Natural Family Planning

Natural Family Planning is fertility awareness: the knowledge of a couple's fertility. It is a means of reading a woman's signs of fertility and infertility to achieve or postpone pregnancy.

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From the August 28, 2011 Bulletin Article:
One Family's Conversion to Natural Family Planning by Dr. Richard Brennan, Mrs. Katie Brennan and Miss Amanda Brennan

From the July 24, 2011 Bulletin Article:
Responsible Parenthood Means God Is In the Picture an interview with Fr. Richard Hogan

From the May 22, 2011 Bulletin Article:
Infertility Speaks: 4 Women Reflect on the Journey to Parenthood as posted at The Art of NFP - the blog of the Couple to Couple League

From the May 15, 2011 Bulletin Article:
Does NFP Put a Strain on Marriage? by Herbert F. Smith, S.J. (excerpted with permission from Natural Family Planning: Why It Succeeds by Herbert J. Smith, S.J.)

From the May 8, 2011 Bulletin Article:
Treating Fertility as a Gift, Not a Disease by Christian Meert (reprinted with permission of Colorado Catholic Herald)

Note: If you have difficulty viewing the article in Adobe Acrobat, try setting the zoom level to 100% or actual size. If you continue to have difficulty, please contact us for a copy of the article.

NFP Network at SJE

Looking to learn more about NFP? The resources in our NFP network can help!

• To TALK to a couple currently practicing NFP in their marriage, contact us.
• To READ about the sympto-thermal method taught in the Diocese of Gary, visit The Couple to Couple League of Northwest Indiana website.
• To SEE & HEAR couples' personal testimonies of how they discovered NFP and the effect it has had on their marriage, visit The Couple to Couple League's YouTube Channel.
• To LEARN NFP from our CCL-trained parishioner couples and sign-up for Regular, Postpartum or Premenopause classes, view our schedule or contact us to discuss alternate dates.
• To BORROW a resource from the NFP Network, view our list and then contact us.

Natural Family Planning Awareness Week

July 24-30, 2011 "...a call to celebrate and reverence God's vision of human sexuality."
For more information on this initiative of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, please visit the NFP pages of the USCCB website.

WHY LISTEN TO WHY NOT?

Dr. Janet Smith’s CD, “Contraception: Why Not,” has been distributed one million times over and has been revised with updated statistics. Why listen? It’s a strong resource for pro-life work, marriage education and evangelization. Now in a revised edition, Smith has clearly outdone herself and delivered a presentation that has more facts, research references and persuasive arguments for the benefits of natural family planning. Borrow a copy today from the Lending Library in the narthex or get the mp3 from mycatholicfaith.org.

TEN COMMON MYTHS ABOUT NFP

• NFP is just another name for Rhythm.
• NFP can only be used by women with regular cycles.
• NFP is too complicated to be useful for most people.
• NFP is not a reliable method of family planning.
• Couples who use NFP have less intimacy than the average American.
• NFP does not allow for “spontaneity.”
• There is no difference between NFP and artificial contraception.
• The Catholic Church wants people to have as many babies as possible.
• Sex is a private decision between two people.
• The Church does not want couples to be intimate for pleasure’s sake.