THEOLOGY OF CONTRACEPTION
Jerry Harkins
Quadragesimo Anno is the title of an encyclical letter of Pope Pius XI which explicated what became one of the principal themes of Twentieth Century Catholic teaching, the notion that capitalism and communism pose equal threats to society, the church and individuals. The title refers to the fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII’s first tentative invocation of that theme which was immediately and forever overshadowed by its daring and unexpected embrace of the rights of labor. In the year of grace 2008, there was no celebration of the anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Paul VI’s tragic and unexpected condemnation of “artificial” birth control. [1] The occasion, however, was marked by a New York Times op-ed piece which noted that, “Today polls show that Catholics, at least in the West, dissent from the teaching on birth control, often by majorities exceeding 80 percent. But at the official level, Catholicism’s commitment to Humanae Vitae is more solid than ever.” [2]
The tragedy lies precisely in that moral chasm between Catholics and their leaders. The Times essay says that forecasts of the demise of Catholicism as the result of that encyclical, “…badly underestimated the capacity of the Catholic Church to resist change and to stand its ground.” But such optimism flies in the face of what has already happened: Catholicism may still be alive but the institutional church is in its death throes. Everywhere it is closing doors and selling off assets. Nowhere can it attract new priests in anywhere near the numbers needed, nor can it make the priesthood more attractive. Humanae Vitae was, far and away, the most important cause of this decline. Moreover, it was unnecessary and even foolish.
Ever since it emerged from the catacombs, the Catholic church has tried to micromanage the sex lives of its adherents (and everyone else but that is another story). [3] It has generally regarded sex as God’s punishment for the sin of Adam and Eve. Many of the church’s best thinkers have taught that any sexual expression is always sinful except between married people in the service of procreation with no deliberate enjoyment. At the beginning of the third millennium, its fundamental position is that “…it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life. ” [4] After that the logic becomes murky. The church believes this necessary openness to procreation derives from, “…the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.” [5] This would suggest that there cannot be procreation without unitivity and vice versa, both of which propositions are absurd. Still, such an “inseparable connection” is central to the church’s current position, so crucial that Paul VI emphasizes that it—the inseparability—was “established by God.” Pope John Paul II addressed the same issue in 1984. His prose is even more opaque than Paul’s but this is a fair paraphrase: "Since [by its very nature] the marriage act [simultaneously] unites husband and wife in the closest intimacy and makes them capable of generating new life, then it follows that the human person must [recognize both functions] and also the inseparable connection between them." [6]
The emphasis on the “unitive” significance of sex is a recent development and the notion that God established an inseparable connection between it and procreation is even more recent. Between Vatican I and Vatican II, the “traditional” teaching was that procreation alone was the primary end of marriage and that there were two secondary ends, a remedy for concupiscence and the mutual help of the spouses. Vatican II came close to reversing these priorities. Gaudium et Spes ultimately retains the primacy of procreation but speaks glowingly of the marital bond, “…this many-faceted love, welling up as it does from the fountain of divine love and structured as it is on the model of His union with His Church.” The church began to further enhance the role of the unitive function when it became necessary to conform two antithetical positions, the limited but essentially liberal teaching of Vatican II and the reactionary strictures of Humanae Vitae. It said that the idea traces back to Eden and God’s observation that “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.” [7] The logic here is elusive but need not detain us.
I have been unable to discover exactly what the church means by “unitive.” Literally, of course, it means that sex tends to bring people together which seems obvious enough. Perhaps it is meant to suggest that sex can actually strengthen the love between people, another obvious notion that you can find in recent pronouncements. Even Saint Augustine hints that marriage promotes the goal of mutual support and love but he still contrives to believe that sex, for any purpose other than procreation, and with any pleasure beyond what is minimally essential, is sinful. And that remains the root position of the Catholic Church.
The increased emphasis on unitive is welcome. Many medieval theologians were convinced that sex is so tainted that children born out of wedlock are forever doomed, and Saint Jerome seems to have thought that even legitimate children, especially females, were damned unless they remained virgins. Saint Peter Damian taught that sexual intercourse under any circumstance and for any reason inside or outside marriage is inherently sinful. By the twelfth century, several commentators were talking about what is now called the “unitive” function. Some such as Hugh of St. Victor were quite eloquent on the subject but all remained cautious. Hugh thought married couples were well advised to moderation and conjugal chastity in the service of procreation. [8]
Of course sex brings people together. But the two functions—unitive and procreative—are quite different. There is a great deal of sexual attraction in the world that is unconsummated (i.e., non-procreative) and a great deal of sex that does not unify couples. If the modern church were entirely candid, it would admit that it grudgingly accepts the unitive function of sex only because it thinks it must to strike a rational note in its otherwise absurdist teaching on sex. It does understand that blameless sex can occur between married lovers who, for one reason or another, cannot, do not or do not want to conceive (as long as they do not employ “unnatural” contraceptive means). This concession implies that the two functions are logically and biologically independent. If sex can sometimes be employed for unitive purposes only, then it follows that unitive and procreative are morally independent.
