Catholicism and contraception
The number of Catholic blogs linking to my post on Dan Brown's errors in Angels and Demons has surprised me a bit. I shouldn't be too shocked, I suppose, since many of Brown's critics are defenders of the Catholic Church against Brown's slanders. I must admit that I don't fall into that camp. I'm not entirely convinced that Brown is particularly anti-Catholic; his sins are of the literary and factual sort, not the heretical kind. My guess is that if Brown were to write about some other religion, say Methodism or Reform Judaism, its adherents would take arms, too.
But all that's beside the point. As a result of all the links, I've read lots of blogs that I never would have stumbled on by myself, blogs like The Shrine of Holy Whapping and Catholicae Testudines. I've found lots I don't agree with, and plenty that just doesn't make sense. Some of that disagreement can undoubtedly be attributed to dissimilar worldviews. But I'm not such a relativist that I'm willing to cast disagreement aside and accept the validity of beliefs that strike me as decidedly wrong-headed and narrow-minded.
Take this post from Catholicae Testudines. The writer, Thomas A., opens his essay by warning "these people" not to get their hopes up about Vatican thelogian George Cottier telling an Italian news agency that there were circumstances in which the use of condoms might be justified.
First of all, Thomas A. fails to make clear just who "these people" are. The staff at the Guardian who wrote about the story? The article he linked to is straightforward news; I can't find anyone getting their hopes up in it. People in general? Maybe, but then why make it "these people"? As best I can figure out, Thomas A. is writing against critics of the Church's position on contraception. Fine, then, let's see what he has to say.
Until they understand that Catholicism is a deontological religion, not a consequentialist one, they will not understand why the Church cannot approve of contraceptive sexual activity for any reason. Perhaps they do not realize that the Church condemns as sin all genital activity that because of its nature (and not because of accidental circumstances such as the woman being out of a fertile period) is closed off to the generation of life. And that she does this because such is contrary to human nature and displeasing to God, and not because it might in some circumstances have harmful effects on bodily health.
Let's be clear here. According to Thomas, the Church disapproves of "all genital activity that ... is closed off to the generation of life." He inserts a little disclaimer in there, and that's what I want to examine more closely. What are these "accidental" circumstances in which "genital activity" that can't lead to procreation is not a sin? His example is a woman "out of a fertile period." I'm not sure whether he means post-menopausal women or women who aren't ovulating. But both seem like reasonable readings, so that's two scenarios.
Here's my question: how is either one of these circumstances in any way "accidental"? Is it an accident that post-menopausal women are infertile? Sex between a man and a post-menopausal woman will not, by its very nature, generate life. There's no accident involved here. According to Thomas's description, the Church condemns this sort of sexual activity. Now maybe this is true, maybe the Church does, in fact, prohibit post-menopausal women from having sex. If that's the case, well, the Catholic Church is even more repressive than I thought.
But maybe I'm being too harsh here. Maybe Thomas really was restricting his women "out of a fertile period" to post-pubescent, pre-menopausal females who don't happen to be ovulating at the time of intercourse. But again, where's the accident here? It's not as if menstrual cycles are random phenomena. Ovulation and fertility can be predicted and tracked with a great deal of precision. When a woman who isn't ovulating has sex and doesn't conceive, there's nothing accidental about it; that's just how it works.
The obvious counterargument here is that there's nothing about the nature of sexual intercourse between a man and a non-ovulating woman that makes conception impossible. Women can conceive when they're not ovulating, it's just not very likely. As far as I can tell this argument says that sexual intercourse with a non-ovulating women is acceptable because there's still a chance that life could be generated.
UPDATE (6 February 2005): See SRC's comment below for more precise discussion of ovulation and conception.
To this, I hasten to point out that there's nothing about the nature of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman using a condom that makes conception impossible. Women can conceive when their partner uses a condom, it's just not very likely. Condomns do, after all, fail.
It seems, then, that the Catholic Church, at least according to Thomas A.'s description, isn't terribly consistent in its condemnation of "genital activity that ... is closed off to the generation of life." Condoms are out but sex with a non-ovulating woman is in? Okay then.
Then there's the bit about such activity being "contrary to human nature and displeasing to God". Now, I don't know about the second part. Maybe God doesn't like sex that doesn't generate life. But who's to say, really? But as for the first part, that non-life-generating genital activity is contrary to human nature? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's wrong. Now I have some doubts about the existence of "human nature" but I'm certain that it's impossible to describe it. Can you point to some human behavior or activity that has characterized all societies? Even more obviously, if all this genital activity were contrary to human nature, why has it been so common throughout history? It's not as if masturbation or oral sex are new things. Besides, don't Catholics believe that man is inherently sinful? Wouldn't it be human nature to sin?
You know, as fascinating as I find Catholicism, some of it doesn't make much sense...
I could go on, but I'm already feeling like John Holbo. Besides, my knowledge of Catholic theology is minimal; I don't want to get in over my head.
posted by Danny @ 11:22 AM
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women can't conceive when they're not ovulating. yes, ovulation does not necesarily occur at the same time in the menstrual cycle (thus you could think that you weren't ovulating) each cycle, but you need that little egg to pop out. of course, sperm can live in a nice warm place like a uterus or fallopian tube for up to 5 or six days, i think, but they're unlikely to get there unless a woman is near ovulation (when hormones change and the mucus membrane at the cervix changes). i guess the statement is true that conception does not necessarily occur at the exact time that a woman ovulates, but it ain't gonna happen unless the ovulation has just happened or is about to happen...anyway.
your email is on the way. eventually.
src
In all do fairness, I think there is a bit of misunderstanding here regarding terminology. By "accident," Thomas refers to the thomistic principle of unintended side effects of an action. The use of contraception is by its very intent designed to prevent conception, and therefore the inability to conceive is never "accidental." It is never unintentional. Menopause, etc. is not a willed act, therefore its interference with conception is not intentional on the part of the married couple.
So even though a condom can fail, the couple is still actively seeking means to prevent conception. The INTENT is contraception, and any conception would be accidental, in both the philosophical and the vulgar sense of the word. The Church hopes that no person would be conceived "accidentally."
The debate which the media inflated regarding the Spanish Bishops was whether using condoms to prevent transmitting AIDS to a partner would be the intent and contraception merely an accident.
As for the issue of what is "human nature," you appear to be using a descriptive definition whereas Thomas is using a prescriptive definition.
According to the Church, "natural law" is the knowledge of moral principles inscribed on every human heart. Even if everyone in the world disagrees on the particulars, there is a general sense that some acts are right and some acts are taboo. (For a much clearer argument, see C.S. Lewis' Protestant version of this in A Case for Christianity.)
The proclivity to sin and the loss of preternatural gifts are consequences of original sin, but this does not make man inherently sinful. No creature can be inherently sinful because God does not make bad things. Acts can be "disordered" or inherently sinful because they go against God's plan for his creatures. Temptation isn't abnormal--but that doesn't justify acting on it.
My point is that the purpose of the Church is to help transform humanity from what it is to what it should be. What does it mean to be truly human as God intended, versus what do human beings do when left to their own devices.
To borrow one of your own examples, the Church condemns auto-eroticism because it takes a highly sacred event and reduces it to meaningless sensation. This is "disordered" because it goes against the purpose of sexual pleasure which heightens the bond between a man and woman and expresses the joy of the creative act.
Wouldn't you rather live in a world where sexuality expressed an eternal cosmic glory rather than just provided a momentary spark of physical gratification in a clinically sanitized world?
Often, people who complain that they don't understand Catholicism simply need to learn the lingo.
Thanks for the comment. Like I said, my knowledge of Catholic theology is fairly limited, and this post was based just on Thomas's post, without any further reading. It may be that more precise understanding of a few terms clears up some stuff. I've gotta say, though, a prescriptive definition of human nature sounds pretty goofy to me.
It's still not clear to me, however, the grounds on which the Catholic Church justifies the validity of the rhythm method of contraception but condemns all other forms of contraception. The intent of having sex when a woman is not ovulating and abstaining she is is contraception, isn't it? Like using a condom, "the couple is still actively seeking means to prevent conception."
Thanks again for your comment. I'm genuinely curious about this stuff.
On defining human nature prescriptively: This really isn't that unusual at all. You enact some kind of prescriptive definition every time you consider what someone should do. Is it better for people to execute murderers or not? Is it more human to show mercy or to enact impartial justice. A descriptive definition merely describes what people have already done in the past, and you wouldn't get very far in life if you only thought about your humanity in terms of what you've already done.
On the contraception issue: Actually, the rhythm method and natural family planning aren't quite the same thing, but that's a minor point. Abstinence during a fertile period is still different from contraception because in contraception you are trying to have your cake and eat it, too. If you are abstaining, you are sacrificing the pleasure of intercourse. I'm not married, but I imagine this can be quite a sacrifice given the length of time a woman can conceive.
You are right to point out that if a couple only ever engaged in activity during infertile periods, this would amount to virtually the same thing as contraception...and this, in fact, could lead to grounds for an annulment.
But even with this in mind, the couple who uses NFP responsibly is not actively putting any obstructions in the way of intercourse as they would if it used a contraceptive. They aren't pumping their bodies full of chemicals or sticking bits of plastic between each other to redirect the course of nature.
NFP says the couple will play by the rules as we've found them. Contraception says we'll only play with the rules that we make up as we go along.
Ah, now it seems that you're the one who wants to have his cake and eat it, too. On the one hand, you privilege "nature" as the was things have been in the past "the rules as we've found them", arguing that contraception is bad because it's contrary to the "course of nature." On the other hand, you view human nature prescriptively, as a means of regulating human behavior. You can't have it both ways. Either nature is a goal we strive to attain (which is what seems so unusual to me) or nature is "the way things have always been."
I have to admit, I'm a bit skeptical of the whole notion of human nature. Attributing behavior to human nature ignores the complex and multiple influences on our actions. It's a bit of an explanatory cop-out. Put another way, how do we know that a given behavior is the result of human nature and not, say, how one was raised? This complaint has more to do with descriptive definitions of human nature, obviously.
There's certainly prescriptive attitudes involved when you judge someone's actions, but I'm not sure how human nature is relevant here. About every dictionary definition I can find defines human nature alongs these lines: "The basic character or disposition of mankind", "The sum of qualities and traits shared by all humans". Ther's nothing wrong with setting out ideal behavior, but it's counter-intuitive to describe that behavior as "human nature." If it were natural for people to act that way, why wouldn't we all be doing it? Again, I think that we're talking past each other a bit when it comes to terminology, but I just can't see how a prescriptive definition of human nature is at all sensible.
As for contraception, I think you're missing the fact that there are inconveniences associated with use of contraceptive methods like condoms or the pill. Maybe not sacrifices along the lines of abstinence, but it's not as if sex while using contraceptives is a utopia where there is endless cake for both having and eating. There's a continuum of sacrifices and inconveniences here. There are definite similarities between natural family planning and using condoms, most notably sexual intercourse with the intent of avoiding conception. And since there's a continuum of related activities it just seems rather arbitrary to declare that certain behaviors are permissible and others are absolutely forbidden. Why draw the line where it is?
Well, one of the more fun tasks of Christian philosophy over the past two thousand years has been to sort out what human attributes reflect God's intended design and what human attributes are actually a result of man's fall. Thus, it is perfectly valid to argue that something can be both prescriptive and "have always been." What humans should be is what humans always should have been--we lost it, and now we're striving to get it back. As the catechism puts it "his nature bears the wound of original sin" (1707). The nature itself is intrinsically the same, but it's ability to express itself been impaired.
Now, back to birth control...Yes, I agree there can be similarities, but similarities do not breed equivalencies. Despite the similarities, the main difference is still that the use of contraceptive is a direct use of illicit means. Is it a fine line? Perhaps...but again, the line is drawn at the level of action.
Think about it this way. According to the Church, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a married couple engaging in legitimate intercourse every night of the year. If the couple decides not to have intercourse for one half of those nights, it does not suddenly mean that there would be something wrong with still engaging in marital acts the rest of the time.
What we need to compare is a couple abstaining with a couple using a condom, not a couple using a condom with a couple having sex during the infertile period.
The irony, of course, is that the Church advocates the healthiest, cleanest, and most reliable form of birth control, while pharmaceutical agencies and latex companies want you to suffer the anxiety of less reliable means that can even screw around with your body's natural functions.
I wasn't suggesting equivalence between the two behaviors, just similarities (hence the idea of a continuum). There's a fine line, as you yourself admit. I don't see why activities on one side of that fine line are categorically condemned while the ones just on this side of that line are acceptable.
Let's be honest. Not having sex isn't really just on this side of the contraception line.
The difference here is between having sex with a condom and not having sex at all.
The Church isn't going to issue a statement requiring couples to have sex 365 days of the year, therefore it will never say that it is immoral not to engage in sexual activity with your married partner at certain times.
Now if you get married and never, ever, ever want to have kids--then the Church has a problem. But it's not like there's some kind of Catholic sex police checking up on these things.
I think perhaps the confusion we are having here is due to a consequentialist approach to morality. Putting abstinence and contraception on the same continuum seems to do so because the ends of the acts are the same. That is, if X and Y both produce Z, then X and Y must both have the same moral value. The Church argues that it doesn't matter what the ends of an action are. There are simply actions which are in and of themselves good, bad, or amoral.
