Natural Family Planning and Protestants
It’s always interesting to me to find articles that talk about how Protestants “discover” some truth in Catholic teaching that they’d previously rejected. With a hat tip to Deacon Greg Kandra of The Deacon’s Bench blog, here’s a very nice article about the “discovery” of NFP by Protestants. God bless ’em; I congratulate anyone who decides to give Truth a try.
Take a look. And feel free to get in touch if you want to talk about it.
Tall, Bald, and Called 
Hi Deacon Chip, we’ve spoken before in RCIA class when my husband was going through. We had our little girl during the year and you were always so sweet to us. I wanted to throw my comment in here on the subject. It has always baffled me how Protestants aren’t on the NFP bandwagon since “the body as a temple” seems to apply here. I had a long conversation on another Catholic blog (testosterhome.blogspot.com) on the subject as well. It seems that Protestants are wary to me since NFP is so “Catholic”. I was able to point out to them, however, a very secular book called Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler which describes NFP as a “fertility awareness method”. It was very helpful to us to conceive Maggie since it had been a while since we had done the class. I picked it up at the bookstore and within a month had conceived. I tried to explain this over at the other blog to the Protestant posters as well. And I also have found non Catholic friends turning to NFP or FAM. Two of my best friends just got pregnant with charting. And I hear a lot about women being afraid of the effects of the pill. I just wish there were more homilies or talks on the openess to life we are called to as Catholic couples. And yes, it’s very hard. And no, it doesn’t have to be all Providentialism! People hear “NFP” and think “10 babies in a row!” I even wish more time had been devoted to it in RCIA. You are our favorite clergy member and I’m glad to have found your blog! Thanks for all you do.
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Brenda,
The problem with NFP for most Protestants, I believe, is that it’s “Catholic”. This is one of those areas (which are many, I fear) where prejudice gets in the way of truth.
Consider the case of Scott Hahn, that famous former Evangelical preacher. The specific issue that started him on the Road to Rome and full communion with us was exactly that: the Church’s teachings on contraception and family planning. Once he started researching original sources, he was drawn inexorably to the conclusion that the Church was *right*; once he discovered Catholics to be right about something about which he had been *wrong* when making up his own theology, he couldn’t escape the Truth.
We all thought the same way, us Christians, until 1932 or so; it was then that our Anglican brothers and sisters came up with an exception that allowed contraception. The classic slippery slope ensued; now, among almost all (OK< make that all) Protestant denominations, contraception is no big thing. Except that it is.
All we can do, I guess, is live the witness of our lives the best we can,and then pray.
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