Join us for a special day with other like minded women and mature teen girls. There will be time for Mass, Confessions, Lenten talks, Meditation, Rosary, and Stations of the Cross. A Priest of the Miles Christi Religious Order will be the speaker and Confessor in the Morning.

Fr. Charlie Becker will offer Mass, an afternoon talk, and Confessions.

Registration begins at 8:00 am. The retreat day will begin at 8:30 and end at 3:00 pm. You may bring your own lunch or eat in the hospital cafeteria. Babies are welcome.

Cost: $10 per family. Please pay at the door. Seating is limited.

Register at: virginia.mann@sbcglobal.net If you have questions, call Virginia Mann, 847-392-2964.

A bullet pass for NFP

(Jan. 27, 2012) While much journalistic ink has been spilled on quarterback standout Tim Tebow for publicly sharing his Christian faith recently, it’s good to hear that another football star is complimenting Natural Family Planning and other solid values.

San Diego Chargers’ quarterback Philip Rivers is passing not only the pigskin, but also his faith and family values. Although the Chargers finished with an 8-8 record this season, Rivers says he is learning through adversity.

“We didn’t make the playoffs, and I didn’t have my best season, personally. However, I’m thankful for the adversity we experienced because if we take it in the right way, it can help us next season,” he told the National Catholic Register recently.

Bond in the Faith

Rivers, who grew up in the Bible Belt, also talks about his Catholic faith. “Our bond in the faith is the foundation of our marriage. San Diego has a very solid Catholic community, which has been great for my wife and kids to make friends and be supported in the faith.

“This is very encouraging, especially when it comes to living out teachings of the Church that are not as popular as others. The most noticeable of these is being open to life, or what is commonly known as natural family planning (NFP). When you see others making the same commitment to the faith as you are, it can only strengthen you.

Children Do Grow Up

“Because of the commitment that’s required, a lot of people are particularly afraid of the baby stages of raising children,” Rivers says. “It’s easy to talk yourself into thinking you just can’t handle all the work that it takes. What I tell people, though, is that the children do grow up; they aren’t going to be in need of constant supervision and assistance forever.”

Rivers and his wife Tiffany have six children.

Read the Register article (limited time availability), “Catholic Quarterback Philip Rivers Passes On the Faith.”

Why don't they try the natural means?

(Dec. 16, 2011) With the celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus this month, we call to mind the joys of having children. But we also acknowledge the anguish of those who have trouble conceiving, and the various challenges with which they are faced.

Natural Family Planning users know that the knowledge of a woman’s fertility on a daily basis is a great help in optimizing conception for those who have at least marginal fertility. OB-GYNs know about the symptoms of fertility, but rarely know about the details and accuracy of the Sympto-Thermal Method.

So do someone a favor this month and let them know about the fertility-enhancing effects of NFP.

Natural Procreative Technology

In addition, infertile couples often look into in-vitro fertilization (IVF), and aren’t aware that the first step toward solving their problems is to learn and use an effective method of NFP, and then, if they still have a problem, look into treating infertility by surgically improving the natural processes of conception with Natural Procreative Technology.

Dr. Thomas Hilgers, of the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, is probably the most successful practitioners of this approach, which he calls NaProTechnology.

NaProTechnology is even more successful, and much cheaper, than IVF, with its disturbing moral problems. We wrote about this on the CCL Chicago website at “Natural Infertility Treatment Tops IVF.”

It’s amazing how a natural approach proves to be a more effective approach to treating infertility than IVF, and yet it’s almost unknown because of the aggressive marketing efforts of the IVF profiteers.

Read about the IVF industry and Catholic moral teaching about treating infertility in a recentCatholic World Report article, “Anything Goes - Reproductive Technology Grows Ever More Disturbing.“

On the whole, couples want to make it work

(Nov. 22, 2011) Common sense, manners and just plain effort can do a lot to save a marriage, or make a good one better, says popular clinical psychologist and radio call-in talk show host Ray Guarendi.

Guarendi, known on the speaker circuit, brings a wry sense of humor to his books, which center on family life and raising children. He now offers ten steps to a happy marriage in his new book, Marriage: Small Steps, Big Rewards.

Guarendi finds that except for big problems, such as major psychiatric disorders or alcoholism, “on the whole the husband and wife are decent people who would like their marriage to work…. Their problems have developed over time, as they drifted apart or as life brought more stresses.”

