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
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