Archive for the ‘NFP’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Eco-Breastfeeding is the Only Way to Mother

Sunday, January 15th, 2012

A woman wrote us about her search for a Catholic viewpoint on mothering. See below.

I downloaded the manual because I wanted to see what the chapter on ecological breastfeeding said. I have been doing attachment parenting and been interested in LLL [La Leche League], and I wanted to see a Catholic viewpoint on this natural mothering.  I was already doing this, but I certainly loved the chapter.

My husband is a Catholic and I discovered NFP [natural family planning]  while we were getting engaged in 2006.  It changed the way I viewed everything from my body, feminism, Catholicism, etc…  Honestly, I am not sure what I believe religiously, but all I am sure about is NFP (or ecological breastfeeding, or basically natural mothering). I am very convicted that that is the way we should mother, and I was especially drawn to the idea of a moral obligation to breastfeed.   I do not feel ready at this moment to take the steps to become an instructor.  Additionally, I want my husband to be with me on this, and while he is interested, he hasn’t read anything yet.  But I am very passionate about the ecological breastfeeding chapter in particular, and I truly believe that we will be called to be involved in teacher training in the future.

I did want to say thank you both for all the hard work and devotion you have given to defending Humanae Vitae and in coming up with the term ecological breastfeeding. I talk to mothers all the time who try to tell me I am lucky that I didn’t get my period back until 15 months or who try to tell me how unreliable breastfeeding is as a child spacer.  But I realize that it involved mothering in a totally different way than people advocate here.

In my opinion, it is so natural and wonderful.  I love mothering in this way and would not want to mother any other way. I would love to be a part of spreading good mothering and truth.  Especially since so many people are spreading the opposite of truth. Even at the last Catholic church we attended before we moved, the mothers put together a child class on Babywise, which you are probably familiar with, and I was frustrated.  Why didn’t the Catholic church there want to put together NFP classes instead?  They certainly could use a mothering support group for NFP too!

Well, we are in a new city, and not much of anything is going on with the mothers here.  I am becoming a LLL leader and will be leading those meetings soon. In addition I have started a mom’s group and I was just having the discussion last week with a mom telling her about Sheila’s book on the 7 standards since I just checked it out and was reading it from the  LLL library.  I am happy to say that I am advocating good ideas and support here to the best of my ability while still being a mom first, and I will be happy to get NFP going in the local Catholic churches here if possible.

Thanks for your time!  I hope to be contacting you in the future for my husband and my’s interest in becoming a trained leader.  Until then I say thanks for all your work and I am still working towards spreading the good ideas and supporting mothers in my own way.
________

If anyone is interested in promoting ecological breastfeeding in their community or in their Church, contact Catholic Nursing Mothers League.

If anyone is interested in teaching both systematic NFP and ecological breastfeeding in their community, contact us.  It is recommended that you have a priest who will require his engaged couples to attend your NFP classes for marriage preparation.  Otherwise, you may not have anyone to teach.

Sheila Kippley
Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood

Posted in Ecological Breastfeeding, NFP | 1 Comment »

Marital Contraception is the Elephant in the Sanctuary

Sunday, December 11th, 2011

The Catholic Church in this country and around the world has been suffering for more than 40 years from massive contraception by Catholics and also from the effort to avoid the issue.  Marital contraception is truly the elephant in the sanctuary.  Everyone knows it’s there, but it’s the unmentionable subject.  After a US Bishops committee urged, in 1989, that every engaged couple should be required to attend a full course of Natural Family Planning instruction, that good idea has been adopted by only six dioceses with a seventh trying to get there.  The pews continue to empty, schools are being closed due to lack of students, parishes are closed or consolidated, and the basic cause—marital contraception—continues to be ignored.

And then there are the millions of aborted babies.  Abortion is a fatal fruit of the modern sexual revolution that started with the acceptance of marital contraception.  How can we reasonably expect to stop abortion without a huge increase in the number of voters who refuse to accept unnatural forms of birth control?  Build a Humanae Vitae population within the Catholic Church and legalized abortion is over.

How does this affect us?

The 43-year tradition of ignoring the elephant in the sanctuary has tangible results. Only about 1.1 percent of churchgoing fertile-age Catholics are using any form of systematic NFP.  Others are breastfeeding or just letting the babies come as they may.  But the rate of non-contraception is still very low, about 10% at best.  When we started teaching NFP in 1971, there was a market of couples who had formed their consciences—at least partially—before Humanae Vitae.  Many of our early students were using unnatural forms of birth control because some priest had told them directly or implied that it was now okay to do so, but they still felt uneasy about it.  Our NFP services and our Catholic teaching freed them to accept and to live out the truths of the encyclical.

But now there is almost no market for NFP services geared to couples of normal fertility.  In the once-very-Catholic western part of Cincinnati, our pastor is the only priest who requires his engaged couples to take an NFP course, so we teach very small classes at his parish.  I’ve talked with most of the other pastors (but some won’t return my calls).  They say they accept Humanae Vitae, but they will not do anything effective such as requiring an NFP course.  In response to my recent request to the Archdiocese, I received a page and a half of difficulties and problems they saw with an NFP requirement.  Parish bulletin announcements rarely bring a response. The elephant in the sanctuary remains undisturbed.

Next week: What can I do about it?

John F. Kippley

Posted in Abortion-Contraception, NFP | 2 Comments »

NFP Speaker Available

Sunday, November 27th, 2011

Speaker available to Promote the Truth and Demands of Love plus Practical Help

My husband has written considerably about the teaching reaffirmed by Humanae Vitae, and we have done what we can to provide the practical help to live out its teachings.  Our interest is not birth control as such but the truth.  Here is how John replied to a recent correspondent:

“I have no passion for systematic NFP, but I do have a passion for the teaching of the Church and for the truth, including the truth about the various ways of doing systematic NFP.  My passion is simply for telling the truth about the demands of love and for providing as much practical help as we can to live out those truths.  And, of course, I have a passion for ecological breastfeeding because it’s God’s plan for feeding and nurturing babies.”

If you know a seminary or parish that would like to have John talk on these subjects, or if you know a parish that has a group of couples interested in learning natural family planning, please contact NFPI.

Sheila Kippley

Posted in Humanae Vitae, Morality, NFP | Comments Off on NFP Speaker Available

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »