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Natural Family Planning Memoirs

Sunday, October 28th, 2012

Battle-Scarred: Justice Can Be Elusive (memoirs by John F. Kippley)

The following is a recent book review at Amazon.com by a person previously unknown to the Kippleys.

This book is a lesson in forbearance and an excellent reminder about prudence. I have read and enjoyed the Kippleys’ work for over 20 years. John’s covenant theology of sexuality is beautifully expressed and easy to understand. His work drew me to become a member of the Couple to Couple League (CCL). I believe every member of that organization would be interested in reading this book.

CCL has moved away from certain key elements of the Kippleys’ system of natural family planning instruction, called the Triple Strand. The Triple Strand consists of the three concepts the Kippleys brought to the founding of CCL in 1971:
1. Ecological breastfeeding as a distinct form of natural baby spacing. It has now been further standardized as the Seven Standards of eco-breastfeeding.
2. The covenant theology, which is more completely stated as the renewal-of-the-marriage-covenant theology.
3. An open-to-choice version of The Sympto-Thermal Method of systematic NFP oriented to reducing abstinence as much as possible according to the evidence. All the common signs of fertility are taught, as well as rules that attempt to maximize the benefits and minimize the limitations of each of the signs.

I pray for the return of CCL to these core elements upon which the organization was founded. I can think of no legitimate reason to have removed/altered them. The excuse of “simplicity” is insufficient to justify these changes. The method was easy to learn and complete the way the Kippleys formulated it. The reformulation loses theological clarity as well as informed choice among the widest range of practical options.

These elements, especially Kippley’s covenant theology (simply & beautifully expressing the Truth of God’s plan for human sexuality) are precisely what drew me to & kept me with CCL.

It is heartening to read that the Kippleys have the fortitude to have founded Natural Family Planning International in order to continue their instructional material & methods.

I do not personally know the Kippleys, but I have come to know them through their published work and have deep respect and admiration for them. I will be eternally grateful for their message of Truth about marriage and for providing the practical means of living out that Truth.

Amazon reviewer for Battle-Scarred, October 12, 2012

Posted in About Us, Education, NFP | Comments Off on Natural Family Planning Memoirs

Teaching Natural Family Planning to the Poor

Sunday, October 21st, 2012

Ecological Breastfeeding
For the poor and illiterate, ecological breastfeeding is God’s way to space babies.  Recently mothers in Ghana who were taught through song and instruction to exclusively breastfeed their babies soon discovered that breastfeeding not only gave them healthier babies but also gave them natural spacing.  Our studies with American mothers who do ecological breastfeeding have found an average duration of breastfeeding amenorrhea (no periods) of 14.5 months.  Certainly similar results would be found among breastfeeding mothers in other countries, especially those who still follow the traditional ways of keeping their children with them.

Sympto-Thermal Method (STM)
We believe that NFP International has the most complete program for NFP since we teach all the common signs of fertility plus eco-breastfeeding.  Those who teach only the mucus method frequently claim that it is easier to teach.  It may be easier to teach, at least in theory, but that certainly doesn’t mean that it is easier to use or is equally effective.  In the one comparative study of the STM and the mucus-only method, the study was closed much earlier than expected because it became clear quite early that the mucus-only system had a much higher unplanned pregnancy rate than the STM.

Couples Should be Taught All Their Options
We believe all options should be taught and then let the couple decide what fertility signs they want to use, and some or many couples may choose to use only ecological breastfeeding to space their babies.

One Advantage to Teaching the Poor
The NFPI teaching system does not require expensive equipment.  Daylight is sufficient.  That is, you can teach directly from the manual, Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach.  Students can have the same manual in their possession. You don’t need PowerPoint or slide projectors or even a chalkboard.  The truly poor can download this manual for free at the home page.  Otherwise, a $10 donation is requested for the download of the manual.  Anyone can download free charts also at the home page.    Some might say that a thermometer costs something.  That is true.  But when my husband spoke to Mother Teresa, she told him that some of her sisters taught the temperature sign.  So apparently the use of a thermometer was not an obstacle to teaching NFP among the poor.

Sheila Kippley

Posted in Ecological Breastfeeding, NFP, Sympto-Thermal Method | 2 Comments »

Natural Family Planning: Sexuality Crisis and the Catholic Church

Sunday, October 14th, 2012

One NFP instructor said:  The philosophy of the mucus-only method she taught  “is that every woman is entitled to the knowledge of her fertility, so religion is not a part of the instruction in this method” even though the founders of the method were  Catholic.   Below is John’s response.

John:  Much more important than every woman’s right to understand her fertility is her right to know God’s plan for the proper use of her sexuality.  The Great Commission of the Lord Jesus at his Ascension called for the apostles and their successors and co-workers to tell the Good News to the entire world, and to teach everything that he had commanded them.  Romans 10 is highly applicable to the message of marital chastity.  To paraphrase, How can people be saved unless they believe and act properly, and how can they believe unless someone tells them…?

The Church is in a horrible crisis today, and much of the problem is that too many bishops and priests and others have treated the teaching of Humanae Vitae with benign neglect.  Unfortunately, with all the talk about the Obama theft of First Amendment rights from Catholics, the bishops have continued their relative silence on the moral, psychological, and physical evils of the contraceptive drugs etc. to be given free to everyone who wants them.  At the same time, the leaders of the Church are calling for a New Evangelization in which Catholics and others will become aware that it is Jesus Himself who is the Author of the teachings of the Church.

The subject matter of the NFP movement is at the heart of the sexuality crisis in the world, and a biology-only approach is no longer sufficient, if it ever was.  Participation in this movement is a privilege, and it is also a call to exercise the New Evangelization.  This is not the time to hide under a bushel basket the very light that leads us.

Everyone has a God-given right to know that sexual intercourse is intended by God to be exclusively a marriage act between heterosexual spouses married to each other.  Everyone has a right to know that the marriage act ought to reaffirm the original marriage covenant.

Everyone has a God-given right to know about Ecological Breastfeeding, the kind of breastfeeding that really does provide a natural, abstinence-free, spacing of babies.

Everyone has a God-given right to know the common, easily taught and detected signs of fertility and infertility.

And everyone has a right and a need to know that, despite Judas and his spiritual descendants, the Lord Jesus did give us a visible and tangible way of knowing the truth about the meaning of love and sexuality, namely, the Catholic Church led by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a guidance promised repeatedly at the Last Supper.  That’s part of the New Evangelization to which all Catholics are called.

John F. Kippley
Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach
Sex and the Marriage Covenant
Battle-Scarred: Justice Can Be Elusive

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