Three cheers for George & Eileen Finnin, Directors of the Philadelphia Area Natural Family Planning Network. Along with Wichita’s rock star NFP Coordinator, CCL Chicago Chapter and a handful of other fervent NFP advocates, they’re harnessing the power of the press release and letters to the editor! They published this Op-Ed piece in the November 28 edition of the Philadelphia Bulletin, which isn’t exactly the NY Times, but is a good example of using the media to get out the word. I challenge the Finnins and others to take the next step, using their ingenuity to take the op-ed/ letter to the editor to the next level, and sumbit it to a more secular newspaper or women’s mag.
- Have you seen any other inventive press releases or letters to the editor?
- What’s the best NFP-related writing you’ve seen out there, something that made you smile, think, or clap your hands?
On the heels of an entry on good images and promotion, I present….
Natural Family Planning Promo Video
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIrQwjCUbf0]
While the production of this video could stand for a little improvement (smoother editing, different transitions, etc.), I’m impressed overall. I’ve yet to connect with the Diocese of Phoenix about their video, but my guess is that this was done entirely by volunteers or at least on a limited budget. With that in mind, it was really great. The music was great as well, getting your attention right from the beginning.
The couples and speakers on NFP were all authentic, relatable, young but still varying in age, and well-spoken. I give it a strong 7.5 out of 10–awesome video with room for improvement. Keep it up, Phoenix! I really hope more dioceses ramp up their use of audio and video on their web sites and the web in general.
In the world of NFP marketing, a picture is worth a thousand words, and a well done ad or image is worth a thousand embraces. It’s really difficult to find good, modern, clean and engaging images in the NFP world, and when you do, you remember. Below you’ll find some of my favorites.
The first one is perhaps most appealing to the young adult audience. You can see in subsequent years the addition of children and family subset images, which must have come about from criticism that the first time (couple only) that it perhaps communicated a sort of non-fecund, anti-child or contraceptive mentality. I don’t think so, but the addition of family and child images are a welcome change.
(2005)
(2008)
(2009)
The Owens’ are the founders of this non-sectarian non-profit in New Jersey (Damon is the NFP Coordinator for the Newark Diocese as well as a nationally known speaker on marriage and Theology of the Body). Their devoted parents who happen to have great style and taste. The hip factor will no doubt be strong in the Owens household. I think this header on their web site is joyful, whimsical, and communicates the life-giving love of NFP without overwhelming newcomers with a line of of the 10-child family.
Priests for Life Canada Poster (Free)
This poster is so simple and straightforward that it baffles me how a parish can’t even muster the courage to say these words, let alone post this in their parish. Order one for your parish for priesthood Sunday (coming up in October)!
Plan Your Family…Naturally (NFP DVD Cover)
(Diocese of Rockville Center, NY)
It’s simple, joyful and fun. Just plain smart, clean and contemporary.
Have you spied something great, hip, witty or just plain awesome in the NFP/ natural methods world? Send it my way!
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the water –Genesis 1.2
It’s very easy to become depressed in the Natural Family Planning world and arena of Humanae Vitae Evangelization. It usually happens that one becomes enthused over the discovery of NFP and the beauty of Humanae Vitae and signs up for the cause, only to be shot down by a stranger, a friend, your parish staff or pastor. It sometimes seems that the NFP world is without form and void, and that darkness is everywhere. It’s very easy to wonder, “Where is the light in this crazy arena of promoting true love and life?”
We see the light sometimes in the fruit of what we do, and we are grateful. However, more often than not, we watch the news, we get criticized, and we receive denial and humiliation in the form of excuses for what is actually just spiritual and pastoral pusillanimity from our leaders. And it’s hard.
In the first and previous article in an “NFP & Marketing” article in Family Foundations, I introduced NFP’s credibility crisis, which, briefly reviewed, goes something like this: NFP usage is low; NFP awareness is low; misunderstanding of NFP is high. Not shocking, is it? I followed my dark inauguration of the facts, however, with a brief look at some of the things NFP advocates are doing right, ranging from grassroots newsletters to researched radio campaigns and encouraging comments from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop’s queen bee of NFP, Theresa Notare.
There definitely is good news, as I am quick to remind disheartened apostles and crestfallen friends. More and more people are discovering the Church’s teachings on marriage and sexuality. They give up contraception and often reverse their sterilizations. They return to the sacrament of reconciliation, and embrace marital chastity. It is truly awesome. Realistically, though, they are the exception, and not the rule.
It’s been over forty years since Pope Paul VI, whose baptismal name was John the Baptist, played the cultural John the Baptist with Humanae Vitae. He affirmed the constant teaching of Jesus and His Church, and predicted the consequences of the contraceptive revolution. Yet, we are still in desert with NFP amongst Catholics, and we wonder what can we do?
At the core of this crisis is spiritual contraception—a crisis of faith, and the subject of numerous articles from your favorite spiritual writers. However, this is also a crisis of personal initiative, creative solutions and professional finesse. We’re falling short as promoters and marketers of NFP. As a former full-time NFP Coordinator and Promoter, I was and am still often asked, “What on earth can we do to curb this crisis?”
[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.
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