NFP as a Path to Holiness
Integrating Faith into Family Planning
NFP.
These three letters, standing for Natural Family Planning, represent the Catholic Church’s teaching on achieving or postponing pregnancy. Sometimes, NFP can sound like a burden rather than a blessing.
It is true that using NFP is not all sunshine and roses, and it does no one any good to sugarcoat the realities of NFP or any aspect of marriage. However, understanding the foundational virtues that support healthy Natural Family Planning can bring more beauty into the marriage relationship than most couples initially realize.
The Challenges of NFP
Marriage is hard.
Living life with another person and building a life and a family with them is hard. Charting can be challenging, especially during certain phases of a couple’s reproductive lives.
NFP is not as simple as abstaining from intercourse for a couple days each month.
There are many nuances to the instructions couples must learn and follow for every method. For example, when a woman is breastfeeding, the couple will need more support for charting as they navigate breastfeeding amenorrhea (the lack of cycles caused by breastfeeding temporarily suppressing ovulation) and the return of fertility.
Health conditions, medications, and even busy schedules can affect a woman’s cycle and the signs she relies on to determine fertility.
However, just because something is challenging, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t beautiful and fruitful.
Through the practice of Natural Family Planning, couples can experience something they may not have expected: good fruit in their spiritual lives.
Discerning Together
One of my favorite things about Natural Family Planning is month-to-month discernment. Couples don’t have to decide their intention in using NFP (meaning using their chosen method to either postphone or achieve pregnancy) forever.
They only need to decide how they will use it each cycle.
Unlike artificial methods, NFP allows couples to change their intention with ease. The couple trying to come off of a method of artificial contraception to achieve pregnancy would have to allow time for the woman’s cycle to regulate, and the woman may experience post-birth control syndrome.
However, the Creighton Model System, one of the NFP methods recommended by the Church, emphasizes that it is a method of true family planning, meaning it can be used to both achieve and postpone pregnancy.
All couples learning the system are given instructions for both avoiding and achieving pregnancy.
Growing in Discernment
Couples can also grow in their ability to discern or perceive God’s will in their lives as they make decisions regarding the planning of their family. I have found the principles of Ignatian discernment to be very helpful in my own life.
In addition, spending time in Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament has been an important part of my own discernment of our family planning decisions.
By discerning their intention in using NFP, couples can grow in their ability to pray together, discuss their spiritual lives, and see God’s movement in their lives.
The practice of discernment applies to many situations couples face in the course of life and marriage.
Understanding Sacrificial Love
Couples can also grow spiritually as they practice responsible parenthood.
As Humanae Vitae states:
“With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time.”
Growing a new life is both beautiful and physically and emotionally taxing. Understanding the realities of welcoming a child into your family is part of loving one another and your children well, even before a child is conceived.
Sacrificial love means placing your child’s (even before conception) and your spouse’s multifaceted needs before your own. Couples grow in sacrificial love when they consider all of these things and then discern to avoid or achieve pregnancy in a given season of life.
Accepting Suffering
In addition, couples experiencing infertility feel a great longing for a child that is not satisfied either temporarily or permanently. Couples who lose children to miscarriage, stillbirth, or death experience a profound grief which is often misunderstood by those around them.
Even without those heartaches, a couple avoiding pregnancy is not free of suffering.
They must lean into other ways besides intercourse to express their love during times of fertility. This suffering is greater for those who have more challenging charting situations as they may need to abstain from intercourse for longer periods of time.
Some couples avoiding pregnancy long for another child, but they cannot have more children for various reasons. Health conditions, medication side effects, upcoming surgeries, and many more issues may require couples to avoid pregnancy for a season, even if they don’t want to.
All of these seasons can be seen as manifestations of sacrificial love and opportunities to purge away selfishness, encourage mutual service in the couple, and help them align their wills with God’s even when it is difficult. In these periods of difficulty, couples can be drawn into the bleeding, suffering heart of Christ who longs to be united to us.
The True Meaning of Chastity
Through their use of Natural Family Planning, couples can grow in chastity. Chastity is an often-misunderstood virtue, and it isn’t just for single or engaged people. Everyone is called to chastity.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
“Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality…becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another” (paragraph 2337).
The Creighton Model refers to the acronym SPICE which stands for the different types of intimacy: spiritual, physical, intellectual, creative, communication, and emotional. Remembering those helps couples expand their understanding of their sexuality. Sexuality includes intercourse, but it is so much more than that. It also includes all the pathways that people can connect with each other, even with everyday things like prayer, holding hands, or discussing a great book together.
Through their use of NFP, couples can find ways to bond and strengthen their relationships that are non-genital in nature. Their understanding of intimacy broadens, as does their ability to connect on multiple levels.
The Fruit of Chastity
When couples avoid genital contact during fertile times because they are postponing or trying to avoid pregnancy, they are given the opportunity to grow in virtue and discipline. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
“Chasity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy” (paragraph 2339).
Intercourse is neither over nor under-valued in sacramental married life. Couples grow in their appreciation of this beautiful way of expressing love by their growth in self-mastery. They are able to truly love each other rather than use each other for their own pleasure.
Couples who understand these aspects of Natural Family Planning are truly drawn closer to Jesus through the suffering endured during their fertility journey.
They are drawn closer to the Father as they discern His will for their lives and their family. They experience the works of the Holy Spirit through the blessing of children and the love they express through SPICE.
Together practicing these foundational virtues of Natural Family Planning can bring couples closer to God and help them live holier lives during their time on earth.
Article by Julie McKay, Groesbeck Fertility Care Center
NFP Life® featuring Dr. Danielle & Kyle Koestner, Daria Bailey & Natalie Klinkhammer, and Jessie Wiegand — This foundational Natural Family Planning course covers the Catholic Church’s teaching on human sexuality, conjugal love, and responsible parenthood. It also provides detailed information about the biomarkers that indicate fertility and how to track them, so couples can choose a method of NFP that fits their lifestyle. Watch the trailer below and have your couples register here.