Any reflective married couple could explain to the church that love is (a) real, (b) a sublime and comforting force during life’s pilgrimage, and (c) that it changes over time, becoming deeper and more complex. Sex plays a role in this but that role is destructive as often as it is constructive. Sex is not love and is not the cause of love. It is a concomitant certainly. It is a constant, often urgent, often distracting presence. Desire may ebb and flow but sex itself is a constant aura in our conscious and subconscious lives. It is there whether or not we are “in love” and the church’s morality should begin with the proposition that God put it there. There is a marvelous story about Pope Paul VI’s Birth Control Commission. A very conservative Jesuit, objecting to any change in the teaching, asked, “What then with the millions we have sent to hell if these norms were not valid?” An American expert, Patricia Crowley, replied, “Father Zalba, do you really believe God has carried out all your orders?” [9]
Sex between humans is a complex dance, as much mental as genital. Contraception allows partners to respond more effectively to this complexity and in this sense the church’s teaching on contraception is immoral. [11] It condemns out of hand an action that has many good results including the prevention of serious diseases and the spacing of children. The fact that the church permits what it considers “natural” contraception is hypocritical in that Vatican Roulette is nothing more than a feeble effort to separate the unitive and procreative functions of sex. A hierarch who believes that careful monitoring of a woman’s estrous cycle is “natural” is only betraying his lack of experience and understanding, not to mention his latent misogyny.
All the theology is simplistic and ultimately the church relies as it always has on its teaching authority and the fear of hell. Even before Humanae Vitae, Paul VI fell back on the last argument of fools and kings: because I say so. He wrote, “…sons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law…spouses should be aware that they cannot proceed arbitrarily, but must always be governed according to a conscience dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be submissive toward the Church's teaching office” [10] What divine law? The one the Holy Spirit whispered in the ear of the Pope. Because I say so.
That’s all, folks. That is the theology of contraception as taught by the Catholic Church. There is no grand theory, no compelling logic, no biblical support and certainly no scientific evidence. Of course, as with other doctrines, there is the theory of “natural law” as propounded by Thomas Aquinas. If there is such a thing then either everyone knows its specific provisions or some law giver has to say what they are. Aquinas himself was not shy about assuming the latter role and in this modesty he is part of a long line of teachers that includes John Calvin, Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart. The church relies on its own “teaching office” or magisterium. It claims a mandate from Jesus to teach all nations [11] and an assurance that what it teaches will be binding. “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” [12] Whatever covers a lot of ground. The church burned Joan of Arc for the heresy of cross-dressing and condemned Galileo for the heresy of writing that the planets revolve around the sun. Were either of these actions “bound” in heaven? Of course, both were more or less rescinded and so, presumably, became unbound. Now maybe you think the Spirit protects the church only when it speaks on matters of faith and morals. But (a) it gets to say what constitutes faith and morals, and (b) if the motion of the solar system was not faith and morals, why was heliocentricity heretical? Not to mention cross-dressing. Throughout its history, the “teaching office” has been a bureaucracy of Wonderland and most of the popes have been servants of the Red Queen.
Many individuals and institutions have claimed to be infallible. The aforementioned Pat Robertson, for one, has regular communications with God who tells him the most horrifying things. “This Page,” the editorial voice of The New York Times, issues some 1,500 dicta every year on a dazzling variety of subjects. As far as it can remember, it has never experienced the heartbreak of error. But there is something especially frivolous about a small group of elderly celibates purporting to dictate universal sexual morality. Frivolous and embarrassing, dangerous to believers, and, in its defiance of the divine wisdom it purports to believe in, just possibly blasphemous.
Notes
1. There have been several lesser recognitions of the event, all of them invoking similar language and logic. Perhaps the most important of these was the address of Cardinal James Stafford, the Apostolic Penitentiary, to the 27th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Fertility Care Professionals, June 11, 2008. The title of the speech which may be found on the Vatican website is “The Year of the Πειρασμός [peirasuos] – 1968.” Peirasuos is the Greek word for temptation and refers to the heroic virtue of His Eminence when, as a young priest, he had been tempted to agree with others at a meeting of Baltimore priests called to denounce Humanae Vitae. AAFCP is an organization dedicated to promoting the Creighton version of the rhythm method of birth control. This method appears to require elaborate record keeping and it promotes “selective” rather than “spontaneous” intercourse.
2. John L. Allen Jr., “The Pope vs. the Pill,” July 27, 2008.
3. What is true of the Catholic church is generally true of the entire Christian enterprise. In the Protestant world, there are sects that are more conservative and more liberal on specific issues but all consider sexuality a domain of special religious concern. Sexual ethics, of course, is an important subject but few clergy members have the training or experience to expound on it in anything like a definitive fashion.
4. Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, Chapter 11.
5. Ibid., Chapter 12.
6. Pope John Paul II, “Morality of Marriage Act Determined by Nature of the Act and of the Subjects,” General Audience Of 11 July 1984.
7. Genesis 2:18. This is, at best, a weak reed on which to hang a heavy doctrine. There is no evidence that Adam and Eve enjoyed sex in the garden. On the contrary, it seems God invented sex to punish them for their transgression. He tells Eve, “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in sorrow you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16)
8. The definitive work on this subject is Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe by James A. Brundage (The University of Chicago Press, 1987).
9. For a definitive account of the work of the Papal Birth Control Commission, see: Robert McClory, Turning Point, Crossroad, 1995.
10. The medieval canonist Gratian considered that contraceptive actions were minor sins on a par with excessive eating or oversleeping. This is interesting because Gratian was among the most conservative of the commentators on matters of sexuality.
11. Matthew 28:19-20.
12. Matthew 16:19. See also Matthew 18:18. There are similar mandates in Mark 16:15 and Acts 1:7.
