Observations: How I Converted to NFP

When teaching on issues like abortion and contraception, bishops and theologians often seem ineffective. I guess that both bishops, theologians and maybe a lot of the rest of us are ignoring the reality of the indwelling Spirit. It is of course not accidental that the statement of faith in the Church is made in the Holy Spirit’s section of the Creed. I am trusting not in man, but in the Holy Spirit, when I place my trust in Peter.

The world has seen turmoil amongst theologians before. Our Protestant brethren have suffered many divisions after they rejected Peter, for how can man know truly which theologian is correct? As a Catholic, I look to the Holy Spirit to guide Peter. There are instances where popes have been prophetically correct when the world, and many theologians, were sadly wrong.

This I testify, from my experience. I was young, married, very much in love. We were poor, but I desired to have things (like our own house) for our children. After the birth of our first child, I followed my doctor’s advice, and let him insert an IUD.

The detrimental effects were threefold. First, it was bad for my health. I have long had a problem with anemia and have always had heavy menstrual flows. The IUD aggravates such problems. I still have difficulty forgiving the doctor for his negligence. For him, my health was of less importance than it should have been. Second, I became very jealous of other women, especially those who were pregnant or who had babies. For, you see, contraception did not mean that we did not want more children; it was a temporary means to an end. Third, I became harshly critical of my husband. In fact, there was something so obviously wrong that he said, “Get the damn thing taken out.”

In time, I have come to see that, by deciding to contracept, I wronged not only God, but my dear husband as well. I had good reason to know that Bill was and is capable of self-control and genuine caring and unselfishness. Yet I assumed that Natural Family Planning would be too hard a burden on him. I, who had freely and gladly promised to honor him.

Yet it was my wonderful husband who, while yet an agnostic, correctly identified the problem. “That damn thing.”

Natural family planning was a God-send for us. We had already rejected all forms of artificial contraception, and we were certainly not going to abandon our delightfully reborn nuptial life. If necessary, we were prepared to accept a large family, and, reluctantly on my part, poverty.

Then, in 1974-5, we learned natural family planning (NFP). The first benefit was knowledge. Knowledge about reproduction, about our bodies, about ourselves, and about each other. We talked and talked. It was a real liberation. The second benefit was a sharing of responsibility for family planning.

A long-lasting benefit has been the time of abstinence. By 1978, my husband was saying that this way of living our marital life was so good that the effectiveness of the method was almost irrelevant. For when one abstains from sexual intercourse, one experiences desire. Now to desire one’s spouse is in itself a good thing. When this desire is channeled into a desire to be with one’s spouse, to please one’s spouse, to express one’s love in a myriad of ways, the marriage benefits. All too often we humans place too great a burden on sexual intercourse. We make it the sole channel of marital affection and are so hurt when misunderstood.

When our sexual union was enriched by the 10 or so days of courtship in the fertile time of the cycle, it was also freed. Now I can be playfully sexual, even when Bill is too tired, or it is not a good time for him. For he will still enjoy it, and he will feel no pressure to perform. We have completely eliminated the “demand.” Invitations, yes. Demands, never! This works well, because the fact of periodic abstinence aligns our desires; when our time of periodic indulgence arrives, we are both very ready.

I think that sometimes the emphasis that our society places on the sexual act is deadly to sexual desire. A young woman we know had, by her own admission, lost all sexual desire for her husband. They started to use NFP, and as I expected, some desire for her husband started to return to her. Unfortunately, she was so eager to give this tender bud to her husband that they quickly put on the condom and got rid of it. Her problem persists. It is precisely because of the daily jading and familiarity of married life that our time of abstinence helps us retain and regain the ideal of married sexual love, as found in the papal teachings.

Consider, for example, Paul VI’s address of May 4, 1970, “Good News for Married Love”: “As the Holy Scripture teaches us, marriage, before being a sacrament, is a great earthly reality: ‘God created man in the image of Himself, in the image of God He created him, man and woman He created them.’ We must always refer back to this first page of the Bible if we want to understand what a human couple, husband and wife, is and ought to be.

“We are taught not to reduce it to physical desire and genital activity, but to discover in it how the qualities of man and woman are complementary, to discover the grandeur and frailty of married love, as well as its fertility, as an introduction to the mystery of the design of God’s love . . . The union of man and woman differs radically, in fact, from every other form of human relationship. It constitutes a unique reality, namely, the couple, founded on the mutual giving of self to the other: ‘and they become but one flesh.’ . . . Love, in fact, is the binding force that gives this community of life its solidarity. Love is the force that directs this community toward an ever more perfect fullness. The whole being participates in this exchange of love, at the deepest levels of its own personal mystery, with all its dimensions—emotional, sensual, sexual, and spiritual— thus forming ever more perfectly that image of God which the couple has the mission to make present and visible day by day as they live out the joys and trials of life—so true is it that there is more to love than just love.”

Another example, this time from Humanae Vitae “These husbands and wives are strong in abstaining from the marital embrace at the fertile times, when, for just reasons, the procreation of children might not be desired; when, however, the infertile times return, it follows that they employ marital intercourse for witnessing mutual love and for safeguarding their promised commitment. Indeed these husbands and wives, by acting in this way, furnish testimony of a love truly and totally correct.”

In fact, in our marriage, the choice of NFP as the way that we would live our marriage sexuality is a choice that has and is constantly challenging us to love ever more truly and correctly.

Some couples are concerned with the frequency of lovemaking. I suspect that we make love more often within the discipline of NFP than would be the case otherwise. I hear rumors that people in our age bracket make love as seldom as 1-4 times a month. With 16-20 days in an average cycle available to us, we usually do quite a bit better than that.

My husband asks me to state that periodic abstinence is not heroic, and we certainly do not live like celibates. Anyway, when one uses artificial contraception, one does not use knowledge of fertility and infertility. Only the researcher who perfects the method needs that knowledge. The rest of society lives more or less contently in ignorance. Nowadays we are very squeamish about biological facts. I am sure that a great deal of the attraction of sterilization is that then the individual need not think about the whole messy problem of procreation anymore. The provident use of knowledge of fertility and infertility, which the popes praise, belongs by its very nature to NFP.

In conclusion, I think that many people seriously misunderstand the Church’s teaching. In my life I have found it liberating, life-giving, and this particular teaching has led both of us closer to God. My husband is now a Catholic. My teenage daughters respect and appreciate our choice of NFP. I think that knowing that sexual restraint is an essential part of his father’s life made it easier for our 13-year¬old son to accept our strictures on pornography. In fact, the prophecies made in Humanae Vitae (III, 21) are happening right here, in my home.

The danger of contraception to children is immediate and deadly. Contraception validates the notion of the “wanted” child, where the desires of the parents take precedence over the good of the child. This is directly against authentic Catholic teaching that each and every human should be loved because he or she is. I am commanded to love even my enemies. My feelings towards my enemy are irrelevant to the command.

It is not that the parents should not have desires, or be unaware of their desires. It is just that these desires are in one sense irrelevant. The problem lies in placing primary importance on the wantedness or unwantedness, instead of on the child. This view may go beyond explaining the abuse of the child to condoning it. The idea of the unwanted child goes past justifying artificial contraception to justifying abortion, infanticide, and even euthanasia. For if the caregiver’s wants become paramount, then there will be an obvious and accepted need for legally sanctioned killing of the unwanted. I am afraid that artificial contraception, which does so little harm to some, has already been deadly to unfortunate innocents.

Author

  • Trudy Whittaker

    At the time this article was published, Trudy Whittaker was a homemaker and a mother of six. She and her husband were a natural family planning teaching couple with Serena in Ontario, Canada.

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