Mom, how did you really handle Natural Family Planning?”
My daughter asked me this a few weeks after her first child was born. I was sitting with her on the couch; she had a burp cloth on her shoulder, and I had a cup of lukewarm coffee on the table beside me. She wanted the unvarnished version: the frustrations, the grace, and whether timing intimacy by natural means isn’t just “Catholic birth control.” The personal details of our conversation are hers to keep, but I noticed how a handful of concepts kept resurfacing in the conversation. Each one traces back to the Church’s teaching as restated in Humanae Vitae and deepened in St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, both of which I had delved into as a new Catholic back in the 1990s.
Early in our marriage, my husband, James, and I were fortunate to join a group from our parish who were reading through Theology of the Body by John Paul II (St. John Paul II delivered the 129 catechetical talks that make up Theology of the Body during his weekly Wednesday general audiences from September 5, 1979, to November 28, 1984).
Alongside other couples in the monthly discussion led by Fr. Matthew Kauth (now Rector at St. Joseph College Seminary who was then a young priest at his first parish), most of us had multiple children and were trying to figure out how to navigate natural family planning. Together with the other equally sleep-deprived couples, we worked through Theology of the Body chapter by chapter. Those evenings were a gift: Fr. Kauth’s insights helped translate the book's dense theology, and the discussions that ensued were sometimes emboldened by the very real frustrations that many were experiencing as they tried to live out their faith in that regard.
But Father Kauth facilitated our discussions well, never preaching, just allowing us to see the wisdom in the Catholic understanding in real and practical ways. My dog-eared copy of Theology of the Body, scribbled with margin notes and coffee rings, still reminds me how much that study shaped my understanding of marriage, family life, and the true meaning of self-giving love.
Natural National Family Planning Awareness Week
This week (July 20 - July 26), we celebrate National Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, and the theme from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is:
"Pursue a lasting love … MARRIAGE, Create hope for the future!”
This week is also important in the Church calendar because we celebrate the anniversary of Humanae Vitae (July 25) and the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne, the grandparents of Jesus (July 26).
In honor of this week (and without going down too many rabbit holes), I offer here a few of the insights I shared with my daughter.
1. The weight can feel “impossible”, but for grace
Let's face it, Naturally Family Planning (NFP) isn't easy. Paul VI states bluntly that the Church’s teaching on regulating births “will easily appear to many to be difficult or even impossible to observe,” yet in his encyclical Humanae Vitae, he insisted that greatness always costs effort and comes only with the help of grace.
The Church does not approach this teaching in a Pollyanna way, but in truth. The sacramental grace that accompanies the marriage vows remains efficacious throughout the marriage. It's important to remember this! Prayer, together as a couple if possible, is crucial, and so are the sacraments - namely Eucharist and Confession, for that efficacious grace to be maximized!
We see this directly in the encyclical Humanae Vitae: On the Regulation of Births, written in 1968 by Pope Paul VI:
"The most serious duty of transmitting human life, for which married persons are the free and responsible collaborators of God the Creator, has always been a source of great joys to them, even if sometimes accompanied by not a few difficulties and by distress...
Conjugal love reveals its true nature and nobility when it is considered in its supreme origin, God, who is love, “the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.”
...Marriage is not, then, the effect of chance or the product of evolution of unconscious natural forces; it is the wise institution of the Creator to realize in mankind His design of love. By means of the reciprocal personal gift of self, proper and exclusive to them, husband and wife tend towards the communion of their beings in view of mutual personal perfection, to collaborate with God in the generation and education of new lives.
For baptized persons, moreover, marriage invests the dignity of a sacramental sign of grace, inasmuch as it represents the union of Christ and of the Church."
Marriage isn’t effortless, but it is one of God’s finest treasures. It is a covenant where steady work and God's grace refine ordinary love into something enduring and beautiful. In the end, James and I would both agree that it is His grace that sustains us.
2. NFP forces honest conversation
When fertile days meant abstaining, James and I tried to welcome opportunities to talk about fatigue, money, hope, and fear before those undercurrents of anxiety could erode trust. Pope John Paul II says continence guards the subjectivity of each spouse, preventing either from being treated as an object. In plain terms: the chart next to our bed became less a referee and more a standing invitation to deeper dialogue.
During our conversation, my daughter and I discussed how there can be some reasons to postpone pregnancy: things like illness, serious economic issues, mental health concerns, etc.
