Educational Resource
NFP Bulletin Briefs: Wisdom from Blessed John Paul II (2012)
Natural Family Planning Bulletin Briefs: Wisdom from Blessed John Paul II
“[R]esponsible fatherhood and motherhood directly concern the moment in which a man and a woman, uniting themselves “in one flesh,” can become parents. This is a moment of special value both for their interpersonal relationship and for their service to life: they can become parents—father and mother—by communicating life to a new human being. The two dimensions of conjugal union, the unitive and the procreative, cannot be artificially separated without damaging the deepest truth of the conjugal act itself. (John Paul II, Letter to Families, no. 12)
The logic of the total gift of self to the other involves a potential openness to procreation: in this way the marriage is called to even greater fulfillment as a family. Certainly the mutual gift of husband and wife does not have the begetting of children as its only end, but is in itself a mutual communion of love and of life. (John Paul II, Letter to Families, no. 12)