The coming election has shaped up to be a battle between those who think free contraceptives and keeping abortion legal should be our national priority and those who think jobs and reducing the national debt should be our national priority. (These were the self-identified themes at the summer conventions.)
How astonishing it is that Sandra Fluke should be a headliner at the Democratic National Convention, when her only claim to fame is her adolescent, narcissistic grousing that Catholic Georgetown University does not provide her, a law student almost certain to be wealthy, with free contraceptives.
How sad it is that two of the chief architects of the Health and Human Services mandate are Nancy Pelosi and Kathleen Sebelius, both Catholics.
The Catholic vote will be pivotal, as it always is. The recent effort to get the Obama administration to rescind the HHS mandate has again brought to the fore the sad fact that Catholics are poorly educated about the Church’s teaching on contraception.
The brave, visionary and remarkably candid Cardinal Timothy Dolan, in an interview in The Wall Street Journal, acknowledged that the Church has failed to teach on contraception: "I’m not afraid to admit that we have an internal catechetical challenge — a towering one — in convincing our own people of the moral beauty and coherence of what we teach. That’s a biggie."
The cardinal said the "flash point" was Humanae Vitae, which "brought such a tsunami of dissent, departure, disapproval of the Church, that I think most of us — and I’m using the first-person plural intentionally, including myself — kind of subconsciously said, ‘Whoa. We’d better never talk about that, because it’s just too hot to handle.’ We forfeited the chance to be a coherent moral voice when it comes to one of the more burning issues of the day."
The present struggle offers an opportunity to become that coherent moral voice.
The U.S. bishops are taking an important lead in this matter. For instance, they have developed a set of bulletin inserts about contraception and developed a very useful website about contraception. If there were only some way to get priests and laypeople to take advantage of these resources.
Let me here encourage laypeople to approach their pastors and encourage them to use the inserts.
A report has recently been issued by "The Women, Faith and Culture Project" that should help spur a renewed effort to teach about contraception. The report gives the preliminary results of a study done on "What Catholic Women Think About Faith, Conscience and Contraception."
It is a professional and measured report (funded in large part by the Our Sunday Visitor Foundation) and worth a close read.
We all know that the vast majority of Catholics reject the Church’s teaching on contraception. This study attempts to figure out what women really know and think about the teaching.
Actually, I found it terrific news that "37% of women who both attend Mass weekly and have been to confession within the past year completely accept Church teachings on family planning."
We don’t know what is cause and effect here — we don’t know whether those who accept the Church’s teaching are more likely to go to Mass and confession regularly or whether going to Mass and confession regularly helps people accept Church teaching — but it is not surprising that there is a pairing of these elements of the faith.
Still, although that figure is encouraging, we might ask why it is not higher.
Part of the answer is surely that few Catholics have ever heard an explanation or defense of the Church’s teaching. It is not surprising to learn that "85% of Catholic women believe they can be ‘good Catholics’ even if they don’t completely accept the Church’s teachings on sex and reproduction. And a full third are mistaken about what the Church teaches."
The study found that 72% of Catholic women state that the homily is their primary source of learning about Church teaching — and that priests and other religious leaders are the primary sources for 55% of women.
My guess is that few have ever heard a homily about contraception.
I have long been exhorting my seminarians to reflect on the fact that most Catholics get most of their understanding of Church teaching from the homily.
People in the pews tend to think that if issues are important, their pastor, who cares enough about their eternal salvation to dedicate his life to serving them, will speak to them from the pulpit about the issues that may threaten their eternal salvation.
If they never hear that abortion, greed, contraception, pornography, racism, missing Mass on Sunday, etc. are serious sins, they tend to think they are not serious sins. And if they don’t hear these teachings from the pulpit, they are unlikely to hear them at all.
Few Catholics attend conferences, read Catholic publications, visit Catholic websites or even read the parish bulletin and its inserts.
Many priests are hesitant to teach on moral issues from the pulpit, but if they don’t, they are seriously shortchanging their congregations.
It has not always been thus. In her book Catholics and Contraception: An American History, historian Leslie Woodcock Tentler reports that in the ’20s through the ’50s of the last century, in an increasingly contraceptive culture, priests regularly preached on contraception, and an impressive proportion of the Catholic faithful cheerfully embraced that teaching.
