(c) 2005
Liga pár páru v ČR
[servis]
THE COUPLE TO COUPLE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL, INC. (CCLI)The Couple to Couple League International was founded in 1971 by John and Sheila Kippley. John is a Catholic lay theologian who, in the discussion following the issue of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, wrote a book in its defence. (It is now published by Ignatius Press in an expanded version as Sex and the Marriage Covenant.) Not wanting to be like the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, whom Jesus condemned, because they loaded "men with burdens hard to bear" and themselves did not "touch the burdens with one of [their] fingers" (Luke 11,46), he, together with his wife Sheila, started teaching couples Natural Family Planning (NFP) so that Catholics could live according to the teaching of their church. Sheila had been doing research on breast-feeding and its effect on the return of fertility after childbirth, and as a result the teaching of ecological breast-feeding (or natural mothering) was an integral part of the CCLI course until the "Extreme Makeover" of 2008.The Couple to Couple League International is based in Cincinnati, USA, spread first to Great Britain through US servicemen, and then to other countries in Europe, America, Africa and Asia. It is active in about 10 countries worldwide. The name of the organisation reflects the teaching of Humanae Vitae 26, which refers to the apostolate of married couples teaching NFP to other couples. CCL teaches the Symptothermal Method (STM) of NFP, in which a woman measures her basal temperature daily and observes changes in her cervical mucus and cervix. She can then judge whether she is in the fertile or infertile part of her cycle, irrespective of whether she has regular cycles. The method, when properly learned and applied, has the same effectiveness as the pill and incurs no health risks. CCLI has radically revised its extensive teaching materials, and the "re-tooled method" is more closely based on the STM as developed by Dr. Roetzer (from Austria). Teaching couples must undergo retraining to be able to teach it. Teaching materials have been produced progressively and the new method was launched in the spring of 2008. The Czech and Slovak branches retain the original CCLI method, including ecological breast-feeding, now termed the Kippley-Prem method, with which the new "re-tooled" method is no longer completely compatible. CCL teachers, whether in the USA or elsewhere, have to promise to live according to what they teach, i.e. not resort to contraception, sterilisation or abortion or artificial means of assisted reproduction, such as IVF. The CCL course includes not just instruction in the method, but sets NFP in a context of marital chastity and Christian values in regard to children and the family, comparing the positive influence of NFP to the negative influence of the contraceptive approach. For further information on the work of CCLI in the USA visit the CCL International web site at http://www.ccli.org. Further articles: Home page |