Why NFP

Abstract

Natural family planning, as a function of God's will is also a function of the natural law. For years we have been waging war on our fertility in the practice of artificial birth control to the point that many countries, especially in the West are demographically below replacement levels. On the other hand, while vast numbers of women are ignorant of the significance of those changing mucus sensations, modern methods of NFP, if the intention is to avoid/postpone pregnancy are scientifically secure. Natural family planning also has several advantages which benefit the marriage. Concluding, the article proposes that all Catholic physicians begin to conduct NFP-only practices.

Keywords:

• Natural family planning
• Natural law
• Contraception
• Pregnancy
• Culture of death

“Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.” Thus reads the fourth clause of the Our Father. The problem is that His will is not being done on Earth. While this may sound somewhat rudimentary, it is the truth. But how do we know the will of God? St. Thomas Aquinas, following the lead of St. Augustine, defined three types of Law that define the will of God: Eternal Law, Divine Law, and Natural Law. There is another kind of Law: Human Law which is valid only when just. This paper will focus on the Natural Law and its implications for mankind. But what is Natural Law? Natural Law is a rule of reason, promulgated by God in man's nature whereby man can discern how he/she should act so that good is to be done and evil is to be avoided. In its simplest form Natural Law commands us: “to do good and avoid evil” (Rice, 1995) and St. Augustine maintained that this Law is written on the heart of every person.

If the first of God's gifts to us is the gift of Life itself, then one may argue that our second most precious gift is the gift of our fertility. God's first command to Adam and Eve after the fall was to “be fruitful and multiply.”

In a previous article (Peck and Norris, 2012), we maintained that while pregnancy is not a disease, more fundamentally neither is our fertility which is a healthy physiologic component of the sexually mature person. Given the present milieu, it seems that we are waging war on our fertility in the practice of contraception, i.e., artificial birth control. While this may sound countercultural, this war is attested to by the current armamentarium of barriers, chemicals, abortifacients and even the knife. The medical profession is undeniably active in promoting this war. Under these circumstances, the furnishing of these modalities which treat a normal physiologic function of the sexually mature human being as a disease must be a violation of the Natural Law and therefore evil and opposed to the will of God. Furthermore, one of the results of this war is that many countries, especially in the West, demographically are below replacement levels. While our non-Catholic brethren in the medical profession do not necessarily see this evil for what it is, Catholic physicians should have no problem seeing the logic of this position.

What has the “Sexual Revolution,” which began over fifty years ago, wrought with the availability of the birth control pill? It encouraged infidelity, increasing divorce rates, increased out-of-wedlock pregnancies, pornography, blatant homosexuality, the spread of sexually transmitted disease, and massive abortion and contraceptive industries (John Paul II, 2006).

Perhaps the greatest evil of the contraceptive culture in which we live is that it allows men to avoid their responsibilities, while denying women the dignity and respect to which they are entitled as our wives and the mothers of our children not to mention the denial of their normal cyclic fertility. Furthermore, today, to refer to the Health and human services (HHS) mandate as an issue in “women's health care” is the height of duplicity. Given these considerations it is clear that contraception acts as the gateway to the Culture of Death.

Natural Family Planning

The Catholic Church has never opposed family planning, but she teaches through Her Magisterium, or teaching authority, that man may not, of his own volition, separate the two meanings of the conjugal act, the unitive and the procreative, because these meanings are willed by God, Himself (Humanae vitae n. 12). Over the years of his pontificate, and even before, Blessed John Paul II, the Great spoke and wrote extensively on the subject of human sexuality. Two areas in which he spoke on the subject are in sections 118 to 131 in his Theology of the Body (Ibid: pp. 118–131) and in a work titled “The Foundation of the Church's Doctrine Concerning the Principles of Conjugal Life” (Wojtyla et al., 2012), published in 1966 in which Karol Cardinal Wojtyla was the primary director of research.

The title of Part 1 of the Foundation of the Church's Doctrine reads: “The Natural Law as Foundation for the Condemnation of Contraception by the Magisterium of the Church,” i.e., on natural morality. This statement devolves into three questions: (1) “Does the Church have the right to make authoritative pronouncements on matters of morality and natural law?” (2) “Is her teaching on this subject infallible or not?” And (3) “Can this teaching change?” Those in favor of allowing contraception answered the first two questions in the negative and the third question in the affirmative. On the other hand, those who upheld the constant teaching of the Catholic Church answered the first two questions in the affirmative and the third question in the negative and they “emphasize that the immutability of human nature provides an objective foundation [to natural law]” as upheld by the ordinary Magisterium. Furthermore, beginning in the nineteenth century, under the pontificate of Pope Pius IX in 1854, no less than twenty-nine documents attest to the Church's position on this matter based on natural law (Ibid: p. 325).