Feeding the hungry is always a good thing to do, even if you, for some reason, have an evil reason for doing it (say, to show off your generosity). This is good because it rectifies an evil. No person is supposed to starve to death. Feeding the hungry fixes that problem. It's like when Huck Finn thinks he is going to Hell for freeing Jim, his action is good even if he thinks he is being bad.
Killing another person is always an evil thing to do, even if that person is doing something wrong. This is evil, or disordered, because no ordinary human being is ever supposed to take the life of another human being (I don't want to get into the death penalty debate here, but you get my gist).
Thus, using a contraceptive is evil because, as I have said, it willfully introduces a barrier into performing the fullness of the marital act. Contraception makes a person infertile (or at least attempts to sterilize the sex act as efficiently as humanly possibly) when that person is supposed to be fertile. Therefore it is disordered.
Abstenance doesn't change the nature of the sex act. That's why it's so easy to condemn everything else.
And there are, in fact, many other actions along the continuum between abstenance and active contraception that the Church does condemn, such as auto-eroticism and coitus interruptus.
So though I was willing to consider the possibility of a fine line, I think the boundaries are actually much wider than we realized when we began this intellectual journey.
You're contradicting yourself. Above you wrote that we have to consider intent when deciding whether an action is sinful. Now you're saying actions are inherently good or evil, regardless of intent. Which is it?
I put abstinence during fertile periods and condom use on a continuum not because the consequences are the same, but rather that the intent is similar - the ability to have sex without risk of conception. Go read what I wrote again. I'm not adopting a consequentialist approach here; I'm trying to stay within the bounds that you and Thomas have defined. I'm genuinely curious about how the Church justifies and rationalizes its norms of behavior. But as it stands, I remain unconvinced.
My guess is that coitus interruptus is condemned because it goes against the "nature" of sexual intercourse, the nature of sex being the conception of human life (let's ignore the fact that it's possible to conceive even if the guy "pulls out" before ejaculating). Yet by allowing natural family planning, the Catholic Church admits that sexual intercourse without the possibility of conception is acceptable. Once this admission is made, I simply don't see how there's a principled way of categorically condemning other forms of contraception, for the reasons I've outlined above.
"You're contradicting yourself. Above you wrote that we have to consider intent when deciding whether an action is sinful. Now you're saying actions are inherently good or evil, regardless of intent. Which is it?"
I said that there are actions which are inherently good or bad regardless of intent. I did not say that all actions can be judged independent of intention.
The act of making oneself sterile or infertile is inherently evil, just as it would be inherently evil to gouge out one's own eye or lop off a hand.
And since you bring up sin...for Catholic morality, intention can determine the difference between a mortal and venial sin. But, to elaborate on what I said, you can't make a mortal sin out of an inherently good act. (A mortal sin requires free choice, sufficient reflection, and grave matter. If any one of these three is missing, you have a venial sin. A mortal sin is a complete break in one's relationship with God, whereas a venial sin merely damages one's relationship with God.)
"I put abstinence during fertile periods and condom use on a continuum not because the consequences are the same, but rather that the intent is similar - the ability to have sex without risk of conception."
You say that abstenance during the fertile period and using contraception are on the same continuum because their intents are the same, but the intention you give is "the ability to have sex without risk of conception."
But abstenance is not having sex. Abstenance is the ability to not have sex in order to conceive at a better time. Most importantly, the intention is to refrain from sex.
Using a contraceptive is to not refrain from sex.
These are absolute opposites in terms of intent. If the purpose of a contraceptive was to refrain from intercourse until the woman was not fertile, then there would be no reason to use a contraceptive.
"Go read what I wrote again."
The debate as it started was concerned with the issue of "accidental" impediments to conception versus intentional impediments to conception.
"Yet by allowing natural family planning, the Catholic Church admits that sexual intercourse without the possibility of conception is acceptable. Once this admission is made, I simply don't see how there's a principled way of categorically condemning other forms of contraception, for the reasons I've outlined above."
Again, this hinges on the "accidental" approach. The human body does not have a means of willfully controlling its fertility. A woman does not ovulate voluntarily. The Church accepts sexual activity during a woman's infertile period because there is nothing to be done about it. It's a non-issue. That's simply the way the human body works. But again, this isn't the same as contraception because no one has actually done anything that would impede conception.
"Even more obviously, if all this genital activity were contrary to human nature, why has it been so common throughout history? It's not as if masturbation or oral sex are new things."
Bestiality, human sacrifice, and pedophilia have all been common and even at times rampant throughout human history -- but these are things that demean the human. These are things that make humanity less than it is called to be. Humanity dignifies itself through self-control and at times self-denial.
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