Ed Who Sees Not Silliness:  so we can trust that the Friday burger-eater in 1950 who died in the street immediately after leaving Mickey D's went straight to hell for transgressing in such a "serious matter," but today the same would not be the case?  And where is our good God in all of this?  Is your understanding of God really so small as to believe that God and God's judgments is enslaved to such man-made nonsense?  This, my brother, is pitiful indeed. 

By the way, still looking for your evidence for why you say PPVI called the Commission...

Ed wrote:  It's such an easy sin to avoid and such a grace to obtain..

I never have nor ever would think that eating/not meat on Friday could/would/should be considered "serious matter" and the stuff of mortal sin.  A God who cares for such trivia is a God I might just want to spend eternity separated from anyway, so I win, either way, and get to have that burger.  Read what Jesus said about the leaders of his "church" who destroyed the lives of people by straining at fruit flies while swallowing elephants. 

Your God seems frightfully tiny, small-mided and somewhat like an idol. 

I have cut and pasted this passage from Brett Salkeld's interview with James Alison (Commonweal, 03/06/12).  It is one of the most articulate and strangely hopeful visions of what is wrong with the current state of affairs in the Church and why discussions such as the one we are having here are so contentious and difficult.  Alison's assessment is theologically sound and biblically-based; it is a vision with the living God of Jesus Christ at the center.  I was very moved whan I first read it and still am.  I only wish I had his grace and patience! 

Spending time, as I do, with people on both sides of the Reformation divide, I find strict parallels between the temptations to which either side is prone. Protestantism is tempted to bibliolatry, and Catholicism is tempted to ecclesiolatry. Both are forms of idolatry that involve some sort of grasping of security where it is not to be found. This grasping ends up by evacuating the object grasped (whether the Bible or the church) of meaning, turning it instead into a projection of the one grasping. The nonidolatrous approach is when we allow ourselves to be reached and held by a living act of communication from One who is not on the same level as either Bible or church, but of whose self-disclosure those realities can most certainly become signs. A sure sign of a pattern of desire locked in grasping is the speed with which we collapse into invidious comparisons such that we acquire our identities over against others in our own group, rather than receiving them together patiently from the one calling us into being.

As a Catholic I am fully committed to the notion that, the Word having become flesh, the living act of communication is an ecclesial one, made available through bodily signs. In addition, I take it for granted that the church is prior to me, and that if something is church teaching, it is true. The presumption is on there being some sort of truthfulness at work in the stated teaching until it becomes clear that this is not the case. The real question for me, as a Catholic trying to think toward the future, is this: we know that we have only one Magister, the Incarnate Word of God, and that the authentic teaching office in the church is not above, but serves, this Living Word. Furthermore, this Living Word has chosen to address us at a level of fraternal equality, making of us his brothers and sisters who have only one Father, God, and are not to call anyone else our father. So, how do we hold fast to the experience of Jesus teaching us in and as church as we become aware of how often the bishops, those who have been consecrated sacramental signs, seem to allow the richness of the faith to become secondary to culture-war imperatives, institutional self-interest, and the search for corporate approval? I think that reimagining the ecclesial shape of Christ teaching in our midst, exploring the sort of act of communication genuine divine teaching is, and understanding better the relationship between the Teacher, those taught, and those charged to be signs of truthfulness is going to be one of the real challenges of the next generation.

Carlo:

So you're saying "the Christian tradition" regarding sex and marriage has remained essentially unchanged for the past 2,000 years?  Obviously, I think that's assuming too much.  To wit:

1.  No one disputes that Augustine upheld procreative sex in marriage as a "good", but when he simultaneously warned against concupiscence, or the "turbulent lusts of the flesh," it's hard not to conclude that, to him, the pleasure involved was at the very least an occasion of sin.  The tendency toward sexual puritainism that afflicted Christians for centuries came from somewhere.  As a former Manichee, Augustine may have been victim as much as cause of this problem, but the very fact that he found it virtually impossible to consider marriage without warning against concupiscence exemplifies a certain mindset, a mindset that got passed on so that, even if when marriage has been accepted as "good," the sex involved seemed tainted.

