Having the NFP Talk with your Diocese
Jennifer and Ivan D’Souza recently met with their Diocesan family life representative. Vincent Reilly is the new Faith, Family, and Discipleship Managing Director in the Diocese of Greensburg, PA. Prior to their meeting, Vincent had already spoken with a local CCL teacher and had reached out to the CCL Parish Rep. He was eager to hear what the D’Souzas could offer the Diocese as CCL promoters while he begins to restructure the NFP and marriage prep programs. For a long time, their Diocese only offered one method of NFP training with no set way of introducing the concept NFP; but now Vincent is exploring ways to direct couples to more methods (specifically STM, Creighton, Billings, and Marquette), and paving the way for making an NFP course a regular part of marriage preparation.
Jennifer and Ivan shared ideas about how to present the science/theology of NFP and the Theology of the Body for many other “audiences” as well–in different levels of formation, for clergy, for medical professionals within the diocese, and more. They offered him sets of printed CCL literature and directed him to key places on the FSI and CCL sites. It was helpful that Vincent had some familiarity in working with CCL in his previous Diocese!
Have you had “the talk” with your Diocese? Sometimes that quality one-on-one time makes all the difference in making everyone more comfortable with the material. The CCL, MyParishNFP and FSI websites are full of resources and videos to make sharing the NFP message more accessible at both the Diocesan and parish levels. Schedule your meeting and then tell us how it went!