My wife was at the La Leche League International Conference last week in Chicago (any other readers out there make it to the conference?) and spoke for a while with a person with connections to Couple to Couple League International, on the changes going on at CCL.

CCL, by their own admission, is going through growing pains right now. As they explain on their website, they are overhauling their teaching materials because

we have seen a marked change in our audience, that is, the couples who attend our NFP class series. Twenty, or even 10 years ago, the classes were largely made up of married couples who were seeking NFP information on their own because they already had a commitment to living out the teachings of the Church. Now, our classes have many more engaged couples than in the past and some of them are attending solely because of a marriage preparation requirement. While that is good news in many respects, it also means that our teachers have couples who may not really care to learn NFP, and some may already be using contraception or living together. This change in the class environment demands a change in the way we deliver our message, and Pope John Paul II has provided us the best means to reach out to these couples.

So, that means they’re working on a new set of materials. It also means that they are pulling out a good deal of information on ecological breastfeeding from the basic class series, and doing supplemental classes on breastfeeding and natural child spacing, as well as premenopause. They do point out that they’re not eliminating any and all talk of EBF from the basic class series:

Not at all. We’re actually creating supplemental classes on both the postpartum time and premenopause, and this decision was based on feedback from our Teaching Couples. What we are moving into supplemental classes is the very practical lessons on how to determine your fertility at these times of life. For example, the supplemental classes will answer questions such as: When after childbirth should I start taking my fertility observations? How do I handle patches of on-and-off mucus? What kind of cycle changes can I expect at the time of premenopause, and how do I approach my fertility observations at this time? Our teachers have found that spending time on the specifics of using NFP at these times to classes of largely engaged couples was not working well as these scenarios are not their immediate interest.

The topics of breastfeeding and premenopause will still be addressed in the regular series, much to the same extent they are now. Regarding ecological breastfeeding, it is mentioned in all of the classes of the new program, but is a focus of Class 3 where they will learn its specifics and its impact on the return of fertility. They will come to understand the difference between ecological breastfeeding and “restricted” breastfeeding, they’ll hear the benefits of breastfeeding for both mother and baby, and they’ll learn that some couples are happy to space their family through breastfeeding alone.

So teaching about ecological breastfeeding and encouraging it remains part of the main class series, and what moves to the supplemental class is the practical application. The supplemental class reviews the above concepts from the main course, then moves on to the mechanics of fertility observation at this time, practice with interpreting charts from postpartum women, etc.

Interestingly, it seems that some of the vibe that my wife got from her conversation is that CCL is in fact trying to downplay ecological breastfeeding because it’s not Catholic enough. People could in fact use their babies to avoid fertility and therefore future pregnancies. Of course this is illogical - the whole point of natural child spacing is that it’s natural - when mom’s services are no longer as vital to the current baby, fertility returns because the body is theoretically ready to provide for the next one (and you can’t force a kid to nurse enough to keep your fertility in check.) For that matter, sympto-thermal NFP can easily be used to avoid pregnancy forever…so it seems a little twisted up.

Interestingly, it’s notable that CCL is no longer selling Sheila Kippley’s Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing or Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood. Also, as noted some time ago in this very blog, the Kippleys have started a new organization, Natural Family Planning International at which they have free charts, a free online manual to learning NFP, and a ton of other great information.

While CCL’s website is reassuring, it’s interesting that what we heard from an insider is different. We have financially supported CCL in the past, but it could be rather difficult to continue doing this if they are going to omit a key part of NFP. Their monthly Family Foundations magazine is also becoming a bit shallower and doesn’t talk about breastfeeding as much as it did 5 years ago when we start receiving it. It also doesn’t have nearly the same “attitude” as it did then, when there was more of an attachment parenting angle to it - of course if you take out breastfeeding, you preclude at least some AP also. This is clearly going to be a developing story over the next several months.

In the combox to this post, Sheila Kippley has left some notes of interest.  Also, I invite you to check out posts to her blog specific to this subject by clicking here.  It looks like indeed CCL is fleeing eco-breastfeeding and instead talking more about the (ineffective) LAM method…though their website continues to have a great deal of information on EBF.

As we all know, it is liturgically and canonically impossible for a woman to be ordained a priestess in the RCC.  As we also know, there are a number of women, mostly fifty-somethings who like boating and wearing red ponchos, who think they are ordained.  Here’s a story on what happens in the real life of these priestesses.

