Interview

A Viable Alternative

After years of teaching natural family planning to married and engaged couples--in the face of daunting obstacles--the Couple to Couple League introduces a program designed to introduce younger children to the virtue of chastity.

After years of designing programs for married and engaged couples, the Couple to Couple League recently struck out in a new direction, with an sex education curriculum for children in Catholic primary schools. That program, the New Corinthians curriculum, has been quickly approved as the official sex-education program of several American dioceses. And in March 1997, the New Corinthian program furnished one member of the League's staff with an extraordinary opportunity to influence public policy in Poland--a story related in the second portion of this interview.

John Kippley: Well, it was really an outgrowth of the reaction to the encyclical Humanae Vitae. Right after Humanae Vitae appeared, I wrote a book which was published in early 1970s--at the time it was called, Covenant With Christ and Contraception, although it has subsequently been re-issued as Sex and the Marriage Covenant--which was a effort to uphold and explain the teaching reaffirmed by Humanae Vitae. In that book I developed this what we now call the Covenant Theology of Sex, which can be summarized into 17 words: sexual intercourse is intended by God to be at least implicitly a renewal of the marriage covenant.

As I argued, he evil of contraception can be explained in terms of that covenant. The body language of contraception says, in effect, that the couple has exchanged vows "for better but definitely not for worse--for the imagined worse of possible pregnancy." That attitude renders their vows invalid as a marriage act.

Once that book was out, I kept thinking about the words that Jesus addressed to the lawyers: "Woe to you lawyers also! for you bind men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers." I felt that warning was aimed directly at me, because I had gone out of my way and to reaffirm what everybody else was saying was a huge burden. So I felt obliged to do whatever I could to help lift the burden as well.

That was how we began to think about natural family planning. There was no national organization at the time to teach natural family planning, so we decided that would be a good thing do. Also, my wife Sheila had written her book, Breast Feeding and Natural Child Spacing, and we wanted to get that part of the message out, too.

Providentially, at around this time we moved to Minneapolis and met with Dr. Konald Prem, who had years and years of experience teaching the sympto-thermal method of natural family planning. He was giving one-night sessions in one parish after another, and he was very excited about helping to found an organization that would have some ability to follow through beyond that initial presentation. He believed that the only way the message was going to really stay alive was through a well-trained cadre of couples who themselves were using the method and were trained to teach other couples. So that is basically what led to the start of the Couple to Couple League: a combination of theological concerns on my part, the desire to help women with the breast-feeding, and Dr. Prem's analysis of the sympto-thermal method.

Kippley: At first there was a lot of enthusiasm. In the late 1970s, there were still many couples who had correctly formed their consciences according to the teaching of the Church. Some of them had very large families; others had been practicing the calendar or rhythm method of natural family planning, and were very anxious to learn something new and better. So there was a lot of interest among people who had been married for a good number of the years. These were people who were in their 20s or even up to the 40s who were coming to our classes in those days.

In 1980 we peaked, as you saw. Our records showed 9,000 in 1994 and we were thinking: "Oh boy, next year we're going to break 5 figures. Wonderful. Let's cheer." Well, we didn't reach that figure. We never have reached it.

The way I take a look at it is that in 1981, we had gone past Humanae Vitae, and now we were starting to feel the real effects of the lack of Catholic teaching in the Catholic school systems. So we were now getting people who had gone all the way through grade school and high school and even Catholic college and never heard a good explanation of Catholic teaching. They may have heard about Humanae Vitae, especially at the college level, but what they heard was all negative.

When I was teaching theology here at the College of Mt. St. Joseph in the years 1972, 1974, I remember a freshman girl in one of my classes who said, "Mr. Kippley, you're the first person that I have ever heard say a good word about the Church's teaching on birth control." She explained that she had been told that this was what the pope was saying, but all the theologians were saying something contradictory, and anyone who had any common sense or any good education was going to go along with the theologians.

Well, that was in 1972. Ten years later the young people of that era were now married, and that is what we were facing. We kept going downhill every year as the Church's teaching became more and more faint.

