Natural Family Planning

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states "Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves.  The fruitfulness of conjugal love extends to the fruits of the moral, spiritual and supernatural life that parents hand on to their children by education.  The fundamental task of marriage and family is to be at service of life."

While fertility is at the heart of marriage, sufficient time and resources are necessary to truly educate our children in supernatural and temporal life.  From this perspective, what method of optimally spacing births is available to Catholic couples - a method that must retain the integrity of each marital act in both its unitive (love between the couple) and procreative (life-giving) meanings? 

While contraception obliterates these meanings - and frequently the baby itself, as is the case with both the birth control pill, the IUD, and Plan B, which all prevent implantation of an already fertilized egg, Natural Family Planning, instead, teaches the couple how to identify the naturally occurring infertile phase of a woman's menstrual cycle so that together they can confine their marital acts to this phase if they wish to postpone pregnancy for a while, or even indefinately, if necessary.

All natural methods are based on the couple learning to recognize, via easily identified biological markers, the beginning and end of the woman's infertile phase,a s well as the possibly fertile phase, so that the couple can then adjust their actions according to their intentions. 

Used correctly, Natural Family Planning is more than 99% effective in postponing pregnancy, and had a high effectiveness rate for couples wishing to achieve pregnancy also.  Moreover, the discipline of using Natural Family Planning enables couples to move from what may be a lrgely self-seeking motivation to that of achieving what is best for their spouses and families, thereby bringing their mutual love to a higher level.  Grace from God, centered by the Sacrament of Matrimony, prayer, and the other sacraments, gives strength for this joyful journey.

For more information contact Carol Roadarmel 937-8291