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.
Janet,
All that's necessary for us ot know that a teaching is infallible is for the Church to say so. Period. If you don't understand that, you don't understand the nature of Christ-given Church authority. But the Church doesn't just leave things at the "accept or else" stage. it lays out reasons. Doctrine doesn't have to be explicitly stated in scripture. All doctrine can be derived from scripture and Tradition just as all the theorems in Euclid's 13 books of geometry can be derived from those 5 little axioms and a handful of definitions found in Book 1, Page 1. Paul VI didn't have doubts about the moral evil of artificial contraception. He gathered as much information as he could, pro and con on the issue, so that his pronouncement - Humanae Vitae - would be encompassing. On what basis do you argue against infallibility? You've reached the point of inconvenient truth? if you want to talk about silly reasoning, check out all the silly comments here on Fr. Landry, as if anything about his character has the smallest thing to do with the infallible truth of the doctine that artificial contraception is always and in every circumstance is wrong.
"The Church doesn't 'make up' doctrine any more than scientists make up the speed of light."
Seriously? All church doctrine as well as the church itself was totally made up many years ago and has been adjusted and refined by the magesterium ever since. Jesus did not found the church; his followers did; and I'm not aware that Jesus ever dictated a policy on contraception!
Wonderful article, Jo, ably articulating what so many of us Catholics think about this issue!
Michael:
I disagree. NFP does not make contraception impossible, just very unlikely.
Anyway, at end of the day NFP can be as "wrong" (your choice of words) as contraceptive pills, if it is used selfishly, in order to achieve absolute certainty that a marital act cannot channel the gift of life to a new human being. The crucial moral issue is not the instrument but the disposition of the heart, whether when we give ourselves away to our spouses we are also giving ourself away to God's will, which in this case includes the possibility of a baby.
As my non-Catholic husband always said: when the Pope helps to pay for feeding, clothing, housing and educating our children, that's when he can tell us how many children to have.
I have spent four full years, 24/7, researching and writing about HV. I will not go into a lot of detail, unless asked, but these are my conclusioins.
1. The central principle of HV that changed sexual ethics for the next 44 years, was the "inseparability prinicple", that you cannot separate the unitive and procreative meanings of the marital act because it is the Divine Plan of God. This principle was taken "word for word" from Karol Wojtyla's 1960 book "Love and Responsibility", and from the conclusions of his Krakow Commission formed and directed by Cardinal Wojtyla shortly after the PBCC gave their reports to Paul VI. No other pope, theologian or bishop before 1960 has ever spoken, written or proclaimed as a teaching or moral principle a inseparability principle.
2. One of the reason Paul VI gave for rejecting the conclusions of the Majority Report of the PBCC was that "there was not a complete agreement among the members". Yet, in contradiction, Paul VI embraced the philosophy and theology on marriage and procreation of one-man, Karol Wojtyla, and a one-country commission in Krakow limited to Polish clergy and theologians. HV also includes Wojtyla's consequences of contraception and his interpretation of Divine Law.
3. JP II claimed that his personalism, and his Theology of the Body, was not based on biology or physicalism. It was based on the order of nature, created by God, manifested in the language of the body, in its fertility-infertility nexus. God's procreative plan was based on speculation about anthropology, in the Genesis story, and symbolism. This symbolism is an exaggeration of analogy: it goes something like this...Christ's love for his Church is inseparable and one; by analogy, spouses are inseparable and one flesh, as well as the unitive and procreative meanings of their marital acts are inseparable. The fallacy of such a philosophy and theology of marraige and procreation is that speculation and symbolism is a weak moral theory and no one knows God's procreative plan.
4. A more nuanced version of argumentation in defense of HV, in particular of the thesis of Martin Rhonheimer, is that NFP-PC is a virtue of chasity-temperance; while the choice of contraception makes superfluous the choice of this virtue. How insane! According to this post-Vertitatis Spendor argument, there can be no virtue in the choice of contraception regardless of circumstances, intentions and ends. I will not waste the space in this blog for the counter-argument.
5. Lastly, as many have pointed out, the reality of marriage and procreation is anything but what the Church asserts, especially the unrealistic and exaggerated consequences of contraception. They want us to believe that contraception has caused the increase in: abortion, spousal abuse, unwed mothers, and promiscurity. We all recognize that our modern culture has grown more liberal and exploitative. However, this does not mean that all who disagree with the teaching about contraception, or who practice it, are infected with the evil of the secular world or who are invincible ignorant....as the Church claims.
Is it possible that the celibate Roman Curia teaches what they have not learned, proclaims as truth what is contradicted by human experience, and who claim they listen, but have not heard? While the Church repeats their narrative in the hope of an epiphany, what goes without remedy are the sufferings, moral dilemma and conflict that their teachings on sexual ethics cause millions of Catholics. In the end, it is not to enough to ignore the teachings, but to do all in our individual and collective power to move the conversation forward in the hope that our Church will solidify a divided Church and resolve a Crisis in Truth
Ed: WOW. Breathtaking. Is that REALLY why PPVI called the Commission? Seriously? Hmmm...you might want to get a little education on this. Did you read the letter from John Marshall on Page 2 of these comments? He was actually on the Commission...maybe he could be of help to you in getting some things straight. Now, eating meat on Fridays and exacting interest were also once taught as intrinsically evil---as mortal sin. Were these also revealed "doctrines"? And if so, what HAPPENED to them? Are they in the "revealed doctrine" trash can? Or did the Church make a mistake? Or what? WOW.
PS to ED: IS the teaching of HV considered "infallible" under the strict qualifications of that term? Really? Since when? It is my understanding that the magisterium has produced only two infallible doctrines in modern times: the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception. Where is it stated that HV is "infallible" teaching? Are you super-duper, infallibly sure of this??? Hmmm...you might be the only person in the church privy to this info. That is special!
PPS to Ed (I am so stunned that I keep forgetting what I need to say): the "inconvenient (alleged) truth" of the teaching of HV is not inconvenient for me in the least, as I am a celibate for God. It has no direct impact on my life at all. But I sure do love my married brothers, sisters and friends, and I respect their experiences and do not cast aspersion on their hearts or motives when they make adult decisions about the most intimate aspect of their lives. Lies are the inconvenience here, and blessed be those who love the truth and listen to their consciences.
Michael B: Excellent post. And while I agree that, ideally, we should all do what we can "to move the conversation forward," the reality is that there IS no conversation...when do the bishops listen and advocate for the people? Where is the conversation happening---and happening between the true partners (in this case, married people and the bishops)? There simply is no conversation---or even the possibilty of a conversation. Instead, we get the pontifications of Roger Landry and his ilk. They talk; they don't listen; and exhausted, disgusted Catholics turn away.
Matthew 23:4
Luke 11:46