sts. anne and joachim

Today is the feast day of Saints Anne and Joachim.  The USCCB chose this week to celebrate NFP Awareness Week partly for that reason, and partly for this being the very week of the anniversary of the publication of Humanae Vitae on July 25th, 1968.

This an aside.  Sparky's middle name is Paul, after Pope Paul VI, who had just become the new Pope on the 21st of June, 1963.  And Sparky and I are so all het up about reproduction.  Coincidence?  I think not.  I think Pope Paul IV is praying for us.  Yes, I do.

For my dearest Protestant readers, if you are not aware of the significance of Pope Paul VI or Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul released an encyclical (formal teaching letter) in 1968 reiterating and clearly defining the Catholic Church's constant teaching on the use of birth control.  His purpose for writing an encyclical at this time in history was a response to the onslaught of chemical birth control being widely accepted and for many Catholics, even, considered a moral alternative to barrier methods of birth control. A letter of this sort regarding birth control had not been required until this point, as the question and concern had not yet arisen.
It was a given, a foregone conclusion that God intended the marriage act to be open to life.  This idea was being challenged by the easy accessibility of birth control, and by the sexual revolution of the 1960's.

Humanae Vitae is a profoundly beautiful and prophetic document. Even if you disagree with its premises, it is worth reading.

But, along side the celebration of NFP Awareness Week, I thought I could start NUF Awareness Week.  The acronym fondly known around here as Naturally Unplanned Families.  We celebrate not bothering at all to practice anything.  It's kinda fun.  We who practice such a lifestyle are trained in NFP and think it is totally excellent to know it and have it in our back pockets so that if we discern that we are faced with a grave reason to postpone a baby that we will effectively be able to do so.

For those of you who are on board, not necessary to say this, but for those of you who are skeptical, read Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing by Sheila Kippley.  Then read it again.  Then read Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood, by the same author.  BF and Catholic Motherhood covers the theology behind the nursing relationship, BF and Natural Child Spacing covers the physiology.