NFP Hipocracy

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renee1258:
The Church would agree with you. Birth Control isn’t self control though. The Church asks for self control, that is the price to pay of sorts instead of having your body on demand for your spouse. All I can ask is for you to inform yourself about what NFP is and isn’t. If you choose to be ignorant at this time, that is your problem.
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you are so right renee calling people ignorant is so helpful thank you for your kind christian like words your compassion and support of someone who isnt trying to offend anyone, but who only has a different opinion than yours.
 
wisdom 3:5:
Wouldn’t you rather have your body cured than deal with these painful, potentially dangerous symptoms all your life? What about the children you want in the future? polycystic ovaries are a cause of infertility.
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i know thats why i have to take the pill until im ready to get pregnant so that the cycsts do not damage my ovaries to the point of infertility. i almost had to have one removed over the summer, but prayer healed me. during my surgery they were able to fix it rather than remove it, the pill helps to keep them healthy and strong so that someday i can be a mom.
 
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TarAshly:
i know thats why i have to take the pill until im ready to get pregnant so that the cycsts do not damage my ovaries to the point of infertility. i almost had to have one removed over the summer, but prayer healed me. during my surgery they were able to fix it rather than remove it, the pill helps to keep them healthy and strong so that someday i can be a mom.
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Bless your heart. My 22-year-old daughter has been on a full dose of BCP since the age of 14 – no cysts but extremely debilitating, painful, long periods with DAYS of heavy bleeding; twice she was hospitalized for mittelschmerz, which was thought to be acute appendicitis. I’ve been looking for ways to get her off it without terrorizing her. Her pain was *unbelievable. *

I hope when you want to get pregnant, the long term effects of the pill won’t prevent that. I do wish you could get a consultation from a specialist who understands these issues – there are NFP physicians who “get it” about ovarian cysts and can approach it without the chemicals. Look up the Creighton Model FertilityCare System. May God bring you knowledge and peace!
 
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TarAshly:
i know thats why i have to take the pill until im ready to get pregnant so that the cycsts do not damage my ovaries to the point of infertility. i almost had to have one removed over the summer, but prayer healed me. during my surgery they were able to fix it rather than remove it, the pill helps to keep them healthy and strong so that someday i can be a mom.
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Hopefully we can all agree that she is not acting immorally by taking the pill. The Church does allow for it in her condition. She shouldn’t be made to feel guilty when all she is doing is taking care of her body in a way that is fully acceptable to the Catholic Church.
 
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martino:
Hopefully we can all agree that she is not acting immorally by taking the pill. The Church does allow for it in her condition. She shouldn’t be made to feel guilty when all she is doing is taking care of her body in a way that is fully acceptable to the Catholic Church.
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Absolutely! I was not trying to make her feel guilty, just wanting her to know that there are now new options for her. As a woman who suffered from infertility (undiagnosed) I’m just encouraging her to seek out better medical treatment. Believe me if someone had told me about this option during my reproductive years I would have gotten that treatment.

www.popepaulvi.com
 
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TarAshly:
you are so right renee calling people ignorant is so helpful thank you for your kind christian like words your compassion and support of someone who isnt trying to offend anyone, but who only has a different opinion than yours.
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But you are being ignorant though you have yet to learn NFP ‘because it is untrustworthy’, you demand for us to submit to your misunderstanding of Church veiws on sexuality. Also you are shouting. So please don’t try to guilt me in being unchristian, it isn’t working.

Anyways once you get off the Pill, you will realize that you cervical mucus is evident and noticable as an indicator of one’s own fertility. You body is very trustworthy when you decide to get pregnant.
 
Tar – back in post 31 you say: birth control is birth control is birth control. Please believe me that this is absolutely not so. I dearly hope somebody (maybe your deacon) can help make this clear for you. Once you “get it” you will be amazed that you ever thought otherwise. But sometimes it takes a bit of “doing” to “get it.” There are threads on these forums about this but frankly, you have to wade through a lot of chaff to collect the wheat. Buy the Christopher West book I recommended earlier, and read it with your fiance.