Following on from these documents, three conclusions may be drawn: (1) “The Church, in her official teaching, condemns contraception as being morally evil and impermissible.” (2) “The teaching on this subject is consistent from Pius XI to Paul VI (even before Humanae vitae), the latter having neither revoked nor questioned it.” And (3) “The condemnation of contraception from the point of view of morality is considered by the Church as a norm of natural law and therefore an objective norm flowing from nature, immutable and obligatory for all and not only for Catholics.”

A true method of family planning must be a method that can be used to either achieve or avoid pregnancy. In a very real sense, methods of natural family planning (NFP) and fertility awareness are the only true methods of family planning for the simple reason that they are the only methods that can be used either to achieve or avoid pregnancy. All other methods can only be used to prevent pregnancy. An excellent article (Vigil, 2012), which one can heartily recommend, by Pilar Vigil, M.D., Ph.D. et al. and which describes the values of fertility awareness and NFP appeared in the November, 2012 issue of The Linacre Quarterly.

How does the Church justify its condemnation of contraception? First of all this condemnation is based on the human person: his dignity, his rights, and his values. Secondly, his power of co-creating (transmitting life) is a gift of God, but man's intellect has discovered biologic laws which command him to follow the dictates of Humanae vitae, which is grounded in truth. Next the natural law demands that a person should never be used as an object for one's own ends, egged on, so to speak, by concupiscence. Rather the virtues of justice and love should govern relations between persons and that the marital embrace be guided by the virtue of chastity. In fact, John Paul II asserted in his Theology of the Body that the practice of NFP in marriage is the practice of conjugal chastity and defined periodic continence as a virtue.

Furthermore, the Foundation for the Condemnation of Contraception asserts that both man and woman enjoy an equality in marriage, i.e., in their nature, in their right of contracting marriage, but also marked by the differences in the sexes. While the normal sexually mature male is continuously fertile from puberty, the woman is only periodically fertile through relatively short but relatively frequent periods of time. In this regard, contraception makes no contribution to the woman's personal rights and primarily benefits the male as stated above relieving him of his responsibility.

In both the Foundation for the Condemnation of Contraception and Blessed John Paul II's Theology of the Body, he makes the assertion that the sexual instinct in man is “without a doubt one of the strongest instincts” and taught that periodic abstinence, i.e., continence, is a virtue. In addition, he pointed out that the willingness to abstain from the marital act can be a greater act of love than the act itself.

Blessed John Paul II then addresses the concept of Responsible Parenthood and teaches that the number of children a couple decides upon is a matter of human responsibility and should not be left to chance but rather based on objective criteria and marital chastity. Interestingly to me, as a student of reproductive physiology, while they developed the foundation in 1966, there were numerous references to the use of the thermometer in the natural methods, but there is not one mention of the role which cervical mucus plays in defining the limits of the fertile phase of a woman's reproductive cycle, especially since the research of Dr. John Billings began in 1953.

So, Once Again, Why NFP?

First and primarily NFP is a function of the natural law and the will of God. This is so because God created man in His image and likeness with an intellect, a will, and a memory. God therefore also created human sexuality and with it fertility and ordained that this fertility provide a unitive and procreative meaning to the marital embrace.

We are all called to lead chaste lives. Blessed John Paul II defined NFP as the practice of chastity within marriage.

The practice of NFP requires precisely the same kind of commitment as marriage itself.

The practice of NFP obligates the couple to discuss with one another, among other things, the availability or not of the marital embrace thus increasing loving communication between the spouses.

While the divorce rate in this country, Catholics and Protestants alike, is estimated at 50 percent, the divorce rate among couples using NFP is between 2 and 5 percent (McCrystal, 2002). In other words, if you want your marriage to survive, you will not contracept.

When a wife sees that her husband is willing to deny himself for their mutual benefit and the benefit of the family this increases her love for him.

While this may seem overly simplistic, there are only two essentials in the practice of NFP if the intention is to delay/avoid pregnancy: (1) that the woman temporally defines the limits of the fertile phase of her reproductive cycle, and (2) that the couple willingly abstains from all genital contact during that time period.

Blessed John Paul II also mentioned in the Theology of the Body that NFP is not without its difficulties but at the same time it promises the couple both a courtship and a honeymoon each month.

And last but not least, the practice of NFP experientially teaches four virtues: Patience, Generosity, Self-Control, and Sexual Maturity.

Conclusion

Having said all of the above, there remains the proposal or plea, nay the obligation that Catholic physicians commit to conduct NFP-only practices in obedience to the teaching of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Nothing short of this will act to defeat the culture of death in which we live.