2.  To Aquinas, the "marriage debt" meant the procreative act, period.  A spouse was owed the act, period.   If spouses were owed "pleasure" as well, let's just say that wasn't exactly a universal interpretation.

3.  When Innocent XI condemned the idea of performing marital intercourse out of a desire for pleasure exclusively, he was thinking in terms of pleasure vs. procreation, not the more modern juxtaposition of pleasure vs. love, wherein "exclusively for pleasure" might be seen as "using" the other person.  IOW, "love" didn't have anything to do with it, nor did "using."  He meant pleasure wasn't a good enough reason to justify sexual intercourse, you had to, above all, desire procreation, which might make pleasure OK, but still, as Augustine pointed out, dangerous because of the possibility of concupiscence.

Fwiw, I'm not sure how enlightened Christians today are about sex and marriage.  I only know our views have changed over the centuries.....on the one hand (considering the old tendency to hold marital sex suspect unless performed for procreation), for the better; on another (considering the modern tendency to separate sex and marriage), for the worse.  Hopefully, there are more than two ways to go.

Ed, I grew up in the Midwest with no access to fresh fish or seafood because supermarkets didn't yet sell fresh seafood, and we had no friends or relatives who engaged in freshwater fishing.  Fridays were a dreary succession of tuna casseroles and tasteless deep-fried fish squares from church-run fish fries.  

Moving to the Gulf Coast, where we have lived since 1978, was a revelation; we learned that NOBODY who had access to fresh-caught fish and seafood ever suffered on the Church's meatless days.  The person who, inadvertently or defiantly, ate a bologna sandwich on a Friday in Lent during the Fifties was "atoning" far more than someone who devoutly chowed down on flounder stuffed with crabmeat--yet the Church said that the former had committed a mortal sin, and the latter had not.  

If I step back from a philosphical and theological argument, I am left with pragmatice ones. Some people call these "kitchen table arguments", others call them practical arguments. If you want to write and publish a essay about a church teaching, you need to use the language of the church, or academic, theological or moral philosophical logic and jargon. However, the pragmatic arguments, IMO, are the thinking of the common people. They are accessible to everyone, If understanding the truth was based on intelligence and education, only the few would be enlightended by God. 

We all heard the stories of the rich man who contributes a hundred dollars to the church each week, and the poor woman who drops a penny in the collection box. Jesus says that the woman who gave the church her last penny was closer to God. Here are some pragmatic questions and comments that continue to haunt my understanding of the truth about contraception and other sexual ethical teachings. 

1. If contraception is truly intrinsically evil, regardless of circumstances, intentions or ends, and the Divine Truth, why would God allow the majority of His Church to reject it? If the battle for the human soul was like a baseball game, would it be irresponsible or unreasonable to view the "score" as: Satan: 90, Church: 10...reflecting the fact that about 90% or more of Catholics don't believe that contraception is always morally wrong?

2. Vatican II proclaimed that Christ's Church on earth is much broader than the Catholic Church, and ecumenism is a call to Christian solidarity. In fact, the Catholic Church signed what I call memorandums of understanding between itself and other Christian Churches. Unlike what was taught to me in elementary school during the 1950s, that you can only be guaranteed salvation through the Catholic Church, today the Catholic Church does not deny that Protestants who follow their faith can gain eternal salvation.

If this be true, most non-Catholic Christian Churches, and most Jewish religions, do not believe that contraception is always immoral, while the Catholic Church believes it is always intrinsically evil. 

To the horror of Christian Churches that "thought" the Catholic Church was finally changings its arrogant posture, only to realize that the ecumenical document/memo of understanding they signed together professed one thing, only to find out that the CDF (under questioning by the Press) repeated the same old argument that the Catholic Church is the only Church that possesses the fullness of truth. Are we to believe that non-Catholic religions do not possess the fullness of truth, as the Catholic Church asserts?