As a young married non-Catholic couple, my husband and I used birth control for a couple of years early in our marriage. The day we decided that this was not what God wanted for us was in a very concrete sense our first full day of real marriage!
 
renee i wasnt trying to guilt you into feeling anything i just wanted you to understand that calling someone ignorant isnt productive to the situation. different strokes for different folgs. and NFP isnt an option for me because of my medical situation. if my condition goes untreated i could easily become infertile.
 
Interesting responses to my thread. I’ve been reading all of them and thinking a lot. I own the book “Good News About Sex and Marriage.” and I read it while I was still engaged and talked about it with my now husband to great length.

I agreed with most of what it said. However, as a new teacher without tenure and a grad student working on my master’s degree with a husband working as a cashier at Meijer finishing his degree, NFP is simply TOO RISKY. We can’t afford to raise a baby right now and until we finish our degrees, we don’t have time to spend with a baby even if we had one.

I am 28 and my husband is 27. Should we have waited to get married? We shouldn’t have to. Should we abstain from sexual relations for the next year to make sure we don’t get pregnant? That is unrealistic - not to mention unhealthy for our realtionship. Just like ABC, NFP is not a 100% guaranteed method of birth control but on the flip-side, NFP isn’t nearly as effective due to human error. From my perspective, it would be flat-out irresponsible to take a chance like that given our current economic and unstable career situation.

I struggled for a long time before I resolved to use the pill. In the end, my husband and I talked about our decision and acknowledged the importance of not taking sex for granted, reflecting on the importance of it and the meaning behind it.

I am more committed to my faith than most Catholics I know and I believe, in my heart, that only God can judge us from one person to the next. He knows who’s using ABC to have gratuitous sex and/or to avoid having children in order to fund their worldly needs and desires. I believe He also knows who’s using it in order to build a foundation and provide for the children they would like to have.

Times are different. I believe that God’s law does apply to the present as well as the past. However, I also believe that God gave man a brain to figure out ways to adapt to the changes in the times. If I had my way, I would have had 4 children already, but I have yet to find myself in a circumstance conducive to bringing children into the world. God knows when I finish my degree and my husband gets a job in his career field, we will have as many children as we can handle. Until then, I am going to choose the most effective measure for preventing pregnancy so that I don’t create an even more difficult situation for my family and new baby.

The bottom line is, only God knows the individual circumstances of each person. It is wrong to assume that because someone chooses ABC that they aren’t as much of a Christian - or even a Catholic. God knows what’s in each and every person’s heart and although the Church says that ABC is wrong, I think it’s wrong to say it’s wrong for *everyone *without knowing everybody’s story and seeing into everybody’s heart.

Also, as a married woman for the past 2 years, I could probably count the number of times my husband and I have engaged in sexual relations on my fingers and toes. Because our relationship is so strong and God is constantly present, we have managed to abstain from sexual relations in order to observe the time that I would be ovulating if I was using NFP. Believe it or not.
 
La Devota:
Also, as a married woman for the past 2 years, I could probably count the number of times my husband and I have engaged in sexual relations on my fingers and toes. Because our relationship is so strong and God is constantly present, we have managed to abstain from sexual relations in order to observe the time that I would be ovulating if I was using NFP. Believe it or not.
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Fingers and toes? With NFP you could do **way **better than that! :yup: Sounds like you didn’t have good training in NFP. With committed couples the success rate is equal to that of the pill.
 
La Devota:
Just like ABC, NFP is not a 100% guaranteed method of birth control but on the flip-side, NFP isn’t nearly as effective due to human error. From my perspective, it would be flat-out irresponsible to take a chance like that given our current economic and unstable career situation.
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Where are you getting your statistics from? NFP is more effective then ABC.

