Natural Family Planning International

This organization shares the founders’ 40+ years of experience with using and teaching natural family planning and explaining morality in a way that ordinary people can understand. The content of our triple-strand approach to natural family planning is unique within the NFP movement.
       •Ecological breastfeeding provides a wonderful combination of health benefits for mother and baby, the emotional benefits of attachment parenting, and the natural spacing of babies. It is truly part of God’s plan for families. Only ecological breastfeeding with its frequent suckling provides a significant spacing of babies. Most couples can use ecological breastfeeding to space the births of their children and then use systematic NFP when they have a sufficiently serious reason for additional spacing or avoiding pregnancy.
       •The covenant theology of human sexuality provides an easy-to-grasp way to understand and internalize God’s plan for love, marriage and sexuality. The knowledge that the sex act ought to symbolize the commitment of marriage provides meaning and motivation to postpone the “marriage act” until marriage. The knowledge that within marriage it ought to be a renewal of the marriage covenant provides deep meaning to this expression of married love. It also provides a challenge to spouses to maintain an attitude of caring love and gratitude throughout every aspect of their life together.
       •The Kippley-Prem Method of systematic NFP provides couples with maximum freedom of choice and minimum abstinence.

Next Week: Your Place in This Vision

John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality (Ignatius)  Now on sale until April 4, 2010 at $3.95.  Contact www.ignatius.com.

A pipedream is a pleasant but impossible dream. A vision is an idea about what’s possible. It guides your plans and actions. Our vision is about what is eminently possible with a change of heart. It should be obvious, however, that our vision is not going to “just happen,” and here’s why.
       •There will be no freedom from the culture of death and fear without building a culture of life.
       •There will be no culture of life without a stop to legalized abortion. As Mother Teresa said at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1994, “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?” If a culture cannot tell people not to kill others who stand in their way, how can it expect people not to engage in the lesser crimes of assault, muggings, rape, robbery, dishonesty, fraud, and mutually voluntary sins such as adultery, fornication, sodomy, and dealing in drugs?
       •There will be no stopping abortion without a widespread acceptance of chastity.
       •There will be no widespread acceptance of chastity outside of marriage without a widespread acceptance of chastity within marriage.
       •There will be no acceptance of marital chastity without the rejection of unnatural forms of birth control, many of which can also cause early abortions.
       •There will be no widespread rejection of unnatural forms of birth control without the widespread knowledge and practice of natural family planning (NFP).
       •There will be no widespread practice of NFP without serious efforts to promote it and without sufficient NFP teachers and/or materials.
       •In many sub-cultures, that will happen only when the clergy require couples to learn NFP, including ecological breastfeeding, as a normal part of preparation for marriage.
       •In the fast growing computer-oriented subculture, the vast, vast majority of married couples—say at least 90% and probably 95%—can teach themselves how to practice chaste NFP from the online manual, free charts,  and other materials at this website.

The bottom line is that in order to roll back the culture of death that is built on the logic of unnatural birth control, it is necessary to promote, teach, and practice the natural ways that God has given us to space babies.

Next Week: The Role of NFP International

John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality (Ignatius) Now on sale until April 4, 2010 at $3.95.  Contact www.ignatius.com.

What’s in this vision of a culture of life and hope? In this culture of life and hope—
       •There is an almost universal conviction that, in the words of George Washington, the first president of the United States, “religion and morality are the indispensable supports of democracy.” The meaning of the “self-evident truths” of the American Declaration of Independence has been internalized. It is part of the culture to respect in others the “inalienable rights” to life, liberty (but not license) and the pursuit of happiness. There is a common sense recognition that without such respect for the God-given rights of others, civic life will eventually become governed either by the law of the jungle or a police state.
       •Citizens of all ages are conscious that God has a plan for us, and they internalize the basic morality described in the Ten Commandments. This provides peer support to live virtuously and peer pressure not to sin.
       •Legalized abortion is recognized as a national error of the past, and illegal abortions are almost non-existent.
       •Men and women of all nations and cultures believe that sexual intercourse is exclusively a marriage act. Therefore, these ordinary men and women postpone the sexual expression of their love for each other until they are married. Those who still think they are above God’s law are few and are not taken seriously.
       •Parents are married, have children, stay married, raise their own or adopted children, and strive to make each marriage act a renewal of the committed love of their marriage covenant.
       •Babies and their mothers are healthier because of extended breastfeeding. Most couples experience the natural birth spacing of ecological breastfeeding.
       •Couples who need additional spacing practice chaste systematic NFP.
       •Thanks to a pervasive culture of life, sexual crimes are rare, the overall crime rate is low, some jails have closed, and others are half empty.
       •Men and women of every continent appreciate and continue to build a culture of life and hope.

Next Week: Vision or Pipedream?

John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality (Ignatius)