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By Lauretta Brown, OSV News
OSV News – When the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops first considered holding an annual educational campaign on natural family planning, there was some debate over the best timing for it. Ultimately, the bishops settled on July 25, the anniversary of the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which St. Paul VI articulated Catholic teaching on artificial contraception, human sexuality, marital love and parenthood.
Now, 24 years after the USCCB’s first Natural Family Planning Awareness Week in 2002, Theresa Notare, assistant director for the NFP program in the USCCB’s Secretariat of Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, said that while the weeklong effort has developed over the years, it remains important. The 2026 National NFP Awareness Week is July 19-25.
Notare said NFP methods offer “an ethical means to live out the Gospel.”
“Sadly, the world does not know how valuable these methods are” and how they “can really strengthen a marriage,” she said.
Natural family planning encompasses several methods that use biomarkers in the woman’s fertility cycle to help couples achieve or postpone pregnancy.
“All of this is deeply rooted into how God made men and women in his image and likeness,” Notare said. “We have a capacity to love just like God. We are not ourselves unless we give of ourselves to each other. The Church’s social doctrine and moral teachings about the proper use of human sexuality is so foundational to who we are.”
She noted that modern pressures often impact couples’ decisions about how large a family to have, or whether to have children at all.
NFP methods are important because “they don’t harm human sexuality as God designed it,” Notare said. “They don’t harm fertility.”
She added that there is “emotional growth and maturity, as well as spiritual growth and maturity, when couples actually work together to live with the gifts that God gave them, to live with their fertility as a gift, rather than suppressing it or keeping the Lord out of their sexual relationship.”
She said that dioceses celebrate National NFP Awareness Week in a variety of ways, ranging from “offering one-day conferences to family picnics to a Mass of celebration with families attending.”
Notare said one major change she has noted after the COVID-19 pandemic is that many dioceses have moved celebrations online, opting for webinars and virtual prayer services.
She said that some couples use NFP as an approach to addressing infertility, and some parishes offer prayer services during National NFP Awareness Week for couples hoping to conceive a child.
The USCCB offers suggestions for parishes, dioceses and individuals to observe the week including educational billboard campaigns, homily notes for pastors to approach the topic sensitively and NFP parish mission ideas.
As the week gets underway July 19, the USCCB website will provide a daily reflection from an NFP leader or supporter.
Notare believes the USCCB’s National NFP Awareness Week poster beautifully captures the theology behind the week. It shows a bride and groom with the message that natural family planning is “designed by God, guided by love, open to life.”
“Natural family planning is designed by God because it’s rooted in the body,” she explained,
“and marriage, of course, is rooted in the image and likeness of God, of how we’re made to be gifts to each other and the body has a spousal meaning. So it’s designed by God, guided by love – of course, the love of the spouses for each other, and of course, the love of God for us, who first loved us – and then open to life.”
Some parishes plan to offer educational talks during NFP week, in part to dispel misconceptions around the topic and the methods. Notare said that the most common misconception is that NFP is “guesswork” and “doesn’t work.”
“Natural family planning methods … are based on teaching a woman to identify her biomarkers of fertility,” she said.
She noted the three main NFP approaches: cervical mucus (or ovulation) methods, which tracks when cervical mucus is most conducive to conception; sympto-thermal methods, which look to basal body temperature as well as cervical mucus and other biomarkers; and sympto-hormonal methods, which adds another biomarker: the detection of reproductive hormones in the urine.
She said people do not realize that NFP is reliable, “very doable” and even easier today with apps such as FEMM that make it simpler for a woman to track her fertility cycle.
Notare called National NFP Awareness Week the “tip of the iceberg” of deep reflection and teaching from the Church on how “the goods of marriage are the conjugal union and having children.” Her prayer is that people will learn more about these teachings and embrace them.
Lauretta Brown is culture editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @LaurettaBrown6.
Information about the USCCB’s National NFP Awareness Week is at www.usccb.org/topics/natural-family-planning/national-nfp-awareness-week
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