Directly from the Couple to Couple League web page.
A number of studies have shown that the Sympto-Thermal Method of NFP can be used at the 99% level of effectiveness for avoiding or spacing pregnancies. It is interesting to note that throughout the history of modern “birth control,” the moral means of achieving this end that have been recommended by the Catholic Church were never less effective than the most effective unnatural means. The Ogino-Knaus Rhythm Method was as effective in birth regulation as the most effective immoral method, prophylactic condoms and diaphragms. The Rhythm Method was, unfortunately, poorly understood and taught, which led to its being criticized as ineffective… CCL was established to help avoid that mistake. When the Pill was developed in the late 1950s, the Natural Family Planning methods we teach were also achieving similar rates of effectiveness in studies, though far less public and media attention was paid to that research.
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Yes there is a chance people will make mistakes but that is why multiple methods are used to determine fertility. NFP is not the rhythm method. There are numerous signs that go into determining fertility. They vary depending on which method you use. The Couple to Couple League uses the Sympto-Thermal method which utilizes temperature reading, mucus readings, and cervical readings all cross checked.

Errors can occur in ABC methods, how many times do you hear about a condem breaking? how many times do you hear, “I got pregnant while on the pill”? All the methods are prone to error, but if you learn NFP correctly and actually do it the way it is written, it is 99% effective. Nothing else short of abstinance can claim that.
 
On this thread, somebody said “birth control is birth control is birth control.”

In response to Marauder’s last post I would add a resounding:

NFP is not the rhythm method NFP is not the rhythm method NFP is not the rhythm method!
 
Never had a pregnancy scare, but I have a good story about family planning. Since we talk about it at pre-cana, on how we went from contraceptive to NFP. I don’t mess around with the rules of NFP. We were waiting to have out second child, after I knew the results of the Bar Exam. When we recieved the good news that I passed, we celebrated a week later when I ovulated. A few days after that, all the scores had to be recalled and recalculated due to an error. It was unclear for a week whether or not I passed the Bar. The point is, you can plan and plan and plan your family and life will throw you something you didn’t expect. I did pass the Bar, but I didn’t get pregnant either on that cycle.
 
La Devota,
I think by your even posting your topic, you are questioning the decision you have made and maybe your conscience is bothering you?

There have been many posts that have told you how ABC is different than NFP and why the Church teaches that ABC is WRONG and SINFUL. In fact, nearly all the posts have dealt with this. You seem to want to hear the truth, but yet it scares you. I understand. I’m a convert of about 8 years. Our fertility was the biggest hurdle to jump during our conversion. I had used BC pills in our early marriage and to be honest, they made me very ill–permanent morning sickness. But I didn’t trust anything else. I was a teacher at a Catholic school (whoo-hoo raking in the dough! lol 😃 ) and my dh was in grad school. Times were tight. When we were finally taught about NFP during our RCIA classes, I was thrilled because I didn’t have to be sick anymore and it was as reliable as any artificial means if the rules are followed. But then an amazing thing happened. We talked about what would happen if we had a baby? We worked out the logistics and our son was on his way! Was it all easy? No, we had to split our schedule so I could teach and my dh could remain in school. We thought daycare was not an option. My prayer was always “Lord, if you give me another child, please help provide a way to take care of him/her.” And you know what, the Lord HAS provided. Are we rolling in the dough? lol, no, not really, but we are doing okay and we have since added 3 daughters. I’m able to stay at home and be a full time mom. As children were added, our finances improved and we were able to handle the addition.

Have you taken NFP classes??? Have you consulted a Dr or nurse who knows and supports NFP???
( omsoul.com has a list of NFP Doctors )
Have you truly prayed over your decision and actually waited for an answer? Have you spoken with a priest knowledgeable with NFP and supportive of the Church’s teachings??? I pray that you and your dh open your hearts and minds to the true teachings of the Church and have the courage to accept and follow them. May God bless you abundantly on your journey!
Jennifer
 
This is a very complicated issue and I think that a lot of reading should be done before one makes a judgment on the effectiveness and the morality of NFP. I’m seeing a lot of misconceptions here regarding NFP. There is far too much information out there than can be covered under these threads.

I have polycistic ovarian syndrome and I can tell you that there are far better ways of treating it than the pill. Most doctors don’t care about the morality of the pill and just go with the norm as far as treatment. Find a better doctor! You might want to get in touch with Creighton University for a referral or help on this matter. www.creighton.edu/ By the way, while we had trouble conceiving our first, I now have 5 kids and 1 on the way so I’m not crazy about other things working.

