Principles of the Couple to Couple League

• THE CREATOR of the universe and the Lord of Life has created marriage for the mutual sanctification and growth in love of husband and wife, and for the procreation of children to be raised in the ways of the Lord.
• The embrace of sexual intercourse is intended by God to be a renewal of the couple's own marriage covenant, to be a reaffirmation of the very purposes of marriage. Therefore, sexual intercourse is intended by the Author of love and life for building marital love and for the procreation of children.
• Adultery, fornication, and homosexual acts are contrary to the order of creation.
• Young people in any form of sexuality education must be instructed about the natural meaning of sex.
• Young people must be encouraged to be chaste; they should be instructed in both the practical and the moral-religious reasons for chastity.
• Married couples are called to be generous in the service of life.
• Married couples are not required to have as many children as may be physically possible.
• When Christian prudence leads a couple to conclude that they should delay or space pregnancy, or keep their family at its present size, they can practice chaste natural family planning during the fertile times. Since breastfeeding is normally the best care for the baby, and when appropriate for the family, it may be used to space children. Ecological breastfeeding can be an appropriate exercise of responsible parenthood; it is not just a child spacing technique.
• Natural family planning is the best approach to family planning in every respect — health, morality, and in the development of married love.
• It is contrary to the order of creation to use unnatural ways of birth control. These include abortion, sterilization, and contraceptive behavior, e.g., using such anti-conception or anti-implantation drugs, chemicals and devices, or behaviors such as withdrawal, masturbation, or sodomistic acts. The use of drugs or devices that prevent the continuation of newly conceived life constitutes the grievous immorality of abortion.
• Natural family planning is an art which needs to be learned; it is a humanizing art because it utilizes the human powers of observation, analysis, and interpretation, and cooperative decision making.
• The natural signs of fertility provide data accurate enough so that a well-instructed couple can achieve an efficiency of self-regulation that ranks with the most effective means of contraception.
• "Natural" has to do with what is in accord with the very being of man and woman as creatures made in the image and likeness of God.
• "Natural" does not mean doing what comes naturally in the sense of the easiest nor most convenient.
• Sexual activity is habit forming; couples need the help of God in placing the sexual drive at the service of authentic married love.
• Every adequately instructed couple can develop fertility awareness. The right of the couple to decide what to do with this information must be respected. Thus a CCL Teaching Couple may not tell a couple when to have or not to have coitus or tell a woman when to wean her baby. CCL representatives offer personal recommendations and suggestions only when asked. And, most importantly, they support the couple's own natural family planning program.
• Children are to be accepted as a gift from God, whether asked for or not, and are to be loved for their own sake.
• Technological reproduction which depersonalizes the act of human procreation as an act of married love is contrary to the order of creation.
• Involvement in causes, including our own, should always respect the priorities of family needs.

Thank you for considering this unique apostolate!