The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) helped get Natural Family Planning Awareness Week off to a start Sunday by providing information about the reasons for choosing it, instead of contraception, when it comes to deciding when to have children.

“Today begins National Natural Family Planning Awareness Week,” the USCCB posted online. “As Pope Francis writes, ‘Love is more than a mere feeling;’ its fruitfulness ‘allows us to experience the happiness of giving’ (AL, 94). And marriage is the unique human relationship which God designed for the good of husband, wife, and children. Indeed, God created marriage for the good of humanity because marriage reflects God’s love—permanent, faithful, and fruitful. In this context, the methods of NFP support God’s design for married love!’

Natural Family Planning (NFP) is a philosophy that is built on that foundation of marriage as a gift that allows spouses to share in God's procreative love, the bishops say. The practice of NFP views fertility as a priceless gift that should not be rejected, and sees contraception is a man-imposed suppression of fertility that contradicts the union of husband and wife.

NFP does not mean that a husband and wife must leave the number of children they have to chance, the USCCB says. Instead, married couples are urged to learn about the cyclical nature of human fertility so they can practice sexual intimacy during the times in a woman's cycle during which she is naturally infertile if they don’t want children, without violating the purpose of marital intercourse. Contraception is seen as a person believing that he or she should have total control over the creation of life, thereby rejecting God's design.

Pope John Paul II, in 1996, talked about how "using the natural methods requires and strengthens the harmony of the married couple, it helps and confirms the rediscovery of the marvelous gift of parenthood, it involves respect for nature and demands the responsibility of the individuals," according to the Vatican.

The USCCB said NFP doesn’t keep people from expressing their love, but rather allows it to flourish.

"God is love. Authentic love as Pope Francis wrote, 'makes us rise above ourselves' (AL, 95). That is because God wants men and women to share in His love,” the bishops said on Facebook.

“That is why God created us in His image! God created humanity as male and female,” it continued. “Human sexuality is woven into the fabric of each man and woman. Human sexuality carries within it the two-fold powers of love and life—it has a 'nuptial' meaning. Human sexuality is to be safe-guarded. It must not be abused. Human sexuality is lived in its fullest in the marriage between one man and one woman. In order to become good stewards over God’s gifts of love and life, married couples can use the methods of NFP. The methods of NFP are authentic family planning in that they can be used to attempt conception or postpone it. Nothing is done to harm or reject God’s gifts!”