A friend recently forwarded to us an article about which someone else had already commented “This says it all.” The article was quite critical of several aspects of the NFP movement, including the whole idea of using NFP for anything but a most serious reason. John replied as follows.
“No, this article does not say it all. It makes no distinction between the NFP providers who fit its descriptions and those who don’t. It says absolutely nothing about ecological breastfeeding as God’s own plan for spacing babies. And its arithmetic is faulty. Without eco-breastfeeding and without any systematic NFP, the fertile couple who marry in their early twenties will have 18 to 20 children not 8 to 10. I can remember too well in the early Sixties the 30 year old mother with seven children asking me, as the parish lay evangelist, what they were supposed to do for the next 15 years of her fertility. She already had bulging varicose veins. At the time I could only mumble something about calendar rhythm, and I didn’t even know much about that.
Young couples have a right to hear the full story which includes Humanae Vitae 10 and 16 and its call to generosity, the ordinary obligation to do what’s best for your children—–which certainly includes eco-breastfeeding, all the signs of fertility so that they can exercise their right to make an informed decision, and Catholic teaching on marital chastity so that “NFP” couples do not delude themselves into thinking that oral sodomy and mutual masturbation during the fertile time are okay alternatives to the marriage act.” (John Kippley)
Sheila Kippley