helps her assert her dignity to herself and to her husband by giving her the vocabulary she needs to articulate her physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual needs to her husband in a way that is virtually impossible without NFP.  It gives her a way of embracing her sexuality in a manner that doesn’t objectify her, but rather, sets her free to be loved as a person.

The most famous line from the Theology of the Body is that “the body, and it alone,  is capable of making visible what is invisible, the spiritual and divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world, the invisible mystery hidden in God from time immemorial, and thus to be a sign of it.”   NFP promotes the dignity of women by empowering them to know and respect their body and see that body as a sign of who they are–persons deserving of love.

 

Dr. Greg Popcak directs the Pastoral Solutions Institute, an organization dedicated to providing marriage, family, and individual counseling services by telephone to Catholics around the world.  He can be reached at www.CatholicCounselors.com or by calling 740-266-6461 to make an appointment.