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.
Michael Barberi:
Very interesting what you say about the connection between Woityla's thinking re the "inseparability" principle (of the unitive and procreative purposes of sex) and HV; I'd never realized the former came before the latter. It seems to me that when Pius XII OK'd natural family planning, he OK'd separating the two aspects morally, if not physically. So here again, even when it comes to the vaunted (but aptly named) "theology of the body," the physical seems to be what really matters. Or it's come down to that, because there's nothing else left to explain the teaching.
St. Augustine would probably have gagged at the very term, "theology of the body," since, like most philosophers of his time, he found both the body and sex degrading because of "concupiscence," i.e., the body's natural tendency to resist what the spirit commands. If it weren't for original sin, he said, husbands and wives would still procreate physically, but "they would not have had the activity of turbulent lust in their flesh. (From "Against Julian")" IOW, they wouldn't have enjoyed it, which seemed to be the problem for theologians for centuries....in fact, all the way up to modern times. That's too often forgotten by defenders of HV who seem to believe the Church's doctrine on sexual morality has remained essentially unchanged since the apostles handed it down fully developed.
In fact, if the Pope were to pass on what Augustine and Aquinas and popes of previous centuries taught, Catholics today would be taught sex is for procreation, period, and if they enjoy it too much, they'd better confess their sin before attempting to receive Communion. Aquinas said the marital act is justified only for procreation or to "render the marriage debt." Doing it for pleasure is a mortal sin. (Summa Theologica, supplement, Q 41, 4.)
Pope Innocent XI in 1679 condemned the idea that the marriage act performed for pleasure alone might be free of sin. ("The Christian Faith in the Documents of the Catholic Church," ed. J. Neuner, S.J. and J. Dupuis, S.J., NY: Alba House, 1982,p. 662.)
As with slavery, usury (to a lesser extent) and religious liberty, when it comes to sex and procreation, I think the Church's grasp of what's truly right and wrong has been weak from the beginning thanks to the thinking of the wider culture(s) it grew in. Ironically, defenders of HV are quick to see the shortcomings of the wider culture today and how culture affects even Christians. What they don't take into account is how much this has always been the case.
Janet:
Thank you for kind comments. Yes, it is true that the Roman Curia has closed the book on the reform of contraception, but not entirely. There has been a healthly theological debate for the past 44 years, and especially since Veritatis Spendor, but admitedly, this debate has lacked much initiative during the past several years. However, recently there has emerged with some rigor a renewed debate on contraception. I call attention to the December, 2011 issue of Theological Studies (William Murphy's essay on contraceptin) and the March, 2012 issue of Theological Studies (namely, Joseph Selling's reply to Murphy's article). Great efforts and worth the read.
I also am hopeful about the Austrian Catholic Church's effort, namesly the Pfarrer Initiative (the Priest's initiative). This collective consciousness among the clergy is most encouraging. This is a bottoms-up effort to move the conversastion forward. Many issues are being pushed to the forefront: the prohibition of the sacrament of reconciliation and reception of the Eucharist for the divorced and remarried, the prohibition against using a condom by seropositive husbands to protest their spouses from this deadly disease, the prohibition of contraception for married couples who have children and want no more for good reasons, the prohibtion against taking the pill or sterilization for married women whose lives are threatened by another pregnancy...to name a few.
We must be diligent and not lose heart.
Ms. Janet,
With a seminary background, minors in philosophy and theology, and decades of study, I may qualify as having a little education on a few things. That's not the point. The Church's laws consist of doctrine (the codification of God's word) and juridical rulings. The Nicene Creed, for instance, is a rundown of some doctrines binding on the Catholic conscience. The Church cannot change doctrine, even if it wanted to, but it can change disciplines. A male-only priesthood is doctrine, no meat on Friday and Sunday Mass are not doctrines. They are juridical rulings. The Church can impose and rescind them under its authority to "bind and loose". Under that same authority the Church has the right to say willfully eating meat on Friday or neglecting our Sunday obligation is a mortal sin. What is doctrine is the Church's right to impose a discipline that is binding under the pain of serious sin. Yes, twice in Church history has the use of the extraoridnary magisterium been promulgated, both, as you indicated, regarding the Blessed Mother. But nothing says that infallibility only results from the use of the extraordinary magisterium. The ordinary magisterium is just as infallible and binding and doesn't require a solemn pronouncement. By your thinking, "Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity" would not be an infallible teaching. There would go the whole shooting match. The teachings of HV are infallible. The Church is the authority, the institution with the right and the competnece to decide these matters, not us. We are nor our own private mini-magisteriums despite what comes through in most of the comments. As for Michael B, the thought that "more conversation" will somehow create an epiphany within the Church and get it to change doctrine shows just how little some people know about how God speaks to his people. 10,000 generations from now the Church will not have changed what it lacks the power and authority to change.