I do have to make a comment on this quote. For some reason it just jumped out at me :hmmm:
THERE IS SOMETHING VERY WRONG WITH MARRIED PEOPLE NOT MAKING LOVE (YOU MAKE IT SOUND SO CLINICAL) IT IS AN EXPRESSION OF PASSION AND LOVE FOR YOUR PARTNER IF A COUPLE IS NOT MAKING LOVE IN THEIR MARRIAGE THERE IS A DEEP SEEDED ISSUE THAT NEEDS TO BE RESOLVED!
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I think you’re projecting your prejudice of NFP onto all of us here. I doubt any of us married people live like monks unless we have some pretty serious issues going on. However, that said, there are times in a marriage when other ways to express our passion and love for our beloved need to be utilized. Illness, post-partum times are just some examples. These could be short intervals or long intervals depending on the situation and there’s nothing wrong or crazy about having to make a physical sacrifice for the one you love. There’s nothing clinical about it. It’s just a state of life that has to be dealt with. It doesn’t mean your love diminishes.
Sex is a result of love, not love in itself. I know you’re getting married soon. Let’s just look at a worst case scenario. Let’s say you and your husband can no longer have sex because one of you is paralyzed. Is the marriage over then? It would be if the relationship was based on sex. Christian marriage is soooooooooo much more than that.

I’d look on this site, Couple to Couple League, Ignatius Press,etc. for books on NFP and marriage. There are a lot of crazy people out there who think that NFP is a wonderful gift (if used according to Church teachings) for the married couple. Hope you don’t think we’re all crazy or that we’re all just not as physically attracted to our spouses as you are. I think you’ll find the divorce rate between NFP and ABC couples VERY interesting.
 

Um, you say too risky. What about the risks of health issues and infertility with using contraception? Isn’t that risky? Your chances of becoming pregnant with applying the rules of NFP are not much different than the best contraceptives. Why is that risky? Think of the risk of conceiving whle taking oral contracpetives. It’s one thing to think of yourself, but what about consequences to others?

Not having sex is not unrealistic or unhealthy for a relationship. If you truly respect each other as who you are, why should your relationship depend on sex? Not having sex, especially before marriage is an oppotunity to grow in your relationship.

Remember trust in God. He will provide.

FYI: We’ve practiced NFP our entire marriage. All three children were expected and prayed for. We delayed our first becuase my wife was getting a Master’s and working to pay for her education the first four years of our marriage. Our finances were tight as well.
 
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bear06:
I think you’re projecting your prejudice of NFP onto all of us here. I doubt any of us married people live like monks unless we have some pretty serious issues going on. However, that said, there are times in a marriage when other ways to **express our passion and love for our beloved need to be utilized. Illness, post-partum times are just some examples. **
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Or a Red Sox/Yankees Series… I’m not fertile, and my husband said we have have plenty of time after the game and when the kids are in bed. Six hours later… Guess what didn’t happen. Sorry I had to share.
 
Let’s say you and your husband can no longer have sex because one of you is paralyzed. Is the marriage over then? (QUOTE)

absolutely not. my soon to be husband has diabetes very very severly and i am prepared as one can be in this type of situation to be widowed young or to lose our sex life early on. none of that matters to me i love him more than life itself. and not paralasys, death nor sex could ever effect that. he’s my heart. and i couldnt be without him no matter what the circumstances were.
 
La -

The quote you made "God knows when I finish my degree and my husband gets a job in his career field, we will have as many children as we can handle. "

As someone who is older :eek: and have the corporate battle scars to prove it… please, don’t put your faith in your husband getting a job in his career field. In this world, no degree is a promise of a job. My husband has a degree in a what should be a very lucrative line of work, not only that, he is so talented that he won national awards in his field and did not spend a penny on his degree - had more scholarships than he could actually use!

I, on the other hand, dropped out of college after 2 semesters and went into an entry level job.

We have lived in 3 states, while my accidental carreer took off, my husband has not been able to find a job in his degreed field for years - he does some freelance stuff and I work full time. He stays home with our child… But no job is guaranteed… more later
 
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