3. Lastly, Jesus never condemned the sinner. In fact, he always welcomed sinners and those who society believed were evil...tax collectors, lepors, prostitutes. He taught us "if you seek me, you will find me; knock and my door will be open to you". He never denied salvation to anyone who was sorry for his/her sin and wanted salvation in His name. Yet, there are millions of divorced and remarried Catholics standing on the outside of Church doors seeking salvation, knocking but the doors to the Church are closed. They are denied the sacrament of reconciliation and absolution and they cannot receive the Holy Eucharist.

The Church gives absolution to habitual sinners, such as contraceptive couples, under the principle of gradualness in the sacrament of reconciliation. Contraceptive couples, by definition, have no firm purpose of amendment. Nevertheless, the Church believes that by constant prayer, and frequent receipt of the sacraments, they will "gradually" reform. But, other habitual sinners, such as the divorced and remarried, are denied the principle of gradualness and absolution. How do we explain this contradication between the letter of word (doctrine) and the deed (pastoral practices)?

4. If NFP is God's procreative plan, then spouses who want to practice birth control must abstain from sexual intercourse for a maximum of 6 days per month, because this is the maximum fertility window for most women. For many women, it is closer to 4 or 5 days. However, the symtothermal method, the method endorsed by Georgetown University's Center for Reproductive Health, calls for 12 days per month...twice the number of fertile days that God made. The reason for this is a fact: there are no easily accessible methods that Catholics can use to accuracy determine the moment of ovulation, either prospectively or retrospectively. If it is true and God never asks us to do the impossible, why can't we do what God wants us to do? Is not 12 days excessive in terms of a maxium of 6 days?

When it comes to birth control, does God want all spouses to measure temperature and examine cervical mucus every day to determine the number of fertile and infertile days, and limit sexual intercourse to only infertile days? If so, why would he want us to abstain for 12 days per month when he only made 6 days fertile?

Beverly:

no, I am not saying that there were not variations over the centuries. I am saying that overall the Christian tradition about sexuality is remarkably balanced and positive, and that your interpretation of those three examples as necessarily sexuo-phobic was unfair.

I wish there were a clearer way to do this than one uniformly-spaced combox post, but since that’s the tool I have at my disposal, I’m going to do my best. Reading this article also made me sad, ironically partially for the same reason as the author, but for a few others as well. I’m sad because of just how profoundly this article simplifies the priesthood, the men who comprise its ranks, and even sexuality. I feel like I need to respond to it piece by piece because that’s the only way the response will make any sense, so since I can’t write my responses in a different color or indent them in any special way, I’m going to put the quotations from the article between arrows and in quotations -->”like this”<--

-->“...men who may never have experienced sex feel qualified not just to speak about it, but to pronounce on it with certainty.”<--

To hone in even further, -->”may never have experienced sex”<--. This was the first part that made me feel a little bit like I’d been punched in the stomach. How many married couples would you say you know? Do you think the author knows? Do you think the average person knows? Of those couples, what percentage of them have trusted you with intimate details about their marital life and sexuality within it? Less than half? Maybe fewer than 10%? Even if you count 50 married couples among your friends, do you know intimate details about the sexual and marital relationships of more than five of them? How broad, really, is your, my, the author’s, or the average person’s “experience of sex”? It’s incredibly narrow, and therefore incredibly nuanced and biased. Your individual sexual experience, complete with all the personality traits and features that make your relationship with your spouse unique, is overwhelmingly the most defining “experience” you have of sex. And it’s unique to you.

On what grounds does that make any married individual more qualified to speak about sex than, for example, Pope John Paul II, who wrote the Theology of the Body? Or Pope Paul VI who wrote Humanae Vitae? Not only does he have the “experience” of having been trusted with intimate details of thousands upon thousands of marital and sexual relationships over the course of his priesthood and papacy, but his assessment and understanding of them is not skewed by his own unique, individual, un-duplicatable, personal experience. Even ordinary parish priests have incredibly broad “experience of sex” relative to the average married person.

Equating “experience” with “intercourse” is such a drastic oversimplification of sex it’s painful. Instead, I would argue that because a priest is NOT married, he actually has a much BROADER “experience of sex” to draw on and to use to make conclusions about what is and isn’t good for the human person and human development. That’s not to say there won’t always be nuance as, obviously, sex only exists between real living people, but it is a great basis for someone to “feel qualified not just to speak about it, but to pronounce on it with certainty,” certainly relative to the limited sexual experience and exposure of a married individual.

-->“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.”<--

You may not be rejecting it in the aggregate. But the “decision” being made in the particular sexual act, if it’s contracepted, is one of rejection. You may very well value your spouse as an actual or potential parent on the whole of his or her life, but in the particular instance of making a decision whether to have sex *right now,* even if you “recognize that pregnancy is a possibility” and you’ve decided this is not “the right time for us to have a baby,” means that in this instance, you *are* rejecting your spouse’s capability to become a parent. You don’t want the “becoming a parent” part of your spouse right this moment. And there’s nothing wrong with knowing there are times when “becoming a parent” *is* irresponsible or undesirable. In those times, rather than participating in an act that bodily communicates a *total* gift of self and receptivity to the self of the other when you really mean you want to give your whole self *except* your “becoming a parent ability” and receive the whole of your spouse’s self *except his/her “becoming a parent ability”, choose not to engage in the act until your body language can match what your heart knows to be true about the situation.

When you’re willing to give yourself completely and receive your spouse’s self completely, by all means, do so! But when you’re not willing to give yourself or receive your spouse’s self completely, why enter into an act that, in the intense vulnerability she describes later, requires a complete gift and reception of self to support the relationship instead of undermine it?

-->“But the rules aren’t just unrealistic. They are often irrelevant, based on incorrect or incomplete information.”<--

This goes back to the initial point about the “experience of sex.” Who is more likely to have incorrect or incomplete information about sex: The individual who knows his/her own experience in extreme detail and the experiences of a few very close friends in detail, or the individual whose judgment is not swayed by the extremely detailed knowledge he has of his own experience, but instead can make a conclusion based on the detailed knowledge of thousands of people who have trusted him with it?

I don’t mean to say that every priest knows a married couple’s sexual or marital relationship better than they know it themselves. But think about what married couples do when they reach an impasse within the marriage and they don’t know what to do. They seek out professional advice, often from a marriage counselor. Why? Because they recognize that the breadth of that professional’s experience of marriage makes him/her better able to help the couple than the couples’ own deep experience of only their own marriage. Furthermore, the counselor’s impressions and advice aren’t unduly swayed by personal and emotional engagement in the couple’s problems. The objectivity is an *asset,* not a hindrance. The objective professional has a more level-headed, clear-sighted perspective than the couple in the depths of their very human experience. The same is generally true of priests. There will always be exceptions, but generally, the priest is also an objective professional with a more level-headed, clear-sighted perspective to offer.

-->“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.”<--

Whether the average young married man has actually matured beyond adolescence is a topic for another day (obviously many of them have, but whether it’s enough to be a majority is debatable). But let’s focus on this idea of “constantly available sex, uninhibited by any possibility of pregnancy.” While condoms or any other contraceptive procedure that requires a decision whether to contracept to be made at the same moment as the decision whether to have sex might be able to avoid this “constantly available sex, uninhibited by any possibility of pregnancy” mentality, long-acting or permanent methods of contraception cannot. Their whole purpose is to be able to make a decision for months, years, or even lifetimes at a time whether there should be any possibility of pregnancy specifically *for the purpose* of making sex constantly available without having to make the decision about pregnancy in that moment. What is the purpose of contraceptive sterilization other than to say, “I want to be able to have sex whenever I want without the possibility of having a child”?? The idea behind anything that is inserted for long periods of time or a pill that becomes routine is that the decision whether to have sex should not be influenced every time by the possibility of having children. It’s fine to make that decision monthly, or quarterly, or just once.

