February 12, 2025

Angelo & Suzanne Pietropaoli
Directors, NFP Office

Every wedding is an occasion for wonderment at the beauty of human love, and at the awe-inspiring vows that the couple makes. In those vows, the newlyweds promise to love each other forever in a love that is free, faithful and fruitful. In other words, the marriage vows are not just pretty words. In fact, they express the very love with which God loves us!

It is awe-inspiring, as well, to watch the unfolding of the love story that begins in the Book of Genesis. There we learn that God created human beings in his own image, that he created them male and female, blessed them, and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. We also learn that a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, so that the two may become one flesh. And that God, looking at what he had made, “found it very good.”

What is God teaching us in this familiar story? First, out of all that he has made, human beings alone have been created in his image – the image of a God who is himself a community (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) of loving persons. Secondly, we are created male and female so that we might image and participate in the free, total, faithful, fruitful love of the Blessed Trinity. Thirdly, this participation is made possible in a particular way through that truly marital union of man and woman which makes them one flesh and at the same time opens them to becoming co-creators with God of new human persons. “These two meanings or values of marriage,” explains the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2363), “cannot be separated without altering the couple’s spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family.”

What does God expect from married couples? How can they respect both the love-giving and the life-giving meanings of the marital act? In AMORIS LAETITIA (222) Pope Francis explains that to do so is both possible and blessed: “The use of methods based on the laws of nature and the incidence of fertility are…methods [that] respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom.”

Following God’s design for human love, the Church faithfully encourages couples to seek to understand and apply this truth in their marriages. Natural Family Planning is NOT the old rhythm method. NFP is not predictive, but uses ongoing observations of the signs that indicate fertility/infertility within a cycle. Once taught to identify and understand these markers of fertility, the couple is able to assess the times of the cycle when conception can happen and when it cannot. These real-time signs, and the correct application of rules developed over more than half a century, yield high effectiveness rates – up to 99%, which is on par with the pill and surgical sterilization, though entirely without side effects.

While NFP is unquestionably the safest method of family planning – and the only one that can be used to achieve pregnancy. It does require abstinence during the fertile time if a couple is avoiding conception. While this can be challenging at times, it does bear good fruit. This makes sense because NFP cooperates with nature (that is, with God’s design). Couples using it do not treat fertility as a disease to be medicated or as an enemy to be opposed with a barrier. Couples who choose Natural Family Planning acknowledge that God is good and that children are indeed “a gift from the Lord.”

Such couples open themselves to receive the blessings that accompany their gift of free, total, faithful love that withholds nothing, not even fertility, from the beloved spouse. In his APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION ON THE FAMILY (32), Pope St. John Paul II highlights the fruit of this way of life. His words express qualities which are at the heart of strong and happy marriages: “The choice of the natural rhythms involves accepting the cycle of the woman, and thereby accepting dialogue, reciprocal respect, shared responsibility, and self-control.”(Likely these contribute to the fact that NFP couples have a divorce rate under 5%!)

God’s ways are good! Our Diocesan NFP Office welcomes your questions, comments, and suggestions. Please contact us at apietropaoli@rcdony.org. Visit us at www.rcdony.org/nfp. Also visit the national NFP office www.usccb.org/nfp.