Does abstinence make the heart grow fonder? Two writers share what happened when they practiced natural family planning.

Disobeying church teaching is not something I do lightly. I respect the church's authority and admire her commitment to social justice, the seamless garment approach to life issues, and her countercultural stance. But I also know that Catholics are bound to obey a correctly formed conscience in moral matters.

Most adult Catholics know Pope Paul VI condemned artificial birth control in his 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae. Fewer Catholics are aware, however, that the 1966 Papal Commission on Birth Control had recommended lifting the ban on contraception. Although the pontiff rejected the group's recommendation, Humane vitae made licit what later came to be known as Natural Family Planning (NFP) for married couples wishing to plan births.

In keeping with his predecessor, Pope John Paul II has consistently upheld the prohibition of artificial birth control. At a 1983 seminar on responsible procreation, he advised priests: "Contraception is to be judged objectively so profoundly illicit that it can never, for any reason, be justified." I humbly disagree.

Natural Family Planning may be a suitable alternative for some couples, but it had profound negative effects on my own marriage. To paraphrase a statement by Father Andrew Greeley, sex within a committed married relationship should be play, and in my experience NFP does not allow for play. Instead it stifles what should be celebrated as freely and frequently as possible for a marriage's good health. NFP is natural only in the sense that drugs and mechanical devices are not used.

My husband and I faithfully practiced NFP for the first six years of marriage. By following this method, we succeeded in postponing pregnancy and later conceiving when we felt ready for parenthood, but in the process we nearly lost the grace that sex gives a marriage.

When we became engaged, my husband -- to-be and I embraced official church teaching on contraception. I was only 19 and still had at least three years of college ahead of me, so we decided to delay having children, although we looked forward to eventually having several. We felt good knowing I wouldn't be putting chemicals into my body, but our greatest satisfaction came in cooperating with God's plan.

Eight months before the wedding, we pored over literature describing NFP. I took my basal body temperature every morning before getting out of bed and recorded the results on graph paper. I also charted my menstrual cycles, noted ovulatory symptoms, and learned to observe the differences between fertile and other indications of infertile times.

Based on the pattern that emerged from my charts, we planned our wedding and honeymoon to coincide with what would probably be my infertile time. In accordance with Catholic moral teaching, we were saving intercourse until after marriage.

Two years of waiting had created great anticipation, and once we were married, we gloried in our reward. Our opportunities for mutual discovery seemed limitless. Soon, however, we discovered a host of new limitations.

Sometimes my irregular cycles permitted intercourse only three or four days during the month, and usually no more than a week. Such prolonged abstinence felt cruel because avoiding premarital sex had already been a trial, but we persevered. We made love as much as we could during my limited safe times, whether we felt like it or not. While still new and exciting, sex became something we had to do on schedule. Perhaps we were still immature or too vigilant in our approach, but we feared pregnancy before we had adapted to life with each other. We pretended to be comfortable with the arrangement, but a strain existed.

We rejoiced in the fourth year when I conceived, not by accident but through careful planning with NFP. Unfortunately, a few months after our daughter was born, I began to suffer from what was later diagnosed as clinical depression -- a malady that runs in my family.

With my illness and the unfamiliar stress of parental responsibilities, my husband and I needed the playfulness and corresponding grace of sex more than ever, but we were unable to express those needs often enough with NFP's enforced abstinence. We drifted apart to the point of rarely making love, and this vacuum engulfed other areas of our relationship. My depression worsened.

I remember reading a section of Greeley's Bottom Line Catechism (Thomas More, 1982), which says, "[M]arriage reflects the intensity of God's love for us.... The worst threat to a marital relation is not unbridled passion but bridled passion .... The more playful, the more uninhibited ... the more surprising . .. is a sexual relationship between a husband and a wife, the more authentically sacramental it is."

If God's passion for us was reflected in our marriage at that time, my husband and I must have been cloudy mirrors. With NFP we had bridled ourselves so severely that we couldn't open to each other. We talked separation.

I Don't remember who first mentioned using artificial contraceptives. It doesn't matter. We deliberated, prayed, and talked with our parish priest. We weren't seeking permission to do what would be convenient; rather we asked for and received spiritual guidance knowing that ultimately the decision was between God and us.

A wise and compassionate man, our pastor reminded us that we had already demonstrated our willingness to have children according to our wedding vows, and he advised us to follow our consciences after consideration and prayer. We did.

No immediate or dramatic turnaround occurred. We struggled to learn how to celebrate our love and commitment in a more relaxed manner and worked hard to improve other areas of our relationship. Gradually we renewed and strengthened our love.

