Good news! The out-of-date, rhythm method is not the Catholic Church’s only morally acceptable means of spacing births. There is another, better way that upholds the truth of sexuality and saves women from the physical and spiritual dangers of the Pill.
Natural Family Planning incorporates modern knowledge of the woman’s cycle and scientific signs to determine when she is fertile. If there is a good reason to avoid pregnancy, couples may abstain from intercourse during the fertile times. NFP is 99% effective and 100% risk-free.
The Church’s teachings on sex (including opposition to contraception) have always been to uphold the two ends of sexual intercourse: unity and procreation. Couples that are open to life are speaking the language of sexual love that says, “I give myself to you: freely, totally, faithfully, and fruitfully.”
While many Catholics disregard Church teachings and foster a contraceptive mentality, I know many young, married couples who use NFP successfully and as a result share deeper intimacy, communication, and commitment. Is that not what every woman wants?
The divorce rate for NFP couples is under 5%. Maybe the Church knows something.
My heart goes out to all women wounded and crippled by the sexual revolution and effects of the Pill. My heart goes out to lost motherhood, to women grown up believing fertility is a disease needed to be treated by a pill, and those enslaved by sexual addictions yearning for freedom to be treated not as an object of use and end of man’s pleasure, but as a subject worthy of love.
Has the Pill cheated women to think that feminine liberation means becoming like a male? The three things that in essence define a woman and which a man can never do are: menstruate, conceive, and bear a child.
Let’s be proud to be women. Here’s a tribute to those who want to reclaim a new feminism of responsibility and the freedom to be intricately women in our very beings: to be nurturers, mothers, and lovers who uphold our dignity and call men on to love, not use us.
A version of this entry was published as a letter to the editor of the Fond du Lac Reporter. Click here to read.