The more educated a Catholic woman was the more likely she was to accept Church teaching.
Today’s priests may not have a habit of teaching on moral issues, but they can cultivate that habit. And I suspect they will like the results.
Certainly, they will meet with some resistance, but they will also be the recipients of an outpouring of gratitude. I also suspect they will experience a newfound source of satisfaction in their priesthood.
When my seminarians preach on moral topics, there is a strangeness in the room; neither they nor I am accustomed to hearing homilies about greed or immodesty or laziness or contraception. But after the strangeness wears off, it is quite inspiring. The young men come alive when they speak from the heart about something they care about.
It is hard to think a congregation wouldn’t be moved by their zeal.
One of my seminarians, as a deacon, gave a homily against contraception based on the story of Jonah. He asked the congregation to consider what sins Jonah would be inveighing against were he alive today and suggested to them that contraception would be high on the list.
With trepidation, I asked what kind of response he got; he said he got a standing ovation. I doubt that even the majority agreed with him, but I think they were impressed with his courage and concern for them.
I strongly suspect that there have been more homilies about contraception in the last year than there have been since Humanae Vitae was issued (1968).
One homily, of course, won’t do the trick. There will need to be follow-up, with more homilies and conferences and inserts, but the homily will likely jump-start the whole process.
Moreover, priests also need to exhort their parishioners to be faithful in Mass attendance — even to take in a daily Mass on occasion — and to go to confession.
Providing the occasion for Eucharistic adoration would undoubtedly increase that effect of receptivity as well. Combined, everything will have a profoundly positive effect.
All of this is the work of the New Evangelization; it will galvanize Catholics to share their faith.
Jesus himself was a tireless teacher. He traveled from synagogue to synagogue; he taught on the hills and in the plains and from the water.
The great apostle Paul could not have clocked more miles; John Paul II spoke on natural family planning in nearly every country he visited. In 1999, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a document, "The Priest and the Third Christian Millennium: Teacher of the Word, Minister of the Sacraments and Leader of the Community." At one point it states: "From a pastoral perspective, the primary action of evangelization is, logically, considered to be preaching."
The homily is a marvelous vehicle for teaching; the congregation deserves and needs to be fed by their pastor.
Janet E. Smith holds the
Father Michael J. McGivney
Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.
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First as a theologian you know that a teaching is not authentic teaching unless it is “recieved” by the whole church, the mystical body of Christ. This teaching has not only not been “recieved” it has been rejected as you said. Then there is the issue of conscience for the individual which is the final arbiter. Even then archbishop Joseph Ratzinger said the same when commenting on Gaudium et Spes, that conscience is the final authority even over ecclesiastical authority.
You call for more “education.” That won’t do it. What is needed is all out debate with both sides of the issue represented. What you are talking about is more talking down to people and not listening. I love Andrew Greely words on this. He said “there appears to be a pedagogical law that the taught will not listen to the teachers unless they are first convinced that the teachers have listened to them.”
Dear Anon, The concept of “reception” is very complicated. Catholics seem to have abortions, fornicate, commit adultery, act in racist and greedy ways with great frequency, but no one is saying that all of those acts are not wrong because people don’t “receive” the Church’s teaching on them. Those who, in fact, follow the Church’s teaching in other respects, such as going to mass weekly, regular reception of the sacrament of confession, do in fact accept and follow the Church’s teaching on contraception. I have written on the topic: “The Sensus Fidelium and Humanae Vitae”
Angelicum 83 (2006) 271-297. Also published in Called to Holiness and Communion: Vatican II on the Church, ed. By Rev. Stephen Boguslawski, O.P. and Robert Fastiggi, (University of Scranton Press, 2009) 291-319. It is available on my webpage at: http://www.archdioceseofdetroit.org/SHMS/Faculty+5819/Janet+Smith+9260/Dr.+Janet+Smith+-+Published+Articles.htm The .conscience is not infallible, as you know. The conscience needs to be “formed.” Pope Benedict would never say that if a person believes his/her conscience is telling him/her that contraception is moral, that therefore it is moral. They may be subjectively innocent but would be objectively wrong.
