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.
I'd still be interested in seeing proof of what you said about PPVI's reasons for organizing the BC Commission.
The insistence upon celibacy for family planning insures its own demise. How many marriages have been ruined and become cases of economic room-mates when the fear of another pregnancy drives people apart? Do priests really believe that all those small families among their congregants are simply due to infertility? Do they even have a clue about the tension and misery their rants, especially from the authority of the pulpit, have caused? The decision to practice NFP is just as 'unnatural' as the decision to use any of the preventative birth control methods. Does the church really expect a woman (even a priest's sainted mother) to have 10 or more pregnancies in her child-bearing life? If we had a non-celibate priesthood and married bishops (of both sexes), this teaching would be quickly reformed. And the result would be millions of disaffected and alienated Catholics streaming back to church. And that would make the 'celibate' vocation crisis a much more overwhelming problem. Full churches or empty pews??
Mike Evans:
I think rage is clouding your good judgment.
"How many marriages have been ruined and become cases of economic room-mates when the fear of another pregnancy drives people apart?"
Since, as many commenters have assured us, the overwhelming majority of Catholis disregard the Church's teachings on contraception, I would imagine the answer is "very few."
"Does the church really expect a woman (even a priest's sainted mother) to have 10 or more pregnancies in her child-bearing life? "
No, just use NFP.
"And the result would be millions of disaffected and alienated Catholics streaming back to church."
Right, like the tens of millions of happy Episcopalians, Methodists and other types of liberal Protestants who have been abandoned their contraceptive-friendly denominations since 1960. Have you considered that people join the Church to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, and if they leave it because of something as trivial as their desire to use the pill it probably means that maybe, just maybe, their faith was not especially strong to begin with?
Sorry Carlo. Those who use NFP are called "parents." And it seems diabolical to suggest that people who are dismayed and disillusioned by the church's teaching on contraception are somehow less faithful, less worthy, less commited to Christ. And the church simply does not make sexuality issues "trivial" - they have become a central teaching and a turn-off because they make no sense in the wider human experience. The fall off of church attendance is mostly because people find the organized churches increasingly irrelevant and unauthentic. People no longer are ignorant and uneducated and scared to disagree. And if you survey kids 15 - 40, you will see them voting with their feet.
Mike: People no longer are ignorant and uneducated and scared to disagree.
Perhaps people today arent as smart as they believe. This generation didnt suddenly learn truths about God that weren't know to previous generations. We have learned much about how to make computers and human biology but our knowledge of philosophy and theology still relies on Aristotle, Plato, the Apostles and Doctors of the Church.
Come to think of it, my grandparents werent ignorant and uneducated but they were quite devoted to Christ and His church. Hmmm
I understand the outrage against an insensitive male priesthood, but you're letting that blind you to the simple fact at hand. The government is narrowing the definition of "religion". That's it. That's the issue.
Ed Micca's document doesn't mention BC at all but I bet he can 'infallibly' tuck it in somewhere. Didn't these guys have 'democracy and religious liberty stinks' tucked into the infalliblity bucket before BC?
Through the "pre-pill" era of 2500 years, birth control forms and practices have been used and documented, including oral, chemical, barrier, and other techniques. Philosophers and physicians such as Aristotle and Hippocrates (c. 400BC) worked on it, and some explicitly addressed family size planning. The notion that somehow the pill (1955) or the new secularism has any special responsibility in the matter is difficult to support. (See for quick summary http://www.bmj.sk/2007/10803-12.pdf and Wikipedia Birth_control#Early_history )
Today, the theory of the "Natural" method has become plausible because of its scientific foundation using modern, clinically obtained knowledge of temporal, thermal, and viscous variations which are statistically correlated with a woman's ovulatory cycle and are externally observable. It focusses on reproduction-related biological factors approximately analyzable by informed ordinary people to point to a generally unnatural practice as means to an end - avoiding pregnancy. For many, it manages to separate unitive and procreative aspects of marriage as little else but disease and disability do.
Jo McG. tells with stark clarity and others have amplified the centrally important factors that are determinative _in combination with_ the use of externally visible organs which Church teachings as promulgated tend to end up emphasizing. When the Church teachings as pronounced reflect understanding of the non-biological consequences of procreation and the multiple meanings of "unitive" in marriage as lived, some credibility may be restored.
Meatless Janet,
Let's see what you know about Catholic basics. QUESTION: Does or doesn't the Church have the authority to mandate meatless Fridays under pain of mortal sin? ANSWER: Yes, assuming the requirements are present for an act to be a mortal sin - 1. serious matter, 2. knowledge that it's serious; 3. full consent of the will to do it anyway. Your opinion that this is silly makes no difference. What you should be asking is if eating meat on Friday is so friviolous yet be very serious, then why in the world would anyone eat meat on Friday? It's such an easy sin to avoid and such a grace to obtain. For the record, the law of meatless Fridays was never abrogated - in essence this sacrifice is still in effect though we are free to substitute another sacrifice in place of not eating meat.
Bruce:
You misread what I wrote. The words I used are the ones the Church uses, in particular the late JP II, to describe those that disagree. He used language and lables such as: dissenters, the culture of death, invincibly ignorant, those who distort the truth, to name a few. If you read what I wrote carefully, you wil notice that I objected to these descriptions of those who disagree with a church teaching, such as contraception.
Incidentally, invincibly ignorant does not mean simply ignorant as used to describe those of our great grandparents who were illiterate. Invincibly ignorant means one is not aware that he or she is wrong. You can be highly educated and still be invincibly ignorant.
Also what I wrote had nothing to do with ones spirituality, like those of your good grandparents.
We have gleaned much from Aristotle, Aquinas, and others including some of the greatest moral philosophers during the period 1600-1800. Most of them were not Catholic. History has taught us that our understanding of the truth is progressive. Not the fundamentals of our faith, but what we consider moral norms and what is immoral. We continue to learn. This does not mean that there are no moral absolutes. Killing the innocent is immoral and intrinscially evil and this will never change. We have also learned much from scientific knowledge which continues to help us undertand the cosmos, human nature and ourselves as well.
However, it is clear that it was only after Vatican II that moral theology became a doctoral curriculum in many Catholic and non-Catholic Universities. Before Vatican II, most theologians were clergy, male and celibate. Today, most theologians are non-clergy, female and married. This has profoundly changed our view point. Before Vatican II, moral theology was taught using the scholastic or neoscholastic method. This method of moral discernment did not significantly change from the 1500s. Then, there was an exposion of moral theologican thought after Vatican II. A quick study of the many books and essays written over the past 50 years, dwarfs those of past centuries, and we are better for it.
It is also true that those clergy, theologians and the laity since 1968 are not afraid to disagree because they can argue using the language of the Church as in moral philosophy, theology, anthropology, and the like. Others can use their critical thinking ability and inform their consciouses properly so they can decide, giving respect for the Church teachings and their spiritual advisers, what is right and wrong, good and evil. This does not mean that those of us who disagree with a chruch teaching are practicing individualism or relativism. It also does not mean those who disagree are picking and choosing what they want to belive or not. Most are only following their informed conscious especially when a teaching is in contradiction with human experience, as contraception is.
I hope this explanation provides more clarity about what I wrote.