She has a few friends who have struggled with fertility, and she shared with me how deep and painful some of their experiences have been. Trying to find understanding or acceptance in that pain is hard, and simple platitudes are unhelpful. Their stories remind me that every couple’s path is marked by mystery, and that compassion and prayer are essential
3. Timing Intercourse is NOT "just natural contraception"
Advances in fertility-tracking technology have made charting far easier than when I was doing it, yet the same tools can also make the process feel impersonal and purely technical. My daughter voiced the question many young Catholic couples whisper: Isn't timing intercourse just Catholic natural contraception?
John Paul II’s answer is two-fold, and he insists you need both - the objective difference in the act and the interior difference in mindset - to see why NFP isn’t “natural contraception.” When either half is missing (for example, using NFP with the same anti-life mentality), the moral clarity disappears.
I found this great chart from EWTN Global Catholic Television Network that explains this well:
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|
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|---|---|---|
| What happens in the act | (Using contraception) Fertility is blocked or altered | (Using NFP) Fertility is respected; the couple simply refrains |
| Underlying view of the body | (Using contraception) Fertility is a problem to solve | (Using NFP) Fertility is a gift to steward (TOB 122:2; Familiaris Consortio 32) |
| Moral danger | (Using contraception) Treats new life as threat | (Using NFP)Can slip into the same “contraceptive mentality” if motives turn selfish (FC 32) |
(Source: EWTN Global Catholic Television Network)
The following are some guardrails that keep NFP from becoming contraception-in-disguise:
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Serious motives, revisited together - things like health, grave finances, and real psychological strain are different than lifestyle tweaks.
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Prayerful discernment - ideally side-by-side as a couple, but also alone or together before the tabernacle.
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Readiness for surprise - every child is received as a gift if God overrides the chart.
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Sacramental fuel - Eucharist and Confession are essential for keeping generosity alive.
Pope Saint John Paul II said it beautifully: "It is not uncommon in current thinking for the natural methods of fertility regulation to be separated from their proper ethical dimension and to be considered in their merely functional aspect. It is not surprising then that people no longer perceive the profound difference between these and the artificial methods. As a result, they go so far as to speak of them as if they were another form of contraception. But this is certainly not the way they should be viewed or applied. On the contrary, it is only in the logic of the reciprocal gift between man and woman that the natural regulation of fertility can be correctly understood and authentically lived as the proper expression of a real and mutual communion of love and life. It is worth repeating here that “the person can never be considered as a means to an end, above all never a means of ‘pleasure.’ The person is and must be nothing other than the end of every act. Only then does the action correspond to the true dignity of the person.” (cf. Letter to Families, no. 12).
4. Peace and joy ripen slowly—often in hindsight
Pope Paul VI promises that disciplined love yields “abundant fruits of tranquillity and peace.” To be honest, I tasted that peace only in small doses until after the fog of fussy babies cleared and I could view a little better through the rear-view mirror. But looking back, the sacrifice that felt sharp at the moment forged a resiliency in our marriage and the laughter in our home was proof that joy and hard work are not opposites.
The teaching itself is wonderfully reiterated in Humanae Vitae:#12:
"That teaching, often set forth by the magisterium, is founded upon the inseparable connection, willed by God and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning. Indeed, by its intimate structure, the conjugal act, while most closely uniting husband and wife, capacitates them for the generation of new lives, according to laws inscribed in the very being of man and of woman. By safeguarding both these essential aspects, the unitive and the procreative, the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the sense of true mutual love and its ordination towards man’s most high calling to parenthood. We believe that the men of our day are particularly capable of seeing the deeply reasonable and human character of this fundamental principle."
A final word I gave my daughter
Natural Family Planning will stretch you, but it also widens your capacity for sacrifice and for joy. Ultimately, it will invite you into that abandonment that comes eventually for us all if we genuinely pursue it: trusting God with everything. Every worthy work - parenthood included - costs something, but it will yield something greater in return. As parents of nine and grandparents to five (with three more arriving in the next two months), James and I are grateful for the overflowing gift of life God has entrusted to us. All the noise, the work, the laughter (and even any sadness) are the daily reminders that love always multiplies when it is shared.
Discover more about the gift of cycles and fertility here: The Language of Your Body: Embracing God's Design For Your Body
For spiritual support while pregnant - or as a gift for a loved one who is pregnant: Made For This: A Catholic Mom's Guide To Birth, Peace In Pregnancy, Nine Months With God And Your Baby
