- Clergy Corner
What is Natural Family Planning?
by Fr. Larry Toschi, O.S.J
Summer 2023
Natural Family Planning is simply studying and learning to recognize the signs produced in a woman’s body indicating exactly when she is fertile and capable of becoming pregnant. Married couples who wish to conceive then have the valuable awareness of what days conjugal relations may result in pregnancy. Similarly married couples who agree that they have a legitimate reason for wishing to postpone pregnancy may then avoid genital relations during the fertile time. This is “Natural” because it recognizes God’s two-fold plan for sexuality and marriage: Love and Life. NFP cooperates with this plan and uses nothing artificial or harmful to one’s body, emotions, marriage, or soul. During times of abstinence couples are to express their love to each other in other, non-genital manners that enrich rather than harm their relationship, including their sexual relationship. NFP is not simply a “method” which serves as an alternative to contraception, but a way of life, a new mentality, and indeed a spirituality
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