Today our 17-year marriage is more alive than ever. I don't attribute the success of our relationship to our use of contraceptives, but it has been part of the equation. Other parts have been love and commitment, professional counseling, and medication to treat my depression.

Still, negative residual effects of NFP linger. Beginning our marital relationship with enforced abstinence led me to a pattern of suppressing desire and frequently rejecting my husband's intimate overtures. Eleven years after formally abandoning NFP, I still struggle to overcome these ingrained behaviors.

Even though Natural Family Planning temporarily wounded my marriage, I'm not blind to its advantages:

* The method requires both partners' cooperation.

* The process is educational. The wife becomes knowledgeable of and comfortable with her body, and the husband becomes attuned to those same nuances.

* The method enables a couple to determine the best time for conception when a child is desired.

* Periodic abstinence encourages nongenital expressions of intimacy that enrich a couple's relationship.

* Neither partner must ingest or is exposed to potentially harmful drugs, synthetic hormones, or other chemicals.

We benefited from NFP for the reasons just listed, but the method's disadvantages outweigh the advantages:

* The burden of the method lies with the wife. Daily she must take her temperature, observe subtle bodily changes, record and interpret these and other numerous details.

* Everyday occurrences can affect reliability. Sometimes ovulation doesn't occur can't be pinpointed because of illness, medications, travel, stress, or fatigue. A month or more may pass without a safe period for intercourse.

* Realities of modem life can severely limit opportunities for lovemaking even in the infertile periods. When both partners work or attend school, conflicting schedules interfere with safe times. And the arrival of children restricts the time available for making love, as any parent can testify.

* The emotional constraints imposed by NFP can aggravate a preexisting or concurrent condition, such as depression.

* Heavily restricted sexual expression prevents a couple from fully experiencing the mystery and grace of sex within marriage. It can lead to minimal or dutiful sexual expression rather than a passionate sharing of bodies and spirits.

Traditionalists may insist on Humanae vitae's pronouncement that "each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life." Yet I believe this holds true for my husband and me even though we employ so-called artificial means. No method of birth control, including NFP, is 100 percent effective, so we remain open to the possibility of another pregnancy and would welcome another child. Also we continue to avoid contraceptives during my obviously infertile times.

Most important we believe our lovemaking transmits life to our marriage. We give and receive grace from each other and God in our physical union. Free and open sexual expression allows us to rejuvenate our relationship whenever we feel the need, not on a strict schedule. Because of this freedom, we find ourselves better parents and spouses. We display visibly affectionate natures, which we hope our daughter will emulate in her future relationships. What better gift can we give her?

Sex may not be the most important component of a marriage, but I believe lovemaking between husband and wife is the closest we will ever get in this world to perceiving Cod's overwhelming passion for us.

I now live with the paradox of rejecting a church teaching yet remaining in good conscience a practicing Catholic. I can only hope the God I know and love, the God who inspired the passion of the Song of Songs, will not condemn my husband and me for loving each other with abandon.

Just before getting married, my husband and I dutifully attended a four-week course in Natural Family Planning. Edward comes from a secular family where contraception is an article of faith as fiercely held as the right to vote. His willingness to go along with my religious convictions was touching evidence of the power of love.

He had some reservations about the period of abstinence required during the fertile period (so did I), but on that score our teacher was emphatic. You'll find it does your marriage a world of good, she assured us. Just you wait and see.

All the books we consulted said exactly the same thing, with varying degrees of piety. Some, indeed, were positively rapturous about it, practically guaranteeing that sexual satisfaction would skyrocket provided we would forego intercourse during the fertile period.

We've been married for nearly 20 years now, and we have used NFP exclusively for all of them. We have three children (two homemade, one adopted) and, though I hesitate to admit it in public, a terrific sex life. Our teacher was right. It's the abstinence from intercourse that does it. But here's the secret that she (and all the books) forgot to mention: we still have sex. No, we don't cheat and use condoms (I am probably one of the few people in the Western world who has never even seen a condom). We just don't have intercourse. Get that sacred cow out of the way and the whole world opens up.

It reminds me of what happens when a typical American becomes a vegetarian. Freed from the constraint of meat and potatoes on the plate at every meal, she suddenly becomes aware of the amazing variety of food available in the world. The Greeks, the Italians, the Lebanese, the Indians, the Chinese, even the French all have marvelous and delicious vegetarian preparations as part of their everyday diet. The new vegetarian, far from being deprived by giving up meat, is on the contrary, enriched.

