CIPRIANO, Stephanie Mae P.

1HR-3

Title: Responsible Parenthood USSCB                                                      

                                                                                                                     
Name: Responsible Parenthood, Marital Love, and NFP
I. Introduction
A. Background
B. The practice of NFP can help
husband and wife open the heart
of their marriage to all the gifts that
God wishes to provide. The natural
methods of family planning respect
God's design for married love!
II. What does NFP have to do with
married love?
A. Married love is the most deeply
personal union found among men
and women.
1. Married love "involves a totality,
in which all the elements of the
person enter—the appeal of the
body and instinct, power of feeling
and affectivity, aspiration of the
spirit and of the will."
2. The marital union calls husband
and wife to become one flesh, one
heart, and one soul.
B. Married love is "caught up into
divine love" which enriches the
couple's relationship with grace.
1. Marriage is for the good of
husband and wife, the creation of
new people, and the forming of the
family.
2. Marriage bestows a unique
dignity on husband and wife that
contributes to their mutual
salvation.
C. Marriage is a vocation, a real
calling from God to form a
communion of persons, the one-
flesh union spoken of in Genesis
and reaffirmed by Jesus.
CIPRIANO, Stephanie Mae P. 1HR-3

1. the Church teaches that when

they marry, husband and wife
receive a "kind of consecration in
the duties and dignity of their
state"
2. God prepares spouses to
faithfully live their sacred union and
become parents who will love and
nurture their children.

III. What does NFP have to do with

married love?
A. The methods of NFP are a support
for married love. They are good
tools for married couples to help
them live in harmony with God's
divine plan for human sexuality,
marriage, conjugal love, and
responsible parenthood.
1. Responsible parenthood is, first,
a husband and wife's conscious
acceptance of marriage as created
by God.
2. Responsible parenthood
includes the just and prayerful
decision-making exercised by
spouses in light of this beautiful
design of God, recognizing that
God wants the best for husband
and wife.
B. Responsible Parenthood.
1. Spouses ought to be well-
formed in understanding Church
teaching and reflect upon their
responsibilities toward each other,
children already born, and the
wider society when deciding when
to attempt to conceive or not
2. Responsible parenthood
requires that husband and wife
understand God's design for
marriage—that it is love-giving
(unitive) and life-giving
(procreative).
CIPRIANO, Stephanie Mae P. 1HR-3

C. Authentic responsible parenthood,

therefore, only makes sense in light
of the nature of married love as
willed by God.
1. That love is "total," a "very
special form of personal friendship
in which husband and wife
generously share everything … not
thinking solely of their own
convenience"
2. This marital friendship means
that spouses love each other not
because they will get something
from each other, but just because
of who they are.
IV. Responsible Parenthood,
Mercy, and NFP.
A. Mercy is love as expressed in an
imperfect world. It helps men and
women see and cherish each other
—gifts and weaknesses included!
It calls forth patience and bestows
forgiveness. Mercy is a blessing.
1. NFP requires effort since
husband and wife must live their
sexuality in a way that respects the
gift of their combined fertility.
2. This can be difficult; it may
quickly reveal their weaknesses
and may even result in
discord.Through the use of
periodic sexual abstinence (the
NFP means to postpone
pregnancy), husband and wife
practice individual and couple self-
discipline for the good of each
other and for their family.
B. Through the use of periodic sexual
abstinence (the NFP means to
postpone pregnancy), husband
and wife practice individual and
couple self-discipline for the good
of each other and for their family.
CIPRIANO, Stephanie Mae P.
C.
V. It follows then that the meaning
of marital love is intimately tied to
the concept of self-gift, which also
hearkens back to men and women
being created in God's image:
"This likeness…reveals" that no
one "can fully find himself except
through a sincere gift of himself".
A.
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1. They can discover whether their
reasons are in line with what God
wants for their marriage. This will
need honesty and lots of "give and
take."
2. In the end, NFP always requires
sacrifice and forgiveness. If lived
well, this honest struggle can
deepen a couple's spousal
relationship, as the demands of
love help them to rise above their
own desires.
Marital love puts the well-being of
the beloved before personal
desires.
1. Pope Francis explains that
marital love is a powerful love that
is "infused by the Holy Spirit," and
"a reflection of the unbroken
covenant between Christ and
humanity that culminated in his
self-sacrifice on the cross".
2. God himself, through the power
of the Holy Spirit, "gives a new
heart and renders man and woman
capable of loving one another as
Christ loved us".
To be a gift to another person
requires self-sacrifice, putting the
other person's needs before one's
own.
1. It means that spouses live true
charity, grounded in generosity and
regard for the well-being of the
other person.
CIPRIANO, Stephanie Mae P.
B.
C.
VII. NFP teaches husband and wife
to prayerfully discern when to
attempt to conceive a new baby or
not. Each NFP method helps
couples understand their "fertile
window."
A.
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2. When husband and wife work
with God and his design, they will
honor the power to unite in a
holistic and procreative way and
be enabled to maintain the
"integrity of the powers of life and
love" placed in them by the Lord
God.
meaning of marital love
1. They will ensure the unity of
their persons and marriage, thus
living chastely.
2. In addition, through the use of
periodic sexual abstinence,
spouses will be able to
"experience the gift of married love
while respecting the laws of
conception," thereby
acknowledging that they are "not
the master of the sources of life
but rather the minister of the
design established by the Creator"
How does NFP use in marriage
support life?
1. The methods of NFP respect
God's design for married love.
They do nothing to oppose God's
gift of human fertility.
2. FP education teaches husband
and wife to value their fertility as
their gift from God. NFP teaches
husband and wife to prayerfully
discern when to attempt to
conceive a new baby or not.
No other method of family planning
does that; NFP methods therefore
clearly value procreation!
CIPRIANO, Stephanie Mae P. 1HR-3

