By
BETH LONGWARE DUFF
Fairfield County Catholic,
July 14, 2007
"Life. A Gift
of Married Love."
That's the
theme of this year's National
Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, taken from the
U.S. Catholic Bishops' document, "Married Love and the Gift of
Life."
All parishes
in the Diocese of Bridgeport will observe the week, which runs
July 22-28 and highlights both the anniversary of Pope
Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (July 25) and the
feast of the parents of Our Blessed Mother, Saints Joachim and
Anne (July 26).
A Diocesan
NFP Novena Mass in anticipation of NFP Week was celebrated at
Saint Mary Parish in Norwalk on July 18. The celebrant was Father
Greg Markey.
"Natural Family
Planning is a part of our ministry commitment, and is closely
tied to our new marriage preparation program," says diocesan Director
of Family Life Ministries
Betty Anne Casaretti.
The goal of
NFP awareness will be met with a week of specific readings and
intentions each day for the entire week, explains Casaretti.
"We've sent
pastors a variety of tools that can be utilized, whether they
want to focus on a particular weekend or the whole week."
To download
"Preaching for the Family" homily notes in
Microsoft Word, click
here.
To download
"Praying for the Family" prayer intercessions
in Microsoft Word, click
here.
Not Rhythm
What is NFP?
First, forget the rhythm method of old. Today, married couples
have three highly effective methods of family planning to choose
from: Sympto-Thermal, the Creighton Model, and Billings Ovulation.
All three
provide a safe, healthy and low-cost way to plan a family and,
advocates maintain, strengthen a marriage by fostering mutual
respect. They point to statistics that show a divorce rate of
less than five percent among NFP practitioners, compared to a
national figure that hovers around 50 percent. They also note
that NFP is in accord with the teachings of the Catholic Church
and encourages responsible parenthood.
Among its
proponents are Kevin and Linda Gaboardi of Saint Joseph Parish
in Danbury. They have practiced NFP since their third child was
born eight years ago and are certified teachers of the Sympto-Thermal
Method through the Couple to Couple League of Fairfield County.
Linda notes
that in addition to helping couples plan their families, NFP also
helps promote marital chastity, a concept that she admits may
seem contradictory.
Marital
Chastity
"God doesn't
expect 'anything goes' in a marriage," she explains. "There is
virtue within marriage that has to be practiced within the sexual
marital embrace. The challenging aspect of NFP is that there needs
to be periodic abstinence during the cycle if you're looking to
avoid a pregnancy. So temperance, or the element of self control,
is the virtue we practice to attain chastity."
She continues
that NFP, which she touts as 99 percent effective, is one way
for couples to fulfill their promise to God to be open to new
life.
God's Design
"God provides
us the means to know exactly what our cycle is doing throughout
the whole month. We're using that knowledge not in a way that
we control our fertility, but in a way that we work within God's
design," she says, adding that "just like anything, it can be
abused with the wrong intention, and that's where having a well-formed
conscience is very important. We need to be able to listen to
what God wants for us, to be prayerful within our marriage, and
to be open to discuss what God is planning for our family."
NFP has the
additional advantage of providing women a healthy understanding
of their monthly cycles, a valuable tool if they've been having
trouble achieving a pregnancy.
Getting
Pregnant
"The statistic
is that in the first cycle of NFP use, 75 percent of couples achieve
pregnancy, and that's for all three methods," Gaboardi notes.
NFP Awareness
Week was begun by the American Academy of NFP (now the American
Academy of FertilityCare™ Professionals) and is promoted by the
Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops.
(For more
information about NFP and links to the three methods, visit the
Fairfield County Couple to Couple League for Natural Family Planning
website: fairfieldcounty.ccli.org.)
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