Educational Resource
Perspective: Is NFP Good? by Richard M. Hogan and John M. LeVoir (1985)
Perspective: Is NFP Good? by Richard M. Hogan and John M. LeVoir in International Review of Natural Family Planning, Volume IX, Number 3, Fall 1985
The title of this article may seem strange. However it is a question currently debated among the Catholic instructors and users of natural family planning (NFP). Is natural family planning inherently good? While the questions discussed are very practical, they also involve serious moral decisions.
For example, a Catholic instructor couple teaching NFP to a man and a woman who are engaged to be married may discover (while helping the engaged couple read their chart) that the engaged couple are having sexual intercourse. Since the Catholic Church teaches against premarital intercourse, is the teaching of NFP in this instance "bad"? Should the Catholic instructor couple sever their teaching relationship with this engaged couple?
Another difficult situation arises when a Catholic instructor couple discover that a married client couple do not ever plan to have any children whatsoever. In other words, the couple learning NFP desire to use their knowledge of fertility only to avoid a pregnancy. They never plan on achieving a pregnancy.
Fr. Richard M. Hogan, Ph.D., is associate pastor at the Church of St. Raphael, Crystal, Minnesota. Fr. John M. LeVoir, M.A., is associate pastor at the Church of St. Charles Borromeo, Minneapolis, Minnesota. They are co-authors of the recent book, Covenant of Love -Pope John Paul II on Sexuality, Marriage, and Family in the Modern World (Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1985)