Lent, 2009
Dear friend who reads our blogs,
Thanks very much for opening this blog. We are told that response to blog-appeals is very poor, but we have to try. There’s progress to be reported and much to be done.
• Of very special interest is the progress in Slovakia. Jozef and Simona Predac have 50 couples under instruction in four courses, and in the last two months they conducted nine marriage preparation meetings with 86 couples. Of special interest for long-term development and even for next year, they had a very productive meeting with the bishop who is the Ordinary for the armed forces and who has declared this year to be a “Year of the Family” in this diocese. He invited the Predacs to an April meeting for the formation of priests who serve in the Slovak armed forces, in prisons, and with the police. He also invited them to visit separately the family fellowships of soldiers, policemen and jailors. “We expect this will lead to long-term active cooperation—the bishop emphasized the need for and importance of our work.”
Also of great importance: The Predacs have been invited to develop material for an NFP pilot program of the Slovak Bishops’ Conference for marriage preparation. “Our presentations and texts will be tried out and then used in the whole of Slovakia, in all dioceses for marriage preparation… This year it will run as a ‘trial program’ and next year it is to be offered in all deaneries…” Anyone who understands the difficulty of working through the Church apparatus will appreciate the bishops who are cooperating and enabling these landmark achievements.
• Here in the States, our Denver teaching couple is teaching 30 couples in two courses of 15 each. It certainly helps to be in a diocese where NFP is a marriage requirement. We now have eight Teaching Couples in the States. All of these have previously taught the classic content of our Triple Strand approach to NFP. More “new” user couples want to teach with NFPI, so our next priority is to develop a Teacher Training program.
• The latest version of our online manual was posted in early January. Now titled Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach, it has eight chapters plus an Introduction and an Index for a total of 156 pages. It has charting exercises built into the text, and we enjoyed teaching with it in February. This book will be published soon in two formats. One will be coil-bound for classroom use; the other will have perfect binding for stores and Amazon which does not process coil-bound books.
• A special new feature in The Complete Approach is Chapter 7, “Witness.” Does the inclusion of Catholic morality in an NFP book turn off non-religious readers? The author of the lead entry in this chapter was an atheist when she taught herself NFP from the Fourth Edition of our book, The Art of Natural Family Planning. If you haven’t read “Witness” yet, I encourage you to do so. Just click “NFP Manual” on the Home Page.
Have we ever thanked you adequately? Some of you who are reading this appeal have helped us before; some of you help NFPI every month. Sheila and I really appreciate your support. We know that NFPI is very small, but your support tells us that you believe with us that this cause has reasons for hope. Here are some of those reasons that keep us going.
• The Catholic Church teaches that only the natural methods are morally acceptable, so we know they need to be taught.
• NFP International is the only NFP organization in this country that teaches ecological breastfeeding as a form of natural family planning, so we know that we have something very special to share.
• The Church has called for a new evangelization. We have built that into our new teaching program, and in this NFPI may be unique.
• We receive a wide range of expressions of gratitude. Some thank us for making NFP instruction available cost-free at our website. Others thank us for the full-range of Systematic NFP. Some appreciate the ecological breastfeeding, and others appreciate the moral teaching. We think we are on the right track.
Sheila and I are very grateful for the NFP teachers who have joined our efforts. We are very grateful to you who are making this mission financially possible and who give us hope. Thank you once again.
With the economy always in the news and great concern for the health and human services budget, there will be a greater effort to reduce those costs. We think that the right questions need to be asked in the coming debate. What follows are three paragraphs from Chapter 1 in our new manual.
“How does it affect me if others depart from the biblical norm?
“Try to estimate how much of your tax dollar goes to alleviate the effects of the sexual revolution. Start with the easy stuff—all the money spent on research, medications, and nursing care related to AIDS. Expand that to the funds spent on other sexually transmitted diseases. Consider the increased health costs and mortality that stem from the increased cancer induced by the Pill and other forms of hormonal birth control. Realize that all of this has played a big part in raising the costs of your health insurance. Consider the costs of welfare to support single parents and their children. Take into account the cost of imprisoning criminals who grew up without the influence of a dad who cared. Add in the costs of government programs to promote unnatural forms of birth control and the costs of social services to single-parent families.
“Then realize that this chaos is not going to be resolved in a free country until the majority of free people accept the norm of human nature and not the norm of unnatural forms of birth control.
