Comments for NFP: A Challenge to Married Couples at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 6 out of 6 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Mon, 20 May 2013 01:40:01 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/nfp-a-challenge-to-married-couples.html#comment-7738 My husband and I have been married for 35 years and used NFP for 30 of those years. I love and respect my husband so much for the unselfish attitude he displayed. It's not to say that we didn't go through some challenging cycles but each of our 4 children was planned and joyfully received into our family. It's interesting that now that I'm post-menopausal and don't have to consider becoming pregnant, we seem to have less intimacy than when we were practicing NFP. - Isabel Castro Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:11:09 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/nfp-a-challenge-to-married-couples.html#comment-7728 I understand that sex has been analogized with eating by other writers to stress the pleasures derived as an incentive to engage in it due to its God-given goodness and necessity, but I think this writer stretched the analogy too far. The analogy of dieting to NFP really falls apart when you compare skipping lunch when hungry to abstaining at the women's peak of arousal. Hunger happens everyday. A women's peak arousal happens for three days per/month at most (if she is on a 28 day cycle), more like one day, when ovulation actually occurs. Couples do not abstain because they are "sexually overweight" and to argue against Maria's post, NFP can be the default position, because NFP is not all about abstaining. Couples (including myself) have used it to get pregnant; to "feast" or enjoy what is good and invite God into the creation of a life. As the author wrote, NFP allows a couple, with God's help, to prudentially and prayerfully bear children. Addison, the women's fertility cycle only requires at most around a 2 week period of abstaining. The scripture verse you paraphrased actually refers to when to come together after abstaining from sex. Paul acknowledges that couples abstain "for a season" or certain period of time, but then suggests that it not be too long lest they begin to lust. (1 Corinthians 7:5) Some married couples in the early Church, after converting, even chose to be celibate within their marriage! - Phil Sun, 14 Aug 2011 16:23:37 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/nfp-a-challenge-to-married-couples.html#comment-7719 Agreed. With you, too, Bender, except that you don't offer an alternative to "making love" and the secular alternative is ... not fitting, shall we say? - JPac Sun, 14 Aug 2011 05:55:20 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/nfp-a-challenge-to-married-couples.html#comment-7718 NFP? Whatever. Paul, speaking in the Spirit, said that husbands and wives should come together that way they weren't tempted by the devil. - addison Sat, 13 Aug 2011 12:19:54 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/nfp-a-challenge-to-married-couples.html#comment-7716 Well written summary of what NFP is and is not. One note, NFP use is not meant to be the default postion of married life, just as dieting (for weight loss) is not meant to be the default position of human nutrition. - Maria Sat, 13 Aug 2011 07:36:39 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/nfp-a-challenge-to-married-couples.html#comment-7714 Please let's get rid of that phrase "making love." It is misleading at best. Recreational sex is not "making love," it is gratification. True love-making necessarily involves, wait for it, love. "Love" is an act of self-giving, not of reciprocal taking. "Love" is also an act of truth, including the truth that one has sex with reproductive organs, it is always and everywhere primarily a procreative act, even if procreation does not occur in each case. A mentality of sex first, of the primacy of sexual gratification, a mentality of "having sex is my right as a spouse" -- which is the mentality of most of the people of the modern world -- is not a mentality of love or truth. It is a mentality of the corruption of love and the corruption of truth. Sex can -- and properly should be -- an act of "making love." It should be, not merely a single act, but an entire manner of living, of complete self-gift. But in most cases, including that described above, it is not love-making. Rather, it is self-centered personal gratification. So, enough with the phrase "making love." I know that some are so squeamish on this subject that they prefer to use euphemisms like "marital embrace" or "love-making," but clear understanding and truth are sacrificed at the expense of such linguistic diplomacy. - Bender Sat, 13 Aug 2011 07:32:44 +0100