My Pontification

This is the final post of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post  please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Q.  How did the Church arrive at the conclusion that NFP is a viable family planning practice as opposed to completely putting one’s trust in God?

A.  Putting trust in God does not mean not planning.  God gave us our reason.  And He gave us our reason to plan.  I honestly don’t know anybody who at the end of every month empties out their bank account and gives it to the poor.  No one insists that “God will provide.  Trust in God.  I’m just going to give away every penny every month.” We pretty much know that God doesn’t ask us to do that.  Save some, give some away.  He gave us our reason to plan.   We don’t just eat whatever we want and expect God to keep us at our best weight.  No one counsels: “Just eat whatever you want and trust in God.  You won’t get diabetes.”  Isn’t it rather that God wants us to use our reason to live moderately?  We have to govern all of our appetites, and sometimes even the appetite for children needs to be governed.  In marriage it’s not always a good idea to have another child at this time.  Hopefully, eventually, the parents will be able to have more children.

Humanae Vitae says that some couples make the prudent and generous decision to have a large family.  But note that it speaks of a prudent decision.  The spouses should be confident they can meet the demands of a large family.  Some people are such good parents and so stable that it is a prudent decision on their part to “just let the babies come.”  I’ve got many friends who have very large families of 8, 9, 10, 11 children. Most of them are very stable people.  I don’t know where they came from.  Maybe having children makes people stable. I don’t know, there’s something about them that’s really special.  Some of them might say everyone ought to do what they would do.  But I don’t think that is necessary true. Some people can have six children and go to daily mass and get a medical degree and run the local Right to Life group and go on missions to foreign lands and run in marathons. They have an energy level that defies belief and that not everyone has.  Not all of us have the same gifts; not all are called to do the same things.  We need to accept who we are and live in accord with the gifts God has given us.     

On the other hand, it is easy for some of us to look for the easy life.  A lot of us need to learn stretch ourselves in most every respect.  Most of us need to give away more money than we do.  Most of us have to volunteer more time than we do.  And probably a lot of people should consider having a somewhat larger family than they are initially comfortable with.  But I see nothing in Church teaching that says that we’re supposed to let the babies come unless you make a decision that you can handle that.

 Q.  Isn’t having sex only when one can’t get pregnant, using NFP, not giving oneself completely in the act of marriage?

A.  Again, it is possible to use NFP selfishly.  Some couples simply don’t want to have more children because they don’t want to take on the additional responsibility. That’s selfish.  And those people are not giving of themselves completely. 

But we also need to be clear that sometimes it is an act of self-giving not to have sex.  Often having sex is the selfish act.  People who don’t have sex before marriage, for instance, are giving of themselves very completely.  It’s those who are having sex that are being selfish.  They want a pleasure without commitment.  I find that people who are chaste before marriage find NFP quite natural to use; they abstained before marriage precisely because they loved each other and it was not appropriate to give themselves to each other sexually.  Their not having sex was a loving and self giving act. The same thing can be in marriage.  One or the other spouse is tired.  One spouse would like to have sex, the other wouldn’t.  “Not tonight, dear.”  There is considerable disappointment on the other end.  But if the disappointed spouse doesn’t pressure for sex, that is an act of self giving.  That person doesn’t put any pressure on you because it’s not good.  It’s not good right now.  That person walking out of the room is giving completely of himself or herself because it’s not good to engage in this act at this time.  So, I’m going to say yes, you can be giving of yourself completely by not having sex.

Q. How does cohabitation cause an increase in divorce rate?

A. Cohabitation is not a good preparation for many reasons.  Consider how it begins.  In our culture, those who begin serious relationships have often not made a very careful choice of a partner; they have not considered whether they want to have children with this person or to marry this person. Many couples start having sex fairly early in an intense relationship; if not early on, then eventually.  They wonder why they are paying rent at two places. So they move in together.  Pretty soon after they move in together they stop having the kinds of conversations they should have to build a relationship.  When you move in with someone, it’s very awkward to move out.  Important conversations are avoided because they might lead to fights and fights might lead to a separation.  Moving out means that somebody has to find a new apartment.  It’s embarrassing and costly.  So all of these conversations that couples should have, they don’t have.  They don’t have them until after marriage and then they discover that they have huge incompatibilities about really important matters.  

