I was trying to find some video of a dynamic Natural Family Planning, contra-contraception, or Humanae Vitae talk on YouTube, and I couldn’t find anything! (Yes, I know, the seminarians are there, but the novelty is wearing off.) There were a couple of decent homilies, but they weren’t the speed I was looking for for the blog.
So you know what I found instead? This jazzy cartoon:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3y18QpOy4]
Are you just so *sold* on World Contraception Day? Well, naturally, I was curious and checked out their web site, YOUR-LIFE.COM (note to self: future Humanae Vitae site will be HIS-LIFE.COM). There was the usual mis-information about natural methods of family planning , although it wasn’t as ridiculously incorrect as it usually is, and there weren’t any cartoons making fun of it. Overall, though, it was an all-around cool site, anti-fertility, anti-family messages notwithstanding. I really liked the FAMILY/TEACHERS/PRESS bars on the side, giving information to parents on how to talk to their kids about said travesty (“Listen Son, you’re beginning to have special feelings, so I want to teach you about something that has divided your mom and I so that you, too, can objectify and poison that special someone.”) teachers about how to give workshops (“Hey kids! Here’s women’s lib’s gift to you: poisoned relationships between the sexes, higher STI rates and a massive correlation to the world’s highest divorce rate. C’mon!”), and press all sorts of media-related goodies–videos, photos, press releases, etc.
WHAT A GREAT RESOURCE if you don’t believe that contraception is the greatest societal cancer to women, children and families, the fallout of which we’re just now experiencing!
But seriously, folks. This is great media presence here, particularly for the youth/ young adults and their parents/ mentors. The million dollar question (or mostly likely the ten thousand dollar question) here is: WHY DON’T WE HAVE THIS KIND OF MEDIA PRESENCE FOR HUMANAE VITAE, THEOLOGY OF THE BODY AND NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING!? Now, to give credit where it’s due, there is good web presence for Theology of the Body & Chastity (but it could be better) and a few good sites for Natural Family Planning and at least one fair site for Humanae Vitae. (I won’t name my personal taste here because there will be a firestorm of comments from such-and-such a group/NFP method/diocese/whomever complaining that I’m being unfair and they’ve gotten really good feedback from their favorite techie. Good for you, but sometimes, “Hey, it’s a great web site compared to all the lame churchy web sites” is not a qualifying statement for the great web site awards. As you know, the artistic bar in the Church is not set too high in most places.
Back to the question: Why does our media suck–especially for such vital evangelization efforts as marriage and sexuality–and what can we do about it? Do you know of an off-the-hook web site, brochure or media campaign? Let me know!
9 Responses to Medocrity & Marketing NFP
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I wish I had answers to your questions but I don’t. I personally think the media ignores NFP because it is associated with religion as a whole and I think we need to bridge the gap to the non-religious. Also the media projects “free love” as those videos suggest. Met up with someone and have sex. No worries; as long as you use contraception.
I do have my own questions after reviewing the web pages. Why are the statistics they give so different from the statistics that NFP advocates give? The books I have on NFP claim 99% effective rate while the “Your Contraception Guide” gave it a 25% of women will get pregnant in their first year of use (however I will say they didn’t have a percentage rate in the perfect use column).
Also the information given on the Young and Healthy web page is completely wrong. There is not an NFP method taught today that teaches you to count the length of your cycle and go solely on numbers. I don’t think that has been taught since 1952. I wonder why they choose to give such wrong information.
Thank you so much for this post. I’ve never heard of Contraception Day. I’m not surprised though.
Jeanne- One reason for the discrepancy is that the effectiveness rates in pro-contraceptive sites is that they are stretching the meaning of user failure. User failure occurs when the user does not know the method well enough and so does not follow the correct rules.
However what probably happened with a t least some of those pregnancies was that the user knew the rules and consciously decided not to follow them for whatever reason. Perhaps for these couples delaying pregnancy was just not as big a goal as they originally thought, even though they weren’t technically “planning”. I don’t think that is the same thing as user-failure. Its similar to a couple who normally uses condoms deciding not use them one day. However, that is not considered a “user failure” I don’t think…they simply did not use the method period.
What do you think Miss NFP? Am I right on or are there other reasons for the discrepancies in effectiveness from these different groups?
P.S. I think some groups/books just ignore reasearch, or pick and choose which studies they want to cite. For instance, what about the recent study in…I believe it was the Journal of Human Fertility or something like that. IT took place in Europe, had a pretty large sample, and the effectiveness of NFP was similar to the pill with proper use.
Oh and regarding the original post. I wish I was super media/graphic arts/website design savvy. But I am not. Hopefully some more people that are will step up!
I’d love to be in on a project like this, but funding would be so tough. I think the reason you see such media savvy marketing from the contraceptors is that they get gigantic government funding, such as the $150 million that the US gives to Planned Parenthood which can’t be used to directly provide abortions. So instead it goes to drum up business for the backstop abortion!
I just wanted to tell you I love your blog
Keep up the great work in spreading the word about NFP!!
(Feel free to visit my blog any time- – http://www.thiscrossiembrace.blogspot.com)
Just found this post and it reminded me of this topic!
Good post! I hope to find a good site I can recommend to people, someday.
Good question. I’m a figurative artist and am really into studying my faith. I have recently been studying theology of the body and it is pure gold. I’ve been telling everyone I know about it like crazy and it seems that God may be calling me to somehow incorporate this into my art, I don’t know what it’ll look like but I have all the tools. I’m almost 20 and in art school if you know of any good quality resources for Catholic artists/ Theology of the Body and art I should know about email me!
Shana, how very providential! I have a passion about art, Theology of the Body and NFP. We should email at nfp@straphael.org, because I have a lot of thoughts on this topic.