Dramatically heal

This father of ten children says, “In my experience most marriages, no matter how near the point of no return they may seem to be, can not only pull back from the edge but also dramatically heal and grow in intimacy.”

He says that the success of those who stick out the problems of troubled marriages are those who “try to figure out what went wrong, what’s still going wrong, and how to remedy what they can.”

Small but necessary changes

If you ask these couples their success “you’ll hear how two people, and sometimes only one, determined to make small but highly consequential changes in their attitudes and actions toward each other.”

Here are the ten steps, as chapters of his book: “Say I’m Sorry,” “Don’t say it,” “Listen a Minute,” “Ask a Few Questions,” “Accept It,” “Dump the D Word,” “Use Your Manners,” “Protect,” “Make a List,” and “Add a Touch.”

Read the National Catholic Register review, “Marriage Saver,” or read parts of his book at Amazon.com. The book can be ordered from Servant Books/St. Anthony Messenger Press.

He warns, “Nuturing a thriving natural culture of marriage is critical for society…. Defining marriage as simply a union of consenting parties will change the core meaning of marriage in the public square….”

Great going, bishop. We hope people will listen.

"Rhythm?" — what's dat?

For at least forty years, it’s been making  NFP users utter a weary cry - hearing the word “rhythm” used by a major media outlet when talking about Natural Family Planning (NFP). But this time, when the popular Psychology Today uttered the “R” word, it caused such an clamor among its readers that the magazine issued a retraction in its online version.

Within 24 hours of its publication of “The Real Reason Why the Rhythm Method Doesn’t Work?” the article drew the fire of a slew of angry readers, with such headlines as “How outdated and disingenuous to lump NFP in with RM!” and “Please correct major inaccuracies.”

Good Gracious

One anonymous writer complained, “I really, sincerely thought people KNEW that the rhythm method was NOT NFP. Good gracious, NFP is scientifically backed, scientifically proven to both abstain and achieve pregnancy…. I’m disappointed that an article like this was even allowed to be published because it promotes ignorance (as in, lack of knowledge) about fertility.”

The article’s author, Jena Pincott, added a retraction at the end of the article and acknowledged that “NFP includes cervical mucus, temperature data, and other forms of fertility monitoring that are much more accurate than the rhythm method.”

The Earth Is Flat

Nevertheless, it is unnerving to see what is either a single-minded campaign on the part of the media to malign NFP, or a thickheadedness that calls to mind an image of a caveman crawling out of his dark home and urging us to believe, “the earth is flat, the earth is flat.”

The story mentioned that the city officials found more than two dozen pharmaceuticals that are passing through the city’s water treatment facilities and consumed by seven million people in the city and surrounding suburbs.

The rising specter of birth control hormones in the nation’s water supply has long been known by natural family planning organizations such as the Couple to Couple League, but this may be the first time a major news organization is exposing the fallout of the birth control pill revolution.

Although the Tribune story did not mention the word birth control or contraception by name, it said in its Aug. 7 story that,

“the Tribune found trace amounts of pharmaceuticals, residue from personal care products and unregulated industrial chemicals in local tap water. Substances found in the city’s latest tests include the sex hormones testosterone and progesterone….”

For the complete story, read “Odd chemicals turn up in drinking water.”

NFP is a legitimate form of child spacing.

(Aug. 24, 2011) If the federal government requires health insurance plans to cover contraceptives, shouldn’t it also require coverage for learning NFP?

Dr. Denise Hunnell, writing in HLI America, suggests, “In addition to conscience protection I would also propose that coverage for training in Natural Family Planning be included in the mandated coverage.”
She also reviews the U.S. Bishops’ opposition to this elective type of health coverage as a violation of conscience.

“For the record,” she also says, “I am uncomfortable lumping NFP with contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization…. The Institute of Medicine and Department of Health and Human Services made a glaring mistake in declaring contraceptives to be a mandated preventive service, primarily because pregnancy is not a disease that needs to be prevented. Fertility is not a disorder that needs to be ‘cured.’  My proposal does not right that mistake: it simply prevents the mistake from being compounded by the exclusion of a legitimate and scientifically-based form of family planning.”

Read Dr. Hunnell’s full story