#359: A Basic Tenet?—Part 2

EXCERPT:

Last time I clarified one problem of the current claim that opposition to contraceptives is a “basic tenet” of Catholic faith, by showing that church teaching is actually about contraception, not contraceptives--that is, it focuses on certain kinds of behavior, rather than about certain devices. People can violate this teaching by their behavior whether or not they use contraceptives--and simply having contraceptives does not constitute prohibited behavior.

But this of course begs the further question: is this actual Catholic teaching on contraception a basic tenet of our faith?

The answer is in two parts: (1) the teaching fits into a particular “niche” of Catholic moral teaching and (2) in its current form it represents the latest in a series of revisions dating back centuries. So, what is the niche that teaching occupies, and how has it evolved?

The Place of This Teaching. Consulting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, one finds the index entry on “contraception” to be empty, except for a referral to see the index listing for “matrimony: purpose.” In that listing, a subhead is “Fecundity of Marriage,” and its subhead includes “contraception.”

The relevant section on “The Fecundity of Marriage” has seven paragraphs covering two pages of text (in the Liguori edition, pages 569 – 570). The fifth paragraph cites both Pope Paul’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae and John Paul II’s encyclical Familiaris Consortio to summarize church teaching on contraception.

These pages are in Part III of the Catechism, “Life in Christ,” which treats Catholic moral teaching. Section One of Part III outlines moral teachings drawn especially from the New Testament and Catholic social doctrine; Section Two reviews the Catholic understanding of the 10 Commandments. This section comprises slightly more than 100 pages of the Catechism’s 800 pages, and the paragraph on contraception (paragraph 2370 out of 2865 in the catechism) is found, naturally enough, in the article on the Sixth Commandment, in subsection IV, “Offenses Against the Dignity of Marriage.”

In other words, an 800 page compendium on traditional Catholic teaching devotes a single paragraph out of 2865 paragraphs to contraception, deeply imbedded in a minor section on the Commandment prohibiting adultery.

If this is supposed to present a “basic tenet” of Catholic faith, one can say without irony that the Church has buried the lead here--and buried it well and deep. By contrast, Benedict XVI’s encyclical “God is Love” presents a 30 page survey of basic Catholic doctrine without even mentioning the Ten Commandments at all.

One can safely say that the niche occupied by the teaching against contraception is a minor niche in our tradition, despite the public controversy. This teaching’s evolution explains why.

(see my complete article for the history of this evolution)

…so current church teaching rejects the idea that individual sex acts can ever, under any circumstances, exclude the purpose of procreation. (Even this, of course, is not about contraceptive devices—e.g. coitus interruptus (withdrawal) violates this norm with no recourse to contraceptives.)

… so this minor component of our Catholic faith tradition continues to exert, in its current form, a disproportionate influence in the lives of Catholic families, as well as on our nation’s politics.

One result: people end up mistakenly thinking Church teaching is about devices, not behavior.

And a second result: the insistence that this teaching is a “basic tenet” of Catholicism adds fuel to the scandal-fired popular perception that the Catholic Church is an institution obsessed with sex.

#358: A Basic Tenet?—Part 1

The U.S. Bishops current campaign for religious freedom (including the curiously-named “Fortnight of Freedom”) is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it rightly targets the danger that some provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act might infringe on the First Amendment rights of churches by preventing some church institutions from operating in conformity with certain church teachings. I applauded this position in CrossCurrents #350.

On the other hand, many bishops and Catholic commentators are exploiting this issue politically, arguing that the Obama Administration is making war on the Church by forcing it to violate one of its “basic tenets.”

This is especially troubling when the “basic tenet” being referred to is a prohibition on artificial contraceptives. Some commentators are actually calling this a “basic tenet” of Catholicism, while others are implying as much. (If you google “contraception a basic tenet of our faith” you get 1,760,000 results in 0.31 seconds.)

I confess only cursory knowledge of the legislation itself, and I fully support suits that will force the courts to determine if our First Amendment rights are being threatened—especially if coverage for abortion procedures is mandated. My problem is in another direction--namely, my concern that some Catholic commentary distorts our faith tradition and risks needlessly alienating rank and file Catholics by confusing their Catholic identity.

