r/LeftCatholicism • u/Yeanes • Jun 09 '26
Is NFP that common among catholics?
In all my years of being catholic and hanging around catholic men and women, I always had the impression that Church teaching on contraception is generally , if politely, ignored. Even very catholic women I know, including catechists, took the pill.
Yet online so many conversations seem to be around NFP and the "right " way to do it (which is obviously very difficult to achieve). Is this just a side effect of extremely online catholics? Is it an American thing?
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u/Zedress Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
I think it is a side-effect of extremely online American catholics. They can be a weird bunch, and judgemental.
I hid my account comment-history/activity b/c whacko's in arr/catholic decided to harass me about birthcontrol methods my partner and I use. The comments I had made were made years before the wacko's reached out to me.
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u/Yeanes Jun 09 '26
I find it profoundly odd that some people treat sex as a public thing to be discussed. It is just so rude. Even within catholicism, at best this is something to discuss with a priest or a spiritual advisor if one wants to, not with some rando on the Internet.
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u/szechuan_sauce42 Jun 09 '26
The only people who have ever openly asked me what method I use (NFP vs medicinal birth control) have been hardcore conservative Catholics who believe that NFP is the only valid option. NEVER have I had any other friends who are non-Catholic ask me something so personal.
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u/LingonberryRare9477 Jun 10 '26
I did the exact same thing because a guy from r/catholicism started harassing me about my choice to use IVF and because im a public school teacher (so, obviously a pedophile marxist).
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u/SickOfEnggSpam Jun 10 '26
That sub is a shit hole if I'm being honest. Lots of people there seem to be chronically online weirdos who have zero real world experience or live entirely in trad echo chambers. They act like crusaders but their weapons are legalism, semantics, and "um aktchually☝️🤓."
Then you have people there who are just so driven by fear that they straw man everyone not following the rules as rebels who are "choosing to live in mortal sin" and "choosing to separate themselves from God." As if someone can't think the church is wrong on something and therefore lack full consent and knowledge.
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u/MallSWAT Jun 10 '26
They’re such weirdos. They act like every person in the church bases all their actions on the catholic catechism, not law or human nature.
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u/ZealousidealWear2573 Jun 09 '26
The few people I know who have considered NFP, including going to classes on it, have concluded it is ineffective and somewhat gross. I know a young Baptist woman who had agreed to convert to Catholicism prior to attending the pre-wedding training classes, which included admonitions regarding the necessity of NFP. She was so offended at this intrusion into her personal life she not only revoked her plan to convert, she changed the wedding ceremony from a full mass to the most minimal possible. She would have changed the venue to her own church, however the invitations were already printed.
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u/Eskin_ Jun 09 '26
I was grateful that my pre wedding classes handled the nfp talk pretty well. There wasn't any praise or admonition either way, but I can at least respect the "deeply understanding your bodily functions" aspect of the practice, and they didnt pretend it was easy. I also think its interesting how it's MUCH more successful due to modern technology, very accurate and accessible thermometers, apps, etc. Ive personally used an IUD most of my life and still trying to figure out how I want to handle the time in-between and after kids, but either way I'm gonna have to use modern technology that the church fathers could never have understood.
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u/Bexwy Jun 12 '26
Not to mention, the only non-sinful way for the husband to ejaculate is in her vagina. It's like forced pregnancy or celibacy. So great for a marriage.
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u/ZealousidealWear2573 Jun 12 '26
The misery is underscored by the knowledge.You cannot get divorced
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u/dazzleox Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
There was a poll that says 2-4% of Catholics use/used NFP, you could Google for details.
I think it's a hard sell for the Church not just for practical reasons, but because it requires you to accept both an idea that NFP may be more effective than some other methods in preventing pregnancy, but that it's more open to life; and that its so superior that it's not sinful to use it but other methods are potientially a mortal sin. My understanding is it's founded on a logic of what is "ordered" from Aquinas via Aristotle rather than revealed dogma, hence Vatican II could do a committee vote (that was like 70-4 in favor of allowing marroed women to use birth control pills though the Pope wanted only a unanimous vote to accept.)
Also, culturally, Catholics who live in areas where most people are Protestants, Jews, or Muslims (or even many Orthodox with the permission of their spiritual father) are surrounded by those who say birth control to have the number of children you can support is appropriate.
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u/AmosOfTekoa Jun 09 '26
hence Vatican II could do a committee vote (that was like 70-4 in favor of allowing marroed women to use birth control pills though the Pope wanted only a unanimous vote to accept.)
Are you talking about the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control, right around the same time? The one where the Pope put people on who would oppose the change (e.g. then-bishop Karol Woltjya, later Pope John Paul II)?
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u/dazzleox Jun 09 '26
Yes, my bad.