Beverly:
your interpretations of Augustine, Aquinas and Innocent XI sound awfully prejudiced:
a) since like most of us you probably have experienced the "turbulents lusts of the flesh" you should know that they are largely disconnected from sexual enjoyment.
b) What is Aquinas's "marriage debt" about if not sexual pleasure?
c) As for Innocent XI, I would not dismiss so quickly the idea that a marriage act performed "exclusively for pleasure" tends to "use" the other person and so, yes, it usually ends up being sinful.
I bring these things up just because they are representative of a certain mentality that thinks that Christian tradition is full of sexuophobic nonsense and that people came to their lights about the beauty of sex around 1963.
jbruns Why would God expect us to exercise dominion over nature, except in this one instance?
Because in this one instance God is actively involved in creating a human soul. Very different than the rest of nature.
I find this discussion fascinating, for in my experience, the battle was decided years ago in favor of contraception. As an NFP user and teacher of 35 years experience, having worked under Catholic Charities and family planning organizations, I have come to know the dirty little secret: the practice of contraception and the smaller families that have resulted have been a boon for the church. Couples now have smaller families and the financial success to move to affluent suburbs. The pastors no longer have to subsidize Catholic schools, which they found to be a pain in the neck. And look at any diocesan list of permanent deacons; very few have more than two children.
I am not paranoid: after working in several central diocesan offices I am convinced that the majority of priests have no interest in what parishioners do about family planning. Most of the couples in Marriage Prep are already living together, and Catholic rates for abortion and sterilization have long been higher than agnostics and atheists, according to statistical surveys. I also doubt that the majority of bishops have any idea what is going on in their dioceses in terms of how couples learn about the ethics of family planning. They are much more interested in keeping up with their corporate donors.
Summary of Categories of Belief in Professio fidei
[All quotes are from, and all paraphrases based upon, the Doctrinal Commentary
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.]
I. Divinely Revealed
Doctrines contained in the Word of God, written or handed down, and defined with a solemn judgment of the Church as divinely revealed truths by any of the following:
a) the Roman Pontiff speaking ex cathedra
b) the College of Bishops gathered in council
c) infallibly proposed by the ordinary and universal Magisterium
ASSENT REQUIRED These doctrines require of all members of the faithful the assent of theological faith, based on the authority of the Word of God (de fide credendi). Whoever obstinately places them in doubt or denies them falls under the censure of heresy, as indicated by the respective canons of the Oriental and Latin Codes of Canon Law.
EXAMPLES
the articles of faith of the Creed
the various Christological dogmas
the various Marian dogmas
the doctrine of the institution of the sacraments by Christ and their efficacy with regard to grace
the doctrine of the real and substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist
the sacrificial nature of the eucharistic celebration
the foundation of the Church by the will of Christ
the doctrine on the primacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff
the doctrine on the existence of original sin
the doctrine on the immortality of the spiritual soul
the immediate recompense after death
the absence of error in the inspired sacred texts
the doctrine on the grave immorality of direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being.
II. Definitively Proposed
Doctrines definitively proposed by the Church on faith and morals which are necessary for faithfully keeping and expounding the deposit of faith, even if they have not been proposed by the Magisterium of the Church as formally revealed. They can be defined by:
a) the Roman Pontiff speaking ex cathedra
b) the College of Bishops gathered in council
c) taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the
Church as sententia definitive tenenda.
Such doctrines are joined to Divinely Revealed truths by a. historical relationship or b. logical connection. Even though they are not proposed as formally revealed they could, by dogmatic development, one day be declared to be revealed.
ASSENT REQUIRED These doctrines require firm and definitive assent based on theological faith in the Holy Spirit's assistance to the Church's Magisterium and on the Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the Magisterium in these matters. Whoever denies these truths would be in a position of rejecting a truth of Catholic doctrine and would therefore no longer be in full communion with the Catholic Church. There is no difference with respect to the full and irrevocable consent which must be given to teachings set forth as I. divinely revealed and II. those proposed as to be definitively held.
