Are you ready for NFP Awareness Week?!?!

I’ll tell you who is, friends: Fathers for Good, the awesome initiative of the Knights of Columbus. If you’ve not been tracking with these fellas, the KC’s launched this sort of holy man-cave initiative a couple years ago, and they’ve been doing great things to promote authentic masculinity and fatherhood, to include….yes, natural family planning and the culture of free, total, faithful and fruitful love. Hipster Catholic fellas, are you KC’s? If you aren’t yet, the launch of FFG is if nothing a game changer for the KCs and their constant support for love and life, so join. Mr. NFPworks is, in fact, a third degree night.

Anywho…..I’m pluggin’ them because 1) KC’s FFG Initiative rocks, and 2) Because they recognized that there’s a growing moving movement of NFPers/ family advocates who are young culture engagers, including  a little featurette of yours truly that hit the web today:

Is the Church’s message on natural family planning (NFP) reaching young couples? Jessica M.H. Smith thinks we all could be doing a better job of spreading the good news on NFP so she started a blog that has created an online buzz.

She is married for five years (with no children yet) and lives with her husband in Central Wyoming, where Fathers for Good flagged her down via e-mail in advance of “NFP Awareness Week” (July 24-30).

Fathers for Good: How did you get into blogging about NFP?

Jessica M.H. Smith: Four years ago I became the first full-time coordinator in the Diocese of Madison. I quickly realized that a lot of NFP promotion was boring, unfunny and uninteresting. Although the target market for NFP was largely (though not exclusively) young adults, there was a distinct un-young staleness to it all. My well-formed Catholic peers think the culture of Humanae Vitae is beautiful, relevant and exciting, so why was NFP promotion so uninspired? A simple and free way to light some fires and get the gears going and drive traffic to our diocesan site? Start a blog with a commentary on all things NFP/ Family Life related.

Keep reading here….

What do you think? Is the Church’s message reaching young couples? (Not just you, rock stars…all your peers in the pews and beyond.) How can we help this dialogue with youth and young adults in the contraceptive culture? Dream big. What do you want to see? What do you wish you would have seen? For you reverts and converts to NFP, what do you wish you would have known now that you didn’t know then? Things can change, and you can be a part of that right here

Detroit’s NFP Office got caught in my Google Alerts net today.

I found this great sheet of tips for how to promote NFP in your parish communities, just in time for NFP Awareness Week. How great is that? Here’s my edited version of their great suggestions (If you’re in the Detroit area, here’s the actual list). The easy and free ones are in bold!

1. Designate a parish/ community liaison with your Archdiocesan/ Diocesan/ Regional NFP apostolate
2. Include Prayers of the faithful at Masses for openness to life. The USCCB has some here.
3. Sign up for the monthly NFP newsletter, The Loving Choice. www.aodonline.org/TLC [Many dioceses have these. The USCCB also has two newsletters called NFP Forum & Current Medical Research.]
4. Publish NFP articles in the weekly parish paper. [Email me for permission to use mine--see right. Many others available online.]
5. Provide couples informational DVDs on NFP (I recommend this one from the Diocese of Rockville Centre)
6. Display NFP posters on bulletin boards in Church areas with phone and email contacts. (The USCCB has a great one.)
7. Include an insert in your parish bulletin. I recommend:
   • Natural Family Planning: The Key to Intimacy, published by OSV Press
   • Married Love & the Gift of Life Bulletin Insert, published by USCCB
8. Invite RCIA adults and parents whose children receive the sacraments [Great idea! I've been trying to get NFP formation into baptismal classes for years!] to attend local NFP Presentations.
9. Invite an NFP witness couple to speak to various groups of parish members. Be sure to also consider younger couples who are on fire!
10. Provide a table of NFP information at parish events after Masses. A few of my favorites:
    • Pure Intimacy: How Your Marriage Can Benefit from Natural Family Planning (My *favorite* resource! It’s written in a very accessible Q&A format that also doesn’t skimp on details/ resources.)
    • Married Love & the Gift of Life pamphlet, pub’d by USCCB Publishing
    • Brochure: What a woman should know about birth control (Print your own PDFs for free!)
    • IUDs: What every woman needs to know (Print your own PDFs for free!)
    • …and many many more!
11. Include NFP information (to include materials on the ills of contraception) at Pro-Life activities. Consider playing the “Abortafacient” video on a computer/ TV on the table to illustrate how most contraceptives can cause chemical abortions. Most people do not know this!
12. Distribute prayer cards for conversion from contraception
13. Host an NFP forum night of personal testimony and resources and give it a catchy name.

2011 NFP Awareness Week Poster in English

The California Association of Natural Family Planning has a Facebook Page, and recently asked a timely question on their wall:

“NFP Awareness Week is a couple months away–what are you planning?”

So…what are you doing? NFP Awareness Week is July 24-30th this year. I’m addressing this question to: bishops, clergy, NFP instructors, Family Life/ Respect Life offices, DRE’s and more. It’s never to early to start planning, but right now you should be putting your plans into action. Don’t have a plan? Contact me, and I’ll give you some ideas. Start here for a quick brainstorm, or check out all posts under NFP Awareness Week.