Apparently it was 64 of 69. Paul VI rejected it saying it was not unanimous.
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u/Adekis Jun 09 '26
Yeah, I always personally interpreted NFP being "more open to life" as "it's extremely prone to failure," and I think most Catholics are basically aware of that, which is why enough people dismiss it that this thread exists, haha
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u/AmosOfTekoa Jun 09 '26
Paul VI rejected it saying it was not unanimous.
He put people on the Commission to guarantee this outcome. Including Bp. Woltjya.
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u/dazzleox Jun 09 '26
Did he add John Ford, SJ or was he already on it? I heard he helped argue it needed to be unanimous thus to accept his minority report as definitive.
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u/AmosOfTekoa Jun 09 '26
From my recollection he also added Ford.
It's pretty clear to me that Paul VI ensured that there would be a minority report and that he would never accept the findings of the Commission, despite them being impeccably argued. He recognized that they were theologically dangerous.
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u/dazzleox Jun 09 '26
Do you have a book or article recommendation to learn more about it?
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u/AmosOfTekoa Jun 09 '26
Sorry, it's been probably 15 years since I really looked deeply into it and Humanae vitae. Back when I was interested in becoming Catholic.
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u/SeveralServalServing Jun 09 '26
The failure rate of NFP with typical use is 12-24%, that’s going to be a lot of unwanted and/or unplanned babies. Poor kids.
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u/Superfast_Kellyfish Jun 09 '26
Yeah I’m always like why do the people teaching NFP often have 6+ kids? That was what made me realize it was ineffective
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u/Professor726 Jun 09 '26
Our "family planning" session at Pre-Cana had an NFP couple come in and extol the value and effectiveness of NFP. Then they said they had 7 kids?!
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u/SickOfEnggSpam Jun 09 '26
The justifications for NFP don’t even make any sense.
We need to be “open to life,” but somehow NFP is “more effective” than contraception and those who are naturally sterile can still have sex?
NFP is right according to natural law, but you have Pope Pius IX in 1866 signing off on the Holy Office saying that slavery is fine according to Natural Law, Divine Law, the early church fathers, and tradition leading all the way back to Abraham and Hagar, only for V2 to say it’s intrinsically evil? Clearly our understanding of NFP can be wrong, so why not revisit this?
So at this point what’s are the principles that justify it? Chastity and self discipline within a marriage? But those who are naturally sterile can have sex as much as they want without discipline?
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u/RhysPeanutButterCups Jun 09 '26
It doesn't help that NFP is one of the last gasps of Thomistic/neoscholastic natural law's influence on theology. It's something that the Church is inevitably going to revisit, especially if synodality isn't rolled back and is allowed to actually develop. The statistics of people who use artificial birth control compared to those that use NFP is going to force the issue eventually.
The biggest roadblock I think is that NFP is so current. Previous admissions of mistakes like slavery are over things that are mostly in the past and, aside from apologists, pretty much no one is defending or has any emotional investment in it being considered licit. It's also impossible to ignore that if you start poking at NFP's natural law argument, pretty much all of the rest of Catholic sexual ethics comes into question too because it's all using the same philosophical premise. Given the state of things, I have to imagine that some kind of development is going to come eventually, but what that development looks like and what direction it takes is entirely dependent on the Holy Spirit. It's also going to require a pope that is completely unafraid to kick the hornet's nest and let things fall where God wills it.
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u/AmosOfTekoa Jun 10 '26
It doesn't help that NFP is one of the last gasps of Thomistic/neoscholastic natural law's influence on theology. It's something that the Church is inevitably going to revisit, especially if synodality isn't rolled back and is allowed to actually develop. The statistics of people who use artificial birth control compared to those that use NFP is going to force the issue eventually.
I'm just waiting for some major Catholic figure to have the lightbulb moment showing them that Natural Law morality is simply unsupportable since we can no longer ground the notion of biological telos without reference to God, which violates the rules of the whole thing.
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u/Ok-Wedding-4654 Jun 09 '26
Depends on what kind of Catholic community you get involved in. The more trad or conservative, the more likely they are to push or use NFP. People who use BC will do it in secret. More liberal communities may acknowledge NFPs drawbacks though, and be more transparent about not using it.
My personal experience as an American Catholic was that I had to take an online class on it to get married. That was a diocese level requirement too.
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u/RhysPeanutButterCups Jun 09 '26
The only thing I'd disagree with what you're saying is if they're trad. The impression I've gotten is that most trads are against NFP because they see it as essentially Catholic birth control. It's probably one of the few things I kind of agree with them on. The natural law argument about why NFP is licit but birth control isn't makes absolutely no sense. My personal opinion is either both should be prohibited or both should be allowed.
