Do Catholics have to practice natural family planning? No. The Church teaches that it is immoral for married couples to use barrier methods, abortifacients, hormonal birth control, sodomy, masturbation, IVF, sterilization or any other unnatural method of birth control. The Church teaches that couples who engage in such behavior after sufficient reflection and with full consent of their wills incur the guilt of mortal sin.
Do Catholics need to have a sufficiently serious reason to use natural family planning? It depends. Catholics do need to have a sufficiently serious reason if they choose to avoid or postpone pregnancy with the use of chaste systematic natural family planning. Systematic NFP is when the couple records their fertile and infertile times of the cycle and abstain during their fertile times to avoid pregnancy. On the other hand, married couples do not need a sufficiently serious reason to use NFP in order to achieve pregnancy. Nor do they need it to space their babies through breastfeeding. With ecological breastfeeding you are caring for your baby as God intended and you are doing what is best for your baby. It is your baby’s frequent and unrestricted suckling day and night that postpones the return of fertility after childbirth.
For Church teaching on family planning and generosity in having children, read Chapters 1 and 7 of Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach. To learn how to space babies naturally through breastfeeding, read The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding: The Frequency Factor. Both books or ebooks are available at a 40% discount through August 7 at lulu.com.
Sheila Kippley