When I worked as public information director for a Natural Family Planning (NFP) organization, I used to get snickers when I told others what I did. And I don’t mean candy.
Now, a survey shows that when couples understand how their sexual life is a communication of love, they take a real interest in NFP. See my article on the NFP Chicago website.

The colorful bride’s maids dresses sparkled in the afternoon sun, but the small dress shop was empty of customers.

“I don’t want a website,” the shop owner, a man in his 30’s, said flatly.

I said, “A website will bring in more customers — and young customers who are getting married are using the internet. Older people my age still rely on the Yellow Pages sometimes, but young people are looking on the net to find local businesses.”

The bright dresses, typical of the festive choice of the shop’s hispanic customers would look good displayed on a three-page website, I thought.

I’ve been making calls on Berwyn, IL businesses to tell them about my web design and promotion services, and am finding out a lot. Many shops up and down the main shopping street often have no customers when I walk in on a sunny afternoon, a symptom of poor economic times and, I think, just the difficulty of doing business.

Small Businesses Get Left Behind

I think these shop owners are just ignorant of the changing nature of advertising. But if they don’t act soon, they will be left behind. They should take note of the rising use of the internet.  For example, the number of Americans with fast internet access increased 15 percent over the last year, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. Sixty-three percent of adults now have access to broadband internet, even though the average cost of fast internet rose $5 per month in that time. That’s news, especially when we all trying to tighten our belts in these times.

“For many Americans, a home broadband connection is a conduit for connecting to community and economic opportunity,” said John Horrigan, of the Pew Internet project, as reported in the Chicago Tribune last week. “That puts broadband in the ‘must keep’ category for most users.”

Businesses and non-profits, take note: the internet is where your customers are. If you aren’t there, they will go to your competitors.

When Pam Williams, of southeast Michigan, received a blessing from Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., she was moved to tears. Her experiences of meeting this saintly Jesuit priest before and after her conversion to Catholicism is one of the stories found on a new website that collects personal testimonies regarding the Servant of God, who died in 2000.

The purpose of the website, sponsored by the Institute on Religious Life, is to provide a public forum for individuals and families to share and submit stories of Fr. Hardon, whose cause for canonization has been formally initiated. The website, created by our own company, TreeFrogClick web services, features an on-line form through which stories can be submitted. Stories will be forwarded to the postulator of the cause, as well as made available to biographers and anyone interested in documenting his remarkable life.

Visit the website at www.hardonstories.com. The Institute on Religious Life (IRL) promotes and supports the growth, development, and renewal of the consecrated life — particularly vowed religious life — as a gift to the Church and an evangelical witness to the world. For more information, call Michael Wick, IRL Executive Director, at 847-573-8975.

Sexual love is by nature both sharing and procreative. This is one of the helpful lessons learned in Pre-Cana programs throughout the Archdiocese of Chicago. For more information, read our article at the Couple to Couple League of Chicago.

Every time I see a poster asking for money to help cure breast cancer,  I get angry. Not because I don’t want to cure breast cancer, but because the medical establishment is missing the big fish — hormonal birth control.

When a doctor tells a woman in her 50’s or 60’s she has breast cancer, what is one of the first questions he asks? “Did you use the birth control pill?”

Whoops — hey, we all thought the birth control pill was as harmless as candy. Read about this latest study, on the website of the Chicago Couple to Couple League.

The big pitch by Planned Parenthood is that abortion causes no more trauma than a stroll on the beach. This is the dogma pushed on public school children, touted by the mainstream media and most medical hoo-hoos.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the saddle has been put on the wrong horse. Think about it: a baby is torn from its mother’s uterus in a procedure that goes against every mother’s instinct. With abortion, every woman knows for the rest of her life that her baby’s life was snuffed out by abortion. Strong emotions here, to say the least.

A top psychotherapist and researcher in Florida testified before a Wisconsin State Senate committee that abortions cause life-long and deep emotional trauma. The documentation is impressive. Read the full story at WomanCare Services. And get the word out.

A newspaper’s editorial criticizing sexual morality rankled this priest, and he wrote an eloquent guest editorial about it. Read the story at Natural Family Planning Chicago.

If only justice could be carried out when it comes to women’s health.

Women around the country suffer from both physical and psychological difficulties from the abortions they receive. Medical malpractice lawsuits are being filed against abortion clinics in Chicagoland and elsewhere. Read the entire story at WomanCare Services in Berwyn, IL.