In 1984 Pope John Paul came out with his series of summer lectures on marriage and sexuality, and that may have had something to do with the slowdown of the descent around that time. Then in the middle 1980s--I think it was in the fall of 1986--I was privileged to participate in a pro-life workshop at Mt. St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and there were quite of few seminarians on hand from the dioceses of Lincoln, Arlington, and Peoria. These young men were enthusiastic about the Church's pro-life teaching. There were also very enthusiastic about the Church's teaching on Humanae Vitae, and now they knew there was something they could do about.

When these young men got out of the seminary, a number of them started a full course in natural family planning as a part of their marriage-preparation programs. If they didn't actually force couples to take that course, at least they did everything they could do to encourage it. So I think the where you see things picking up on that chart in the last few years, it is essentially due to the increased number of priests who are making our class a normal part of marriage preparation.

I didn't realize it at the time, but in 1988 the US bishops' Committee for Pastoral Research and Practices published a book called Faithful to Each Other Forever, subtitled, "A Catholic Handbook of Pastoral Help for Marriage Preparation." That book contained a very strong recommendation that every engaged couple, should attend a full course--not just an introductory session, but a full course--in natural family planning, as a normal part of preparation for marriage. I didn't find out about that until sometime in the middle of 1995--seven years later. There wasn't an awful lot done, that I'm aware of, to market the idea. In 1992, I wrote to just a few bishops who I thought might be open to the idea; none of them came back and said, "John, our own bishops' committee recommended that." I felt that when I wrote in 1992, I was really leading off into uncharted waters. Yet here I was four years behind a committee of bishops!

Kippley: Well, we do have some competition. The movement for natural family planning has been somewhat fragmented from the very beginning. Some of the other groups have coexisted with us more or less from the beginning, and others...well, I just don't think their numbers are that significant. Maybe we lost a little bit here and there, but the decline which we saw was universal. Everyone had the same complaint. No matter who was doing the programs--whether it was ourselves or our competitors--the complaint was always the same. Out of 100 couples introduced to natural family planning, only two or three would show any interest at all in learning the method.

Kippley: Yes. I don't think there is any question about that.

Kippley: The background is that we were getting telephone calls here in the office from Mr. and Mrs. Smith, who lived in some parish where the pastor or the Catholic-school principal had introduced a sex-education program which was one of those that should not be used in any school, much less a Catholic one. These callers would agonize about their problem. They would frequently join together with other parents, and they would be able to point out to the pastor the real pronounced shortcomings of these programs. But then he would play the trump card; he would say, "I see your point, you have some valid objections, but what is your alternative? I'm mandated to have a sex-education program in my school." At that point they would call us to see: what was the alternative?

Well, while there were some programs out there for a particular grade level. But there was nothing we could find that provided a curriculum to cover the whole elementary-school range from kindergarten through 8th grade. And we kept getting so many agonizing phone calls that finally, in one of our fundraising appeals, we said that one of the things we would do with the money we received would be a chastity-education program for younger people. I don't think at the time we were really thinking of whole range of kindergarten through 8th grade; we were thinking of a specific video here, or a book there, or something like that. But doing the whole series was really forced upon us by all the agonizing telephone calls; we just felt a responsibility to do it.

Kippley: Right. I have a lot empathy with them. I talked with them on the phone after their very sharp demolition job was published, and I understand where they are coming from. They have been hurt so much; they have seen so many examples of being misusing their opportunities; they've seen the whole idea of chastity education as an excuse to open the door to teaching some really bad stuff--stuff that should not be taught at any grade level. So they had decided to take the point of view that no program would be acceptable; they told me that even if the New Corinthians series were perfect they would still oppose it, because it might open the door for some of the other programs.

I really think that when they looked at our program, they began with the feeling that it couldn't be good--that nothing in this field can be good. So with that rather jaundiced view they proceeded to do a job on it. We wrote a one-page reply in our magazine and then we wrote another 17-page reply which is available to anyone who wants to take a good look at a step-by-step refutation of their different charges. But I don't think it has done us any significant harm.

My main concern is that I try to be very cautious in my criticism of them because I think they've done some good. They call attention to some really serious problems with other things that should just not be in a Catholic classroom at all. I don't want to destroy their credibility.