“Catholic teaching on the marital meaning of the sexual act and against unnatural forms of birth control is not based on manmade rules or discipline. It is based on the very nature of man and woman and on the nature of the sexual act itself” (Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach, p. 21).” (End of quote from manual.)
Current government policy rewards the irresponsible behaviors of the sexual revolution. And it’s been that way for 40 years.
Granted, contributing to NFPI today is not going to change the above tomorrow, but when the above paragraphs become internalized by thousands of young couples every year, some day someone will bring it to the attention of those outside the NFP ghetto. So please help us to reach those thousands each year. And if you have any influence with your political representatives, perhaps you can share these realities.
And now I need to beg. To state the obvious, funding is necessary in order to make NFPI a long-term service to the Church and to the countries where it serves. When we started to work full-time for our former organization in 1974, we had an annual budget of $40,000. That allowed a salary for myself, a part-time secretary, and a part-time person for order processing. Of that amount, two archdioceses had pledged a combined total of $25,000 for each of two years. In terms of 2009 dollars according to a consumer price index website, the 1974 dollars would be respectively $173,913 for the entire budget and $108,225 for the archdiocesan subsidies. Those are not impossible amounts today. If you look at the budgets of various non-profits, these are relatively small amounts. Still, the prospect of having to raise $175,000 annually to open an office with a minimum paid staff, (I will still work as a volunteer) is simply not imaginable right now. That’s what makes it so appealing to support Jozef Predac in Slovakia. Because of the difference in economies, we can support his full-time work for only $20,000 a year. Please help NFPI to continue that support. Without increased donations, we will have to reduce that support or discontinue it altogether. That’s one reason I am begging so hard this Lent. He may be the only person in the world whose job description includes regular visits to bishops and priests to try to persuade them to require a complete NFP course as a normal part of preparation for marriage. And from what you read on page one, you can see he is making real progress!
Our work in the United States has several special problems that make fundraising particularly difficult.
1. Diocesan subsidies are difficult to find. Many dioceses already fund an NFP program, limited as it may be, and some dioceses are short of funds because they did not emphasize chastity, including priestly chastity, 30 and 40 years ago. You know the story.
2. A significant majority of Catholics, quite possibly including some who have great influence in foundations, do not believe and do not practice according to the norms of Humanae Vitae. Some time ago I was practically kicked out of the office of a local secular foundation by a gentleman who identified himself as an anti-Humanae Vitae Catholic. I didn’t mention the encyclical or religion, but he certainly did.
3. Closely related to the above is the fact that our pro-Humanae Vitae apostolate is the only work in the Church and the culture that is actually opposed by others in the Church and the culture. No one is opposed to the work of feeding and educating children, helping the poor, and healing the sick and the handicapped. No one is teaching dissent from the social justice teaching of the Church. But the dissenters from Humanae Vitae have been in charge of Catholic parishes, schools, colleges, and social services for some 40 years, and the orthodox have been silent for the most part. Further, despite the fact that exclusive breastfeeding for even six months could save the lives of 1,500,000 babies each year if universally adopted, we are learning of a widespread Catholic cultural resistance to the idea of breastfeeding at all, to say nothing about ecological breastfeeding.
So please help us. First of all, please help NFPI with your prayers. Please pray every day for our work as part of a prayer for a rebirth of chastity, for a stop to contraception and abortion, and for a culture of life. Ours is a spiritual work of mercy as well as a corporal work of mercy, and it is not going to succeed without lots of prayer support.
Second, please help us financially. Please make a gift that will truly be a Lenten sacrifice. Please remember that every $5.00 helps. If you are still employed, even if hard pressed, and can afford five or ten dollars, please send it along with your prayers. If you can afford those bread and butter gifts of $25 to $100, please do what you can. If you can help us with larger gifts of $250, $500, $1,000 or $2,500, may God give you the satisfaction of knowing that you are making a significant contribution toward the support of our efforts both here in the States and in Eastern Europe.
Thank you for reading our appeal. Please give it your prayerful consideration. May God continue to bless you and your family, and may He bless you richly for your generosity. I thank you for whatever you do to help this apostolate.
In his service,
John F. Kippley (for both of us)
President
www.NFPandmore.org
Natural Family Planning International Inc. is a 501-C-3 not-for-profit organization. Donations are tax-deductible.
Please make your check payable to NFP International.
Please send it to NFP International, P.O Box 11216, Cincinnati OH 45211