So who’s projecting here? Is this really a case of a priest projecting inexperience and an adolescent understanding of sex onto sexuality within a marriage, or a married woman projecting her own extremely limited conception of what “sexual experience” means and doesn’t mean onto priests? The priest can look at the objective reality that a decision to use long-term or permanent contraceptive techniques *does* have as its goal “constantly available sex, uninhibited by any possibility of pregnancy” and recognize it for what it is.

-->“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.”<--

She uses two kinds of pleasure interchangeably in this paragraph, but they really can’t be so easily switched for each other. Yes, to some extent, the Church distrusts earthly pleasure. Why? Because every pleasure we can experience on earth has been tainted by the fall. It is no longer possible for us to enjoy them as they were created. There are times we can come extremely close, like in the presence of an exquisite sunset or surrounded by the sounds of a symphony, but death is now a characteristic of all the pleasures we experience on earth. The sun finally goes down. The symphony ends. So it *is* dangerous to grow too attached to earthly pleasures. If we condition ourselves to be attached only to things that die, we leave ourselves unprepared for Heaven. It’s too much for us. We don’t know how to embrace it. And we run the risk of choosing *not* to embrace it because it’s just too hard a change to make. We weren’t made to be attached to things that end. We were made, first and foremost, to be united with God, who doesn’t end. That’s why we’re to love Him with all we are. But we’re also made to love each other, not just in our earthly lives, but as beings who are also made not to end. That’s why it hurts so much when we lose someone we love. We weren’t made for that. So it’s not odd in the least that we should be distrustful of earthly pleasure in the light of the heavenly pleasures for which we were created. Being too attached to the temporary ones conditions us against accepting the eternal ones.

And, yes, children are a safeguard (not an antidote) against growing too attached to the pleasures of sex, not because they make us miserable and are burdensome, but because they remind us that we were made for eternity, not for death. They are like an arrow reminding us that the pleasures we experience on earth exist to point us to the eternal ones that await. The most intense earthly pleasure we can enjoy brings about a new eternal being. Why? Because we were created for pleasure that’s eternal.

-->“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.)”<--

Who fights the hardest to protect newly conceived children, to welcome them, to create a culture in which all newly-conceived children are embraced as a joyful blessing instead of a burden or a consequence, and to make sure the youngest of the young children can’t be killed before they’re even born? If it’s not the bishops, it really isn’t fair to keep criticizing them every time they turn around for their pro-life efforts. Pick on the people who are really doing that more consistently and insistently than they are. But you can’t have it both ways. Either they seek after and welcome children too enthusiastically, or they consider them as burdensome consequences, but their critics really need to pick which. It’s disingenuous to keep accusing them of both.

Since she recognizes at least some of the dangers the bishops are trying to safeguard against by resisting “assistive reproductive technology,” I’m not going to get far into it except to point out that the Pope Paul VI Institute (www.popepaulvi.com) is and long has been a leader in NaPro technology that tries to correct conditions that cause infertility to restore the individual’s natural fertility rather than circumventing the conditions and finding ways to bring about children without having to take the time to heal the parent. They’ve been hugely successful, so it isn’t as though they’re saying people who struggle to conceive should just get over it and accept their fate. They’re pursuing ways that better respect the complete human dignity of the parents AND the children.

-->“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.”<--

First of all, the accusation of mindlessness is an unfair ad hominem attack. I’m sure there were many women who had no mindful engagement in their reproduction (some by their own fault and some without it), but it isn’t fair to paint with such a wide brush over the large Catholic families of generations past. In the instances where there was mindless reproduction, yes, that is just as harmful to the social good as refusal to connect sex with pregnancy. Certainly the instances in which women are not *permitted* any say in their own reproduction are just as harmful too.

