The Couple to Couple League will unveil its updated natural family planning program and materials during the convention at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway in late June.
The changes will hopefully appeal to a younger audience who is used to colorful media presentations, iPods and the Internet and who want simpler rules to follow for natural family planning, CCL executive director Andy Alderson said during a telephone interview from his office in Cincinnati.
“We have really tried to add some spice,” he said.
The materials will include a new DVD presentation for users, Web-based training for teachers and users and a new book. Materials will incorporate Pope John Paul II’s teaching on the theology on the body. The number of classes has been reduced from four to three in order to address couples’ busy schedules, Alderson said.
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The new program will be available to new participants in October.
Alderson said previously many of the couples who attended the four sessions of NFP classes were older couples who already “bought in” to the concept. Now some dioceses, including Denver and Fargo, N.D., and some pastors require engaged couples to attend the classes before they get married. Many of these couples are not interested in learning about NFP.
“Quite frankly, we have couples who don’t want to be there, but they have to be there, said Alderson, a former teaching couple with his wife Giselle in North Little Rock.
Alderson said teaching couples also have to be more persuasive with the participants.
“They are talking about what effect it has had on their marriage,” he said. “They are witnessing.”
The Couple to Couple League was formed in 1971 in response to Pope Paul VI’s statement against unnatural forms of birth control in the encyclical “Humanae Vitae.” CCL was started as a Catholic organization, but it is now open to couples of all faiths who want a natural, effective and safe way to plan for their family. Today it is the largest NFP provider in the United States and is used in 23 other countries.
Currently, there are about 1,000 active couples teaching the method as well as 600 promoter couples who assist with advertising the classes and finding venues for sessions.
“Our greatest challenge is getting people in our classes,” Alderson said. “To me that is the hard work. The promotion is the hard work.”
Before joining CCL in September 2003 Alderson was a lieutenant colonel and command pilot in the U.S. Air Force. He and his wife Giselle were first stationed at the Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville from 1988 to 1991. They returned in 2000 and planned to retire in the state. The couple and their four children, now ages 5 to 15, attended Immaculate Conception Church in North Little Rock.
It was in Arkansas where the Aldersons were introduced to NFP in 1991 and where Andy Alderson made the decision to convert to Catholicism in 2000.
“NFP was the one thing that opened my eyes to the Catholic Church,” he said. “I used to think (NFP) was a Catholic thing to do … The experience led me to the faith, not the other way around.”
After retiring from the military in 2003 Andy Alderson took a leap of faith and decided to move his family to Cincinnati to volunteer for CCL.
“I felt called to work with the Couple to Couple League more,” he said.
During that time, the executive director position opened up and Alderson was hired.
The Aldersons are still involved as a teaching couple in the Cincinnati area.
“I love teaching,” he said. “We still teach. That is where we get the greatest satisfaction.”
Alderson said the convention in Arkansas would offer him the opportunity to visit friends and parishioners from North Little Rock.
“It was definitely a difficult decision to move,” he said. “It was like our home for us. We really think of Arkansas that way.”
More information on the new program and convention in Conway is available at www.ccli.org.
Convention to feature speakers on chastity, pornography
The Couple to Couple League’s national convention in Conway June 25 to 28 isn’t just for couples who teach and use natural family planning, chairwoman Kathy Nauman said.
Kathy and her husband Tom are the local “chair couple” for the biennial convention at the University of Central Arkansas. More than 900 people, including 400 children, are planning to attend. Twenty-six priests and deacons also are registered for Clergy Day June 27.
Most of the couples who attend are teaching the sympto-thermal method of NFP that CCL promotes, but many other Catholics will find interesting presentations on morality and family issues, Nauman said. This year’s theme, “Called to Serve,” is taken from Romans 12:6-8.
One well-known speaker is Steve Wood, founder of St. Joseph’s Covenant Keepers and author of “Christian Fatherhood.” Wood, who was an evangelical pastor before converting with his family to Catholicism in 1990, has addressed fatherhood issues at conferences and on EWTN television shows. At 3:30 p.m. June 26 he will address “Raising Godly Children in an Ungodly World.” He also will speak at 9 a.m. June 27 on “How to Help Families Break Free from the Plague of Pornography.”
Another popular speaker is Mary-Louise Kurey, the director of the Respect Life Office in the Archdiocese of Chicago. She has spoken to more than 200,000 teens and young adults about chastity and pro-life issues. At 9 a.m. June 28 she will talk about “Confronting Tough Decisions about Sex.”
Other national speakers will talk about theology of the body, Internet safety, responsible parenthood, premenopause and breastfeeding.
The opening Mass will be celebrated by Father John Antony at 4 p.m. June 25 in the Reynolds Performance Hall.
Nauman said local Catholics are invited to attend the convention for a half-day for $25 or full day for $50 to hear selected speakers. The full convention is $155 for a family or $130 a person. Childcare and meals are extra. Vendors will be selling Catholic books, T-shirts and religious goods. To register, call Tom Parks at (479) 631-2652 or e-mail him at ccl2006@swbell.net.
The convention is held every two years at a Catholic or public university. Universities are chosen because they have conference facilities and areas for outdoor activities as well as inexpensive dormitory rooms for lodging, Nauman said.
Nauman said the convention has always been family friendly. Children from 3 to 18 years old are cared for by volunteers who have age-appropriate activities planned, including a rock climbing wall and a visit from the Game and Fish Commission’s mobile aquarium.
“They are going to have a great time,” she said. “We will cater to the children. We spend a lot of time and money on them.”
The love and care shown for babies and toddlers is also a high priority. Presentations are purposefully quiet.
“We do not clap,” Nauman said. “We have the CCL wave. Because babies are sleeping, we just wave our hands (after a presenter is done). If you have 200 people in there, it will wake up a sleeping baby.”
The “rock and restroom” is available for breastfeeding mothers.
“We have rocking chairs in the restrooms,” Nauman said.
The Naumans, members of the St. John Latin Mass Community in North Little Rock, have been teaching NFP to couples in central Arkansas for 25 years. They will be honored during the convention for this milestone.
The couple has five children and one grandchild. They said CCL conventions are where they meet new friends and reconnect with old friends.
“Some of our best friends we have met in the back of the room rocking a baby,” Nauman said.
