I was trying to find some video of a dynamic Natural Family Planning, contra-contraception, or Humanae Vitae talk on YouTube, and I couldn’t find anything! (Yes, I know, the seminarians are there, but the novelty is wearing off.) There were a couple of decent homilies, but they weren’t the speed I was looking for for the blog.
So you know what I found instead? This jazzy cartoon:
Are you just so *sold* on World Contraception Day? Well, naturally, I was curious and checked out their web site, YOUR-LIFE.COM (note to self: future Humanae Vitae site will be HIS-LIFE.COM). There was the usual mis-information about natural methods of family planning , although it wasn’t as ridiculously incorrect as it usually is, and there weren’t any cartoons making fun of it. Overall, though, it was an all-around cool site, anti-fertility, anti-family messages notwithstanding. I really liked the FAMILY/TEACHERS/PRESS bars on the side, giving information to parents on how to talk to their kids about said travesty (“Listen Son, you’re beginning to have special feelings, so I want to teach you about something that has divided your mom and I so that you, too, can objectify and poison that special someone.”) teachers about how to give workshops (“Hey kids! Here’s women’s lib’s gift to you: poisoned relationships between the sexes, higher STI rates and a massive correlation to the world’s highest divorce rate. C’mon!”), and press all sorts of media-related goodies–videos, photos, press releases, etc.
WHAT A GREAT RESOURCE if you don’t believe that contraception is the greatest societal cancer to women, children and families, the fallout of which we’re just now experiencing!
But seriously, folks. This is great media presence here, particularly for the youth/ young adults and their parents/ mentors. The million dollar question (or mostly likely the ten thousand dollar question) here is: WHY DON’T WE HAVE THIS KIND OF MEDIA PRESENCE FOR HUMANAE VITAE, THEOLOGY OF THE BODY AND NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING!? Now, to give credit where it’s due, there is good web presence for Theology of the Body & Chastity (but it could be better) and a few good sites for Natural Family Planning and at least one fair site for Humanae Vitae. (I won’t name my personal taste here because there will be a firestorm of comments from such-and-such a group/NFP method/diocese/whomever complaining that I’m being unfair and they’ve gotten really good feedback from their favorite techie. Good for you, but sometimes, “Hey, it’s a great web site compared to all the lame churchy web sites” is not a qualifying statement for the great web site awards. As you know, the artistic bar in the Church is not set too high in most places.
Back to the question: Why does our media suck–especially for such vital evangelization efforts as marriage and sexuality–and what can we do about it? Do you know of an off-the-hook web site, brochure or media campaign? Let me know!
