“Live the truth and beauty of God’s plan for married love!” is the theme of this year’s Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, a national educational campaign of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to celebrate God’s vision for marriage and promote the methods of Natural Family Planning.
Natural Family Planning (NFP) is a general title for ethical, natural, safe and effective methods for both achieving and avoiding pregnancy in marriage. NFP methods teach couples how to observe and interpret the wife’s signs of fertility and infertility. In the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, NFP methods “respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them and favor the education of an authentic freedom.” (CCC, no. 2370)
The dates of Natural Family Planning Awareness Week are: July 19–25, 2020. These dates highlight the anniversary of the papal encyclical Humanae vitae (July 25) which articulates Catholic beliefs about human sexuality, marriage, conjugal love and responsible parenthood.
The Diocese of Saginaw's Marriage and Family Ministry joins with the U.S. bishops in highlighting the benefits of NFP as ethical methods to help married couples live God’s design for their marriages.
Get Local Help
Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center in Alma, (staffed by the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma) offers Creighton Model System (CrMS) FertilityCare and NaProTechnology services. The CrMS is a safe, reliable, and inexpensive method of family planning that is natural—no harmful chemicals or devices—which enables you to determine your natural days of fertility and infertility and to monitor and maintain your procreative and gynecological health. NaProTechnology seeks to determine the underlying causes of gynecologic abnormalities for diagnosis and cooperative treatment that maintains the human ecology and sustains the procreative potential, rather than simply suppressing the symptoms.
The center in Alma has specially trained medical professionals to teach you how to monitor and chart specific symptoms called Biomarkers, and how to interpret what these symptoms mean and how they can be used to diagnose and treat. After an introductory session, you will have private follow-up sessions with a specially trained FertilityCare Practitioner, and, if appropriate, referral to a physician trained in NaProTechnology.
To learn more about the CrMS or to schedule an introductory session please, contact Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center at (989) 463-3451.
Learn about online classes through the Couple to Couple League
Visit the NFP section of the USCCB website here for more information and resources.
Marriage Webinar
Learn about a free webinar series taking place from July 23 to August 20.