Kippley: Well I think it means that we have rediscovered the worst of pagan Rome, and the situation is ripe for the rediscovery of the Christian revolution to oppose the sexual revolution. What we today call the sexual revolution was really the social institution of pagan Rome. And then the world was Christianized and we forgot how people can actually live that way; how could people have ever done those things? Today we are simply right back where the Church started in the 1st century. We aren't quite as openly persecuted--at least in this country, not yet--but the only answer to what is going on, I think, is clear now: we have to reinvigorate the Christian revolution, in which people understand that marriage is for keeps, and sexual intercourse is exclusively a marital act. It's simply not true that anything that you can think of is legitimate within marriage. We simply have to go back to the Christian revolution.

Keith Bower is the chief editor of the New Corinthians series, which was published by the Couple to Couple League in 1996 as a complete curriculum offering education in chastity for American students in kindergarten through grade 8. Although designed specifically for the US market, the curriculum--which was prepared as an alternative to other sex-education programs which parents found objectionable--has already attracted interest abroad. Freshly returned from a memorable trip to Poland and the Czech Republic, Bower explained the purpose of his program, and his first foray into international affairs.

In general, what has been the public reaction to the New Corinthians series?

Keith Bower: Well, in the United States the Archdiocese of Denver has declared that it is the only family-life education program, which we thought was a great boost. We have also had support from some great bishops in Arlington (Virginia), Peoria (Illinois), and Lincoln (Nebraska).

We produced the program for people who really wanted to do this the way the Vatican has advised, and if a diocese is in the grips of the modernists we don't expect to have any results. That may sound like a harsh statement. But when we developed the program, we had in mind the parents who were concerned about fulfilling their duty to teach their children about human sexuality in a way that is prudent, delicate, concise and clear. We designed the program for people who are following the recommendations of Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, and the Pontifical Council for the Family. There are quite a few people who are not paying any attention to that advice, and unfortunately we can't do too much for them.

Bower: Yes, we already have. It is timely, in the sense that the Irish bishops and the Polish bishops and many others are up against state programs which are making sex education obligatory, from the earliest grades, and they find that they don't have an alternative to the programs they are being offered--which are not very good. Our program is admittedly for youth in Catholic parochial schools, but these bishops find it is a reasonable alternative. If they offer the New Corinthians program, their government can at least can excuse students from the programs offered by Planned Parenthood and their allies. -We came along at just the right time to offer that alternative.

Bower: I'm still trying to put it together in my own mind. Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, CSsR, who is the director of Radio Maryja, had invited me to come. He had contacted someone in Poland who knew of our program somehow; we had not be actively working on Poland.

Father Rydzyk is an amazing man. What he wanted to do was influence the Polish government's decision to make sex education mandatory from grades 4 through 8. What he felt he needed was an American "expert" on the issue, because the Polish people are looking to the West for guidance on these sorts of things.

Father Rydzyk was personally disgusted with the only alternative that the Catholic Church could come up with over there. Essentially it was a program that suggested that if children know about natural family, then when they have to make contraceptive choices they'll make them the Catholic way. I consider that a really misguided approach--almost an occasion of sin for youngsters--and so did Father Rydzyk.

Apparently--as I was about to learn first-hand--Father Rydzyk had been coordinating quite an effort in this regard. I'm not quite sure that the Pope wasn't involved in this somewhere down the line, since he met with the Pope a few weeks ago to talk at length about this sex-education issue. The former Communists are very strong in the government right now, after winning the last elections in November. They have approved a more liberal abortion law, and now they are pushing the Planned Parenthood agenda very strongly--which has, understandably, got a lot of people upset.

Father Rydzyk operates Radio Maryja. It has between 10 to 15 million listeners, and many listeners among the Poles here in the United States. He wanted to put as much pressure as he could on the Polish government, both to drop these sex-education programs and to think twice about their plans to alter the Constitution.

Well, I was on the air for about seven hours. The Radio Maryja staff also worked with me through the whole weekend to translate some of my answers to the call-in questions, taking the time to translate them and eliminate some of my American idioms. We had calls from all over. We had calls from the United States--LaCrosse, Wisconsin; Pittsburgh; Detroit; Chicago--asking what people could here in the United States about their own local diocesan mandate. (Now that's interesting, isn't it?--that someone would call across six time zones to talk with one of his fellow Catholics from the United States? It seemed pretty ironic to me.)

