Barack Obama was campaigning recently and explained how he would educate his daughters…he said he’d teach them values and morals, but if they made a mistake, he didn’t want them punished with a baby or an STD.  Apparently, he isn’t interested in teaching them the value of personal responsibility or natural consequences.  They need to have an “out.”  Hmm…think that you might repeat the same mistake over and over if there’s no consequence?  Also telling is that he considers a baby and and STD to be on a similar plane.

Don’t believe me?  Here’s your video clip.

Now, I am as happy as anyone to see an allegedly Catholic school talking about any type of NFP.  But, it’s important to make it clear that, #1, this is not a new discovery, and #2, this is not as effective or as useful as the sympto-thermal method of NFP that the Kippleys have been teaching for 30 years, first under the auspices of the Couple to Couple League, and now in their new organization, NFP International.  These cycle beads only work for women with cycles of 26-32 days.  Sympto-thermal works for all sorts of weird cycle durations.  And, all the cycle beads do is help you to guess when you are fertile provided you have a normal cycle length of 26-32 days.  To avoid pregnancy, it requires a period of abstinence of about 10 days (which is enough to run off some folks right away.) Contrast that with sympto-thermal which could see an abstinence period as brief as 5 days.  And, of course, if you have one cycle where ovulation is just a little late or a little early, you become a parent – with sympto-thermal, you’re looking for actual signs of ovulation – so it’s more effective.  It’s not guessing.

Georgetown ought to be out there promoting the Kippleys’ method which has already been tested for 30+ years showing an effective rate of 99% under perfect use!   But then, there’s apparently some reason to hide sympto-thermal.  No money in it, I guess.

And one more thing…until Georgetown stops using the word “risk” with the word “pregnancy,” they haven’t returned to true Catholic teaching.

So, go watch the video… 

In America, we still struggle with a woman openly nursing in public.  A few weeks ago, I was in public with my friend–a new mom–and every time she nursed she placed a blanket over her child’s head.  I asked her why she was covering herself and she said “It makes people so uncomfortable to see a baby connected to a female breast.”  She couldn’t have said it better.  In American culture, boobs are purely for sex so we really have a difficult time when we see an innocent child connected to that boob.  Some women I know so hate nursing their hungry baby in public, THEY DON’T DO IT!  They bring formula to Church with them.  How many Catholic women at Mass have I seen pop a bottle in their babies mouth when they are hungry?  Far more than seeing a nursing mom at Mass.

Gerald at Closed Cafeteria exhibited some of his ignorance (borne in part of the fact that he does not have any kids yet) with his comments, and of course the comments on the post are a mixed bag comprising those who say “breastfeeding is great and should be done unashamedly” to those who say “breastfeeding is okay as long as I don’t know it’s happening in my general vicinity.”

The rapid spread in Latin America of the virus that causes AIDS is made worse by the Roman Catholic Church’s stand against using condoms, a U.N. official said on Monday.

…

“In Latin America the use of condoms has been demonized, but if they were used in every relation I guarantee the epidemic would be resolved in the region,” said Alberto Stella, the UNAIDS Coordinator for Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

Isn’t that a brilliant comment? If condoms were used in every relation, the epidemic would be resolved. That would be because the population would all die out without reproducing. Oh well, I guess we could claim victory over AIDS if there were no people around to contract AIDS. On top of that, there’s the numerous studies showing how AIDS remains rampant even in areas with high condom use rates. Hmm. You might think that maybe the solution would be to just not have promiscuous sex at all.

The Curt Jester points out:

If only the Catholic Church was a powerful as they infer and that Catholics are as obedient as they assume. Somehow we are suppose to believe that many Catholics won’t use condoms, yet somehow they will commit fornication and adultery. I am pretty sure the Church teaches that these are grave sins regardless of whether you are using a condom or not. Final impenitence of these acts will send you to hell regardless. Do they think that there is a deeper circle of hell for those who use condoms in addition to these other acts?

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Video #4 ; Video #5 ; and Video #6

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.

She got a lawyer to draw up a letter to that Applebee’s location, which was ignored.  A month later, she had another sent to that company that manages that Applebee’s location.  The management company responded: “we regret that Ms. Ryan left without being served and would like the opportunity to personally invite her to return” …. “we are also considering keeping blankets in the restaurants for use by breast-feeding mothers that may not have them readily available as a result of this incident.”  Talk about not getting it.  We’re sorry we discriminated against you, now please come back to our store so we can discriminate against you again.

Anyway, she is gaining increasing media attention and is having a nurse-out at that location (and throughout the country, additional protests are being planned at other Applebee’s locations.)  The management company spokesperson apparently commented that she must have a hidden agenda since she carries a copy of breastfeeding law with her.  Applebee’s corporate responded to her that the manager acted in a “lawful” manner.  The company is apparently not interested in even finding out what the law on the subject is in the localities they serve.

Read more about it here! 

Media attention here  (be sure to read the comments, most are supportive of the baby’s right to nourisment but some of from idiots)

 “re-examine how they might maximise enrolment of Catholic students”.

Also, they should:

increase the proportion of school staff who are “practising and knowledgeable Catholics”.

The general trend here in the southeastern USA, of course, is that Catholic schools are becoming more and more elitist as the tuition keeps going up.  Whereas it used to be a community that was mostly Catholic, living in neighborhoods together, going to Church together, and going to school together, now it’s much more scattered – people come together at the school from all over the place, and there are Catholic and non-Catholic students (nothing wrong with this, but it’s ironic that my local parish school is 55% Catholic.

Meanwhile, Catholics who are committed to Church teachings on the family can’t afford to send their kids for $3000 or more per year (per student.)  There are places in the plains states where it’s much more affordable, but not where I live.  Homeschooling, here we come!

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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.

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.