My post of a couple of days ago on Applebee’s restaurant discriminating against breastfed babies has certainly gotten some attention over at Catholic Dads. Unfortunately, the Dads have largely bought into the sexualization of the female breast and as such they collectively think Applebee’s was within their rights. Read some of the ignorant comments here.

Sheila Kippley emailed today notifying my that the NFP director of the USCCB has put out a press release saying that she intends to focus strong advocacy on ecological breastfeeding as a key component of NFP! Sadly, she says, there’s been a good bit of silence in response to the press release, but nonetheless, it’s hopefully going to get moving in the right direction.

Sheila’s husband John posts this to his blog about it:

The release, which is printed in full below, does not represent a policy statement on the part of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. Not yet. Its significance is that it is the first such publicity and advocacy given to breastfeeding by any office of the U.S. bishops. The late Bishop James T. McHugh, former head of the bishops’ Diocesan Develop Plan for Natural Family Planning, was definitely in favor of breastfeeding, and he made the introduction to the address of Pope John Paul II to the papal breastfeeding conference in May 1995. However, we are not aware that he ever made a public statement such as this. If serious breastfeeding advocacy would become an official USCCB policy, it could have widespread beneficial effects for the Church and for all those affected by its health-related activities. Sheila and I are grateful for this initiative by Theresa Notare, and we offer her our public thanks.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

Breast milk is Mother Nature’s “power drink.” Research confirms its nutritional and immunological benefits. Breast milk reduces a baby’s risk of contracting over twenty illnesses, including allergies, asthma, bacterial meningitis, diarrhea, ear infections, inflammatory bowel disease, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, type 1 and type 2 diabetes. And a woman who breastfeeds reaps benefits for her body too. As breastfeeding advocate Sheila Kippley reports, “one study found that a mother reduced her own risk of getting type-2 diabetes by 15% for each year of nursing. If she nursed two babies, each for a year, she had a 30% risk reduction for this disease, and whatever reduction she received remained in effect for 15 years after the birth of her last baby!”
Breastfeeding also builds up the mother-child bond on an emotional and spiritual level. As Pope John Paul II said in a talk to members of the Pontifical Academy of Science in 1995, “this natural way of feeding can create a bond of love and security between mother and child, and enable the child to assert its presence as a person through the interaction with the mother.” So meaningful is the breastfeeding relationship, he added, that “the Psalms use the image of the infant at its mother’s breast as a picture of God’s care for man (cf. Ps 22:9).”
Despite its overwhelming benefits, breastfeeding continues to be little attempted by new mothers in the United States. This is a problem. With our concern for the welfare of the family, the Church can help. Catholic hospitals are in a particularly good position to advise and educate the new mother before and after she gives birth. Diocesan Natural Family Planning classes can take the time to cover basic breastfeeding information.

Rock and roll, hopefully the Bishops will get fully behind this and make it policy. The benefits to mothers, babies, and families will be amazing.

John also spends a little time talking about what might have happened differently if 55 years ago, when Humanae Vitae was promulgated, there had been strong advocacy of breastfeeding by the Bishops.

…what if she had been reached in a pre-marriage program that really advocated the Catholic and healthy tradition of exclusive and frequent breastfeeding for the first six to eight months and continued frequent nursing for at least two years. What if she had given birth at two-year intervals instead of annually? What if she and her husband had learned the rudiments of calendar-temperature rhythm, about the only thing that was somewhat well-known at the time? What if she knew from experience that Catholic teaching was eminently livable?
What if her practice of something approaching ecological breastfeeding and their knowledge of calendar-temperature rhythm was multiplied many thousands of times throughout the more than 10,000 parishes in the States at the time?

In my opinion, Father Charles Curran and his sympathizers would not have any sort of mass following just as they have no following among those practicing chaste NFP today. The difference would be that instead of about 3 percent of Catholic families currently practicing modern NFP, the numbers at that time would have been at least 65 percent. Yes, in 1962 or 1963, a survey indicated that some 62 or 63 percent of Catholic parents still accepted and followed Catholic teaching on birth control, and all they had was calendar rhythm or calendar-temperature rhythm, the latter of which could be highly effective if properly understood and practiced.

This is some great reading. I wish I had a ton of money to give the Kippleys to fund their continued advocacy.