“In my 30 years in Brazil, I saw many promising apostolates rise and then fall as they abandoned the charisms of their founders.”—Bishop Karl Jozef Romer, Pontifical Council for the Family, 2002 CCL Convention.
Why bother?
It has certainly occurred to me that certain parties may be thinking, “Why are the Kippleys wasting their time on these blogs? Don’t they know that people think they are stupid for doing this or think their whole effort is just a case of sour grapes? Do they really think they can accomplish anything? Don’t they realize they are beating a dead horse in thinking or even hoping that the current CCL management might return to the classic content of the Triple Strand approach to NFP?
Well, yes, we realize that some or many people think this way. First, at this stage in my life I don’t care what people think of me. I have no ambitions that will be affected by adverse opinions. Yes, I do have a few ambitions. I would really like to be able to make good contact with a golf ball, consistently, but if someone thinks I’m crazy for spending time at the keyboard instead of at the course, such negative thinking won’t affect my strokes–either way.
Second, I have been appalled by a few responses that reflect a total absence of critical thinking. What we have witnessed in the CCL campaign to sell the revised program is a classic advertising campaign that uses the common technique of glittering generalities. “Streamlined.” “Up to date.” “Easier to use.” “Easier to teach.” These are all attractive terms, but what is lacking is an adequate explanation about what is behind the language. For example, which is easier to use, a system that offers the earliest possible start of Phase Three (postovulation infertility) consistent with the available evidence or one that requires a later start? Remember, waiting one more day sometimes means waiting a week or more when one of the spouses travels. More on this later.
Third, sometimes when you see something that appears wrong, you simply feel called to do what you can. One day before we were married, Sheila and I were driving on a side street in San Francisco and we noticed a young woman running from a man. It looked bad. So I jumped out of the car to intervene. I was fortunate that time because the gal told me not to worry. Maybe she liked being chased across one front lawn after another. A few years later I read in the newspapers about the local firefighters union president who had been suspended by the safety director of our town for using language that the safety director thought was inappropriate. So I phoned the guy and found out the situation was even worse than the paper reported. This was in Kansas, the great state in which the legislature had recently passed a pro-abortion law that allowed abortion for any reason whatsoever right up to birth. This was the state in which you could not get a glass of wine or a bottle of beer with your dinner in ordinary restaurants but in which you could become a “member” of other restaurants–I think it was $1.00 for an evening’s membership–and get drunk as a skunk. But this was also a state that in 1969 did not require municipalities to recognize labor unions as official bargaining agents. So when the union president was talking tough in support of his men, the safety director could and did regard it as deserving suspension.
I was teaching a college course on Catholic social thought, and perhaps that made me a bit more sensitive to this injustice. At any rate, I told my class that I would be making a few remarks at the city council meeting one afternoon, and at least one of my students came down for the show. I wish I could find the photo that appeared in the paper, and I wish I knew how to get it into this blog, but you will have to use your imagination. They caught me with my mouth open and my finger pointing. It was upsetting to the council members. The next year the college had a new president, and at his first meeting with some council members to assess community support for the college, the first question was, “When are you going to get rid of the ‘perfesser’?” as they called me. Did any good come of it? The firefighter was not immediately reinstated, but he and his wife told me that it really bolstered the morale of the entire department to have a college teacher going to bat for them. A student at the meeting told me it really reaffirmed his faith to see someone confront the council with Catholic social teaching. Anything else? Well, the president reluctantly got rid of me as part of a massive layoff, and that brought me to the Twin Cities where we teamed up with Dr. Konald Prem. Later, the college went under.
Probably the most stupid thing I’ve done from a practical and career perspective was to write my defense and explanation of Humanae Vitae that was published by Alba House in 1970 as Covenant, Christ and Contraception. Today, you cannot imagine the anti-Humanae Vitae atmostphere in the the Church back in 1968-1969. I knew full well that once it was published I would never get a teaching job in a Catholic college except in the smallest and most obscure. I wrote the book not with any hopes of changing things but in the hopes that some future historians might find the book and realize that not everyone had gone along with the massive dissent of the day. There are some things you do because they have to be done.
So, to our friends I say, don’t feel sorry for us. To our enemies and to those in the middle, start to exercise your powers of critical thinking.
To all I express my hope that the Lord will make some good use of these efforts.
John F. Kippley
NFP International
www.nfpandmore.org
Author: Sex and the Marriage Covenant (Ignatius)
Co-author: Natural Family Planning: The Question-Answer Book
(e-book at this website, 2005)