Dear Aaron, a teaching does not derive its authenticity from universal acceptance or from personal conscience, but rather from its objective correspondence to the True and the Good. More simply, a teaching derives its authenticity from Jesus Christ. This and that group’s understanding or my conscience’s stance on a moral issue cannot change that issue’s intrinsic character, and it cannot change whether Jesus still thinks a particular moral act is right or wrong.
Christ gave the principal job of proclaiming and defending the moral truth to the Magisterium of the Church. It is not in fact the job of the faithful or of the individual to define or legitimize morality, per se, but rather to incarnate the moral truth already given to the Church by Jesus through the universal Magisterium. When we make universal acceptance and/or personal conscience the highest adjudicators of moral authenticity, we reduce the very Truths of the Gospel (including how the Gospel calls us to act) to nothing more than group vote and/or individual choice.
Catholics need to read and study the “CATECHISM of the CATHOLIC CHURCH, Second Edition” to evangelize without error.
The US Bishops need to promote this as requested by Pope Benedict in Porta Fidei.
If the Bishops and their Diocese Priests don’t teach us to read the CCC, then we must unite with the Pope ourselves.
On internet, see: “What Catholics REALLY Believe, Source”,
or use the link ” http://whatcatholicsreallybelieve.com “.
“ The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I approved ... and the publication of which I today order by virtue of my Apostolic Authority, is a statement of the Church’s faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church’s Magisterium. I declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion. “ – Pope John Paul II. (CCC pg 5)
Contraception, Abortion, etc., and forming a right conscience is included in the CCC.
In fact, conscience can be “blinded”.
CCC: ” 1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man “takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.” In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.
CCC: ” 2399 The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception).”
CCC: ” 2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, “every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil:
Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality. ”
Prof. Smith. You said that the majority of spouses attending mass each Sunday agree that conraception is wrong. That is not my experience. A small number of people at mass on Sunday will have three kids and a coulpe will have more. The great preponderance have two or less. Believe me they are using contraception. And a few are using NFP. That only works for a relatively small percentage of couples. As a father of eight I know this from lived experience.
Let me also commment on the election. Liberal Catholics are tying themselves up in knots trying to justify a vote for Obama. When he was in the Illinois and U.S. Senate Obama dodged tough questions and usually voted absent. In the Illinois legislature he voted several times for a bill that would allow a doctor to kill a baby that survived an abortion. I bekieve that he also sponsored a similar bill in the U.S. Senate. I find that barbaric and byond justification.
Anon, I didn’t say that a majority of spouses attending mass on Sunday accept Church teaching. I agree with you that there is overwhelming evidence of many kinds to indicate that they don’t.
Many of those who think NFP doesn’t work, aren’t very faithful to the method. Yes, failures do occur but the chemical and barriers methods in real life have a much higher failure rater. A study by a Dr. Ryder in the early nineties of nearly 20,000 women showed nearly zero failure rate of NFP. That is an amazing sample and an amazing result.
Janet E. Smith,
Problems with NFP and fears that NFP does not work are a significant barrier to accepting the Church’s teaching.
We started off our marriage using the Creighton Model of NFP. It was promoted as highly scientific and highly effective. Unfortunately, Mrs. W. is one of the few women for whom the Creighton Model simply does not work. We had lots of false positives and few available days. We also did not have a positive relationship with our instructor, which is critical for success in this method.
We ended up choosing contraception in desperation when we couldn’t figure out her cycle. We felt betrayed by the Church because we were told NFP was “highly effective” and “marriage building” and it was neither for us.
We later tried NFP again (as secular fertility awareness) when she experienced side effects from the contraception. Turns out that the solution was changing methods. In fact, our current instructor had the exact same problem with Creighton. Now NFP works, our teacher is helping us reduce the abstinence and we are seeing the benefits from it in our marriage.
Technical issues make all the difference in the world between the teaching being a marriage wrecking burden and a marriage building blessing. And if a woman knows a sister or friend of a friend who has had NFP problems, then there is a good chance she won’t be open to Church teaching.
NFP is science and it isn’t easy for everyone. And many of those women who have trouble determining their cycles are excluded from the studies. This does not mean that Church teaching isn’t true: Method problems will be solved with technology, and probably in our lifetime. (Indeed, Marquette University has developed a method that uses a fertility monitor that would have helped a lot had it been invented.) But such problems can make it very difficult for some couples.
