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NFP and You

Continuing the Discussion

by Brian Caulfield 

Let’s say that you are an engaged couple, with $60,000 in combined college debt and no immediate prospects for high-paying employment. Is natural family planning (NFP) a proper option for you from your wedding day?

Or, like the mother who wrote a heartfelt comment to my last column (“NFP and Me“), you have five children in seven years of marriage and worry about making ends meet and keeping everyone fed, educated and happy if you have more children.

Looking from the outside, we may want to condemn the newlyweds – how dare you seek from the start to delay or deny children – while expressing sympathy for the fretful mother of five.

Yet the fact is that the Catholic Church gives no absolute prescription in either case, and we must be careful about the guidance we give and the thoughts we harbor when it comes to the begetting of children.

You may ask why I am writing about NFP again. Well, the volume and thoughtfulness of the comments to my last column persuaded me to keep the dialogue going. Unfortunately, this is a rarely discussed topic, and Catholics can fall into the extreme camps of people who don’t talk to one another.

The majority of Catholics who use some form of contraception or sterilization think they know better than the Church, if they even know what the Church truly teaches. Yet those who use no birth spacing method can fall into another trap. They may dismiss any suggestion that God may not necessarily be calling them to add another child to their already large family, as though prayer and discernment are irrelevant when it comes to procreation.

Now I am putting my foot on the third rail of Catholic teaching. It’s easy enough for faithful Catholics to say, correctly, that contraception is wrong and that each and every marital act must be open to the generation of new life. This is a joyful and liberating message about sexual relations and divine cooperation that all Catholics should embrace.

Yet if you want to send a roomful of right-thinking Catholics into dispute, try raising the issue of family size. You will hear some say that NFP is never justified for any couple or for any reason – after all, if God creates new life, he will give the parents the means to care for and educate that child, be it the first or the 15th. You will hear informed and not-so-informed debates over the Latin “reasons phrase” in Humanae Vitae, which various translators have rendered as “serious,” “just,” or “well-grounded.” In addition, there will be talk about just what would constitute “serious,” “just,” or “well-grounded” reasons for using NFP to space births. Then, of course, there will be those who say that almost any reason justifies the use of NFP, as long as the spouses agree together to space births at this time, have prayed for guidance and frequented the sacraments.

My purpose here is not to set forth my own hard-and-fast rule for the use of NFP. But I do want to open a discussion on how a couple might discern God’s will in the area of family size, and the possibility that bigger may not always be better for a particular couple.

A priest friend of mine tells the story (perhaps apocryphal) of a mother who comes to him in tears over the fact that she is pregnant with her 10th child. When the priest speaks gently to her husband about the possibility of NFP in the future, he replies with a little too much bombast, “I don’t care when the infertile periods are.”

The story illustrates the need for communication between spouses on the very personal topic of marital relations and family size. If a couple is not having these discussions, they are not truly living the Church’s teaching about responsible parenthood. Of course, a couple’s decision may be simply to have as many children as they can conceive, without concern for the infertile period. But even that decision should be discussed openly and reviewed periodically by husband and wife.

More commonly, though, a married couple will struggle with the issue of procreation, and need to work out conflicting views. Some women love being pregnant and take their greatest joy in being a “handmaid of the Lord” by giving birth to another child. Her husband, on the other hand, may be stressed out with two jobs to support the burgeoning brood, and may want some more time to enjoy the children they already have. Conversely, a mother may be on the verge of physical or emotional breakdown at the prospect of another child, while her husband pressures to do her “Catholic duty.” But you can be a faithful Catholic while thinking, “God is saying enough!”

One of the advantages of NFP is that it encourages regular discernment and discussion of these very serious and intimate matters. NFP is not just about fertility; it is also about the love, tender concern and communication between husband and wife, and their cooperation with God in the great drama of procreation. When used with generosity toward your spouse and toward God, NFP is a great aid in living an authentic Catholic life.

What do you think?

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)