[This article appeared in the July/ August issue of Family Foundations Magazine.]

[Update: For future installments in this series, bookmark or RSS this blog.]

When is the last time you saw a movie about Natural Family Planning (NFP)? (No, “Cheaper By the Dozen” doesn’t count!)

Now name a movie about contraception. Right. There are any number of birth control movies and documentaries out there, but one especially comes to mind. Deborah Kerr was the iconic chaste love interest in 1957’s “An Affair to Remember,” but just over a decade later she played a much less virtuous female lead as Prudence in “Prudence and the Pill.”

Ironically released just two months before the promulgation of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, Prudence and its adulterous premise reflected the main stream acceptance and popularity of the contraceptive pill, known already simply as “the Pill,” and signaled a sign of the times. Forty years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, the contraceptive business thrives and its popularity persists.

We don’t need a Gallup poll to tell us about the unpopularity or unawareness of NFP. It’s the butt of jokes, shrugged off by the average physician, scoffed at by clergy, and perennially ignored by most. However, it’s helpful to the proactive NFP promoter to know where we are in order to figure out where we’re going. Let’s take a look at the numbers we do have. Though there’s a real lack of NFP research out there, statistical advances have been made in recent years, actually earning NFP its own place separate from the Rhythm method (finally!).

Concerning usage, a 2004 report sponsored by the Center for Disease Control and published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services puts NFP, listed as “periodic abstinence—natural family planning” as used by .2% of women ages 15-44 in 2002. Out of approximately 61 million users, that’s 123, 000 strong of natural family planning users, more or less. The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, puts their 2002 number of NFP users at 133,000. Either way, that would fill a couple stadiums, but it’s nothing compared the 11.6 million women on the Pill, and 10.3 million women sterilized.

If the sheer numbers of people not using NFP weren’t a big enough indicator of the work ahead of us, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a sociological research group at Georgetown, has got a little study to wake us up. According a study released in October 2007 (“Marriage in the Catholic Church: a survey of U.S. Catholics”), the interest in NFP of currently married Catholics is 8%.

Before we analyze what seems to be a low ebb in NFP awareness, let’s look at some strengths of the NFP movement and its awareness efforts.

Dr. Pia de Sollenni, a doctor of sacred theology, is also a consultant on women’s health issues, and she is quick to point out the success of grassroots efforts: “The individual methods have done the most in terms of education…the Couple to Couple League, Creighton Method…they reach out at the community level.”

This is certainly true on a global basis. The groups that made the most impact in paving the way for NFP were people like John and Lynn Billings, John & Sheila Kipley, Mercedes Wilson, whose groups and successors have been the grassroots educators and local public relations agents across the globe.

Also representing NFP from a faith-based foundation are the diocesan Family life and NFP offices of the world and nation. Therese Notare, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop’s Director of the NFP Office, has been promoting NFP for well over twenty years. She has high standards for the ideal diocesan NFP office, but said she’s had “the privilege to know these kind of diocesan NFP coordinators and their teachers!”

There are too many fruitful diocesan efforts to name them all, but allow me to give a few examples. One very simple tool is the diocesan NFP Newsletter, which serves to update people on office activities, relay new NFP studies and news, as well as share information that helps NFP teachers and promoters to spread the word about NFP. The diocese of Richmond in Virginia has had an excellent newsletter for a number of years, and in the October 2005 issue (they’re all available online), former coordinator Misty Mealy published an article titled, “Beyond the Bulletin—Creative Ways and Places to Promote NFP,” which lists anything from local magazines to Mothers of Preschoolers Groups, the La Leche League to Natural Foods Cooperatives.

Another great example of promotional initiative is the diocese of LaCrosse in Wisconsin. In Archbishop Burke’s homeland and former see, the NFP Coordinator, Alice Heinzen, has been promoting NFP using radio spots with success.

One particular diocesan group who’s exceeded expectations is Judith Leonard’s diocesan team in Witchita, Kansas. Diocese of Wichita, KS test marketed a campaign to promote NFP in 2003. Underwritten by Family of the Americas Foundation through the Pax et Bonum Foundation, their goal was to test market a strategy to reach out the entire community (including Hispanics) with various marketing and public relations tools. They developed and released radio ads, print ads, four billboards, and other publicity. Their slogan was simple: “99% effective. 100% natural. Your body knows, ™” which is featured with a photograph of a woman on the edge of a bed enjoying the scent of a rose.

Their basic but very well planned campaign yielded a 500% increase in call volume, and a marked increase in the number of couples receiving NFP instruction. According to the campaign profile published in the Catholic Social Science Review , “The campaign revealed a hunger for an alternative to artificial birth control. People want to know and are responsive when NFP is presented in an attractive, secular format.”

In my next article in this series, I’ll discuss where we’re falling short as promoters and marketers of NFP, and what we can do to curb the credibility crisis of NFP.

Contrary to popular belief and contemporary despair, great success in promoting NFP is possible. You are not alone when you hope for it. It is absolutely possible and NFP, when promoted with confidence and magnanimity, is a means for achieving or postponing pregnancy and healing disease and infertility in a way that respects peoples’ morals, bodies and marriages.

However, when sharing our fervor we should also practice patience. The profile authors of Wichita’s campaigned cautioned that marketing NFP “…is not like marketing a soft drink. The success or failure of the NFP campaign can only be determined over time, perhaps even years, since NFP involves a process of maturation—both in relationship with God and inter-spousal relationships.”

I invite you to a journey of radical intimacy and reckless hope. It will cost you not less than everything, but in shedding light on the world’s wounded souls and bodies, you will find God’s dazzling purpose for you. Give your obstacles, lack of funding, illnesses and everything g else to God, and He will bring you into a gorgeous garden of ordinary miracles in your work and apostolate.

The NFP credibility crisis is, above all, a crisis of faith, but it is also a crisis of personal initiative, creative solutions and professional finesse. While the Church and promoters of NFP are consummate underdogs, we should not shrink to share what we know to be good, true and beautiful.

NFP may not have a Deborah Kerr, and hasn’t yet reached the fame or endorsement of Hollywood or Sundance. One might ask, would we ever want to? It may not be our primary goal, but if Theology of the Body is changing peoples’ lives and inspiring art, why can’t NFP? The answer is it can. And it does.

In his Letter to Artists John Paul II wrote, “All men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life. In a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.”  You may not be a fine artist or performer, but you are the artist of your soul, working under a great Master. Be not afraid, and go forward to promote free, total, faithful and fruitful love, and in doing that you will be an icon of the Most Holy Trinity. That’s not a red carpet line; it’s a heavenly promise.