"Natural Family Planning Awareness Week"

Greetings and blessings to you all;  Coming up at the end of July is "Natural Family Planning Awareness Week" as designated by the USCCB.   


The dates of NFP Awareness Week coincide with the anniversary of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (July 25th) which, as you know, expresses our Catholic teachings and beliefs about human sexuality, conjugal love, and responsible parenthood. NFP Awareness Week also includes the feast of Saints Joachim and Anne (July 26th), the parents of our Blessed Mother (and grandparents of Jesus!).  

We would like to encourage you to promote NFP Awareness Week in your parish and have attached three links to help you.  The 1st link is to the USCCB "National NFP Awareness Week" webpage with many resources to help you   including Prayers of the Faithful, Prayers, bulletin inserts, a media kit, and other resources, many in Spanish.

The 2nd link is to a page of "Homily Notes" for Sunday July 23, 2023 and then each weekday following during NFP Awareness Week.  The homily notes connect NFP to the Mass readings for each day.  We encourage you to forward this link on to your clergy staff who will be doing homilies during NFP Awareness Week.  These Homily Notes are available in English and Spanish.

The 3rd link is to the Natural Family Planning page on our Marriage & Family Life Office diocesan webpage.  It is full of information and links to many NFP resources.

As you may know, one of the components of the Marriage Preparation Policy for the Diocese of Santa Rosa includes an introduction to Natural Family Planning for engaged couples.  We here in the Marriage & Family Life Office provide that introduction for each engaged couple and we always ask at the beginning of our session together "Have you ever heard of NFP before watching the videos we sent you?"  95% of the time the people respond "No."  

It is obvious to us that this beautiful and important teaching of the Church just doesn't seem to get to the ears of the faithful, especially to those who most need to hear it.  To that end this is a perfect opportunity and we want to encourage you to promote NFP Awareness Week in your parish during July 23-29.  

Thank you in advance for your support on the work we are trying to do in the Marriage & Family Life Office.

USCCB NFP Awareness Week webpage


Link to NFP Homily Notes


M&FL Office NFP webpage

Deacon Dave, and Carlin Gould Directors of the Office Of Marriage and Family Life