Why does the Catholic Church continue to speak out against contraception and what is the alternative?
National Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, celebrated July 21-27, reminds us that fertility is a gift given to couples to share in God’s creative powers. Today we rarely hear that fertility is a positive thing – we learn more about blocking our fertility than learning how to work with the natural signs in our bodies to plan or postpone a pregnancy. Natural family planning is learning the signs and symptoms of fertility and using this information to time intercourse according to your family planning intentions while seeking God’s guidance.
Fertility appreciation with natural family planning (NFP) leads to many personal benefits as well advantages for couples and society, including living a healthy life style, effective and ecological family planning, increased communication between husband and wife, and help for couples having difficulties achieving a pregnancy. To raise awareness about these benefits, the Couple to Couple League for Natural Family Planning has initiated a campaign at www.Live-the-Love.org.
The Couple to Couple League is the first NFP provider to have its program fully endorsed by the USCCB under the bishops’ revised NFP standards of 2010 for training both students and NFP teachers.
CCL provides NFP courses in both English and Spanish. There are three convenient ways to learn NFP:
1) a live course taught on location,
2) a virtual (live) NFP course that can be taken at home with an internet connection, and
3) a self-taught Home Study NFP Course if the other options don’t fit the learner couple’s schedule.
The Couple to Couple League recently made available, CycleProGoTM, a mobile (iphone, android, kindle) online app for fertility tracking so that couples can more easily chart and interpret their fertility signs. And, because the data can be accessed from multiple devices, CycleProGoTM allows both husband and wife to be more involved. More information is available at www.ccli.org/cycleprogo.
Another advantage of the Couple to Couple League is its bi-monthly “Family Foundations” magazine that recently won five Catholic Press Association awards. The “Family Foundations” subscription comes with the NFP course and is a source of support and of continuing education for those practicing natural family planning.
A Couple to Couple League NFP course begins on Thursday, Sept. 5, at St. Teresa Hall, Runnemede. Registration is at www.ccli.org. Until then there are virtual NFP courses online and Home Study Courses also available at www.ccli.org.
Cecilia LeChevallier and her husband, Mark, have taught natural family planning with the Couple to Couple League for 30 years. The LeChevallier’s plan to retire from active teaching next year and would be happy to mentor younger couples who are willing to teach or promote NFP. Contact them at 856-753-1906 or sj.nfp@comcast.net
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