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.
Carlo:
There is nothing wrong with NFP. There is also nothing wrong with contraception for good reasons. Many couples, especially those with irregular cycles, find NFP-PC unreliable. According to the most recent research, there is a 25% failure rate with PC based on acual usage. If you have had success with PC, and were happy, good for you. Most couples who practice contraception, for spacing children and to avoid conception after having children, are equally happy.
The act of abstinence is an act, and this act is brought about and preceeded by two voluntary deliberate physical acts: the measurement of temperature and the examination of cervical mucus, all plotted with the intention to limit sexual intercourse to infertile times, rendering procreation impossible during sexual intercourse.
As for me, I have been married to the same woman for 40 years and have two wonderful children. We pracitced contraception and are happy.
In the original NYT article, the reporter writes "Fr. Landry argues that contraception can be the gateway to exploitation." I suspect that there are few people who would disagree that contraception can be a gateway for objectification and gratuitious self-indulgence. That it must lead to it is not the lived experience of many in the church, both before and after Humanae Vitae. By adopting this extreme position that ran counter to what people in the midst of good relationships knew to be true, the church ceased to speak with an effective, credible voice on any issues of sexuality or marital relations . I wonder with sadness where we might be now had Pope Paul accepted the wisdom of those on the Papal Commission and taken the more moderate and more defensible position on responsible parenthood outlined by the Commission. Perhaps the Church would have been better positioned to speak with authority when real exploitation took place, and to do as Ms McGowan suggests is their proper role, to help families find the right decisions regarding family planning.
Who cares? Most Catholics pay no attention to what the Catholic Church says about birth control. And, consequently, they pay little attention to what the Catholic Church has to say about anything related to sex. And because the Church lacks credibilty in this everyday aspect of human life, they lack credibility in so many other important aspects of Catholic moral teaching. I remember when HV came out. I was young and newly married. I thought at the time that HV would drive many Catholics out of the Church and Unfortunately, I was right. I know what the Church's reasoning is behind their decision to ban articifial birth control. But for most people, it is abstract gibberish that bears little or no relationship to how married life is actually lived. Can we get the Bishops to talk seriously and forcefully about economic issues? Almost 50% of Americans are counted as either poor or low income. People are dying without health care. We have wasted trillions of dollars on wasteful and violence producing wars. We have an obscene concentration of wealth in this country. Really, who cares about some arcane arguments about natural law and the other fine philosophical distinctions?
Infertile couples can have sex continuously and it's biologically not "open to life". However, a woman on the pill or a man with a condom CAN be open to life if they accept that a failure of method may result in a pregnancy and they are ready to embrace that pregnancy. Many more contradictions of this sort exist.
Excellent point, Juliana. The Church's witness has been terribly damaged and its voice muted so badly due to the arrogance and fear that motivates so many of its teachings on sexual morality (and its obsession with those issues to the neglect of so many others). Add to that the largely inadequate and hugely tardy response to the abusive clergy-bishop scandal...the voice is hollow and utterly unconvincing.
The primary purpose of sex between married partners is to deepen the love between them. As for procreation, the Church teaches that artificial means of birth control cannot be used to prevent that possibility. The reason everyone should know that the use of artificial birth control is always and in every circumstance wrong is the fact that it's a doctrine of the Church. The Church doesn't "make up" doctrine any more than scientists make up the speed of light. These truths just are. They are part of God's created order. Whether or no we like bishops or popes, whether or not we like the Church, whether or not we understand the "why" of doctrine, whether or not these doctrines fit our lifestyles has nothing to do with the truth of doctrine and our obligation to assent to the truth. The Church has the authority and mandate from Christ to teach, preach, interpret, and defend Divine revelation. Having free will we can ignore God's revelation of the truths necessary for our salvation, but we do so at our peril.
Where is divinely revealed that contraception is inherently evil, and why did Paul VI even consider looking again at the issue if it is, indeed, a "doctrine"? Sorry, Ed, but your argument is a silly loop, circling around itself with nowhere to go.
So sex is either for becoming a dad/ mom or for pleasure? I think that this is where the problem is. I had hoped that by now the leaders of the Church would have been able to move beyond the Augustanian model of sex. The issue is much broader than what this priest seems to say. Sex can be about an expression of a deep, loving connection, even in search of that connection. It can also be about meeting a need and helping another to meet a need. To limit it to always needing to be open to creating life, I believe, is seeing sex thru a very narrow lens; one that does not take into consideration how multi-level it really is. Certainly there are dangers to sex. I don't mean to discount these dangers, but to deal with the dangers by ignoring so much that is good and healthy about sex is very troubling.
Did someone mention Natural Family Planning? To plan not to conceive, couples must abstain from intercourse six to nine days during the wife’s fertile period. Couples normally also abstain from intercourse during the wife’s menstrual period which means another five to seven days of abstinence. So we have eleven to sixteen days per month of abstinence. These numbers are not often presented in NFP seminars.
I disagree with the implication that couples should not have too much sex. Shared sexual pleasure is central to the married life. It is blessed by God in its very act which is a key sign of their being Sacrament + the Real Presence of Christ.
I do not agree that somehow celibacy belongs in marriage. Sexual intercourse is not the only way couples can express and strengthen their love. But ordinarily, making love is the fullest way couples can nourish their marriage. As such, as another writer put it, "the vast majority of the time, couples should no more avoid intimate sexual intercourse than they should avoid celebrating an intimate Eucharist."
Michael Barberi:
I too find arguing an essential difference between NFP and contraception a fool's task, but those who do see the "act" of contraceptive intercourse purposively closed off from its creative potential while an "act" chosen during a woman's infertile period remains morally "open" to life, no matter how many physically demanding techniques are required to determine that it's, in fact, infertile.
I think such reasoning confirms what Birth Control Commission member John Marshall said in his recent letter, "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."
Moralists who defend HV always say they're not basing their view of natural law on the mere physical or biological functioning of sex and procreation, that this is a matter of human acts, not biology, but in the end, as Marshall says, biology seems to matter most.