Local Church

July 20, 2006

Thousands benefit from Natural Family Planning

By Mary Moore
The Catholic Sun

The Phoenix Natural Family Planning Center has doubled the number of classes its office provides this year, allowing nearly 3,000 people to take part in intro classes while 575 others enrolled in more in-depth training.

Natural Family Planning is “an umbrella term for certain methods used to achieve and avoid pregnancies,” according to the U.S. bishops’ Web site.

The methods are based on observation of the naturally occurring signs and symptoms of the fertile and infertile phases of a woman’s menstrual cycle.

“The bishop really wants to give couples the best shot at a good marriage and that comes from living in union with God’s plan for marriage,” said Peggy Frei, director of the NFP Center in Phoenix.

Mark and Jenelle Van Brunt have been married 35 years and experienced a conversion six years into their marriage that led them to learn and use Natural Family Planning. 

“In retrospect, I can see why I didn’t understand it,” she said. “We hadn’t been living out the sacrament of marriage and experiencing the graces that came with that sacrament.”

They found “a whole new presence of grace” opened up to them when they embraced NFP.

“In spite of the difficulties of living it, the benefits so outweigh the difficulties that we would have never chosen to go back,” she said.

In her decade of experience as an NFP instructor, Van Brunt has found that the reluctance for many Catholics who do not use NFP is two-fold.

“Most Catholics think it’s the old rhythm method,” she said, referring to a periodic abstinence-based method that assumed all women had a 28-day cycle and made statistical estimates accordingly. The rhythm method proved ineffective for women with varying menstrual cycles. She said Catholics won’t give it a second look if they think it is ineffective.

“The other reason they don’t want to use it is they are afraid of the abstinence,” she said, “and they think it’s not possible to live or that it’s not going to be workable in their lives.”

What those couples are missing, Van Brunt contends, is a richness that cannot be gained by following the culture’s view of sexuality.

Deacon Dick Peterson, marriage preparation coordinator for St. Timothy Parish in Mesa, said he has seen many hearts converted through NFP classes.

He recalled one parishioner who was adamant about not taking the classes since he and his fiancé did not plan to use NFP in their marriage.

Since there wasn’t any other way to fulfill his marriage preparation requirements, he and his fiancé took all four classes.

“I ran into him at church later and he basically thanked me for requiring him to do that because it has helped them understand things better and communicate things better,” Deacon Peterson said. “They were really looking forward to using NFP in their marriage.”

Yet instructors find that most couples won’t take the full course of NFP unless required, simply because of the extensive time already involved with their other wedding preparation.

More than a dozen parishes now require all four classes for engaged couples preparing for marriage.