Why do we mention masturbation and marital sodomy in our course?
It’s because we listen and read. People have told us that at one time they were practicing their own form of “NFP” with masturbation during the fertile time. One woman told us that she and her husband had taken an NFP course from a different organization and heard none of this. They practiced fertile-time masturbation for eight years. Then she read that the Catholic Church teaches that this is immoral. They changed, and so have others who have learned that their behavior was wrong. We know couples who not only changed but also became NFP teachers so they could help other couples know and live the truth about married love. See Chapter 7, “Witness” in our teaching manual Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach.
We have read in the daily papers that in some parts of the United States about half of high school teenagers have experienced oral sex, that is, oral sodomy. It takes no genius to figure out that if they somehow attend an NFP course and hear “abstinence” during the fertile time, they may start thinking in terms of their previous behavior unless they learn that it’s immoral.
Chaste abstinence is the pregnancy-avoiding “method” of true systematic NFP.
John and Sheila Kippley