Catholics today and NFP Use
Catholics today are, for the most part, quite thoroughly secularized. A recent study indicates that less than one percent of church-going Catholics are using any form of NFP. Actually, it’s worse than one percent. An analysis of the 2010 periodic NIH Family Growth Survey says that only two-tenths of 1% of self-identified Catholics said they use some form of NFP. Among church-going Catholics, the figure reported was four-tenths of one percent. One problem with these figures is that they do not include women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or just letting the babies come as they made. But the numbers very strongly suggest that not over five percent of Catholics in their fertile years are living according to the teaching of the Church.
Schools and parishes are closing. A priest of the Diocese of Peoria recently (Fall, 2010) closed his parish school and posted on the parish website that the primary reason for this school closing was the lack of children due to the practice of contraception. That school was in a small town in eastern Illinois. It was not affected at all by demographic factors such as the traditional parishioners leaving because of an influx of black largely fatherless families.
John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant