The Starting Point for Teaching NFP to High School Boys

I had the opportunity to teach a junior level morality course at Archbishop Riordan High School, an all-boys Catholic high school in San Francisco. Based upon my experience working with high school boys, I believe the vital starting point for explaining NFP needs to be teaching and helping to cultivate within our youth the skills of chastity and purity of vision. Learning and developing these fundamental skills, which are the foundation of NFP, will equip our youth with the necessary skills they will need in order to be able to correctly understand and, in the future, to be able to properly practice NFP. Therefore, in terms of educating particularly high school boys, while it is certainly important to discuss the science of NFP, I believe we need to focus much more of our attention on explaining and cultivating within them the skills of chastity and purity of vision.

In order to convey my basic point, I think an analogy within the discipline of mathematics may be helpful.  Before a math instructor can teach the subject of calculus to children, she must first teach them basic arithmetic and algebra. They can be told about calculus, but a fully detailed explanation would not be warranted or effective because of the children’s current state of development within mathematics. In an analogous manner, in order for young men to truly understand and correctly practice NFP in the future, there are a number of different aspects of our faith life and human sexuality that they must first know and practice well. Just intellectually knowing the method of NFP is not sufficient. In fact, we are doing our youth a disservice if we just teach the science of NFP without at the same time helping to cultivate within them the skills they will need to accept and properly practice this method in the future.

As mentioned above, one of these necessary skills is the virtue of chastity. According to the Catechism, “chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being” (CCC 2337). This interior integration can be accomplished through helping our youth to develop self-mastery over their bodily passions, which, in turn, will allow them to possess the personal freedom necessary to authentically participate in the true self-giving love of marriage. In addition to chastity, purity of vision is another vital skill for our youth to develop. Purity of vision essentially consists of the ability to see other human persons as gifts from God that always deserve to be viewed and treated as ends in themselves and never as means for one’s own pleasure. Both of these skills need to be continually taught and developed within our youth because, as the Catechism states, “Man . . . day by day builds himself up through his many free decisions” (CCC 2343). Therefore, with each decision, our youth are forming themselves into the adults they will be in the future. These are either adults who will be able to properly understand and practice NFP or they are adults for whom practicing NFP will be extremely difficult and seem like an illogical and impractical burden. It is so important that we focus most of our attention on developing these skills within our youth by monitoring what they watch, what they listen to, and how they view and treat other members of both sexes because these skills are indispensable for them being able to enjoy the beautiful and happy marriages that can come as a result of properly understanding and practicing NFP. NFP is a beautiful gift from God, but, as we know, grace builds upon nature, and so we must help our youth form their human nature in such a way that in the future they will be able to properly understand and use this great gift.