A few months ago I played with the idea of writing an imaginary papal encyclical. Its aim was to have shown how the Pope might affirm the “traditional” teaching on contraception in all its force while, at the same time, doing so in such a way as to impress and astound everyone. In my imaginary encyclical, the Pope would have done three things:
(1) He would have reaffirmed the birth control teachings of Casti Connubii, but he would also have made some announcements of ways in which he intended to show his seriousness. He would have stated that all of the Vatican art treasures were to be sold in order to establish a large fund to aid the feeding of the poor. He would have ordered all pastors throughout the world to cease building churches and schools and, instead, to devote their financial resources to helping needy families. Toward the same end, he would have ordered the Bishops, including those in the Vatican, to rid themselves of all Church investments, stocks, bonds and income-producing property. He himself would have announced that he was moving out of the Vatican and intended to spend the rest of his papal days living in a Calcutta slum.
(2) He would have flatly condemned the Vietnamese war, urging all Catholics to refuse military service and support of the war. In the same breath he would have said that all nuclear stockpiles should immediately be destroyed and that no Catholic ought support a government which relied in any way upon nuclear weapons for defense. The Pope would have said these steps were neces sary for the “protection of human life.”
(3) Finally, the Pope would have praised student re bels in the universities of the world, commended Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael and the concept of “black power,” ordered Cardinal Mclntyre to resign for having hindered racial justice in Los Angeles, exalted the Berrigan brothers for their prophetic witness, and, in his footnotes, cited Herbert Marcuse, Fritz Fanon, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
My theory, in this fanciful encyclical, was that if the Pope was to successfully condemn contraception he would have to do so in the most prophetic manner possible, risking so much of the Church’s financial security, community standing and bourgeois support that no one could fail to take him seriously. Even the most ardent lover of contraception would have been stunned and might have been shaken enough to reconsider his position.
The Pope seems to have written a somewhat different encyclical. I won’t bother mentioning all the defective arguments in it; others have already done that, and very effectively. What I find striking is that the encyclical, by its omissions, perpetuates one of the great immoralities of the magisterium’s stance on contraception. It does not show any practical willingness to make the Church’s wealth fully available to those who suffer as a consequence of its teachings; it offers them only a vague spiritual consolation, nice words. The Catholic parish has never felt a communal obligation to give full support to large families; and rarely has it done so. The papacy has used none of its money to support the scientific research in rhythm the Pope calls for; nothing in the encyclical suggests it intends to do so now. The bishops of the world have never given any financial priority whatsoever to problems of overpopulation and the economic requirements of underdeveloped countries. Compared with its interest in the preservation of Church property, the maintenance of authority, the building of schools and churches, the magisterium’s interest in poverty, family life and human dignity has been almost entirely verbal. In America, the bishops have a large and effective propaganda machine designed to protect the Church’s tax-free status and to work for federal and state school funds; on race, poverty and war, they are generally content to issue statements.
In short, the magisterium-popes and bishops-has let the practical burdens fostered by their moral teachings fall exclusively on others, urging them to make radical sacrifices of a kind it is clearly not prepared to make itself. Hypocrisy is one word appropriate here; immorality is even better. Neither the Pope nor those bishops who have supported the encyclicals have given the slightest indication that they intend to give up anything of their own security commensurate with what a poor family, trying to make do on rhythm or abstinence, would have to give up to follow their teaching. The magisterium strikes the rhetorical pose of the prophet and the bodily pose of the self-righteous rich man who feels no compulsion to put his own house in order.
The question now is: what is to be done? It is not, I think, adequate to simply say that everyone should follow his own conscience and thus reject the encyclical if his conscience so directs. If one takes seriously all the good reasons in favor of a use of contraceptives-if one, say, follows the thinking of the majority of the papal commission-then it is not merely a neutral matter. On the contrary, there is an obligation on the part of those Catholics who perceive the morality of contraception to positively foster and propagate their convictions. This means doing everything in their power to educate people in the valid use of contraceptives. It means making money available to the poor for the purchase of contraceptives. It means convincing governments that they should listen to the voice of the Catholic people and not to the voice of the Pope on this issue. It means doing everything possible to negate and repudiate the encyclical, putting in its place a very different teaching.
People should of course be free to follow their conscience. But there is much sense in the traditional corollary that they should have an informed conscience; a lot of mischief is done in the name of conscience. In this instance those opposed to the encyclical would seem to have the positive duty of trying to inform the consciences of those who might feel an obligation to follow it: to inform them that they should know all the good theological arguments in favor of contraception; to inform them that they cannot cast off the obligation of making up their own minds on the shoulders of popes and bishops; to inform them that it is possible that good morality might require that they use contraceptives.
Though much has changed in recent years, the attitude of many Catholics toward the papacy is still one of unthinking subservience and obedience. When they are told these days to “follow their conscience” this will be tantamount to telling them to obey the Pope; for that, and only that, is what following their conscience means to them. Very strenuous efforts will be needed to crack this mold. The people must be given a real choice and this means, in great part, so breaking the hold of the papacy on them that they can rationally and judiciously weigh the alternatives before them. One would not in the face of a people’s temptation to resort to genocide, racism, the killing of the old and the weak, just tell them to do as they saw fit. One would argue against them, try to point out the dangers of their temptation. The same should be done with those tempted to unthinkingly follow the pope’s encyclical.
What will this do to the authority of the papacy? Assuming the problematic, that the papacy still has authority, it will force the papacy (and the bishops) to argue back, to refine its own reasons, to take account of its critics. It will force the magisterium to expose itself. As already noted, there remain many millions of Catholics who do take the Pope’s words as binding. The Pope has in his encyclical seriously misled them; he has taught them a bad morality. The only way they are likely to see this for themselves is to see the papacy pushed to the wall, forced to argue its position more fully, and thus forced to show the weakness of its moral teaching.
Those Catholics now tempted to leave the Church should remember how many others will stay and feel bound by the encyclical, how many will unnecessarily suffer, how many families and children will feel the consequences. To leave these people, to walk out on them, would not be right. As Christians and as Catholics they will need help and education. Only their fellow Catholics are likely to be in a good position to speak persuasively to them and to offer them the assistance of a sensitive Christian community. In its own utterly wrong way the Pope’s encyclical is beautiful: rounded, ringing and resonant. It seems to me now the obligation of the Catholic community to come up with, and publicize, a wiser and more correct teaching, equally rounded, ringing and resonant. The formation of the position will not be difficult; the ingredients are already present, nearly complete. The real work will come in publicizing it: the work of speaking against the present encyclical, the work of withstanding authority, the work of moral education. This is no time to leave the Church, but a time to make it what it should be. Perhaps, just perhaps, the Pope will be caught up in this work as well.
Finally, some immediate, practical steps: (1) paid publication of majority papal commission report in local secular papers; few Catholics have actually read it. (2) Petitions, not to Rome, but to the U.S. government to step up family planning programs. (3) Letters and visits to parish priests to urge them, in their confessional counseling, to support a moral use of contraceptives.
