Natural Family Planning Ministry

Our Mission is to promote Natural Family Planning (NFP) within the St. Wenceslaus parish, as well as to foster and grow and encouraging community for those who are currently practicing NFP.

Jump to NFP Methods at St. Wenceslaus

What is NFP?

Natural Family Planning, or NFP (Fertility Awareness) is a scientific faith- based approach to understanding a woman's natural fertility signs to achieve or avoid pregnancy in alignment with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

By observing natural signs such as cervical mucus, temperature, and hormone levels couples can identify fertile and infertile phases of the cycle and make informed decisions that respect God's design for marriage and family.

  • NFP is faithful to the Church’s teachings: NFP cooperates with God's natural design for life and love.

    NFP strengthens marriages: Couples who use NFP often report greater communication and trust, deeper respect for each other, and stronger spiritual and emotional intimacy.

    Supports a woman’s health and wholeness: NFP encourages awareness of a woman’s health without any artificial hormones or devices, and can help identify medical issues that might otherwise be missed or overlooked.

    NFP is effective for both achieving or avoiding pregnancy: When practiced correctly, NFP methods are 98-99% effective in avoiding pregnancy and can also be used to identify the most optimal times to achieve pregnancy.

    • Safe and natural

    • Part of a holistic-health approach

    • Increased fertility appreciation

    • Increased communication as a couple

    • Mutual decision-making

    • Strengthen your marriage

    • Spacing pregnancies

    • Those struggling with infertility

    • Breastfeeding

    • Peri-menopause

    • Regular or irregular cycles

    • Health problems such as hormone imbalance or PMS

  • NFP is based on guesswork. It’s what people used before modern science and doesn’t really work. Wrong! NFP is a general title for methods of family planning that are grounded in science, accurate, reliable, natural, healthy, and ethical.

    The Catholic Church wants people to have as many babies as possible. Wrong! Couples who use NFP often report greater communication and trust, deeper respect for each other, and stronger spiritual and emotional intimacy.

    NFP is too complicated to be used by most people. Wrong! NFP encourages awareness of a woman’s health without any artificial hormones or devices, and can help identify medical issues that might otherwise be missed or overlooked.

  • If you have more questions or would like more information, contact us at stwenc.nfp@gmail.com.

Register for an NFP Class
at St. Wenceslaus

NFP Methods offered at St. Wenceslaus:

Marquette Method: uses a fertility monitor and hormone testing.

SymptoPro Method: combines temperature and other signs of fertility (symptothermal).

  • The Marquette Method (MM) of NFP brings the latest technology to NFP by using at-home fertility monitoring. Tools such as ClearBlue Fertility monitor and/or other devices are advised depending on your cycles. The information from the monitor can be used along with observations of cervical mucus, basal body temperature, or other indicators of fertility. Couples are guided to use what works best for them by our Marquette Method instructor.

  • The SymptoPro method is an effective, scientifically based approach that recognizes fertility as a normal, healthy process. SymptoPro is a sympto-thermal Method of fertility awareness that relies on observing changes in a woman’s cervical mucus, waking or resting temperature, and cervix. These signs naturally vary in response to hormonal changes throughout the menstrual cycle. Tracking fertility with SymptoPro takes only seconds each day. Importantly, regular cycles are not required, and SymptoPro is not the Calendar Rhythm method

NFP Methods Comparison

The NFP methods comparison table below outlines some of the major similarities and differences between different modern NFP methods, according to the fertile signs that each NFP method tracks.