No spoilers in the combox, please.

From a group of seminarians from the Insitute for Priestly Formation in Omaha comes this excellent video which was produced on the anniversary of Humanae Vitae.

Click the video to leave the seminarians an encouraging comment!

UPDATE: Commenter Dave tells us that there’s a second episode out as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti9ZBGRf9qc

Also, there’s a third one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0UomDP6ExM 

And there is a good comment thread going at The Curt Jester on this same topic. With commenters like Hoodlum out there, I am glad I’m relatively irrelevant as a blogger.

This evening I had the opportunity to participate in a gathering (which I will not detail here, draw your own conclusions about that.)  During the course of this event, which was of a group of Christian protestant men, one of them talked about how he had grown over the last fwe months.  He said, it’s one thing to “get saved” - to have the experience of coming to Christ.  It’s another thing in your everyday life to be “being saved” as the Lord develops us, refines us, and prepares us for eternity with him.  As he said, “I’ve been being saved a lot this summer.”

I felt like jumping up and inviting him to swim the Tiber!  Clearly, this is a guy who has a pretty Catholic view of salvation, not overly fixated on a single experience of salvation as so much of Protestantism (particularly fundamentalism) is, but recognizes that every day is indeed a process of salvation that continues on for one’s entire life.   Naturally, as I know my audience, I try and avoid the word “saved” because it makes it sound like I am pushing an assurance of salvation position.  But this person’s statement was timely and intelligent.  I wonder if he knows how Catholic it is?

John Jansen, contributor to the Catholic Dads blog has a great post on this, the anniversary of the release of Humanae Vitae

I first read Humanae Vitae ten years ago, during my sophomore year in college. I was prompted to do so because at the time, I had issues with the Church’s teaching against contraception. I had always been strongly against abortion, but I also believed that birth control could be helpful to the pro-life movement’s goal of eradicating abortion.

(That, and I gullibly believed that “overpopulation” was a problem. Thanks be to God, I soon thereafter discovered that this hand-wringing, gloom-and-doom nonsense was just that. I also had yet to discover G. K. Chesterston, who, in characteristic wit, managed in one sentence to expose the insanity of the Chicken Littles who seriously believe that “overpopulation” is somehow causing the sky to fall: “The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him whether he is the surplus population, or if he is not, how he knows he is not.”)

Read the rest!

Just in, we have a story in which B16 says that the tug-of-war between creationist and evolutionist philosophies is absurd:

Pope Benedict XVI said the debate raging in some countries — particularly the United States and his native Germany — between creationism and evolution was an “absurdity,” saying that evolution can coexist with faith.

“They are presented as alternatives that exclude each other,” the pope said. “This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”

He said evolution did not answer all the questions: “Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question, ‘Where does everything come from?’”

Unfortunately, the Pontiff then began spouting some environmentalist talking points, some of which come off sounding just a tad neo-pagan (as does much of the radical environmental movement):

Benedict also said the human race must listen to “the voice of the Earth” or risk destroying its very existence.
…
“We all see that today man can destroy the foundation of his existence, his Earth,” he said in a closed door meeting with 400 priests on Tuesday. A full transcript of the two-hour event was issued on Wednesday.

I have no problem with conservation, it just sounds a bit too insidious when the Pope says the same thing that the radical enviro-nuts say.

More 

Verizon might be installing a cross-shaped cell tower in New Jersey.

And it’s definitely not often that a town is forced to balance its respect for a religious symbol against a cell phone company’s reliability, but that’s exactly what’s happening in Pequannock Township.

At Bible Christian Fellowship Church, there is a proposal to develop a 100-foot cell phone tower that would be disguised as a cross and provided by Verizon. Not everyone in the town has dialed into the idea.

“As a Christian, I wouldn’t want to do anything that would denigrate the idea of a cross,” said Pequannock resident Walt Coyne.

Talk about offensive. Now they’re going to want one in the shape of a menorah or a star of David or something over in the Jewish part of town. I love the phrasing on the part of Mr. Coyne: “the idea of a cross.” Wonder what he thinks of a crucifix?

As for the tower itself, Verizon Wireless spokesman David Samberg tells CBS 2 HD that their locations are not chosen randomly, but are specific to network coverage needs. In his statement, he says cross-like towers don’t “happen that often, and it’s not a growing trend. In fact, stealth antennae are more expensive to build. But it’s something we always consider when it makes sense.”