Anon #1,
The Church has not done a good job in explaining the teaching and this cuts both ways.
I have found that many of the Church’s “defenders” are actually spreading bad theology themselves. They mean well, but some have placed burdens on couples that the Church herself does not.
The Church’s failure to teach on contraception is creating confusion on both ends. A couple who wants to be faithful may end up following unfaithful ultratraditionalists, while others may think it is a “matter of conscience”.
Where the Church needs to listen is the difficulties that couples have in following the teaching. Part of the rejection of Humanae Vitae is that NFP methods were not very advanced in 1968 and couples were having children at a physically and psychologically healthy rate.
For example, Nancy Pelosi had five children in six years (1964-70). That’s hard. She knows exactly what Catholic teaching is and had a very understandable reason for rejecting it.
This does not change the TRUTH of the teaching. NFP has advanced considerably since 1968. By 2068, when every couple is able to determine fertility with accuracy and ease with their own Medical Tricorder, method issues will not be a problem.
But in the meantime, it does mean that the Church has a major pastoral issue in dealing with couples who struggle with the method. And this pastoral issue has been even more poorly addressed than the theology.
waywardson,
One of my children teaches NFP & found differences with the methods/teaching systems out there.One group was not welcoming to working moms with small children & advocated not just for NFP but their own philosophy of child rearing as well.You sort of had to buy into their whole “attachment” mindset package.I guess it’s a free country & they can do that but it’s confusing to folks who are trying to learn NFP & aren’t a good fit into that lifstyle.
I was somewhat troubled by the statement - “...fears that NFP does not work are a significant barrier to accepting the Church’s teaching.” If acceptance depends on whether NFP works or not, then the teaching that contraception is intrinsically evil is irrelevant? I can relate to the couple who had trouble using the NFP. We had the same problem, ended up with more children than planned. The pill had been advocated by our friends, but thank God we did not succumb in spite of all the hardships and fears along the way. The “extra” children turned out to be real blessings, by the way. God knew what He was doing. Tell Pelosi that He still does.
Kathleen, we ran in to that too after we tried Creighton. Not only were they very judgemental, but the presentation contained multiple scientific and theological errors. The organization was so pro-large families, that they seemed relatively unconcerned with unplanned pregnancies. This was a big factor in us giving up on NFP.
Art Munirriz, when you are in a situation where another pregnancy would be harmful to her health and extended abstinence harmful to your marriage, contraception doesn’t seem so bad. It’s a lose-lose-lose situation.
Pope Benedict XVI has said the Church’s teaching is “not just a series of prohibitions but a positive option for couples”. So, no, saying that contraception is evil isn’t good enough.
All this back and forth about the difficulty or ease or effectiveness of observing NFP misses the point. Morality is not determined by how difficult something is or isn’t or by how sincere we are in our rejection of Church teaching. I don’t mean to be insensitive to couples who struggle to monitor their fertility. But the fact is that some moral things are hard. It’s not pleasant to have to curtail one’s sexual desire for their spouse. But that’s what love does. It goes to the cross. All this is irrelevant to the question, “is contraception immoral?”
No, it does not change the morality of anything. But method issues do create a pastoral problem that is not being addressed.
Excellent article,thanks!
All this discussion about contraception has me wondering: Is it possible to really go back to the world of 1958, before Vatican II and the contraceptive pill? I really doubt it. It’s not so much that Catholics haven’t been taught about contraception, or haven’t heard homilies about it, or don’t know the Church’s teaching on it. It’s that we now live in a contraceptive world. Absolutely NONE of the Catholic people I know personally accept the Church’s teaching on the issue. The Church might have more success in merely encouraging couples to have children, teaching them what sex and procreation is for, in God’s plan.
But no. The Church MUST have the cudgel. Hell. When the belief in Hell goes away, suddenly the whole Church simply isn’t taken as seriously.
When I was in 1st grade, in 1963, the nun teaching us drew flames on the blackboard. She drew a HUGE Roman numeral I on the board, and an arrow beneath it. “All it takes is ONE mortal sin, and you go straight to Hell!” Such a lesson seems like a thousand years ago.
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