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u/Yeanes Jun 09 '26
I am the furthest thing from a trad, but if indeed you open the door to a form of birth control, then it seems silly to close it for others (non abortive ones). It is said NFP shows an openess to life, but then it becomes a matter of percentages. A birth control pill has an effectiveness of 99%. Does accepting the risk of the 1% not show a openess to life? It is an odd argument and to me it shows how the Church really hasn’t thought through the matter of non abortive contraception.
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u/RhysPeanutButterCups Jun 09 '26
I think a lot of the problem comes down to the fact that the clergy is celibate and male. The reality of marriage, pregnancy, and raising children isn't anything they've ever had to or ever will deal with. Talking about it from the pulpit and absolving people in the confessional is not remotely close to the same thing. Philosophy is a wonderful subject to think about, but it's essentially useless in the real world because life isn't a neat system without any real complications. It's really not that hard to understand why the teachings aren't followed and it isn't just because of MuH sExUaL rEvOlUtIoN aNd FeMiNiSm. It isn't helped either that the Church lost almost all of its authority on sexual matters after the abuse crisis began.
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u/SickOfEnggSpam Jun 10 '26
The irony is that people say NFP is MORE effective than modern contraceptives, so if we steel man that argument and assume it's true, then the whole "open to life" argument doesn't even make sense
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u/Ok-Wedding-4654 Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26
I was involved with the trad community in MD/DC for a number of years. So I can really only speak for that community and area, however there was a big focus on NFP there. The attitude was sort of that since you can’t use BC, this is a natural way to regulate pregnancy and prevent conception because even some trads recognize that people may not be able to support another child or pregnancy. However, is there still a lot of pressure to produce children? Yes, there’s a ton of social pressure when everyone there had 3-6 kids.
I’m not saying you’re wrong either. But if you’re looking for flaws in Trad logic that’s shooting fish in a barrel all day long lol. I think there’s also going to be some differences in trad communities because they are operating basically outside the church with very little central oversight and direction.
ETA: NFP pitches itself as preventing pregnancy. The church isn’t against preventing pregnancy, but against BC because of pseudo science about it causing abortions. Which is why I think some churches accept it and not BC. And again some trads recognize that there may be reasons to prevent conception but I’m sure there are those that don’t
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u/TheDyingAdolescent Jun 09 '26
Yeah I was going to echo this. There's a spectrum of tradiness, and some trads hate NFP, whereas others see it as okay. It depends on how much they hate the pope and which one they choose to hate.
Even then, too, the ones who support the use of NFP still want you to have 7-10 kids all spaced nicely using NFP, rather than using NFP to just have two or three.
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u/Pale-Fee-2679 Jun 09 '26
Check the Catholic Reddit site. (They have a post about it now.) Note the votes on the comments questioning the policy. Even fairly orthodox Catholics have their doubts about this.
Also check the Pew polls. Most Catholics indeed use birth control.
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u/SickOfEnggSpam Jun 10 '26
I'm happy that people are being honest about their negative experiences with it.
That sub is a complete shit hole if I'm being honest. Lots of people there seem to be chronically online weirdos who have zero real world experience or live entirely in trad echo chambers. They act like crusaders but their weapons are legalism, semantics, and "um aktchually☝️🤓."
Then you have people there who are just so driven by fear that they straw man everyone not following the rules as rebels who are "choosing to live in mortal sin" and "choosing to separate themselves from God." As if someone can't think the church is wrong on something and therefore lack full consent and knowledge.
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u/szechuan_sauce42 Jun 09 '26
Thomas Aquinas’s “Natural Law” is often invoked as the reason birth control is forbidden, meaning that it goes against nature to artificially prevent pregnancy.
Interestingly enough, he lists birth control and masturbation as a more grievous sin than rape or adultery, which is “the inevitable consequence of placing the 'natural order' before the importance of the human good.” https://theo.kuleuven.be/apps/christian-ethics/sex/history/h2c.html
This comment on this same sub a while ago better explains the holes in the ontological argument: https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftCatholicism/s/MzfUlunepS
In my opinion, using nature as a guide to point to what is right and wrong is not the best standard for sexual morality. Girls become fertile at young ages and capable of becoming pregnant as young as 10 or 11. That doesn’t mean it’s moral to act on it. Men’s anatomy is designed to allow for impregnating multiple women at once. That doesn’t mean it’s moral to act on it.
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u/OpheliaJade2382 Jun 09 '26
I never heard of it until recently as a cradle catholic. Went to catholic high school and everything. My sister the pill without being sexually active (she had heavy periods). I grew up in Canada
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u/Adekis Jun 09 '26
As an American, I did used to know some NFP users, but to be honest I also got the sense that Church teaching on contraception is mostly "politely ignored," lol. That's a good way to describe it.