Such commentary seems intent on pushing contraception to the center stage in a debate about morals and public policy. This shows up in attacks on the above the legislation, but also on the Vatican’s recent crackdown on US nuns, and seems determined to extend the Church’s “pro-life” campaign from abortion and euthanasia into contraception.

Lumping contraception among those other issues confuses us because, while the pro-life ethic has focused on issues of public morality and social justice (namely, issues about taking human life, including the death penalty and war), the US church hierarchy has previously accepted the idea that contraception is a matter of private, personal morality.

It is nearly 50 years since Richard Cardinal Cushing put contraception where it belongs by making this distinction between public and private.  In 1965 he refused to oppose the legalization of contraceptives in Massachusetts, saying in a written statement:

Catholics do not need the support of civil law to be faithful to their own religious convictions and they do not seek to…forbid in civil law a practice that can be considered a matter of private morality.

His statement was largely influenced by the church and state theories of Jesuit Father John Courtney Murray, principal author of Vatican Council II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom.  Those who opposed Cushing also opposed Murray and the Council’s declaration.

But even if contraception is not lumped in with “taking human life” issues, treating opposition to contraceptives as a basic tenet of our faith is a problem for another simple reason: It misrepresents Catholic teaching. Opposition to artificial contraceptives is not a basic tenet. In fact, the prohibition of artificial contraceptives in and of themselves is not a Catholic teaching at all.  If it were, the rules for Catholics would be quite different.

Current commentators, for example, are attacking Obama’s administration for requiring that companies insuring some Catholic institutions provide coverage that includes paying for contraceptives for employees.  The complaint is that Catholic institutions are forced to indirectly subsidize contraceptive devices (whether or not employees obtain them or use them).

But if indirect involvement in the market for contraceptives were actually contrary to church teaching--if Catholics could have nothing to do with their marketing or promotion-- imagine the consequences.  The logical limit of such a prohibition leads quickly into absurdity.

Following such a logic, Catholics could not be engaged in the manufacture of contraceptives.  Catholics could not work for companies that do manufacture them.  Catholics could not work for companies that market contraceptives, including stores that sell them and media that advertise them.  Catholics could not patronize such companies, for that would constitute indirect support for the contraceptive business and the companies that promote them.

Doesn’t it sound absurd to imagine that millions of Catholics would have to quit their jobs at Pfizer, CVS, and newspapers, magazines and media outlets that advertise contraceptives?  And imagine that millions more would have to stop shopping at CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, and thousands of supermarkets and variety stores across America?  Not to mention that Catholics would have to avoid all bars and restaurants that sell condoms in restrooms? Of course it is absurd. 

It sounds absurd because the Catholic Church has never taught that artificial contraceptives are evil in and of themselves.  In fact, the French bishops and Benedict XVI have both cited instances where the use of condoms, for example, might serve a moral purpose. 

Catholic tradition consistently distinguishes between any technology (which is generally considered morally neutral) and the way people use that technology (which may be for good or evil).  To my knowledge, there is one great exception, one technology for which the Church sees no good use: nuclear weapons.  Vatican II, in fact, reserved its lone condemnation for its unequivocal opposition to the manufacture, sale, stockpile, use, and even threat to use nuclear weapons.  (This of course means that US nuclear policy has been violating Catholic teaching for 50 years—and forcing Catholic taxpayers to fund it!).

In this light, treating contraceptives themselves as evil makes them the moral equivalent nuclear weapons!  No wonder the consequences seem absurd.

So if church teaching does not prohibit contraceptive devices, or their manufacture or marketing--then what is church teaching?

The truth is that Catholic teaching on contraception is not about technology or devices at all.  It is about behavior.  The Church’s official complaint is against the practice of conception, not contraceptives themselves.

The real, direct prohibition in Catholic teaching is aimed at “sexual acts that are not open to the transmission of life.”

This teaching is the central focus of Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical for Humanae Vitae (HV).  The teaching of HV applies to people engaged in sexual activity (specifically, married couples), not to people engaged in the marketing (either as producer or consumer or insurer) of artificial contraceptives.

Indeed many acts covered by HV’s teaching have nothing to do with contraceptive devices.  Masturbation, oral sex, coitus interruptus (withdrawal), anal sex, homosexual acts, even some petting and explicit texting and phone sex--all are activities that involve sex with no prospect of procreation.

