A Special Week and Anniversary
Written by CCL Staff
The end of July every year marks a special week and anniversary for CCL. It’s a week when the entire Catholic Community takes a moment to promote awareness about NFP. National NFP Awareness week falls this year from July 23 – 29, 2023. The dates of Natural Family Planning Awareness Week highlight the anniversary of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae (July 25) which articulates Catholic beliefs about human sexuality, conjugal love, and responsible parenthood. The dates also mark the feast of Saints Joachim and Anne (July 26), the parents of the Blessed Mother. Pope Francis has designated that feast as World Grandparents Day, a fitting commemoration during National NFP Awareness Week!
The USCCB has decided on the theme “Marriage: One Flesh, Given and Received. Natural Family Planning -Supporting God’s gifts of love and life in marriage.” You can view their entire website with interesting resources at https://www.usccb.org/topics/natural-family-planning/national-nfp-awareness-week
For CCL students, teachers, volunteers, and donors, this is a special time to share your experience and knowledge of NFP with your friends and fellow parishioners. Here are a few suggestions and resources that we wanted to share with you to spread the word about NFP.
#1 – Find it hard to put into words why NFP works when talking to fellow parishioners? We can help. We have just updated our new CCL and Liga de Pareja NFP Brochures with information and statistics that can help you share what NFP is all about. The new brochures also mention the new PeakDay app and explains all the different types of classes that CCL and Liga have to offer.
Visit the CCL store and check them out.
#2 – Last November, we launched MyParishNFP.org website as a tool for parishes to promote and teach NFP. This is the first NFP week that our new platform has been around. There are free digital downloads and bulletin ads, as well as video resources for clergy and couples about NFP. We have posters and brochures you can download and use to promote NFP. We even have a free parish sample kit. If you have not checked out the website – take a look and discover what is there to help spread the word at your parish.
#3 – What about PeakDay? It’s new this year too! PeakDay is a great starting point for people to learn to chart and then learn NFP. On the PeakDay website, we have a video series explaining the basics about NFP and how to use PeakDay to start charting. Our CCL Youtube channel shares a number of short videos as well about the basics of NFP and PeakDay.
Check back next week for more tips and ideas about how to promote NFP and celebrate the anniversary of Humanae Vitae!