Some savvy person decided that Natural Family Planning (NFP) needed a facelift. Or a makeover. Or something. And the Catholic Spirit newspaper is reporting on the results:

For years, many of the engaged and newly-married couples receiving instruction in natural family planning from the Couple to Couple League have been crossing their arms and closing their minds.

A growing number attended to fulfill a diocesan mandate, and it showed. The students had shorter attention spans and less respect for the church’s authority.

Change was long overdue at CCL, the oldest and largest provider of NFP training, which was founded in the Twin Cities and is now headquartered in Cincinnati. Its leaders admit this.

Now they are implementing deep-tissue change. They overhauled their entire program: the textbook, the teaching materials, the approach.

They consulted their volunteer teachers, who had no shortage of suggestions. And after three years of hard work – longer than they ever expected – they’re unveiling the fruits of their labor.

The new program incorporates modern technology and Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body, outlined in a series of talks the pope gave from 1979 to 1984 focusing on the meaning of the human body, sexuality and marriage.

It’s interactive, inviting couples to exercise each principle in a workbook that replaces a dense reference manual. And it allows medical experts to address each class via embedded video on DVD. There’s even animation.

The change is billed by CCL as an “Extreme Makeover,” borrowing the title from a popular television show. Archbishop Harry Flynn said he is impressed by the effort.

“The Couple to Couple League is paying a double homage to Pope John Paul II: answering his call for a ‘new evangelization’ and incorporating his theology,” he said. “I anticipate a profound impact.”

So do the teachers who tested the program, including three couples in the archdiocese.

CCL board chair Linda Kracht of St. Paul taught four pilot classes. “The teachings of John Paul II ring true with young couples,” she said. “This makes it easier to teach the moral reasons behind NFP to our students.”

Kracht said the program’s general editor, Father Richard Hogan, synthesized John Paul II’s theology with grace. The Robbinsdale priest is a CCL board member and leading expert on the late pope.

The new program reverses a common complaint that CCL’s sympto-thermal method was too complicated. Using the cutting-edge research of Austrian physician Josef Roetzer, CCL simplified the method, allowing couples to follow one rule, rather than choosing from four, during the infertile stage of their cycles.

The science is 100 percent sound, said John Gagliardi, a 3M scientist who heads the Twin Cities chapter.

The teaching approach also has changed. Now classes will begin by teaching about marriage and theology of the body, leading up to the conclusion that the use of artificial contraception is morally wrong, said executive director Andy Alderson.

What would Ty Pennington think?!