Natural Family Planning International

John has been privileged to write a monthly piece on Humanae Vitae for Catholics United for the Faith (CUF) blog. I think his CUF article, “The Conversion Value of Natural Family Planning,” this month is exceptionally good and the site for his article will be given at the end of this blog.
  Recently John was asked by another organization to write an article on NFP for their website. He wrote the article and it was rejected. Correspondence followed and he wrote a revised article. It was rejected. Anyone who knows John knows that an invitation to write an article on NFP in general entails an invitation to include ecological breastfeeding as one of the two basic types of natural family planning. The organization asked the wrong person to do the article. They only wanted a response geared to systematic NFP. The following is John’s response to the person who represented the organization. I thought it was well written and wanted to share it with our readers.
 
    “Obviously I have not been able to get through to you and your associates that the answer to the question of “NFP vs. a contraceptive mentality” (as you put it) needs to take into account whether the form of NFP is seeking the God-given built-in infertility of breastfeeding or the man-made system of abstaining from the marriage act during the fertile time.  We have had to coin the term “ecological breastfeeding” (EBF) to distinguish it from those culturally conditioned forms of breastfeeding that provide little if any of this normative built-in natural infertility.  EBF IS a form of natural family planning, but it does not require the “serious reasons” required for the morally good use of systematic NFP.  Therefore, it affects the answer to your basic question.  EBF is not just another method but an entirely different TYPE of NFP. 
    With regards to my statement that you quote, “Be sure to do ecological breastfeeding so that you give your children the best start in life and also benefit from God’s own plan for spacing babies,” I wonder how you would respond to the couple about to embark on providentialism.  We have talked with couples directly and have heard about others who have accepted providentialism without eco-breastfeeding.  Just accepting the babies as they come but without the help of the natural spacing provided by EBF sometimes yields a baby each year.  My experience with high frequency birthing goes back more than 40 years.  I still remember the mother of six or seven children at age 30 at most, the varicose veins on her legs popping out all over the place, asking me as the parish “lay theologian” as we were called then in the mid-Sixties, what they could do.  After all, as she said, we have another 15 years of fertility.  At the time, I probably muttered something about calendar rhythm, but I didn’t even know the rules for that.  There were thousands and thousands of such moms.  They were being told by priests that they could use the Pill or that they could follow their own conscience, and that amounted to the same thing in that context.  This formed a significant part of the background for the multitudes who accepted the dissent led by Fr. Curran.  I have long thought that if these same mothers had known about and had practiced what we now call Ecological Breastfeeding, the opposition to the dissent would have been very wide.  They would have known that God does provide a valuable spacing if the moms will take care of the needs of their babies in this way.  So, to repeat my question above, if someone told you that they were about to embark on the voyage of providentialism, would you try to argue them into systematic NFP, or would you say nothing, or would you suggest ecological breastfeeding?  As far as I am concerned, given our knowledge about EBF and having seen the effects of six babies in seven years in some families doing providentialism and their consequent exhaustion, etc. (I’ve even heard of some turning to sterilization), I would be irresponsible not to advocate EBF to such couples. 
    There are a number of problems within the NFP movement, and one of them is the practical exclusion of the teaching of EBF.  Perhaps it is too simple; perhaps it is too universal; perhaps it might be thought to be less revenue-producing; perhaps it is thought by some teachers to be too demanding on the moms; I don’t know what combination of factors leads to this practical exclusion.  The losers are the couples who miss the opportunity to learn this form of baby-care with its consequent natural infertility.  I repeat that it is the Creator who built this natural infertility into female human nature.  But his plan needs to be respected and followed.
    Any discussion about NFP that does not include EBF is seriously incomplete.  I can understand that you have been so much influenced by the general attitude in the NFP movement that you have gone along with that exclusion, but the result is still unfortunate.  You will find someone to write the article about “NFP vs. a contraceptive mentality” with no reference to the fact that there are two entirely different types of NFP and that the type affects the answer to your basic question.  Even the rephrasing of your question with reference to a contraceptive mentality is problematic.  If people truly have a contraceptive mentality, they will use contraceptive behaviors.  If they have a selfish mentality, they may use systematic NFP without sufficiently serious reasons or even have downright self-centered and selfish reasons, but that is still different from using contraceptive behaviors.  Unfortunately, few writers make such distinctions.
   Once again, thanks for the initial invitation. Cordially, JFK”

Next week: The rejected article: “Natural Family Planning: Is It Just Catholic Birth Control?”

John’s CUF article, “The Conversion Value of Natural Family Planning” can be viewed at  http://www.cufblog.org/?p=373. 
John F Kippley
NFP International
www.NFPandmore.org
Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality