YADA, YADA, YADA!

Jerry Harkins

It is not difficult to notice the spread of a mentality that reduces the generation of life to a variable of an individual’s or a couple’s plans. Economic factors sometimes have enough weight to contribute to the sharp drop in the birthrate which weakens the social fabric, compromising the relationship between generations and rendering the view of the future less certain. Being open to life is an intrinsic requirement of married love.

Probably here as well what is required is a realistic language that is able to start from listening to people and acknowledging the beauty and truth of an unconditional opening to life as that which human life requires to be lived to its fullest. It is on this base that we can rest an appropriate teaching regarding natural methods, which allow the living in a harmonious and aware way of the communication between spouses, in all its dimensions, along with generative responsibility. In this light, we should go back to the message of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae of Paul VI, which underlines the need to respect the dignity of the person in the moral evaluation of the methods of birth control. 

—Synod14 - Eleventh General Assembly: “Relatio post disceptationem” of the General Rapporteur, Paragraphs 53-54.

So it came to pass that Pope Francis called an elaborate synod to discuss ways of improving the church’s pastoral care of families.  The “synodal fathers” come up with a preliminary report that included a few Warm and Fuzzies about divorced people and gays that got the press all excited.  The church’s tone had changed!  Right on cue, some of the worst antediluvian bishops threw a temper tantrum about the decline of standards but they need not have worried.  Nothing had changed, not the dogma, not the discipline and not even the traditional Vatican Doublethink.  Still, it was interesting that so many prelates piled on.  In one section (Paragraph 50), the preliminary report asks whether the church is capable of “welcoming” homosexuals to a fraternal space.  The Italian verb is accogliere which can mean many things but whose principal meaning is welcome.  An anonymous bishop persuaded an anonymous bureaucrat to change “welcome” to “provide for.”  Ah, the mills of God grind exceedingly fine.

The Pope probably got a lot more push back than he anticipated.  Not that any document written in Vaticanspeak can ever be free of divine politics.  The coin of the realm is power and power requires obscurity rather than clarity.  The Relatio did not disappoint.  As always, the bullshit was piled high: "A sharp drop in the birthrate weakens the social fabric, compromising the relationship between generations and rendering the view of the future less certain.”  Poppycock!  They made that up without reference to real data about the real world.  In 2010, in the developed and relatively stable countries of OECD, the average birthrate was 11.5 per 1,000 people and the range was from 8.1 in Germany to 16.7 in Turkey.  In India, it was 21.8.  In Afghanistan, that paragon of social cohesion, it was 45.1.  Does the Vatican seriously believe that the view of the future is most certain in Niger (46.0)?  Unless, of course, they’re talking about a bleak outlook.

Lest you think the church has suddenly gotten religion, the prelates thought about what they had wrought for a few days and then watered down the language about gay and divorced people that had so excited the hopeful.  The Warm and Fuzzies could not muster a two-thirds vote although they did manage substantial majorities.  On the subject of contraception, a word that does not appear in either the Preliminary or the Final version, no changes were made.  One sentence appears to be clearer than most pronouncements of the Holy See:  “Being open to life is an intrinsic requirement of married love.”  This is the discredited but traditional teaching.  But with the Vatican you have to read carefully.  In this case, intrinsic is a poor choice of words even if it is the traditional formulation.  If, by their very nature, openness to life and married love are inseparable, then you can’t try to separate them using Vatican Roulette.  The latter with its complex measurements and calculations is thought to be “natural” by hierarchs who, presumably, have never tried it.  Of course, even Vatican Roulette does not free you from the obligation to  meet your “generative responsibility.”  You still have to “go back” to the moral criteria of Humanae Vitae.  In case you’ve forgotten it, the core ruling of that infamous encyclical is the last sentence of Section 11:

The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.

Humanae Vitae is a tough hurdle for the church to confront.  As contemptible, ignorant and self-destructive as it is, the Popes have taught it so tenaciously that to abandon it now would inevitably deliver a fatal blow to papal teaching authority.  Paul VI shied away from invoking infallibility but John Paul II and Benedict XVI invented a whole new category of “definitive” teachings.  In his letter Ad Tuendam Fidem of May 18, 1998, John Paul wrote:

Furthermore, each and every thing set forth definitively by the Magisterium of the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals must be firmly accepted and held; namely, those things required for the holy keeping and faithful exposition of the deposit of faith; therefore, anyone who rejects propositions which are to be held definitively sets himself against the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Since 1998, every substantive papal utterance on marriage and sexuality has invoked the authority of this new “definitive teaching” scam to the point that anyone who disagrees is a heretic.  The one saving grace is that virtually the entire world has definitively rejected the underlying teaching about contraception.  Even the late night comedians have moved on which is why divorce and homosexuality got all the ink in the world press.

It does not, however, explain why the media failed to notice that a 58-paragraph document on the family neglected to mention the most critical problem facing the church today, to wit, its relationship to women.  From the beginning, the leaders of the church, like the leaders of almost all churches, have feared women and shunned their company.  Women have been blamed for everything from the fall of Adam to the death of God.  In recent years, “holy mother the church” has denounced female altar servers, girl scouts and American nuns.  It has ruled that no woman will ever qualify for the priesthood and no woman has a right to control her own body.  For centuries it did not allow women to speak or sing in church.  Virtually every pope of the last two hundred years has held forth on the immorality of women’s fashions.  When it comes to the female half of the human race, the Roman Curia’s philosophy and that of the Taliban are indistinguishable.

The irony of the church’s misogyny is, of course, the fact that, of the two sexes, women are by far the more religious.  Depending on the source, between 15% and 30% of Catholics will attend mass on any given Sunday.  Of these, two-thirds will be women.  In Europe, where a far smaller percentage of Catholics go to church, 90% of those who do are women.  Women account for 70% to 80% of participants in non-mass parish activities.  Women drive participation in the sacraments.  Between 1965 and 2014, Catholic marriages and baptisms fell by 50%.  The number of priests declined by 35% while the number of sisters fell by 75%.  The disconnect between these numbers and the issues the church thinks are important is staggering.

Poor Francis.  In some ways he reminds me of President Obama:  a decent, intelligent person who thinks he can reason together with those who oppose him.  In both cases, this is a tragic flaw.  Francis is not a bomb throwing radical.  What he seems to be aiming for is a couple of modest reforms, ministering to divorced and remarried Catholics and honoring the humanity and the contributions of gay people.  Maybe later he would try to find a way out of the contraception corner the church has painted itself into and thereby undo some of the vast damage its teachings have caused.  But before he does any of these things he must recognize that his opponents are right about one thing:  these are not issues amenable to compromise.  Each one has a right answer that is obvious.  No synod of bishops appointed by his two predecessors ever gave an inch.  In a crisis, leadership requires implacable determination.  It may have been unrealistic to begin the reform with the low hanging fruit.  Perhaps he should have begun a new Reformation by announcing that papal infallibility is a fraud.  Whatever!  But know this:  no matter what his spin doctors claim, Francis has lost the first round and is almost sure to lose the next  one.  Time is short and the river is rising.