The current debate over health insurance and contraception has raised interesting questions for people of faith, particularly Catholics. I’m past menopause, and so contraception is not an issue for me. Yet I’m interested in it—in the same way I remain interested in pregnancy or childbirth. Avoiding or embracing pregnancy is the stuff of real life—the vivid centerpiece of youth and middle age. As a woman, a mother, and a Catholic, I’m part of it. I remember the drama, the excitement, the fear. Pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding are intense experiences. For the sustained nature of the physical bond, nothing compares. But it begins with sex, and sex is never simple.
And so it is unsettling when men who may never have experienced sex feel qualified not just to speak about it but to pronounce on it with certainty. In an article in the New York Times (February 18), Fr. Roger Landry, a priest in my old diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, is quoted as saying, “What happens in the use of contraception, rather than embracing us totally as God made the other, with the masculine capacity to become a dad, or the feminine capacity to become a mom, we reject that paternal and maternal leaning.”
Well, no, Fr. Landry, we don’t. We don’t reject it. We make a decision about it. We recognize that pregnancy is a possibility, and we decide whether this is the right time for us to have a baby. We acknowledge that we are more than just potential (or actual) parents. One of the surest signs of youth—in any profession—is an unswerving adherence to literal interpretations. New teachers cling to the curriculum, whether or not the class is getting it. Young doctors focus on the clear x-ray, unable to see the patient in front of them writhing in pain. Parish priests preach the letter of the law, while their parishioners refuse to follow rules created without reference to the reality they know. But the rules aren’t just unrealistic. They are often irrelevant, based on incorrect or incomplete information.
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Fr. Landry goes on to say, “Contraception…make[s] pleasure the point of the act, and any time pleasure becomes the point rather than the fruit of the act, the other person becomes the means to that end. And we’re actually going to hurt the people we love.” At one level, this is insightful and nuanced. When he laments how frequently such objectification happens to women in sexual relationships, Fr. Landry sounds almost feminist. And he is right that a relationship that’s only about the pursuit of pleasure is demeaning and ultimately hurtful.
He is wrong, though, to assume that using contraception automatically makes “pleasure the point of the act.” This is how adolescents think. Teenagers dream of constantly available sex, uninhibited by any possibility of pregnancy. That priests would talk the same way about sex between a husband and wife who have chosen to use contraception reflects inexperience and adolescent projection.
Adults understand that good sex, with or without contraception, goes deeper than pleasure. It is complex and demanding. And pleasure isn’t necessarily a part of it. Any human encounter requiring honesty and surrender has the potential for both revelation and pain. The communication, healing, and strengthening that good sex ensures is foundational to a marriage. Pure pleasure the point of the act? What is Fr. Landry talking about?
Distrust of pleasure is one hallmark of the church’s teaching about sex. This is odd because, as Catholics, we also believe that “eye has not seen nor ear heard the wonders God has prepared for those who love Him.” But that aside, what is the church’s antidote to the dread prospect of people having too much fun in bed? Children.
The thing is, children are also a deep source of pleasure, joy, and fun. The bishops, while recognizing this truth, nonetheless focus on babies as natural results of the biological act, as consequences and responsibilities—not as persons who are sought after and gladly welcomed. (Indeed, people who seek too vigorously to have children are also criticized as trying to play God, to control what should be divinely ordained.)
I understand what is behind the bishops’ anxiety over designer parenthood—the demand for too much control over what kind of children we have. And I agree that sexual license is a serious threat to happiness, order, and the good of the human community.
But every human activity has the potential to become unbalanced. Having children mindlessly, year after year, as former generations of Catholics did, is just as harmful to the social good as the refusal to connect sex with pregnancy. Visit India, Fr. Landry. Talk with the women here who are treated purely as producers of sons.
To defend contraception within marriage is not to defend sexual license. Married couples who have pledged a lifetime of commitment to each other and their families have the right and the duty to make their own decisions about contraception. The church’s role is to help them arrive at the decision that is right for their lives. It is not to dictate one-size-fits-all rules that have no foundation in practical experience.
The church has made a spectacle of itself by promoting an immature version of sexuality that is missing the sinew of lived experience. It used to frighten people into submission. Now it simply makes them smile a little sadly. I’m a prolife Catholic who practiced only Natural Family Planning. But I’m smiling, too. Because I’m sad for my church.
Jo McGowan's observations are powerful arguments in favor of a married priesthood.
My post never made it, never registered. Edited by the Holy Spirit? Or by a computer glitch? Or by an actual editor? I WAS unsure of it. It was perhaps too personal. So be it.
Sure. Now this last one did make it.
Jim Lein,
Believe this is your prior post:
Adolescent thinking -- something I still have vestiges of after almost 60 years. When I became a teenager in 1953, there were two main viewpoints on girls available to me, neither one stressing the importance of regarding them as persons, of not objectifying them. The messages of my peer group and of my church both objectified them, although in different ways: They were sexual objects or they were occasions of sin. Some choices. Some ways to regard females. .....