I saw a segment of Oprah one day featuring couples who had lived together for a year and a half and decided to get married.  They spent a whole year planning their wedding, some huge extravaganza.  When the wedding came, they just rolled out of bed in the morning, went off to the wedding, and experienced no real change in their relationship except that the wedding was over. These couples reported that as they were driving away from the wedding, they looked at each other and said, “What’s next?”  Their life had just been planning a wedding together, not a life together. 

And then what happens?  Two or three years after they get married one or the other says, “I think maybe we should start planning our family now.”  And the other one says, “What?  What do you mean now?  Why now?” The response: “I’m not getting any younger.  I only had one brother.  And I thought I’d like to have my kids have brothers and sisters.  I’d like to have three or four kids.”  The spouse replies, “Three or four, where’d you ever get that idea?  We’ve got college loans to pay off.  Where did you get that idea?”  The couple had no conversation about how many children they wanted to have previous to marriage.  Or they might disagree about the practice of religion.  One spouse decides to return to going to church on Sunday.  That other asks, “Church, where’d that come from?  You don’t go to church.  Why go to church?”  The spouse replies, “Well once we start our family, that’s how I’d like to raise the kids, in church.” “What?  You don’t expect me to go, do you?  What is happening? Are you becoming some kind of a fanatic?”  Marriages break up over these sorts of things.

When I speak to college students I tell them that within the first few weeks if not days of dating someone they need to make it clear that they are not going to have sex before marriage, they want to have children and they will be practicing their faith.  If the person they are dating doesn’t agree, find someone new.  Don’t fall in love with someone and then find out that that person does not share your values.  In our culture, people have sex, live together and then get to know each other. That is backwards; you should get to know someone, fall in love with the person, and then get married and have sex. Sexual intercourse should be moving the relationship to a new level, a relationship that already has a firm and solid foundation. 

One problem is that too few people in our culture know what their values are.  They don’t know how many children they want to have.  They don’t know whether they believe in God and want to go to church.  Years later they figure it out and they look at this person and think, “What I am doing with this person?? We don’t have the same values and same aims in life.”

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post  please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Slide: Coronation of Mary

Married couples are meant to represent the marriage of Christ and his Church.  Christ is the bridegroom, the Church is the bride.  Couples are meant to symbolize for the rest of us the devotion, the love, the commitment, the unconditional laying down of your life for your bride, which Christ, the bridegroom did for Mary and for the Church, his bride.  It’s an incredible thing.  It’s an incredible responsibility and one not accomplished by the 50 to 60 percent of the marriages in our culture that end in divorce.  When I meet couples who have been married for 15 years or longer, I want to thank them.  They’ve done something good for all of us.  For their children, for each other, and for all if us.  Divorce is hard on everyone; it is hard for the couple, for their children, and for the rest of us to see all that goes on.  When we think of what it takes to have a marriage last, we realize it is very difficult.   The spouses need to learn to forgive and to ask forgiveness.  They need to learn to put up with disappointment both in their spouses and in themselves. It’s hard to when we are a disappointment to ourselves. I think that happens a lot in marriage.  We want to be better than we are and we are not.  And our faults cause a lot of trouble for other people.  People who have been married for 15 years or longer have done a lot of the hard work it takes to get along in this world.  I believe the rewards are great for such dedication; that the satisfaction they experience is incredibly deep.  I hope that they are incredibly in love with each other and it just gets better all the time.  My parents have been married, as I said, for 60 years.  I think they are happier and more in love now than they’ve ever been.  They are reaping the rewards of a life that was well lived.  Let’s stop there and get some questions in.

 Q.  How would you address the misuse of NFP to control family size for selfish reasons?

 A.  Some people say that couples using NFP can use it just as selfishly as couples who are contracepting.  I think that’s possible, but I’m going to actually argue that natural family planning is the solution to the problem. 

Let me explain.  Let’s consider two couples who both want to control their family size.  Both have been married several years.  Let’s say that they may have 3 children under 5, and want to wait awhile before they have another child.  They are tired and need some time to work on household organization, etc.  One couple decides to use contraception and the other couple decides to use natural family planning.  Are they doing the same thing?  While both couples have the same goal, they are using different means to achieve their goals. 