See also more ideas inspired by the Archdiocese of Detroit NFP office.

As you may know, I recently moved from the Madison area in Wisconsin to Denver, but a friend back home sent me an article published in the Madison Catholic Herald about Natural Family Planning, and the future of the NFP Program there in light of recent job cuts.

As a former Family Planning Coordinator, I know diocesan and Church layoffs and downsizing has been a common occurrence. Unfortunately, one of the first programs and personnel to go is the NFP or Marriage and Family Life work. If our bishops and leaders understood the devastation of contraception and the marriage-building of NFP, would they cut their NFP Coordinators? I would hope not, but I do know that there are many factors involved in those decisions.

I don’t want to toot my own horn about this program because it was a real team effort supported  by great bosses and a great Bishop, but we did receive a lot of opposition and criticism for our efforts, and not just from the laity, so the following statements were a little (small) boo-ya to the spiritually invirile detractors who refused to see the fruit of Humanae Vitae Evangelization.

“We realized people would struggle with the teachings and programs, but that struggle would ultimately bear much fruit. Jesus didn’t come to bring comfort and complacency; he came to bring love and truth. We owe it to Christ and the people of God to give them the fullness of truth and the healing they’ve been looking for,” said Smith.

Smith added, “Pastors and parishioners of the diocese should be grateful to Bishop Morlino and Andy for taking such a bold stance on marriage. It is life-changing and on par with the best marriage programs in the country.”

What’s the current state of your NFP Program, and what kind of resources do you need? Any awesome stories of persecution and perseverance? I know you have those stories. It’s out there. What’s going on in your neck of the woods?

The USCCB’s site has some resources like homily helps, prayers of the faithful, prayers, couples’ witnesses (to be published in your local paper the week of/ before), and this awesome poster above (en espanol, tambien).

What are you doing in your area? Here are some ideas:
(Update 6/12: The Contraception Why Not DVD link wasn’t working, so I updated it.)

• Ask your DRE/ pastor/ parish secretary to order 1-3 of the above poster for your bulletin boards, and put up in the next two weeks.
• Give your pastor or deacon A Preachable Message: The Dynamics of Natural Family Planning
or “Proclaiming Theology of the Body,” or “Reaching the Cafeteria Catholic” and encourage him that THIS IS A MESSAGE PEOPLE WANT TO HEAR.
• Have a Parish Novena of Sts. Joachim & Ann.
• Host Eucharistic Adoration for a Humanae Vitae Culture, using a litany of the Holy Family, and readings from a John Paul II (Familiaris Consortio or Theology of the Body would be great). Make sure confession is available.
• Have a local speaker (call your diocese’s evangelization or family life office) give a talk at your parish. Make sure it’s not a really stilted, expected title like “All About NFP.” People have stereotypes and misconceptions (no pun intended) about NFP, and they need to be broken. A local speaker in my diocese has a talk titled, “Family Planning: Think Outside the Pill,” that addresses the myths of contraception (safe, family friendly, reduces abortion), and contrasts it with the holistic, marriage building, spiritually sound NFP. Other title ideas: “NFP: It’s Not Your Mother’s Rhythm,” “Making Good Marriages Great,” “What Couples Need to Know About Birth Control” (and have a doctor give a rundown of contraceptive myths and failures).
• Have a CD/ DVD listening Session of a great speaker, and have a discussion group (make sure you have a well-formed, mature facilitator): Vicki Thorn’s “The Biochemistry of Sex” (Call (414) 483-4141 to order), and Janet Smith’s “Contraception: Why Not,”
• For Youth Directors: Don’t leave Teens Out! They need to know the honest truth about love, contraception (especially since half of them are on it for their acne), and the basics (not too much) of NFP: Patty Schneier’s “True Love: How Will I Know?” for Teens, Jason Evert’s “Romance Without Regret” for Teens.
• Have a Humanae Vitae Study Group: ENDOW has an amazing study workbook, but requires a trained facilitator. The ENDOW Study I might recommend for those who are new to catechesis on this subject, or may not “agree with Church teaching.” Catholic Scripture Study has a resource for a Humanae Vitae here. Priests for Life also has one here. There’s another one by Marian Catechists, but I can’t find the link.
• If you’ve got a little bit of money in your parish evangelization budget (I know money’s tight, but this will change lives), I guarantee that you won’t regret sending each one of your families Patty Schneier’s “Prove It, God!…And He Did” testimony by Patty Schneier. The diocese of Bismark, in a courageous and unprecedented NFP evangelization effort, sent a CD of Patty’s story to EVERY FAMILY IN THEIR ENTIRE DIOCESE, and the results were astounding. The Diocese received over 60 formal (and how many informal?) letters of support and gratitude, and the increase of interest in NFP and NFP-only medical care was so profound, that they had to “import” an NFP-only doctor just to help meet the need! WHAT? This is amazing. If they can find the money in North Dakota, you can too. Read more about this here.

Do you have any other ideas?