Janet:
I don't know why Ed has not responded to your question about Paul VI's Pontiifcal Birth Control Commission (PBCC). The fact is that this commission was not started by Paul VI, but by John XXIII. After he died, Paul VI expanded the PBCC to 72 members, including 16 bishops including 2 cardinals from 5 continents and 11 countries.
When the pill was invented in the 1950s and a better version became available in 1960, the issue about its morality and contraception was hotly debated. There was much disagreement among the many bishops of the world. It was descided that this issue would not be addressed by the Council, but by the pope himself (John XXIII). So, he formed a Pontifical Birth Control Commission. He died in June, 1963 and the first meeting of this commission was held four months later. At that time there were only 6 members, but as mentioned Paul VI expanded it to 72 members.
For an excellent and thorough account of the PBCC, read "Turning Point: The Inside Story of the PBCC, and How Humanae Vitae Changed the Life of Patty Crowley and the Future of the Church".
Janet,
Plain and simple - actions have consequences. You knowingly and willfully eat meat knowing the Church has declared it a mortal sin, you deal with the consequences. The Church didn't pull that rule out of thin air. There's a REASON why the Church mandates Sunday mass attendance and prohibitions against meat on Friday. As for when am I going to back up what I said re/ Paul VI and Humanae Vitae, I already did.
Michael Barberi
The Church has spoken re/contraception in HV and in 2,000 years of Church teaching. It makes not a whit of difference how many moral theologians or priests accept or reject the teaching. A pope's personal saintliness, or lack thereof, has zero effect on his authority to pronounce infallibly (which is rarely done, by the way). Papal infallibility has been accepted since the beginning of the Church, even if its understanding wasn't as fleshed out as it is today. Infallibility isn't some concept that popped into existence in the 1800's. Vatican I merely expressed in writing what had always been accepted. I never said I believe in the moral certitude of encyclicals; I believe in the moral certitude of doctrine which some encyclicals state. The case you present of the woman on the verge of certain death sounds suspiciously like one of those situations a sophomore theology class concocts. It sounds too made up. You appeal to sensitivity, as if sensitivity is a determining factor whether an act is moral or not. I strongly urge you and Janet to study moral theology, the scriptures, the Fathers, the encyclicals, etc. I've said all I'm going to on these issues.
The gravamen of the Magisterium’s argument against so-called “artificial” contraception – I specifically leave out of consideration here abortifacient drugs or similar instrumentalities, which require separate reflection – is found in Humanae Vitae:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_...
in Section 12. It is the natural law argument of the form:
“This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.”
In case you’re wondering, yes, “unitive” is a bit of a euphemism for vaginal sexual intercourse.
A bit later, in Section 14, Paul VI draws out the implications of this in terms of morality by saying:
“Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.”
Paul VI is here explicitly contradicting those – the majority of the experts he asked to report to him on the issue back in the 1960s in the course and the wake of Vatican II, by the way -- who argued: “OK, we agree, marriage is globally for the purpose of procreation. But as long as there is reasonable intent to procreate in a marriage, i.e., procreation is not ‘artificially’ inhibited all the time, surely it’s OK to artificially inhibit it from time to time?”
“No,” says Paul VI. According to natural law, i.e., the order and plan for these matters set up by God, even a single act of artificially impeding procreation in the unitive-procreative context is “intrinsically,” not accidentally or consequentially wrong.
It is interesting to reflect on the fact that intentional homicide, for example in war or capital punishment, doesn’t even rise to the level of being “intrinsically wrong” in the Church’s moral teaching. It’s the circumstances which make such an act morally wrong, i.e., make it murder, not something intrinsic to the act. Not so with artificial contraception, though.
This is equivalent to saying that taking The Pill or using Trojans are intrinsically more evil acts than using the atomic bomb – if you believe that this act met the criteria for just war use. But if you have a problem with nuclear weapons, how about bombs dropped on Hitler’s bunker?
As the under 20 crowd might say: “He-e-a-a-vy!”
But moving on.
The most important thing to realize about the gnoseological status of this natural law claim is that it is not, in the context of Humanae Vitae, an argument based on the Church’s authority as the guardian of faith. Rather, the Magisterium own authority in making this claim is warranted by human reason, not vive versa. Or as Section 12 puts it:
“We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason.”
This is key. To say that it is a truth “in harmony with human reason” is to say that, at least for those who are smart enough and have enough time on their hands to think through the issue, this is essentially a truth of reason and only accidentally a truth of faith, i.e., needing to be taken on faith as a function of the teaching authority of the Magisterium only by those who, again, are too dull or too busy.
Thomas Aquinas, by the way, consistently argued on philosophical grounds that something cannot simultaneously be a truth of faith and a truth of reason for the same knower. A particularly lapidary statement of the point can be found at ST, II-II, q. 1 a 5, otc:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3001.htm#article5
We’ll return to this point in a moment.
There are, of course, other arguments against artificial birth control in Humanae Vitae.
Most of them take the form of slippery slope consequentialist arguments and are presented in summary form in Section 17, where they are presented in a manner in which Paul VI obviously thinks it’s a slam dunk from the standpoint of reason that these consequences would all be considered social pathologies. Who, after all, would want to defend on rational policy grounds such things as: marital infidelity, general lowering of moral standards, especially among the young, the threat of state mandated abortions, and other such depredations?
