What percentage of Catholics use NFP?

[FightingFat]

svoboda:

No matter what people say, in the end NFP comes down to allowing couples to make love without getting pregnant. It’s just like birth control, the only difference is that instead of preventing the sperm from meeting the egg it avoids the situation altogether by being intimate only when there is no egg.

The intent is the same, the result is the same. The biology of the means seems to be amoral.

Exactly.

 

[johntkd]

renee1258:

Also to note when I log onto general NFP sites, there are many Pagan and Feminists that embrace NFP. I guess it is the more holisitc approach to things that we find in common, and many feminists realize that BCP and anything artifical suppresses one’s sexual identity to a artificial mechanism. A good site would be www.tcoyf.com

On that note a lot of women get very sick on ABC because of the hormones associated with them…

 

[johntkd]

Convert97:

I have found research that says three to four percent of Catholics use NFP, although instructors in my city say they get a steady stream of people learning the method. The New York Times believes such numbers prove the Church is wrong. All those numbers prove is that Catholics can be as stiff-necked as any other people

I dont believe that it shows at all that the church is wrong, or that some people are stiff necked, I believe it just shows they dont want to limit intimacy in thier marriage (assuming these study groups were indeed married and not singles)
NFP requires you to give up up to 50% or more of intimate embraces depending on yours and your spouses feelings during cycle times.
most couples i have talked with want to give a little more of themselves than 50% (agreed some are at 75%)

NFP by all statistics is very effective as a birth control and as a conception enhancer…

my two cents

 

[FightingFat]

I think it’s really hard when the Church interfers in this sort of thing- a really private, intimate thing between a man and his wife. It messes with your loyalties and emotions.

 

[setter]

FightingFat:

I think it’s really hard when the Church interfers in this sort of thing- a really private, intimate thing between a man and his wife. It messes with your loyalties and emotions.

I would offer that this presents a window of grace into where one’s loyalties and emotions primarily reside. Jesus make it clear to His would be followers (today as then) that the cost of discipleship is total abandonment to Him.

The spiritual fathers (such as St. Ignatius) refer to this struggle of our own personal allegiances/preferences over those of God as “inordinate attachments”, and consider it a grace when the Holy Spirit offers the lucid conviction and choice to transform and purify our motives and walk with Christ. Lest, one becomes as the young rich man in the gospel (Matt. 19:16-29) who walks away sad because He refused in His personal encounter with Jesus to accept what was demanded of him to “be perfect” as a condition to “come follow me” as a disciple to Jesus.

Jesus made quite clear the conditions of discipleship when our personal, private preferences conflicted with His [the Church He founded] teachings – His exhaustive demand made it clear that nothing was off limits.

“He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” Mark 8:34-35

"If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26-27

 

[FightingFat]

Thanks for that- lots to reflect on. I have to say, when I weigh this issue against some of the discussions in the secular news forum, like this one for example, I think I would rather have made a mistake and be accountable to my Heavenly Father in love, rather than in war.