Question 4

HOW CAN WE OVERCOME OUR RESERVATIONS TO NFP?

Dear Fr. Matthew,

Please pray for my wife and me. We both acknowledge each other’s stance on family planning, but unfortunately we are on opposite sides of the NFP fence.

Do you know of any tools for working through the differences my wife and I have? We have a strong marriage … we pray together every day … but we keep coming up at odds on the issue of contraception. We both recognize this as the major issue of our marriage at the moment. In a sense it has made us both focus more on the marriage, which is good, but neither of us likes that we disagree on this issue. We are currently expecting our fourth (planned) child, so we have a few months left before the issue of NFP has an opportunity to be put into practice again. My wife is from the medical community; as such she regards NFP as a completely shoddy form of family planning.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” This quote scares me so. My wife and I are committed to working through this issue and to never let his ‘prophecy’ come true in our lives. We have both asked for intercession from the Holy Spirit in our marriage regarding this. Is there anything else we can to? Thanks for listening. God bless. –- M.

Dear M,

There are many good books, tapes, and pamphlets on what is wrong with contraception. You can find them easily at One More Soul ( www.OMSoul.com). Here is a brief list I would recommend to you and your wife: 

Birth Control and Christian Discipleship, by John Kippley (Couple to Couple League); 
Contraception: Why Not? A tape or CD by Dr. Janet Smith; 
New Perspectives on Contraception, by Donald DeMarco PhD (DeMarco explains how contraception separates people from their spouses, from God, and even from their own best interests); 
Physicians Healed (personal stories of 15 physicians who do not prescribe contraception);
and Rethinking Reproductive Medicine.

Your wife does not seem to be well informed about the advanced stage of the art of NFP. I suggest that she contact the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction: 6901 Mercy Road, Omaha, NE 68106-2604. Tel: 402/ 390-6600.

To understand the moral evil of contraception, it requires a little reading and reflection. I am convinced that contraception and sterilization is the taproot of the culture of death. Keep reading in this area and you will discover why.

Cordially yours, Fr. Matthew Habiger OSB
To contact Fr. Matthew with a question on NFP, email him at mhabiger@kansasmonks.org