The Church teaches that you not only have to have a good goal, and controlling your family size can be a good goal, you have to have a good means to that goal.  I think contraception, again, violates a woman’s health.  It’s a barrier between the spouses.  It’s a rejection of God, etc.  Natural family planning couples are living in accord with God’s plan.  Very importantly – they are having to deny themselves, and it is a very good thing to be able to deny yourself in pursuit of other goods.  Let’s consider two individuals who both need to lose weight, one engages in bulimia – in eating and throwing up, because that person wants the pleasure of food without the consequence.   Another individual diets.  That denies him or herself cake, ice cream, etc, because he or she is seeking a good, which is weight loss.  Through that self-denial, that dieter is probably going to rise in self-esteem, feel better about him or herself, have more self-control, probably enjoy food more than the bulimic person.  

The couple who is using natural family planning is like the dieter, the contracepting couple are like a bulimic person.  The NFP couple appreciates the goodness of sex but refrains from fertile sex until they are prepared to have another child. The contracepting couple treats fertility as a great annoyance if not a bad thing and they are determined to have sexual pleasure without the consequences. They are engaging in an act and as they engage in it are trying to undo the consequences of it.

The couple using NFP treat the fertile period of the woman’s cycle somewhat like sacred ground. They revere it and will not enter that sacred space until they are prepared to accept the gift of a child.  If it is not a good idea for them to have a child at some time, they won’t engage in an action that amounts to inviting God to send them a child and at the same time rejecting that invitation.  NFP means that a couple is going to have sex during the infertile times and not during the fertile times.  Remember, there is no obligation to have sex during the fertile times.  If there is no obligation to have sex, those who are not having sex during the fertile times are not doing something wrong by not having sex during those times.  Remember that it is perfectly all right to have sex during the infertile days.  So a couple is doing nothing wrong in having sex during the infertile days.  We all know that couples don’t have sex for a lot of reasons, headaches, sporting events they want to watch on TV, visitors in the house.  Now if it’s okay not to have sex because you had a headache, or you want to watch a sporting event, or you have visitors in the house, it’s okay not to have sex because it’s not a good idea to have a child.  That’s a good reason. 

Couples who teach natural family planning say a lot of people coming to them have no more openness to life than those who are contraceptive.  They just are sick and tired of the bad physical side effects.  But in using natural family planning they start to have more respect for their fertility.  They start to have more respect for each other.  They start to appreciate fertility as a gift.  And some of them will have more children and some of them won’t.  But they have a whole different appreciation of their fertility.  That suggests that NFP is a cure for using natural family planning selfishly.  Abstention is difficult.  When people want to have sex, they want to have sex.  If they don’t have a good reason for not having sex, it is difficult for them to abstain.  As they discuss their reasons for abstaining, they often discover whether they are being selfish or unselfish in their decision not to have a child.  So NFP has in internal mechanism for helping spouses realize their selfishness if in fact they are being selfish.

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post  please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Slide: Effectiveness of Natural Family Planning

Natural family planning is every bit as effective as any form of contraception.  Dr. R. E. J. Ryder published an article in the British Medical Journal in 1993 in which he reviewed studies done by world health organizations on natural family planning and concluded that pregnancy rates of couples using NFP have depended on the motivation of couples.  He concluded:

Increasingly studies show that rates equivalent to those with other contraceptive methods are readily achieved in the developed and developing world.  Indeed a study of 19,843 poor women in India had a pregnancy rate approaching zero.  Natural planning family is cheap, efficient, without side effects and may be particularly acceptable to and efficacious among of people in areas of poverty. 

Of the women studied, one third were Christian, one third were Muslim, and one third were Hindu.  Most of them were illiterate.  Do you know who was teaching them?  Mother Teresa’s nuns.  Mother Teresa had all of her nuns learn how to teach natural family planning. 

NFP costs nothing and is perfectly healthy.  A fraction of the money, a fraction of the billions of dollars recommended by the UN for contraceptives could be used to teach women NFP and there would be billions left for health care, antibiotics, hygiene, making the water supply safe, etc. 

 Slide: Benefits of NFP

One benefit of natural family planning is that there are no bad physical side effects.  One of the reasons that NFP marriages last longer is that women using NFP are not as irritable, prone to depression and gaining weight and to having a reduced sex life as are women on contraceptives.  The non contracepting woman is a healthier woman; she feels better.  She is not taking drugs that mess with her system.