VIII. NFP - Opening the Heart of

Marriage
A. The Church teaches that in
marriage, "Christian spouses have
a special sacrament by which they
are fortified and receive a kind of
consecration in the duties and
dignity of their state"
1. Through the practice of the
methods of Natural Family
Planning, married couples can
integrate God's design for life and
love in their daily lives.
2. At times it won't be easy, since
sacrifice and honest
communication will have to
happen.
B. The Church teaches that in
marriage:
1. If couples persevere, the
benefits are well worth the effort!
Husband and wife will see their
love grow and deepen.
2. Their hearts, and the heart of
their marriage, will be open to all
good gifts that the Lord God
wishes to give them!

IX. Ruled by conscience

A. the Council teaches that married
couples "shall fulfill their role with a
sense of human and Christian
responsibility, and the formation of
correct judgments through docile
respect for God."
CIPRIANO, Stephanie Mae P. 1HR-3

1. This involves "common

reflection and effort; it also
involves a consideration of their
own good and the good of their
children, already born or yet to
come, an ability to read the signs
of the times and of their own
situation on the material and
spiritual level, and finally, an
estimation of the good of the
family, of society and of the
Church."
2. At this point words of particular
importance follow, to determine
with greater precision the moral
character of responsible
parenthood. We read: "It is the
married couple themselves who
must in the last analysis arrive at
these judgments before God"
B. True conjugal love
1. Basing itself on the same
premises, Humanae Vitae goes
further and offers concrete
indications. This is seen, first of all,
in the way of defining responsible
parenthood.
2. Paul VI seeks to clarify this
concept by considering its various
aspects and excluding beforehand
its reduction to one of the "partial
aspects, as is done by those who
speak exclusively of birth control."
From the very beginning, Paul VI is
guided in his reasoning by an
integral concept of man (cf. HV 7)
and of conjugal love
X. Under different aspects
CIPRIANO, Stephanie Mae P. 1HR-3

A. One can speak of responsibility in

the exercise of the function of
parenthood under different
aspects. Thus he writes: "In
relation to the biological processes
involved, responsible parenthood
is to be understood as the
knowledge and observance of their
specific functions.
1. Human intelligence discovers in
the faculty of procreating life, the
biological laws which involve
human personality"
2. "the innate drives and emotions
of man, responsible parenthood
expresses the domination which
reason and will must exert over
them"
B. The commitment to responsible
parenthood requires that husband
and wife, "keeping a right order of
priorities, recognize their own
duties toward God, themselves,
their families and human society"
1. One cannot therefore speak of
acting arbitrarily. On the contrary
the married couple "must act in
conformity with God's creative
intention"
2. beginning with this principle the
encyclical bases its reasoning on
the "intimate structure of the
conjugal act" and on "the
inseparable connection of the two
significances of the conjugal act"