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Archived Catholic Natural Family Planning Columns from Sara Fox Peterson:

Surprises Happen
Husbands and Daughters
The Pill: Questions and Answers
Heroic Virtue
Not on the Same Page (Part II)
Not on the Same Page (Part I)
The People Who Actually Do This
Sweetness and Light
Freeing Our Consciences
What if It's Too Late?
What's the Difference
Medical Exceptions
Waiting
Fear Not - Five Resolutions for a New Year
An Open Question
Catholic Contraception?
Contraception, Lies and the Truth
Natural Family Planning - Why Not?

Sara can be contacted by email at sfp@thosepetersons.com - please indicate "NFP" in the subject line of your email.

What is NFP?

Every fertile woman experiences recurring signs of her fertility. Natural Family Planning (NFP) teaches a woman to recognize and record these signs so that spouses can identify the days in each cycle when conception can occur and plan the timing of their marital relations according to their desire either to avoid or achieve pregnancy.

Looking for more information on Natural Family Planning?  Visit our Natural Family Planning Resource Center.

Natural Family Planning Method Comparison - a comprehensive comparison of natural family planning methods 

For additional "cyber-support" you are also most welcome to join in the discussions in the Catholic Mom Community's NFP Forum

Too Much Affection?

Can a married couple ever be too affectionate? Should couples called to avoid pregnancy abstain from all physical affection during the times of mutual fertility?

To answer these questions here are three paragraphs from the Catechism of the Catholic Church to consider:

“The spouses' [physical] union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple's spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family.“ (2363)

 “[Fertility] is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which is ‘on the side of life,’ teaches that ‘it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life.’ ‘This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.’” (2366)

“Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes.” (2351)

The bottom line is that anything done with the intention of experiencing sexual pleasure that could not result in conception, even during the fertile part of the woman’s cycle, is “morally disordered” and therefore wrong.

The reason for this is that sexual intercourse is not something purely physically significant or even just physical and emotional significant; it is spiritually significant as well because it is the physical sign of the sacrament of marriage. When a couple engages in the marital act (sexual intercourse) they ‘speak’ with their bodies the same vows that they spoke with their voices on the day they were married and so renew these vows and participate again in the sacramental reality of marriage. What a Catholic says out loud on her wedding day is that she gives herself to her spouse freely, completely, faithfully, permanently and fruitfully (that is, she is open to the gift of children as a result of the gift of herself) and in order for any sexual activity to be what it should be - the sign of the sacrament and a source of grace - it must ‘say’ the same things.

Contraception and sterilization are wrong because they alter either the sexual act itself or the spouses’ bodies in an attempt to prevent the marital act from being fruitful (procreative) and any activity which serves as substitute for intercourse or a way to experience sexual pleasure during the fertile phase without the possibility of conception is really no different.

The exact line between physical demonstrations of affection (which are always morally acceptable) and erotic or sexual activity is somewhat different for different couples, but certainly anything done with the primary intention of arousing either oneself or the other person is sexual and should be avoided when a couple is abstaining.

For most healthy, married adults some degree of arousal can occur from entirely non-sexual activities - sometimes just being in the presence of one's spouse is enough - and certainly it would be ridiculous (and wrong) for spouses to completely avoid each other when there was a need to abstain to avoid pregnancy. There are also any number of affectionate touches and caresses that may lead to arousal and which would be immoral for an unmarried couple, but remain acceptable ways of expressing affection and maintaining intimacy during times of abstinence within marriage even if they did result in some degree of arousal, so long as the primary purpose of these caresses was to express affection and maintain intimacy and not just to derive sexual gratification.

It is never morally permissible to seek to use another person, even with their consent, for anything and it is important to examine one's motives very carefully to determine whether a desire to engage in potentially erotic touching when one has decided to abstain is really a selfless desire to give oneself to one's spouse or whether one is simply seeking to derive as much sexual gratification as possible without doing actually doing anything objectively immoral.

In addition, the virtue of prudence must be considered. There are certain activities (broadly, those which directly involve the genitals) which can reasonably be considered universally arousing and one does not need to 'test' these activities to determine whether they constitute a near occasion of sin for a couple who must abstain. They almost always will and so should be avoided until abstinence is no longer necessary. Again the goal of the Christian life should never be to experience as much pleasure as possible without getting into trouble, but to gain true self-mastery and love truly selflessly.

For additional "cyber-support" you are also most welcome to join in the discussions in the Catholic Mom Community's NFP Forum

Looking for more information on Natural Family Planning?  Visit our Natural Family Planning Resource Center.

Sara Fox Peterson is a full time momma, a sometimes writer and a certified teacher of the Billings Ovulation Method of Natural Family Planning. She holds a BS in biology and an MS in human physiology, both from Georgetown University, and lives in Maryland with her husband and children.

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