Tori Franke, the Natural Family Planning Coordinator for the Archdiocese Office of Evangelization and Catechesis, shown speaking at the Natural Family Planning Summit, held Jan. 23 at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Milwaukee, is available for any parish that would like her assistance. National Family Planning Awareness Week is July 21-27. (Photo by David Bernacchi)
Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, a national educational campaign celebrated in honor of the anniversary of the papal encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” is July 21-27.
Tori Franke’s office might be located in St. Francis at the Mary Mother of the Church Pastoral Center, but that doesn’t mean it’s where her work is.
When Franke talks about her job as the Natural Family Planning Coordinator for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee Office of Evangelization and Catechesis, she makes it very clear: her work is in the parishes.
“I often tell pastors, and even our seminarians in their training, that I really want them to think of me and of the office as an extension of their staff. I’m not on-site, but I want them to think of me as a staff member who they can partner with in whatever capacity is best serving the people on the ground in their parish,” she said.
Natural family planning uses biological signs of fertility to help couples accurately identify what days the woman is fertile or infertile with the help of daily charting.
Lack of access to resources can be “a big barrier” to effectively practicing natural family planning, Franke acknowledges. “And with NFP and even just cycle charting for teens and adolescents, you tend not to think about it until either it’s right in your face or you hear about it through the grapevine from friends,” she said.
Raising awareness, starting conversations about NFP and cycle charting, and physically visiting the communities where the faithful live and worship is a big part of Franke’s job — which is why the Ask Me Anything program offered by her office is one of her favorite things to do. Any parish in the archdiocese can host Franke for an Ask Me Anything session, and Franke will come to answer questions big and small about all things NFP.
Sarah Schumaker and Maria Feeney, who coordinate a mom’s group for women from the parishes of St. Michael and Holy Trinity in Kewaskum and Immaculate Conception, Holy Angels and St. Frances Cabrini in West Bend, invited Franke to visit their group last October.
“I really feel strongly that every woman, every couple, should have the support and resources they need for this aspect of their life, because it is possible (to practice NFP effectively). And I think a lot of people either give up or are tempted to give up (when they run into barriers) and you kind of feel on your own sometimes when that happens,” said Feeney.
“A lot of the moms had wanted resources for how to talk to their daughters about this and get their daughters started (charting),” said Schumaker. The cornerstone of every method of NFP is cycle charting, which requires a woman to learn and observe biological markers that indicate not only fertility but overall health. It’s invaluable knowledge about the human body that more and more moms want to share with their daughters even as they begin to enter puberty.
“Several of us have daughters who are just starting to enter puberty and we’re looking to help them have this knowledge much earlier than we did,” said Feeney. She noted that right now, it’s common practice for Catholic women and couples to be introduced to NFP in marriage prep. But a lot of those same women end up wishing they had the knowledge years before. “So I think it’s sort of the next generation saying, let’s give this to our daughters so that they have the body literacy and this knowledge about their health.”
William Waech, Principal at St. Frances Cabrini School in West Bend, agrees — so when Feeney brought Franke’s expertise to the attention of school staff, he was happy to pick her brain about ways to bring more resources to the school community. For years, the school has offered education to students and parents about health and puberty, but Waech had been hoping to find a program that was more imbued with Catholic teaching. When he met with Franke and she showed him the Pearl and Thistle curriculum, he was impressed.
“I was like, this is way better than what we have been doing,” he said.
Pearl and Thistle is a Catholic company that offers courses for all ages teaching body literacy and cycle awareness. Franke had long wanted to pilot its Cycle Prep course (geared to girls ages 9 to 11 years old) in an archdiocesan school.
“My long-term hope and goal is that these opportunities would be available to every single one of our Catholic schools in the archdiocese,” said Franke of Pearl and Thistle’s courses.
About 30 moms attended the Cycle Prep pilot program at St. Frances Cabrini this spring, including Feeney and her daughter. “My daughter thought it was very helpful,” Feeney said. “It really opened up for her and I to have more conversations and have more information to form the basis for those conversations.”
Franke has also brought a Teen Cycle Charting program she developed with local registered nurse and NFP teacher Janet Garcia to students at Divine Savior Holy Angels High School in Milwaukee, and Christ King Parish in Wauwatosa hosted Pearl and Thistle educator Christina Valenzuela for a session on Perimenopause Prep in January.
“Our kids deserve really excellent education about their bodies and the way God made them, and that they’re super cool and good and we can understand them. And parents really deserve the scaffolding to do that well,” said Franke.
Franke hopes that more parishes and schools will reach out to her office to explore ways they can bring conversations, knowledge and resources like Cycle Prep and Ask Me Anything to their communities.
“If you have questions, if you have needs, if there are resources that you’re desiring but you don’t see, I want to hear that. I want to either connect you with what’s there or build what isn’t there yet,” she said. “I love connecting people with that knowledge and being a bridge between the need and the response.”
Franke can be reached at franket@archmil.org or at 414-758-2241. For more information about NFP in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, visit archmil.org/naturalfertilitycare.