But that isn’t what the bishops are proposing. It’s not an either/or dichotomy--either we mindlessly reproduce or we refuse to connect sex with pregnancy. That’s a more drastic oversimplification even than what she accuses the priests of. The bishops are proposing a profound integration of sex with pregnancy, and a recognition of the beautiful ways women’s bodies work and tell us when they’re fertile and when they aren’t. They’re encouraging us to respect the way our reproductive capabilities naturally work and integrate our sexuality into an understanding of ourselves in our fullness. If two spouses determine this is not the time to have children, let them wait to have sex until a time when the sex will not produce a child. Why suppress something that’s healthy and functioning properly so as to have sex without children? Whose dignity does that raise, exactly?

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.”<--

Every human person has a moral right to follow the dictates of his/her conscience. However, with great rights come great responsibilities. In this case, the accompanying great responsibility is to make sure that conscience is properly *formed.* It’s not enough to say, “My conscience tells me to do/not do this particular thing,” without asking whether that’s because the thing is evil or because the conscience is in error. The Church’s role is to help them arrive at the decision that best leads them to *holiness,* not the one that fits most comfortably with their consciences. Oftentimes it’s the conscience, not the guidance, that needs to be changed. Yes, this requires great care for nuance on the part of the priest, since there are millions and millions of factors that shape the conscience (just ask your nearest Catholic psychotherapist), but the Church’s responsibility (not just in sexual matters) is to help those entrusted to Her care to form their consciences in such a way as to love and find joy in holiness--not happiness. Holiness. “Happiness” is connected etymologically to “happenings.” One of the greatest errors in our modern philosophical discourse is that words that carry connotations of enduring, ongoing, everlasting joy in other languages end up being rendered “happiness” in English, which is unfortunately extremely misleading.

And not to beat a dead horse or anything, but “no foundation in practical experience” is a drastic oversimplification of both sex and the priesthood. “Practical experience,” in her usage, ends up being reduced to “personal experiences of intercourse,” ignoring completely the breadth of experience of sexuality priests do have. Ironically, it’s her own portrayal of sex and what it means to have “sexual experience” that is simplified to the point of being sad.

-->“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.”<--

If the Church has made a spectacle of Herself, it hasn’t been by promoting an immature version of sexuality. It’s been by failing to explain the depths of it as well as they deserve and leaving most people’s consciences immaturely formed. It’s a huge error to overcome, but I had to take the time to start trying.

I am positively groaning after reading Lindsay Wilcox, and refer readers to Luke Timothy Johnson's critique of TOB in Commonweal, 2001 at 

 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_2_128/ai_71578789/?tag=mantle_skin;content

That may help explain why JPII or a Paul VI have not the competence to set standards for married couples. TOB roams in abstraction, lost in the ethers, removed from lived experience as if "human sexuality is observed by telescope from a distant planet." 

In response to Michael B:

Your information on days per month has further complications for those whose periods vary significantly. Hardly everyone runs on the same cycle every month. Variations may range from 28 to 35 or more days, in which case knowing when to stop before ovulation becomes an almost impossible guessing game.

Some sperm can live up to a few days, and to be completely sure, five days of abstinence after ovulation becomes the margin of marginal certitude. Rounding out the number of safe days becomes a very meager prospect, especially in light of a partner's business travel schedule and family obligations.

The Crowleys had numerous letters from families about the hardships involved. Celibates dismiss the realities at their peril. The pain of so many couples cries out for redress, particularly those where a genetic disease passed on to several children led to maternal breakdown and tragedy for the entire family.

Re: "Christian tradition about sexuality is remarkably balanced and positive." Surely,  Carlo jests. For centuries, pleasure taught as sin instead of joy, an attitude of marriage as permission to sin, constant questions about what is sinful and what not? 

The church has much to account for in the ravages of its destructive teaching on sexuality. Thank God so many people have grown up and moved on from the control and fear instilled by clergy in times past.