Archive for the ‘NFP’ Category

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Natural Family Planning: What the Church Needs Today

Sunday, June 22nd, 2014

About a year ago, John received a Vatican newsletter about current events.  Below is his response to that organization in his effort to explain what the Church really needs.

JOHN:  Thanks for sending me the Newsletter.  What I really want to see in it some day is the announcement that the Holy Father has told all the world’s bishops that they need to require all engaged couples to attend a pre-marriage course that will include adequate instruction on ecological breastfeeding, systematic natural family planning in its different forms (all the fertility signs), and adequate teaching of morality and theology including the teaching of Humanae Vitae 10 and 16 about the call to generosity and the need to have a sufficiently serious reason to seek to avoid pregnancy.

The current growing acceptance of so-called same-sex “marriage” stems directly from the societal acceptance of marital contraception.  The conservative Anglican bishops argued in 1930 that acceptance of marital contraception would logically lead to the acceptance of sodomy, and unfortunately they were right.  The de facto acceptance of marital contraception by a huge majority of Western Catholics is having the same effect.

There may be better ways to reverse this, but the best way I know to reach most couples who want to marry in the Church, even though not regularly attending Mass, is through the right kind of preparation for marriage.  And such instruction has to be much more than just non-contraceptive “Catholic birth control.”
 (John Kippley, May 27, 2013)

Sheila Kippley

Posted in Abortion-Contraception, NFP | 1 Comment »

Natural Family Planning: The New Evangelization

Sunday, June 15th, 2014

Many diocese are placing special emphasis on the New Evangelization.

I think that the program of NFP International is unique with its emphasis on the New Evangelization, ecological breastfeeding as a form of NFP, and a choice-oriented approach to systematic NFP.  

The New Evangelization.  We hear much about this but little that is concrete.  Early on it was defined as the effort to show that Jesus is the Author of the specific teachings of the Church, and that is what guided us in writing our NFP manual, Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach.  In chapter 1, we connect the dots between Jesus and Humanae Vitae via the Last Supper and Nicea.  If you do not have a copy, you can obtain a printed copy and/or download it from the NFPI website.

The covenant theology was originally intended to be an agent of evangelization among our fellow Catholics, but it has also proved to be helpful for others.   Scott Hahn credits it with helping to persuade him and his wife to accept Catholic teaching on birth control when they were still Protestants.  This is also integrated into Chapter 1.

Ecological breastfeeding.  Every year there seems to be some new research revealing another benefit of breastfeeding, and most of these benefits are dose-related and duration-related.  Every style of breastfeeding conveys some benefits, but only ecological breastfeeding according to the seven standards has sufficient baby-spacing that it deserves to be taught as a form of natural family planning.  Chapter 6 of our manual is devoted to this subject.  Extensive research is found at the NFPI website.

This should not be a matter of controversy, but some are very resistant to teaching this.  As my wife and I see it, this is part of God’s plan for mother and baby.  It is part of his order of creation.  We didn’t invent the ecology.  All we have done is to describe it.  My wife’s research built upon previous research; her unique contribution was the seven-standards hypothesis.  She demonstrated it, and others have done the same.  Eco-breastfeeding according to the seven standards IS a form of natural baby spacing.

The big question for dioceses is this:  Does the diocese help to inform young people about this ecology or does it ignore it?  We believe ecological breastfeeding is simply a God-arranged plan that maximizes all the benefits of breastfeeding AND normally delays the return of menstruation and fertility for an average of 14 to 15 months among American mothers.  (In some cultures the duration of breastfeeding infertility is much longer.)  It is the latter reason that provides a compelling reason for teaching this as part of NFP instruction–especially when the instruction is required by the archdiocese or diocese.  We believe that everyone has a God-given right to know this information so that they can make an informed choice.  That means that Catholic educators, especially those preparing couples for marriage, should be teaching this information.

John F. Kippley

Posted in Ecological Breastfeeding, Evangelization, NFP | Comments Off on Natural Family Planning: The New Evangelization

Natural Family Planning and Periodic Abstinence

Sunday, June 8th, 2014

Question:  Someone was asking if the moral acceptability of NFP was infallibly taught by the Church and I wanted to refer them to the argument you laid out regarding that very question. I believe it was in “Sex and the Marriage Covenant”, but I lent my copy out so I can’t check. Is it in that book?

John: In my book I did two things in this regard. 1) I reviewed two separate arguments for the infallibility of the doctrine of marital non-contraception and 2) showed that the teaching of that doctrine more than fulfilled the requirements laid down in Lumen Gentium 25 for a doctrine to which the faithful must give religious submission of mind and will.

You are certainly correct in remembering that I dealt extensively with the issue of the infallibility of the teaching affirmed by Humanae Vitae.  However, I don’t know exactly what is meant by the wording “the moral acceptability of NFP was infallibly taught by the Church.”  I don’t think that acceptability has ever been seriously challenged since 1930 when it first became a practical possibility.  Moreover, in 1850 and again in 1880 the Vatican Curial office dealing with matter of the Sacrament of Penance ruled that it was not immoral for a married couple to restrict their marriage acts to [what they think are] the infertile times.  The speculation about an infertile time in humans was prompted by its mid-19th century discovery in lower animals, and that speculation imagined that menstruation was the fertile time.  Why didn’t the speculators read Leviticus that has couples abstaining during menses? The important thing is that from the first time that the idea of periodic abstinence during the fertile time was raised and until now, the Church has never condemned that sort of periodic abstinence.  Recently, it has, of course, had to qualify its acceptance of systematic NFP with the proviso that couples need to have a sufficiently serious reason or “just” reason to use it to avoid pregnancy.  Sufficiently serious as contrasted with selfish or frivolous.  

I hope this is helpful.  Interested parties should read the book.  Thanks again for writing.

John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant

Posted in Humanae Vitae, NFP | Comments Off on Natural Family Planning and Periodic Abstinence

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