Couples honored for service to natural family planning ministry

By Denver Catholic Register

Two couples were presented with Pope Paul VI Awards at the Oct. 26 appreciation dinner for individuals and couples who teach natural family planning in the Archdiocese of Denver.  The annual event is sponsored by the Marriage and Family Life Office.

Pope Paul VI wrote the 1968 encyclical, “Humanae Vitae” (“Of Human Life”) on married love and procreation. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the document, which reaffirmed Church teaching that contraception is morally wrong. Natural family planning refers to forms of birth regulation that are in conformity with Catholic teaching.

This year’s Pope Paul VI Award recipients were Dave and Jen Anselmi of All Souls Church in Englewood, and Dan and Amy James of St. Mary Church in Greeley. Every year couples or individuals are nominated by their peers to receive special recognition for their service to natural family planning.   Last year, Adrian and Stacey Nagle, coordinators of the Denver Chapter of the Couple to Couple League, received the award. 

Some 40 individuals representing the NFP organizations Couple to Couple League and Creighton Model FertilityCare System were joined with friends and family at Christ the King Church in Denver for a Mass celebrating their ministry, followed by a dinner.

Auxiliary Bishop James Conley celebrated the Mass. He later spoke on the joys, challenges and hope the NFP ministries bring to the Church.  Bishop Conley reminded the crowd that in “Humanae Vitae,” Pope Paul VI warned that the widespread use of contraception would lead to “conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality.” Paul VI also warned that man would lose respect for woman and “no longer (care) for her physical and psychological equilibrium”; rather, man would treat woman as a “mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.” 

That these things have happened has led many to call “Humanae Vitae” prophetic.

“The Church teaches that mutual and total self-giving, strong feelings of attachment, intense pleasure, and the procreation of new life are linked by natural law in a single complex of purpose that should never be broken apart,” said Phil Webb, director of the Marriage and Family Life Office.

“We are grateful for this year’s recipients and for the opportunity to thank them in a special way,” he said.