Natural Family Planning education has been offered in the Diocese of Phoenix for nearly 40 years and we are thankful to those who trained teachers, medical providers, priests, marriage prep lay leaders, and couples. Because of their heroic and visionary work, we reap the benefits of an NFP culture among those who are church-going in our diocese. Bishop Olmsted sensed very soon after coming to the Diocese of Phoenix that the timing was right to move towards requiring all engaged couples to take the full NFP class series as part of a lengthier and more robust marriage preparation.

It was natural to expect some pessimism and perhaps an initial drop in marriages, yet we have only received criticism from a surprisingly small number of clergy and marriage preparation leaders. Since there was such a long promotion period, many couples hurried with their marriage preparation in order to be grandfathered into the 2009 Policy requirements. This could have contributed to the dent in total numbers of marriages in the first year of the new policy. But the dip was not a lasting downward trend. In 2009 a total of 670 couples completed a full NFP course series. In the transitional year 2010, 695 were taught. In 2011 these numbers increased to 1056 couples and in the first quarter of 2012 we have had 310 couples attend an NFP series, leading to a projection of over 1200 couples completing the NFP series this year. Our Catholic marriage statistics have not yet been collected for those years.

Anonymous Couple Survey from the God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage English program

While 80% of our preparing couples came into the class sexually active and 62% cohabitating, some 43% decide during the class to abstain until marriage.

Upon finishing the seminar, 55% firmly intend to use NFP in their marriages and an additional 33% are unsure. Only 6% of respondents answer No to using Natural Family Planning in their marriage.

Anonymous Engaged Couple Exit Survey results after taking the full online NFP series

61% say they intend to use NFP as their form of family planning, while 39% are either unsure of what they will use or do not intend to use NFP as their form of family planning.

We plan to start collecting statistics for all NFP courses in 2013 to see if there is a difference in various modes of NFP education delivery.

The Department of Marriage/Respect Life and Office of NFP wishes to acknowledge Ascension Press for the excellent English and Spanish evangelistic program that has helped us implement the goals set by our Diocese for immediate marriage preparation. God’s Plan for a Joy filled Marriage or its Spanish counterpart, El Plan de Dios Para Un Matrimonio Lleno de Alegria, is a required seminar for all preparing for marriage.