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CNA Staff, Dec 20, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).
In an era when artificial contraception often dominates public discussions on family planning, the Catholic Church continues to champion natural family planning (NFP).
Far from merely another birth control technique, NFP invites couples to cooperate with God’s plan for married love, which “is a ‘great mystery,’ a sign of the love between Christ and his Church (Eph 5:32),” according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
NFP — also known as a fertility awareness-based method (FABM) — relies on observing and measuring a woman’s natural signs of fertility, such as basal body temperature, cervical mucus, and hormone levels, in order to identify fertile and infertile phases of her menstrual cycle.
Unlike chemical or mechanical contraceptives, which suppress or block fertility, NFP respects the woman’s body and its natural rhythms and allows spouses to achieve or postpone pregnancy, after mutual discernment, through informed abstinence during fertile windows.
Most importantly, NFP honors the sacredness of the unitive and procreative aspects of the conjugal act, which the Church teaches must always be a total gift of self between the spouses and open to the gift of new human life.
“Suppressing fertility by using contraception denies part of the inherent meaning of married sexuality and does harm to the couple’s unity,” according to the USCCB. “The total giving of oneself, body and soul, to one’s beloved is no time to say: ‘I give you everything I am — except…’ The Church’s teaching is not only about observing a rule but about preserving that total, mutual gift of two persons in its integrity.”
In his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, St. Paul VI affirmed that couples may space births for serious reasons, using natural methods that honor the “inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative meanings” of the marital act.
The USCCB explains that “NFP is not a contraceptive, it does nothing to suppress or block conception.”
“On the surface, there may seem to be little difference (between NFP and contraception),” according to the bishops. “But the end result is not the only thing that matters, and the way we get to that result may make an enormous moral difference. Some ways respect God’s gifts to us while others do not.”
The bishops continue: “When couples use contraception, either physical or chemical, they suppress their fertility, asserting that they alone have ultimate control over this power to create a new human life. With NFP, spouses respect God’s design for life and love. They may choose to refrain from sexual union during the woman’s fertile time, doing nothing to destroy the love-giving or life-giving meaning that is present. This is the difference between choosing to falsify the full marital language of the body and choosing at certain times not to speak that language.”
The practice of NFP traces its modern roots to the mid-20th century, evolving from early, relatively unreliable calendar-based methods in the 1930s to the smartphone app-based approaches of today.
Common methods include the Billings Ovulation Method, which tracks cervical mucus changes, and sympto-thermal methods, which combine the charting of mucus observations, temperature shifts, and cervical changes. The Marquette Model uses “several different biomarker devices to detect urinary biomarkers (estrogen, LH, and progesterone),” according to its website.
Per USCCB data, NFP, with perfect use, yields 88% to 100% effectiveness in avoiding pregnancy, with imperfect use at 70% to 98%. For couples trying to achieve pregnancy, it typically occurs in about one year for approximately 85% of couples not using NFP, and within three to six months for those who are.
Pope Francis praised the Billings method in 2023 as “a valuable tool” for “responsible management of procreative choices,” urging a “new revolution in our way of thinking” to value the body’s “great book of nature.” He noted its simplicity amid a “contraceptive culture,” promoting tenderness between the spouses and an authentic freedom.
Beyond efficacy at planning, preventing, or postponing pregnancy in a morally licit way, couples who use NFP acknowledge that it can be difficult but say it builds intimacy and improves communication as well as self-mastery, transforming what can be otherwise difficult times of periodic abstinence into opportunities for deeper intimacy.
Jessica Vanderhyde, a nurse and mother of seven who is using the Marquette method because she and her husband do not feel ready to welcome another child, told CNA that while NFP can be frustrating because of the periods of abstinence it requires, it also “leads to a lot more closeness in the marriage.”
“If it’s been a long period of abstinence, we try to come up with other ways to be close. I need to make sure I’m more affectionate with him because sexual intimacy is one of the primary ways he feels I love him. If that can’t happen, I have to be conscious of that,” she said.
“We have become good at taking each other’s feelings and needs into consideration. I work at providing what he needs as much as I can.”
Vanderhyde also noted how charting symptoms can bring the couple closer as it allows the husband to really appreciate his wife’s body as well as her needs.
“The husband should be involved in the tracking of it,” she continued, “so that he fully participates in the process and doesn’t feel like he’s at the whims of his wife’s moods.”
She said it can also reveal underlying health issues like infertility or hormonal imbalances, which artificial forms of birth control can mask.
Read More![‘Our Lady of Guadalupe is the mother of all’: DC pilgrimage highlights value of migrants #Catholic
Bishop Evelio Menjivar speaks with “EWTN News in Depth” on Friday, March 14, 2025. / Credit: “EWTN News in Depth”
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 15, 2025 / 16:36 pm (CNA).
The Virgin Mary’s role as comforter to all was specially highlighted during a pilgrimage through the streets of Washington, D.C., Saturday morning. “Our Lady of Guadalupe is the mother of all. She envelops each one of us with the same tenderness and the same love, no matter our country of origin or language,” Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjívar said during his homily at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The words from the bishop, who was born in El Salvador, came after the Archdiocese of Washington’s annual “Walk with Mary” procession that began at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart, a Hispanic Catholic parish. Participants also prayed a rosary upon arriving at the basilica, which holds 2,500 people and was filled to capacity, according to the archdiocese. The archdiocese billed this year’s celebration of the pilgrimage honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe on her feast day as “highlight[ing] a call to accompany and pray for migrants and refugees, reflecting the Church’s mission of compassion, solidarity, hope, and peace.” “For more than a decade, thousands of pilgrims from diverse cultures and backgrounds have walked side by side, lifting their voices in prayer and songs of praise,” the archdiocese said. “Along the way, participants celebrate the archdiocese’s rich cultural diversity and unity in Jesus Christ, while reflecting on the appearance of the young mestiza Virgin of Guadalupe to the peasant St. Juan Diego on a hilltop near Mexico City in 1531.”The Mass, which included a reenactment of the story of Mary’s apparition to St. Juan Diego, was celebrated by Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington; Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States; and Auxiliary Bishops Menjívar, Juan Esposito, and Roy Campbell.Menjívar interspersed his homily, which was mostly in Spanish, with reflections in English on the Virgin Mary and the Church’s role in accompanying poor and marginalized communities, particularly migrants.“Let me say this in English because I believe it is very important for us to understand Mary reflects what the Church is called to be,” Menjívar said. “In the apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te [“I Have Loved You”] Pope Leo affirms the Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking. Where the world sees threats, she sees children. Where walls are built, she builds bridges.”The Virgin Mary, he said, regards “every rejected migrant” as “Christ himself, who knocks at the door of the community.” Reflecting on the significance of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Menjívar noted that Mary “did not manifest herself to a powerful or well-educated person.” “She appeared to Juan Diego, a simple, poor, Indigenous man, marginalized by the systems of his time,” the bishop said. “With this, God proclaims another truth. He takes the side of the little ones, the despised, the ones who do not count.” “So the good news,” he concluded, “is this: For God, we do count, and a lot, because we are his sons and daughters.”](https://unitedyam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/our-lady-of-guadalupe-is-the-mother-of-all-dc-pilgrimage-highlights-value-of-migrants-catholic-bishop-evelio-menjivar-speaks-with-ewtn-news-in-depth-on-f.webp)
