What NFP is and is not

Many couples first hear about Natural Family Planning in a marriage preparation class, often with a raised eyebrow. Some picture an outdated calendar trick. Others assume it is simply the Catholic version of birth control. Both pictures miss the mark. NFP is a way of knowing and living with the fertility a husband and wife share, and it can shape a marriage in ways that go far beyond the question of when to have a baby.

What NFP is

Natural Family Planning is a family of methods that teach a woman to observe the natural signs of her cycle, such as changes in cervical mucus, the shift in waking temperature after ovulation, or hormone levels measured at home. From these observations a couple can identify the days in each cycle when conception is possible and the days when it is not. With that knowledge they can seek a pregnancy, or, when they have serious reasons, postpone one by abstaining from intercourse during the fertile time.

Modern methods are taught by trained instructors and rest on decades of research in reproductive physiology. They work with the body rather than against it, and they involve no drugs, devices or procedures.

What NFP is not

• It is not the old calendar rhythm method. Rhythm tried to predict fertile days from the length of past cycles. Modern NFP reads the signs of the current cycle as it unfolds, which is a very different thing.
• It is not Catholic contraception. Contraception acts to make a particular act of intercourse infertile. NFP does nothing to any act of intercourse. A couple simply chooses whether to come together on days that are naturally fertile or infertile.
• It is not only for avoiding pregnancy. The same knowledge helps couples conceive, and charting can reveal health concerns worth bringing to a doctor.
• It is not a guarantee of a happy marriage. It is a tool and a discipline. Like any discipline, it bears fruit when practiced with love and patience.

Why the Church makes this distinction

The Church teaches that periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, respects the bodies of the spouses, encourages tenderness between them and favors the education of an authentic freedom (CCC 2370). By contrast, every action which, in anticipation of the marital act, in its accomplishment or in its consequences, proposes to render procreation impossible is described as intrinsically wrong (CCC 2370).

Pope Paul VI explained the difference this way. When couples with good reasons make use of the infertile times, they make legitimate use of a natural faculty; with contraception, they obstruct the natural development of the generative process (Humanae Vitae 16). The outward result, a postponed pregnancy, may look similar. The moral reality is different, because in one case the couple respects the full meaning of the marital act, and in the other they alter it.

What couples often discover

Many couples report that NFP draws them into conversation they would not otherwise have. Each cycle invites a husband and wife to talk honestly about their family, their finances, their health and their hopes. It asks both spouses to share responsibility rather than leaving it to one. It also teaches a kind of patience that can carry over into other parts of married life. This is not automatic, and some seasons of NFP are genuinely hard. Later lessons in this track speak openly about those difficulties.

For your marriage this week

Sit down together for fifteen minutes and share what you each assumed about NFP before reading this lesson. Ask one another what you hope it could bring to your marriage, and what worries you about it. End by praying together for openness to God's plan for your family, and for the trust to talk honestly as you learn.