Needless to say Paul VI takes it more or less for granted that there is something approaching an intrinsic causal connection between artificial birth control and these pathologies. But I don’t want to get into a discussion here of whether, and to what extent, we might be dealing with post hoc propter hoc fallacies here.
Instead, let’s revert to the fact that Humanae Vitae unambiguously presents the main natural law argument for the intrinsic immorality of artificial contraception as an argument whose truth is discoverable by human reason. And taking this claim together with the Thomistic doctrine that something cannot essentially be both a truth of reason and a truth of faith – a doctrine which, though not explicitly discussed in Humanae Vitae, is clearly presupposed by a very non-Bernardian Paul VI – one is faced with the following rigorous truth:
If the natural law argument in Humanae Vitae cannot be sustained on rational grounds, then the argument against the intrinsic immorality of even one act of artificial contraception collapses.
And without going into the details here, I submit that if and when this particular conceptual dike is breached, the basic argument of Humanae Vitae is, at best, on brain dead life support. And whether you continue to grant it any respect depends, I suppose, on how you feel about logical euthanasia.
So the question is: is there a principled argument for why the natural law view ingredient in Humanae Vitae on this issue is inherently, or as we might say adopting Paul VI own language, “intrinsically” flawed?
I suggest that there is.
And I suggest that the basic ingredients for such an argument can be found in what some would consider the most unlikely of places, namely, in Thomas Aquinas. And what’s even more surprising, in the very text where he arguably addressed the issue of artificial contraception, and its moral permissibility or impermissibility, in the most complete form in his entire corpus.
So ….
Go read Summa Contra Gentiles 3:122:
http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles3b.htm#122
And if you come away from this text thinking that, were he alive today and in possession of the generally accepted knowledge that we now have about human anthropology, sociology, biology, and psychology, Aquinas would, using the principles he himself invokes in SCG 3:122, come away agreeing that acts of artificial contraception, as argued against in Humanae Vitae, are intrinsically immoral, you haven’t read him closely enough.
Before signing off, let me note there is another attempt at a novel version of a natural law argument in Humanae Vitae, one which tries to argue from what can best be called a view of love in its “highest” form as being kenotic, or agapaic. This is the “giving of oneself unreservedly because this is the true nature of love and hence the true nature of sexual love as well” argument. It is adumbrated -- though in a somewhat confused and incomplete fashion -- in Section 13 of Humanae Vitae.
There is no space here to address this argument in detail.
Suffice it to say that, even though I think there is arguably a lot of truth in this argument, in no way does the argument materially bear on the issue of whether or not individual acts of artificial contraception are intrinsically immoral – except, perhaps, in the very muddleheaded thinking about the nature of human sexuality that has, unfortunately, been the hallmark of a group of formally celibate clerics who arrogated to themselves some time ago the right to be the authoritative arbiters of the nature of sexuality, even Christian sexuality if you will.
My "prior post" was hardly worth dredging up from electronic limbo or wherever it was it was. But since it was retrieved, let me say that only part of it was posted. Perhaps the second half can also be found. I promise this is the last I will mention this.
Thanks Ed for taking the time to post your thoughts. Most comments shed a lot more heat than light, and very few ever advance the discussion in the substantive way that yours do.
Ed Micca:
You obviously are pinning your entire argument on the papal magisterium without remainder. You don't know history sufficiently enough to argue this point. If you recall the first major issue the apostles dealt with after Jesus's death, was whether Jews who wanted to join the new Christian movement should be circumcized or not. The apostles were not in agreement. The judgment and conclusion that carried the day was not a decision that Peter made; it was James's judgment. It is clear that while Peter was the head of the apostes, he reached out to everyone for advice; he did not make a unilateral decision. It was only after many centuries that popes started to rule with the power and absolute authority as we see today.
The magisterium has become the papal magisiterium without remainder starting in the late 19th century, and was the absolute rule of law in he late 20th century. JP II never looked to ecumenical councils or synods of bishops of the world for advice as many popes in centuries past did. The synod of bishops on the family, held in 1980 was a farse. At the conclusions of this synod, JP II declared that all the bishops of the world were in agreement with HV. Nothing could be further from the truth.There is much written on this subject and one thing is clear. Many bishops argued courageously about reforming HV during this synod. JP II simply ignored the arguments. This is the problem we have today. We have a Church with a head but no body. We have a church divided and a crisis in truth.
The example of the young married woman whose life is threatened by another pregnancy is anything but a sophmoric make-up. There are millions of women who have difficult birth deliveries that have caused serious and dangerous medical conditions. Many women are told by their physicians that another pregnancy will be life threatening. This is a concrete case of human experience where the application of HV demonstrates stoic insensibilty because these women cannot take the pill or be sterilized to safe-guard their lives; they must practice risky NFP-PC or celibacy. So much for the "moral absolute" of contraception.
Any argument that you have no answers for and that threatens the "divine law" you proclaim, such as HV, is dismissed as adolescence nonsense.