Secondly, using NFP requires mutual sacrifice.  That is key.  It takes two people to have sex.  It takes two people to abstain.  Not one or the other of the couple is bearing the contraceptive burden.  In couples where natural family planning is used, wives generally think their husbands are exceptional men.  She thinks, “I married myself an exceptional man.  He doesn’t ask me or expect me to take all of these drugs into my body that are bad for me.  He enjoys my company even when I’m not sexually available.  He can control his sexual desires.  He’s probably not masturbating and using pornography.  I’ve got myself an exceptionally fine man.”

And when a man is married to a woman who thinks he’s exceptionally fine, he tends to think he’s exceptionally fine.  It does good things for his self-esteem.  We women can be very critical.  When a wife thinks her husband is an incredibly wonderful man, that makes for an incredibly wonderful relationship.  He respects his wife; she respects him.

NFP enhances communication between spouses and strengthens marriages.   For some time I wondered how NFP enhances communication.  I figured it out one day and some people now accuse me of hiding in their closets and listening to their conversations.  I understand that about once a month, somewhere during that 7 to 10 day period of abstaining, a couple want to have sex, especially since she’s fertile and males and females are more attracted to each other when the female is fertile.  So they have a conversation that usually begins with the question: “Why did we decide it wasn’t a good idea to have a child right now?”  That’s a very important question because if the answer is that having a baby would be acceptable, the couple can go ahead and do what they want to do.

Now if a couple has a good reason for not having a baby right now,  that can go a long way to dampening the sexual desire.  Spouses have some pretty revealing conversations about the reasons.  The wife might say, “If we have another child right now, I’ll kill you.”  That could lead her husband to remember that there is a sporting event on TV that he very much wants to watch. 

Or she might say, “You said that you would do the dishes.  You said that you would give the kids baths.  You said that I would have time for shopping on Saturday.  When was the last time that you did the dishes or gave the kids a bath or gave me any time on Saturdays?”  And he may respond, “I forgot; I’m so sorry.  I didn’t know.  All right, I’m on duty.”  Or she might say, “I have been tired with three kids under 5 but the baby is out of diapers now.  If we had another one I could handle it.”

Or the husband might say to the wife, “The reason we’re not having more babies right now is because I just can’t imagine how I’m going to support the kids that I’ve already got. I am worried about paying for braces, tuition, and having to buy a bigger van. The way you spend money!!  Your friend Jane wants a fence, you need a fence.  Your friend Jane gets a new kitchen, you need a new kitchen.  What’s a man supposed to do?  And she might reply, “I really had no idea that you felt that way.  I don’t need that kitchen.  I don’t need a fence.”  Or he might say, “I was worried about finances, but I have been getting raises along the way.  My dad raised 4 or 5 children on next to nothing.  If he could do it, I can do it.  So, yes we can go ahead.  If there’s another baby around here, we can handle it.”

That conversation takes place about once a month for couples who are using natural family planning.  It makes them assess where they are in respect to these key questions: Why are we having children and why are we not having children?  Who’s carrying their weight around here?  Who is not?  That’s the kind of conversation that marriage counselors want every couple to have, touching base with each other.  Natural family planning couples have that conversation. 

Most people who use natural family planning have contracepted at one time.  They know the difference between a contracepted relationship and an NFP one.   Nearly all of them testify that their NFP relationship is definitely better than their contraceptive relationship was. When they were contracepting they rarely had conversations about having or not having babies.  They decided they were not having a baby for another 3 or 4 or 5 years.  They just get all involved in their own world and don’t talk about the mutual world they should inhabit.    

NFP strengthens a couple’s relationship with God.  Catholics who come to accept the Church’s teaching on contraception generally have a whole new respect for their church.  It’s an incredible Church that has this teaching.  The Church clearly isn’t trying to win a popularity contest.  It teaches against contraception because this is God’s truth, not man’s truth.  These are God’s laws, not man’s laws.  Some of God’s laws are very peculiar to us.  But when we live by them, when we love our enemies, for instance, we’re usually a lot better off than when we hate them.  And it’s counterintuitive to think you ought to love your enemies.   But if we live by that then we’ve got a better world. We thought contraception was going to be great, but maybe it’s not.  My view is that if people stop using contraception, we will reduce the problems in society.  Poverty will go down.  Crime will go down.  People will generally be happier and better off.