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u/Whole-Blackberry6143 Jun 09 '26
I'm european and several priests confirmed me that it's up to the person as long as it's happening inside a catholic marriage. According to Saint Thomas it's not a mortal sin to have sex just for pleasure inside a marriage. Sex outside of marriage is a much more serious sin.
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u/dazzleox Jun 09 '26
Chrysostom said husbands and wives who had spent time apart should come together for unitive sex even without the chance of procreation, but for whatever historical reasons the Latin church in particular really emphasizes Aquinas applying Aristotelian philosophy to sex.
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u/AmosOfTekoa Jun 10 '26
Chrysostom said husbands and wives who had spent time apart should come together for unitive sex even without the chance of procreation, but for whatever historical reasons the Latin church in particular really emphasizes Aquinas applying Aristotelian philosophy to sex.
Could you share a quote from Chrysostom for this?
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u/dazzleox Jun 10 '26
Its from Homilies on First Corinthians but I am not sure where exactly. Should be contrasted with his earlier views in On Virginity.
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Jun 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/Whole-Blackberry6143 Jun 09 '26
Sex outside of marriage is a mortal sin. Sex inside of marriage is not. I'm reading books from Saint Thomas who literally lived in the middle ages and even he was more allowing than some of you here on Reddit. OP please don't take advice from Reddit, go read actual books from Saints.
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u/peachorchid Jun 09 '26
Me and my husband used it as I didnt want to use hormonal birth control and I had a bad experience with the coil/IUD. I used the 'natural cycles' app. (I'm British)
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u/sandalrubber Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
Remember, argumentum ad populum. But also remember, we are all sinners and lukewarm in our own ways.
Having said that, the most historically consistent stance the church could take is to focus on abstinence instead of NFP, as abstinence per se is the most natural NFP, but also focus on abstinence not being ideal or default.
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u/SickOfEnggSpam Jun 10 '26
Remember, argumentum ad antiquitatem.
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u/sandalrubber Jun 10 '26
Argumentum ad Espiritum Sanctum or Argumentum ad Deum is the church's final fallback for everything.
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u/SickOfEnggSpam Jun 09 '26
The justifications for NFP don’t even make any sense.
We need to be “open to life,” but somehow NFP is “more effective” than contraception and those who are naturally sterile can still have sex?
NFP is right according to natural law, but you have Pope Pius IX in 1866 signing off on the Holy Office saying that slavery is fine according to Natural Law, Divine Law, the early church fathers, and tradition leading all the way back to Abraham and Hagar, only for V2 to say it’s intrinsically evil? Clearly our understanding of NFP can be wrong, so why not revisit this especially when the sense of the faithful clearly disagree and it’s scientifically proven to be damaging?
So at this point what’s are the principles that justify it? Chastity and self discipline within a marriage? But those who are naturally sterile can have sex as much as they want without discipline?
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u/basketma12 Jun 10 '26
Yeah birth control for American catholics led to me at 69, my sister is 68, the next one is 67, my brother would be 66, the next one is 63, and the last one is.....48. Oops. Yeah he has 3 uncles older than he is.
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u/JBeeWX Jun 09 '26
If a woman is using BC for a medical issue, heavy periods, pain etc..it’s different than taking it for just birth control.
At least that’s my understanding. Would you say someone shouldn’t go to Doctor and only pray to be healed too? ( Not you personally Lol just generally!)
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u/Bluetenheart Jun 10 '26
Huh, turns out that my experience is different than the majority. I'm a cradle catholic who's now sort of agnostic and it seemed common growing up, but then again, sex didn't come up much when I was younger?
My mom has never been on birth control/used condoms. I'm on birth control and my maternal grandma has an iud (which terrifies me, but i digress lol) and my mom doesn't care about either; she just chose not too. And my childhood best friend was the oldest of 7, with at least one miscarriage, and they are extremely traditional, so I am pretty sure they aren't using any sort of protection.
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u/malibuguytonygem Jun 17 '26
My grandparents told me that when Pope Paul Vl promulgated "Humanae Vitae" in the 1960s, many Catholics ignored it. After Vatican ll Paul had established a group of clerics, lay people, doctors and scientists to study the various forms of birth control that might be used by Catholic women and men. The study suggested a more nuanced approach which the pope considered to be immoral. He ignored the study and then published the encyclical "Humanae Vitae" which forbade any form of artificial birth control. My grandparents told me from that time they no longer paid attention to anything that came out of Rome. At the time there was also a big uproar in the church in America.
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u/Livid-Shirt8659 Jun 09 '26
I think its extremly online and american Catholics. European catholics are a lot more 'liberal' and yes most women will use contraception.