The absence of meat creates a desire for something to replace it, and the spices, textures, and new combinations from other cuisines, previously too foreign and mysterious to try, now seem worth looking into. Slowly at first, then with a growing sense of excitement and wonder, she adds more and more foods to her menu. Even if she decides to go back to meat occasionally, the leap into the full experience of eating has been accomplished.

The analogy of eating and sex is almost perfect. Both are physical, down-to-earth needs which can be satisfied in ways both pedestrian and sublime. NFP, as taught by the church and as practiced by the strictly faithful, is fairly pedestrian. Sex is good, intones the catechism, but only within certain limited confines. Sex is a need, it acknowledges with a sigh, and married couples are allowed to fulfill it, but still with one big proviso: they have to use sexual intercourse to accomplish it.

This is a problem. To take the whole range of sexual possibility and reduce it to one single act Is to limit things rather drastically. Why would anyone want to do it? Well, intercourse is nice. It is especially nice for men, which makes it pleasant for women as well -- but it isn't enough. Many, perhaps most, women do not achieve orgasm through intercourse alone. Most women whose only experience of sex was intercourse alone would feel, I think, cheated and used within a short time.

NFP is the perfect solution to the problem. It encourages a woman, first of all, to understand and appreciate her body. In the very early stages she studies herself like a scientist, learning to be comfortable with her body and its cycles. This kind of awareness soon makes her the expert in her own body -- and experts seldom take kindly the advice of amateurs. A woman who has thoroughly mastered the art of NFP cannot help but be more assertive about her physical and sexual desires, a fact the church fathers (who more amateur than they?) perhaps did not reckon on.

The first law in NFP is to trust your body. The three-day rule may fail, the thermometer may let you down, but your own body, your primary evidence, will not. It may tell you something you'd rather not hear -- like the fact that you are ovulating at a most inconvenient time -- but you know it's a reliable source. Obviously being proved right month after month builds a degree of confidence that no artificial method can offer. And trust in one area leads to trust in others. If intercourse isn't satisfying, then it must be intercourse that is the problem, not one's own responsiveness. Try something else. This is where the enforced abstinence comes in.

Before marriage, young couples are well -- advised to steer clear of certain situations if they want to avoid getting carried away. Sleeping in the same bed would qualify as one such situation. After marriage, however, the very scene that was going to create such unbearable tension becomes not only acceptable but almost required.

Obviously married couples sleep together. But for those practicing strict NFP, the same premarriage rule applies until they actually want a baby. No intercourse -- indeed, no sexual (genital) contact at all. To paraphrase Saint Paul, it is better to experiment than to burn.

I simply do not believe that married people wishing to avoid pregnancy are required by God to have no sexual relationship during the fertile period. Indeed it is my belief that this period is given to us to enhance our sex lives by offering the chance to get out of the old predictable patterns.

Finding out what works can be as risky as it is pleasurable. It isn't easy to trust another person so intimately, to say what one wants, to come right out and ask for it ... but the benefits, both to the one asked and the one asking, are enormous. And ironically, once one is assured that satisfaction is possible -- every time, all things being equal -- one no longer needs to be obsessive about it. And that's when sex really begins to flower.

What is sex, after all, but physical communication with no limits? We communicate physically all the time -- with our children, our friends, our colleagues, even strangers and people we actively dislike. We shake hands, hug, wave, shrug, strike, caress, massage, push, reach for, and tickle. We use our bodies to tell others what we want, feel, and need. But we almost always do it within certain constraints. There are clear rules regarding physical communication, even with people we are very close to.

Eye contact that is maintained too long is uncomfortable in most situations. A handshake that is unnecessarily prolonged becomes embarrassing for the one being imposed upon. Some people can be hugged, others cannot. The rules are fluid and constantly being revised in view of changes in intimacy, relative status, and immediate events (a crisis like a death or a serious accident can change the rules temporarily without affecting the original agreement).

It is subtle and complicated and yet well within the range of almost everyone. It is something we do without thinking about it, only noticing that the rules exist when someone (usually from another culture where the rules are different) breaks them.

There is a certain pleasure in managing it, like the satisfaction of knowing the steps to an intricate dance, but there is also, in most people, a yearning for more, a need for one relationship where the rules don't apply, where the dance is neither measured nor stately but free and unfettered. That is sex, by definition (mine, anyway).

Love and do what you will, Saint Augustine said. I love the good faith implicit in that advice, the deep belief in the desire of most people to do right.