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Slide: Responsible Parenthood

The Church doesn’t teach that you have to have as many children as your body can bear.  This picture is of the little old woman who lived in a shoe; she had so many children she didn’t know what to do. The Church teaches that spouses should practice what is called responsible parenting.  God wants parents to enjoy their children.  Those who have children often find themselves really fatigued.  That’s normal.  It’s just that it should not be the dominant feeling in your life.  You want the dominant feeling to be gratitude.  Grateful for your spouse and grateful for your children.  If you’re starting to feel dragged down by it all, it’s probably time to push the pause button and get a little bit of rest.  Get the diapers under control.  And you probably will be soon wanting at some point to have another one when you’re feeling less overwhelmed. 

 Slide: Natural Family Planning

The Church approves of what is called Natural Family Planning or NFP.  NFP is not the old rhythm method.  It has nothing to do with counting days.  I’m going to be explaining NFP by reference to days and numbers, but that’s irrelevant really to what I’m saying here; any woman can use NFP no matter how irregular her cycles. 

A woman is a relatively infertile creature.  For a long time it has been said that a woman is born with all of the eggs that she is ever going to have.  Now some researchers are saying women may produce more during their lifetime, but, whatever is the case, women have only a couple hundred thousand eggs, maybe at the most a million or so.  Males, on the other hand, are unbelievably fertile: any male has four to five, six to seven million sperm in any ejaculation.  So, comparatively speaking, women are incredibly infertile. 

Women ripen and release only one egg a month.  That egg lives in a woman’s body for only 24 hours.  It can be fertilized for only 12 of those 24 hours.  So there is only a 12-hour window every month when a woman can get pregnant.  It’s more complicated than that, of course.  At the beginning of a month a woman has a few days of bleeding.   That’s because she didn’t conceive the month before.  During the last cycle she built up an endometrium which was prepared to receive a new little fertilized ovum, a new little human being.  If there’s no little human being, she sheds the endometrium.  Then a woman has what are called dry days that can last for several days.  There is no bleeding and there is no fertile mucus.  Her body is resting from having bled for a couple days.  She’s got to restore herself.  At the same time her body is preparing for the next cycle of ovulation.  She is starting to produce hormones that are going to cause her ovaries to ripen and release an egg and send it down the fallopian tube.  As those hormones are preparing that egg for ripening and releasing, the woman is starting to produce a certain kind of fertile mucus that she can recognize in her system.  It is present throughout the whole fertile phase.  It disappears about two or three days after she’s ovulated. 

If that fertile mucus appears on a Monday, but a woman doesn’t ovulate until Friday, she can get pregnant from any act of sexual intercourse she had between Monday and Friday because the fertile mucus helps preserve the sperm and carries it to meet the egg.  If she has sexual intercourse on Monday, but not Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday and ovulates on Friday, she could get pregnant from the act of sexual intercourse that she had on Monday although it is only about a three percent chance.  On the day that she ovulates she has about a 43-47 percent chance of getting pregnant.  Twenty-four hours later the egg dies if it is not fertilized.  The woman cannot get pregnant for the rest of the month.  It’s absolutely impossible.  It’s only during the fertile part of the month that a woman can get pregnant.  She cannot possibly get pregnant during the first third of the month since there is no egg available.  She cannot possibly get pregnant for the final third of the month because there’s no egg available.  The egg has come and the egg has gone.  At about the same time the fertile mucus dries up.  So a woman knows that she has ovulated and she’s not going to ovulate again.  Her temperature also goes up a bit and stays up for the rest of the month.  So when a woman sees her temperature rise for a couple days in a row, she knows that she has ovulated, the egg has come and the egg has gone and she cannot get pregnant for the rest of the month.  There’s also a change in her cervix that alerts her that she has entered the fertile days and exited the fertile days.

Ninety three percent of women can learn how to read their bodily signs with one month of observation.  Ninety-three percent of women figure out right away when the fertile mucus is present.  The other seven percent, however, have some trouble reading their signs of fertility.  Some of these women have a problem because they are infertile.  If a woman is infertile the signs of fertility are not going to show up.  She is not going to have the mucus because she is not producing the hormones to help her ovulate.  A very good way for a woman to determine whether she’s fertile or infertile is to use natural family planning.  There may be other reasons for unreliable signs besides infertility. A woman, for instance, might be taking medication that dries up the mucus.  She might have allergies that cause her to produce mucus during the infertile days.  But almost every woman within 3 to 4 months of observing bodily signs can determine when she’s fertile and when she’s infertile.