With many options available
for fertility treatment and contraception, the U.S. Catholic bishops want men
and women to better understand God’s plan for marriage and Catholic teaching on
married love and contraception.
The U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued Married Love and the Gift of Life, writing that
“the power to create a new life with God is at the heart of what spouses share
with each other.” The ability to bear children, the bishops say, “is not
subject solely to individual control.” They encourage couples to use natural
family planning (NFP).
To better appreciate NFP and
how it can “lead couples to show greater attentiveness to and respect for each
other,” the bishops recommend the book, Natural Family Planning Blessed Our
Marriage: 19 True Stories by Fletcher Doyle (Servant Books,
The bishops’ statement quotes
twice from couples who tell their stories in Natural Family Planning Blessed
Our Marriage: “NFP does require communication and commitment, but isn’t that
what marriage is all about? We have gained so much by using NFP and have lost
nothing,” And “NFP made our union different, more of a total giving...Because
we’re open to life, we’re giving everything.”
Married
Love and the Gift of Life states that “NFP respects the God-given power to love
a new human life into being even when we are not actively seeking to exercise
that power. However, because NFP
does not change the human body in any way, or upset its balance with
potentially harmful drugs or devices, people of other faiths or of no religious
affiliation have also come to accept and use it from a desire to work in
harmony with their bodies.”
Natural Family Planning
Blessed Our Marriage: 19 True Stories is available by calling St. Anthony
Messenger Press toll free (800) 488-0488 or visit www.AmericanCatholic.org.