We informed ourselves about NFP after our third child, but due to our extreme fertility my wife will not consider it an option for us (and I don’t blame her) - since we would probably end up with more children than we can handle. I have proposed that we try and cultivate the virtue of chastity, but since she does not believe that we are commiting a sin when using contraception she refuses to consider it. And since we have had this discussion several times, she is threatening that my position is breaking us apart and she is only with me because of the kids.
I know a lot of people have trouble trusting NFP to work for them, but it really is actually
highly effective. Yes, I know there are reports out there that that claim it has really high user failure rates, but that is beccause they include ‘failures’ which occur beccause a couple charted correctly, determined that they were, in fact fertile,
and then had sex anyway. That would be like counting those couples who were too ‘caught up in the moment’ to stop and put on a condom in the user failure rates for condoms. Its kind of ridiculous to count those failures as a sign of the unreliability of the method itself.
Toni Weschler explains this in her book “Taking Charge of Your Fertility”. She is a highly respected secular women’s health educator and her book is really informative about all aspects of NFP. (although she does also suggest some things not in line with Church teaching) Whats most interesting is that she promotes charting not just for the sake of avoiding or acheiving pregnancy, but also for the sake of a woman finally being able to actually understand her own body and the changes that take place throughout the month. Perhaps with this book you could encourage your wife to at least start charting for the sake of learning more about herself even if she doesn’t trust it as a method for avoiding pregnancy. And who knows, possibly with time, practice, and a greater knowledge of her cycles she will begin to feel more comfortable with the idea of actually using it to avoid pregnancy. Charting certainly won’t hurt.
Also, maybe you should try posting this in the family life forum as well? Some people tend to only check one forum or the other so you are likely to get more responses by posting it there as well.
Also, I know this topic has been brought up before, if you are still unsure about this issue after Fr. Serpa’s answer and the link to the Vatican you could always do a search to try and find other threads and see what was said.