The upshot of the broadcast in Poland was a vast outpouring of faxes and phone calls to the Polish government. On Monday, March 3, at the end of our weekend blitz, we had a press conference in Warsaw. It seemed as if every microphone in Warsaw was there! The BBC sent a reporter, and the three Warsaw Catholic radio stations were there, along with a Catholic television station which did a separate interview with me.

I told them about the American experience with sex education, and warned them away from us, saying it is not a sociably acceptable answer to whatever problems they are having. They have had great influx of pornography, and they are being barraged with propaganda from Planned Parenthood at the same time, so as their teens are getting the message that it is the "responsible parenthood" to use contraception and abortifacients, and they are beginning to expect instruction on those topics in the schools.

There were about 200 or 300 people at that press conference, which was held in downtown Warsaw at the Center of Culture. I was accompanied by a woman from Radio Maryja who introduced me, and a woman who works in the Ministry of Education (one of the last orthodox Catholics in the government), and a professor from Lublin. We spent pretty much the whole afternoon answering questions from the press and denouncing the Polish government's decision to invade the privacy of the relationship between the child and the parent.

Almost before the press conference was done, a government minister was on Warsaw television explaining that of course the government would never do such a thing. He said that parents who did not agree with the government program could certainly teach their children any way they desired, in their own fashion.

Of course that means that these parents need to have an alternative--just the same way that American Catholics who want to opt out of their official diocesan program need to have an alternative. So we have given Father Rydzyk permission to translate the New Corinthians into Polish. He found no reason to change anything.; he just wants to translate it as it stands and to present that as an option. And I learned yesterday, through a message from Poland on my telephone answering machine, that the bishops' committee has approved the use of the New Corinthians So they will moving ahead on that. We have just about three months to get this translation done, because that's when the government wants to begin the new mandate.

Bower: It sure is. Our program is not even on the preferred list here in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, but it moved very fast over there.

The Polish bishop's conference is somewhat split over Father Rydzyk. My best way of explaining him to you is to ask you to try to imagine if Mother Angelica and Martin Luther King had been combined in one person. Father Rydzyk was very influential and important in the whole movement of lifting Communism from the Polish people, but he also had the courage to go out and start his own radio station five years ago which has a very powerful influence. It has no commercial messages whatsoever, just 24-hour satellite delivery of Catholic talk shows and beautiful music.

I think the Polish bishops were in a quandary. They felt the same way about Father Rydzyk that many American bishops feel about Mother Angelica: keep your distance; you don't know what to expect. Some people have looked upon him as a kind of loose canon, acting impulsively--the way the Redemptorists have always acted in Poland. But now they've seen this organization of Father Rydzyk's has provided a providential answer to an important need at the right time in their people's history; I think there is going to be a much closer relationship from here down the line.

Also the Couple to Couple League in Poland has certainly had quite a boost. We had just a very small organization there, but now they will be receiving some promotion through Radio Maryja, and any time you can get free advertising on a radio station that hits 10 to 15 million people it will boost your outreach quite a bit.

Bower: Oh, absolutely. At the start I didn't even have a really clear idea of why I was being invited, other than to present New Corinthians. Then I realized while I was in the midst of all of this that Father Rydzyk is a very shrewd political operator. He is an energetic priest whose had his life threatened twice in the last six months; he is definitely "a player," and the Communists know that if they are ever to regain power they have to get rid of this guy; he will not go away on his own. It was fascinating to play a part in his work.

I also had a chance to go to Prague, where they are facing the same sort of situation, and where things are even less hospitable to Catholics because that is the homeland of Jan Hus; the Protestants don't have much time for the Catholics in the Czech Republic. But we were at least able to talk to the pro-life leadership there, and warn them that these sorts of sex-education programs were on the way, and that if it ever came to a conflict they should do is what the Poles did.

The most these people can realistically hope for is to persuade the government at least to allow parents to keep their children out of the sex-education programs and use a program that really does teach the truth about human sexuality--a program that puts the biological information in the hands of the parents and trusts them to do the best job through the graces of the sacrament of marriage. That seems to be the compromise that we have to make with the secular world.

But it is very interesting to note that in both countries, in Poland and in the Czech Republic, they couldn't see what possible reason the state would have for keeping this kind of religious training out of the public schools. I would tell them about our First Amendment crises in the United States and their jaws would drop.