Y’know, my mother-in-law was at a Catholic event of some sort, and there were vendors selling religious paraphernalia. She was looking at a cross, and the vendor explained that, “we have this kind and also the kind with the little man on it.” Clearly didn’t know much about the product being sold.

What do you think? Cross cell phone tower? If this was Fark.com, I would start a photoshop contest where you could submit images of various other religious symbols being made into cell towers.  Heck, you can use the combox to do it if you’d like.

More 

Mary Major Fan from the Mary Major Blog commented here after reading my coming home story over at the Closed Cafeteria.  In the comment, MMajorFan made a couple of brilliant points about how cradle Catholics don’t have an “ajcithatplas” moment in their lives because to a Catholic every day is a new day to “ajcithatplas.”

You are feeling a bit bemused and bewildered by now, so here’s what ajcithatplas means.  It means, “asking Jesus Christ into their hearts as their personal Lord and Savior.”  This is likely one of the most common Protestant (esp. fundamentalist) expressions, which refers to a single experience of salvation that one must have in order to be saved.  Any time there’s an altar call (or “invitation”) that’s what one’s invited to do.  For cradle Catholics who are brought up in the faith, as well as for folks like me, who’ve always been in Church, there’s not a single moment I can point to when my life underwent a major change because of accepting Christ - He’s always been in my heart.

Of course, 4 years ago my life did undergo a major change when I came home to His Church…

Kudos to MMajorFan for the new acronym!

Definitive Catholic blogger Gerald over at the Closed Cafeteria is asking for submissions of vocation/conversion stories.  I’ll be submitting mine….you might like to do likewise!

You might think I am just trying to get attention with that headline, but unfortunately, it’s true.  Courtesy ABCNews comes this nugget of joy.  I know you’re shocked that such a thing would be said in a speech to none other than the evil Planned Parenthood.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is “age-appropriate,” is “the right thing to do.”

…

Speaking to a young woman who asked a question about sex education, Obama said, “You, as a peer, can have enormous power over your age cohort but you’ve got to have some support from the schools. You certainly should not have to be fighting each and every instance by providing accurate information outside of the classroom because inside the classroom the only thing that can be talked about is abstinence.”

Then, similar to any pro-abort politician, Obama trotted out the classic “I’m personally opposed” line.  Here’s the windup…

 ”Keep in mind: I honor and respect young people who choose to delay sexual activity,” Obama continued. “I’ve got two daughters, and I want them to understand that sex is not something casual. That’s something that we definitely want to communicate and should be part of any curriculum.

And the big “BUT:”

But we also know that when the statistics tell us that nearly half of 15 to 19 year olds are engaging in sexual activity, that for us to leave them in ignorance is potentially consigning them to illness, pregnancy, poverty, and in some cases, death.”

In other words, it’s our fault if they have sex and get sick/pregnant/etc.  Predictably, Obama’s campaign went into damage control mode, with a spokesperson “clarifying,:”

he “does not support teaching explicit sex education to children in kindergarten. . . The legislation in question was a state Senate measure last year that aimed to update Illinois’ sex education standards with ‘medically accurate’ information . . . ‘Nobody’s suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it,’ [emphasis added] Obama said. ‘If they ask a teacher ‘where do babies come from,’ that providing information that the fact is that it’s not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that’s going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards.’”

What do you think about that “the way that we think about it” line?  Apparently we all think about sex in explicit, graphic, hardcore, wham-bam-thankya-ma’am terms, and Obama’s trying to show us the light - that sex can be thought of in some other way.  Who knew?  Surely, of course, that other way doesn’t involve the beauty and sacredness of the marriage act as a dual-purpose activity, that of unifying and procreating.

Could be that PP needs some more business…gotta teach the kids how to have sex earlier so that they can perform more abortions!  After all, the earlier you get started having sex, the more abortions you can receive…

The Obama camp also pointed out that there was an opt-out provision in the legislation he had supported, so parents could keep their kids from having their innocence violated at such a young age.  One last tidbit:

[the legislation] also envisioned teaching kindergarteners about “inappropriate touching,”

Is there any such thing as inappropriate touching when kids are being taught pre-puberty about how much fun one can have with such touching?

Good news:

Despite Obama’s support, the legislation was not enacted.

Another good reason to homeschool.  Government schools can take over for mommy and daddy so they don’t have to do a thing (and too many of them aren’t doing anything but allowing the government to take over for them.)

Read it all.