EXAMPLES
a. historical necessity
the legitimacy of the election of the Supreme Pontiff
the celebration of an ecumenical council
the canonizations of saints (dogmatic facts)
the declaration of Pope Leo XIII in the Apostolic Letter Apostolicae Curae on the invalidity of Anglican ordinations ...
b. logical necessity
the doctrine on the primacy and infalliblility of the Roman Pontiff prior to Vatican I's definition [The primacy of the Successor of Peter was always believed as a revealed fact, although until Vatican I the discussion remained open as to whether the conceptual elaboration of what is understood by the terms jurisdiction and infallibilitywas to be considered an intrinsic part of revelation or only a logical consequence. On the other hand, although its character as a divinely revealed truth was defined in the First Vatican Council, the doctrine on the infallibility and primacy of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff was already recognized as definitive in the period before the council. History clearly shows, therefore, that what was accepted into the consciousness of the Church was considered a true doctrine from the beginning, and was subsequently held to be definitive; however, only in the final stage - the definition of Vatican I - was it also accepted as a divinely revealed truth.]
the doctrine that priestly ordination is reserved only to men. ["The Supreme Pontiff, while not wishing to proceed to a dogmatic definition, intended to reaffirm that this doctrine is to be held definitively, since, founded on the written Word of God, constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. As the prior example illustrates, this does not foreclose the possibility that, in the future, the consciousness of the Church might progress to the point where this teaching could be defined as a doctrine to be believed as divinely revealed."]
the doctrine on the illicitness of euthanasia (Evangelium Vitae) ["Confirming that euthanasia is 'a grave violation of the law of God,' the Pope declares that 'this doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church's Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium'. It could seem that there is only a logical element in the doctrine on euthanasia, since Scripture does not seem to be aware of the concept. In this case, however, the interrelationship between the orders of faith and reason becomes apparent: Scripture, in fact, clearly excludes every form of the kind of self-determination of human existence that is presupposed in the theory and practice of euthanasia."]
the teaching on the illicitness of prostitution
III. Authentic Ordinary Magisterium
Teachings presented as true, or at least as sure, even if they have not been defined with a solemn judgment or proposed as definitive by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, whether of the Pope or of the College of Bishops.
ASSENT REQUIRED Religious submission of will and intellect.
EXAMPLES
teachings set forth by the "authentic ordinary Magisterium in a non-definitive way, which require degrees of adherence differentiated according to the mind and the will manifested; this is shown especially by the nature of the documents, by the frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or by the tenor of the verbal expression" (Vatican II,Lumen gentium 25)
I. & II. Defining and Non-Defining Acts
The Magisterium teaches doctrine to be I. divinely revealed, or II. to be held definitively, by acts which are either defining or non-defining.
Defining Acts teach infallibly by solemn papal definitions ex cathedra and actions of an Ecumenicam Council
Non-Defining Acts teach infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Bishops dispersed throughout the world who are in communion with the Successor of Peter. Such doctrine can be confirmed or reaffirmed by the Roman Pontiff, even without recourse to a solemn definition, by declaring explicitly that it belongs to the teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium as a truth that is I. divinely revealed or II. of Catholic doctrine. "Consequently, when there has not been a judgment on a doctrine in the solemn form of a definition, but this doctrine, belonging to the inheritance of the depositum fidei, is taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, which necessarily includes the Pope, such a doctrine is to be understood as having been set forth infallibly. The declaration of confirmation or reaffirmation by the Roman Pontiff in this case is not a new dogmatic definition, but a formal attestation of a truth already possessed and infallibly transmitted by the Church."
Geesh, talk about creeping infallibility.
“Over the pope as the expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority there still stands one’s own conscience, which must be obeyed before all else, if necessary even against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority.
This emphasis on the individual, whose conscience confronts him with a supreme and ultimate tribunal [God], and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even of the official Church, also establishes a principle in opposition to increasing totalitarianism."
Joseph Ratzinger, Part I, Chapter 1, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Vol. V of COMMENTARY ON THE DOCUMENTS OF VATICAN II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969, p. 134)
Thanks to Joseph Jaglowicz for the citation.
And when the Pope sneezes, I pull out my hankie.
So at one time "the Church" could assure people that God would send them to hell for eating that burger on a Friday, but later "the Church" could reassure them that God had changed the divine mind and that that burger was a-OK after all? Can't you see the stupidity of this sort of power-play ? Ridiculous. "Doctrine" or "discipline," the result is the same: an exercise in authority that is about controlling people and harming their relationship with the God who has endowed them with reason and given them the freedom and joy of redemption, along with an utter disrespect of the primacy of conscience. If "the Church" could be so silly and unthinking about meat on Friday and lend it such weight that one was in fear of perishing without God if they ate the burger, it's a tad hard to trust that that same authority has a clue about the serious, deep things of human life. They have not been faithful in the small things, but have made huge burdens out of them and laid them on the shoulders of the people they are supposed to love. And their handling of the abusive priest-bishop scandal, from the pope on down, has revealed once and for all a profoundly disordered understanding of human sexuality. So I am not buying it. Thanks for the lengthy document below; no time to read it now, but my guess is that I probably read it during my own seminary days.
Oops...meant the "document above." :)