FROM THE PASTOR’S DESK
Dear St. Mary’s Parishioners:
Ten or so days ago, from October 13th to 15th, I participated in a “NFP Leaders’ Summit” in Baltimore, Maryland, organized by Dr. Theresa Notare, the Assistant Director for the Natural Family Planning Program at the Secretariat for Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. That’s a mouthful, I know. Basically, the Summit was an opportunity to bring together a number of different organizations throughout the country whose goal is to promote Natural Family Planning (NFP). Therefore, organizations which promote the education of the different NFP methods, such as Billings, FertilityCare and Sympto-Thermal, were represented as well as groups which exist to promote NFP in general, such as Natural Womanhood, TeenStar and the California Association of Natural Family Planning (CANFP). Sheila St. John, Executive Director of CANFP, and I, as President of CANFP, were invited to participate on account of CANFP’s long track record of bringing NFP folks together in California.
Gathering all these groups and having them explore ways to better work together to promote the good news of NFP in the U.S. was no small task. The mission of the Summit was stated as follows: “To engage NFP leadership in order to foster community, a shared purpose, and common language in NFP ministry that evangelizes and promotes God’s design for married love.” I would say, by and large, we got off to a good start in fulfilling this mission, but there is still more work to do. The statistics remind us that there is still much work to do. In 2017, of all the married couples in the U.S., with women from the ages of 15 to 44, 10.7% of the couples used the contraceptive pill, 30.5% sought permanent sterilization, 12.0% engaged in relations using a prophylactic and 1.3% of the couples used periodic abstention, that is, some form of NFP. In 2017, of all the Catholic married couples in the U.S., with women from the ages of 15 to 44, 9.5% of the couples used the pill, 28.4% underwent sterilization, 12.70% engaged in prophylactic relations and 1.3% of the couples used periodic abstention to space out the births of their children. (By the way, note that these percentages do not add up to 100%. Rather, they add up to around 50%. This points to the fact that about half of the married couples from this study did not use any kind of artificial birth control or NFP.) Sadly, as you can see, when it comes to NFP and contraception, there is barely any difference in the practice of the Catholic married couples and the non-Catholic married couples. In other words, married Catholics contracept and sterilize at the same high rate as the general married couple population. As you know, at St. Mary’s Parish, Andreya Arevalo serves as our certified FertilityCare practitioner. She teaches couples who are preparing for the Sacrament of Marriage and who are already married how to know their bodies and their fertility so that they can use that information, with God’s help and guidance, to procreate and to space out the births of their children. Andreya reported to me that over the last two fiscal years (Jul 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020 and Jul 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021), she gave 32 introductory sessions to the FertilityCare method and conducted 88 follow-up sessions with couples or clients. (At follow-up sessions, Andreya meets with a couple or with an individual engaged or married woman to review their/her fertility chart in order to answer questions and to ensure that they are using the method properly and have confidence using it.) Over the last two fiscal years, Andreya met with 30 new clients who completed at least one follow-up session. Finally, 49 new couples came to a FertilityCare introductory session over the last two years.
Still, we have more work to do in evangelizing and proclaiming the good news of Natural Family Planning! Moreover, as you have heard me say before, we all need to be engaged in this work. If we don’t get God’s plan for marriage and family right when it comes to making babies, many evils follow that are not good for our Church and for our world, such as abortion, divorce, pornography, samesex relations and gender dysphoria, to name a few. I realize that is a sweeping statement. But think about it for a moment. At the heart of NFP and fertility appreciation are chastity, self-mastery, discipline and respect. We live in a “throw-away” culture, as Pope Francis says. When it comes to marriage and the family, we cannot afford to treat God’s design for marriage, family and marital fruitfulness as something that is thrown away and cast off. God calls spouses, and all of us, to something much greater. When we live according to His design, we are not only more joyfully fulfilled in this life, but also we are preparing ourselves well for the life to come. I invite you to help me spread the good news of NFP. May you have a blessed week! In Christ, Fr. Berg