In other words, the Church’s official teaching from HV is actually much broader and more restrictive than a mere rejection of contraceptive devices--and it did not focus on them.  Even if the invention of the contraceptive pill in 1960 triggered the theological debate that culminated in HV in 1968, HV never mentions either the pill or any other device.

So the official teaching’s focus is actually on the behavior of (married) people having sex.  By nature, enforcing this teaching does not require or even permit anyone else’s intervention, since a married couple’s sex life is both personal and private. It is up to them to conform their behavior to that teaching.

But if that is the real teaching, is that teaching a “basic tenet” of Catholic faith?  Just where does that teaching fit into our Catholic faith tradition?

Next time: The place of contraception in Catholic moral teaching.

Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012

#357: The Other Half of the Story?

EXCERPT:
We already know the first half of the story.

For years now most parishes have had many more “sacramental” Catholics than “liturgical” Catholics. In other words, more people have been showing up for Baptisms, First Communion First Penance, Confirmations, and weddings than for weekend Masses…

We also know that in the last 5 to 10 years this has been changing, because in many places the raw numbers on sacraments have begun falling--and in some cases plummeting. This is especially true for Catholic weddings: we know that in many parishes the number of weddings annually is a fraction of past numbers.

What we do not know is the other half of the story: Why is this happening? What does this drop-off in weddings mean?
…

Earlier this month I traveled to Washington, DC and began to glimpse what might be the real story.

On a brilliant June Saturday my wife and I joined my younger brother, older sister, and their spouses, along with 65 others at Washington’s Saint Regis hotel for an elegant dinner in celebration of my nephew’s marriage. This was not a reception following a public ceremony; it was a standalone event.

As dinner started, my nephew and his wife rose to announce that on the previous Thursday afternoon they had signed their marriage papers in the chambers of a local judge, and expressed their pleasure that they could now celebrate with so many friends and family…

By all accounts, the dinner as such was a great success, yet for me this event triggered several personal reflections. I found myself reviewing our family’s history, compiling (first in a quick mental count and later in a more thorough written tally) a profile of the pattern to date of marriages in the next generation.

For me, the results are striking.

I have four siblings, my wife has five. Thus our two sets of parents produced 11 children. These two families combined have now produced 25 grandchildren.
To date, only 9 of those 25 grandchildren have married. Of these 9, only 4 have married in the Catholic Church (and only 1 of these was married, as used to be the norm, in the bride’s home parish). Of the rest, 3 weddings were non-Catholic (or nonsectarian) religious ceremonies. And 2 were civil events.

What strikes me here is the sudden and dramatic shift in marriage patterns taking place within a single generation. Consider the contrasts:

Of these grandchildren’s 11 parents (that is, my generation), 10 were married--9 of the 10 in church weddings. All 9 of these were at the bride’s home church, including three in Protestant churches (and one of these also included a Catholic priest officiating).

And while all 10 of these married parents were married by the age of 30, there are currently seven of their children who have reached their 30th year but are still unmarried. It is as though, in a single generation in a single family, marriage itself has been transformed.
…

Indeed, of the 11 sets of parents, only one set has children married in the Church. I dare say that such an abrupt rupture would have been unthinkable just 20 years ago.
…

I’ve noted before that the next generation is often quite content to live their lives without making place for the institution of the Catholic Church. In this instance, that means concretely building a life with marriage and family without recourse to the sacrament of Matrimony. While a previous generation may have opted for a church wedding merely to please parents, that motive seems gone. And the former “romance” of church weddings appears largely replaced by the romantic appeal of “destination” weddings.
…

Church now competes with a growing list of leisure options in a culture where there is less leisure time than 50 years ago. Falling marriage statistics may be an early warning sign of how badly we are competing.

If so, the pastoral challenge for us is not only massive but also urgent. If a sacrament so vital the Church’s future life can fall out of favor so fast, a tepid and tardy response simply will not do. Falling weddings numbers could soon produce falling Baptisms, First Communions, etc.

This is a challenge especially for our leadership. We need a clear consensus about the other half of the story, so we can imagine creative ways to respond, and then act before it is too late. Our leaders proclaim their commitment to family life—here is where they can show us they mean what they say.