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.
Superb rebuttal, Jo. Miserably, there are a growing number of "Father" Landrys out there, patronzing, condescending and pontificating endlessly and arrogantly about issues they have no knowledge of. It was funny to me to hear you say Roger "sounds almost feminist...," since it was a few personal encounters with this man that actually MADE me a feminist, and none more powerfully than when I read one of his homilies in which he says that ordination is a form of transubstantiation. For me, that was IT. And you are completely on target when pointing out the inherent immaturity in the stance these men take and the strikingly adolescent tone they sound when spouting what they take to be undisputed wisdom. Sad smiles are understandable, but there is a deep, unsmiling sadness in the fact that the new generation of "John Paul II priests" are hardly the servant-leaders our fractured church so deperately needs right now. But let's revert to something totally laughable: does anyone ever wonder how these celibate guys KNOW SO MUCH about sexual activity and its many complexities? They have an astonishing store of "facts" about it...how is it that they KNOW all this??? Simply and unutterably ridiculous.
I doubt that there are any married men who can honestly say that they understand what it is to be a woman, but we stand a much better chance than any man who has not been married.
" New human life can never be harmful to the social good." (Bruce @9:40 am)
The implications of that statement are profound, implying that men and women are nothing but unthinking animals -- baby factories. This cannot possibly be what God intended.
Goethe: Nothing is more terrifying than ignorance in action.
Thank you, Jo McGowan.
I think I first heard the argument against artificial contraception as a teenager (I'm now in my sixties). The question immediately raised in my mind was, why then don't we have to tear down all the dams, as rivers are patently designed to flow freely to the sea. Well, we are breaching some dams now for environmental considerations, so maybe my teenage take on the absurdity wasn't nuanced enough. Still, though, I think it was correct. It will be a long time if ever before we can remove all the dams in the real world.
On the naivete of celibate priests pronouncing on marriage and sex: they may make up in breadth of experience (from counseling, confessions, training) what they lack in immediacy. I doubt that as a class they are as naive as some facile diatribes would have it. That certain individual priests are ignorant is no more surprising than that certain politicians are.
I've often wondered if abstinence wasn't a form of birth control (at least subconsciously in the preaching of the church) in the pre-pill and pre-condom days. I don't know how old the condom is, but latex is a fairly recent invention. At any rate, the contraceptive options before the pill were certainly more limited. For simplicity, I don't mention the iud etc.
Carolyn Disco, could you elaborate please? ("it was power considerations by the papacy that decided the promulgation of HV"). Thanks.
JOH: I have to wonder if the breadth of "experience" you mention has ever exposed priests repeatedly to contracepting couples who see their use of contraception as "objectification" and harm of their partner? Is this REALLY their experience? Highly doubtful. Do you really think the "experience" of a Roger Landry includes serious encounters with couples whose married lives have been hurt by contraception? Again, I doubt it. These men merely parrot the party line and use as examples the minority of couples who "follow church teaching" on this issue and are fulfilled in that. Their insistence that all couples who contracept are harming and objectifying each other cannot be beased on any real experience----of serious, adult encounter----with these couples. Sure, anyone can figure out the mechanics of sexual intercourse; but can these men actually say with certainty that they KNOW contraception harms married sexual love in all cases and under all circumstances? How can they possibly know this, especially when the experience of the overwhelming majority of Catholics simply contradicts it? The teaching makes no sense to most normal people. The fact that the experience of thoughtful, faithful married people was excluded ultimately in the promulgation of Humanae Vitae is the root of the issue: these celibate men simply do not know what they are talking about, nor do they listen to those who do.
Janet, I think you overlooked my exclusion of ignorant priests from the class of priests I was discussing.
JOH: I hardly think that the Rogers of the church see themselves as ignorant! Do you think a man humble enough to know his own ignorance on these matters would ever attempt to write such things (in The NY Times, no less!)? The truly "ignorant" person would seek to learn from those who DO know what they are talking about. And methinks they would change their minds quite readily once they had heard the real experience of real people. But if you already know everything, why would you bother even ask anyone else what the truth might be? But don't worry: one of his priest friends assured me, with the same smug "certainty" you see evidenced in the Times article: "Roger WILL be a bishop."
And that's what we have to look forward to...
In response to JOH's: Carolyn Disco, could you elaborate please? ("it was power considerations by the papacy that decided the promulgation of HV"). Thanks.
Many have written at length about the focus on papal power and its possible diminuition as a result of any change in the teaching on artificial contraception. Garry Wills comes to mind immediately. In capsule form, however, here is a relevant letter from a professor of neurology who served on the Birth Control Commission:
Truth and authority
I read your wide coverage of Humanae Vitae (26 July) with interest as I was one of the original six members of the Papal Commission on Birth Control appointed by Pope John XXIII and confirmed by Paul VI. The outstanding feature of the Commission was its dedication to the discovery of the truth. Every argument was carefully analysed and sifted to determine its weight. The other striking feature was the attitude of Pope Paul VI. Because of the international political implications of the Church’s teaching on contraception, the Commission was set up by the Secretary of State, not by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) as might have been expected. The Secretary General of the Commission, the Swiss Dominican, Henri de Reidmatten, reported directly to the Pope. When it became clear that fundamental questions were being raised, the response of the Pope was to continue the study with diligence and integrity.
It was only after the Commission had completed its report and been disbanded that the CDF swung into action, persuading the Pope not to change the teaching for <i><b>fear of the damage this would do to papal authority.</i></b> It failed to envisage the greater damage to be caused by maintaining a teaching which is unsustainable. The CDF set up a secret commission entirely of priests to produce a new report. This gives an insight into the curial mindset to think that a group of celibate priests, handpicked for their orthodoxy, would have a better understanding of marriage than a commission of cardinals, bishops, priests and lay people, married couples and single people, drawn from all five continents and embracing a wide range of sacred and secular disciplines.
The fundamental difference between the Commission and the CDF lies in the understanding of the nature of sexual intercourse in marriage. As Charles Curran (“Dangers of certitude”, 26 July) succinctly explained, the hierarchical Church identifies the morality of sexual intercourse with its physical aspects. It would hotly deny this, but the fact that a couple are allowed to choose an act that is nonprocreative but may not make an act non-procreative shows that it is the physical aspect that is sacrosanct. The Commission, looking at the evidence, took a wider view of sexual intercourse, seeing it as part of the wider relationship, expressing and fostering love.
The Commission anticipated that a change in teaching would be a great pastoral challenge and prepared a pastoral document of four chapters, one largely the work of the French Jesuit Père de Lestapis, the finest account of married love I have ever read. What a pity that none of this was ever published.
There have been many tragic consequences of Humanae Vitae, but none greater than that referred to in “A mother’s story – 1” (26 July). For the Popes, especially John Paul II, to teach, in season and out of season, that contraception is wrong and the overwhelming majority of the faithful to reject this undermines the integrity of the Church and weakens its witness in many areas. I hope that your coverage of this issue will promote more open and honest discussion which is so badly needed.
John Marshall
Emeritus Professor of Neurology
University of London
I should have noted the letter appeared in the Tablet.