This week was
the 50th anniversary of perhaps the most controversial letter ever
written by a Pope. On July 25th, 1968, Pope Paul VI released the
letter Humanae Vitae, answering the
question of whether or not artificial means of preventing birth—most especially
the birth control pill—violated Catholic moral teaching. Fifty years later both
the teaching and the public response to it remain hot topics. In 2012, the
controversy heated up again when the Health and Human Services Department
mandated that Catholic institutions like schools and hospitals would have to
pay for employees’ contraceptive plans under the Affordable Care Act. The
bandages were torn off the old wounds about the Church’s teaching as the
Bishops and even the Little Sisters of the Poor challenged the Obama
administration in court. But I think we, and here I especially mean we priests,
have failed to explain this teaching adequately. In 1968, we tended to explain
it as a matter of obedience to Apostolic authority. And in the last decade we
tended to just make the argument that our religious freedom and our Catholic
consciences were being taken away by government mandate. What we need to do,
and should have done for 50 years, was actually make the argument of why
contraception, in all its many forms, is not good for a woman, for a family, or
for a society. We Catholics need to understand it for our own sake and so we
can give a response to others who might think us scientifically backwards or
morally Puritanical.
Fear not about your kids here; my language will be carefully chosen and veiled
for this. And anyone who can
understand it, has the right to know it.
About words:
I’m going to use the phrase “open to life” to mean the opposite of
contraception, which would include both using Natural Family Planning to make
good, prudent decisions, and also simply saying “Ok, God, we trust you; whatever
You think.” Also, I don’t see this homily as a final answer; I see this as
the beginning of a conversation.
And finally about my approach: This is a journey of the heart. I won’t be
quoting Scripture passages; I will be ignoring the Catechism. This is between
two people, you and me. Any person who has even just an inkling that there’s
purpose in the universe should be able to hear these words and reason with
us. In fact, the best resource I offer people is a book by two
Protestants: The Open Embrace, by Sam & Bethany Torode. There
is no “The Pope says; the Catechism says” here. This is a couple saying
what your heart already knows.
Let’s take a look at the history of contraception. Previous to the 20th
century, all major Christian denominations considered it immoral. And
contrary to what you’ll hear maybe in popular history, it wasn’t because they
wanted lots of people for the farming and for bulking up their church’s
membership. No, it was because all churches saw it as a humongous
invitation to promiscuity. No risk, no commitment. Adulterers would
think they could get a free vacation from their spouse; those not yet married
could have a test-drive. All Christian denominations rejected it, and most
other religions agreed. You will find twenty-seven quotes by Gandhi
against it. But in 1930, the Church of England decided at its every-ten-years
conference at Lambeth to allow it: only in marriage, only with good reasons,
only if not for “motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.” It
seemed the perfect middle solution: no fooling around, only for good motives,
no selfishness. But of course, we all
always have a good reason for doing what we want. We can imagine the
conversation some night:
“Do you
realize we met five years ago tonight? We were so…spontaneous, back
then. Catch my drift?”
“Yes…but
lemme see…six, seven, eight, nine months…nope that could put us in June, and we
are set our big vacation in June.”
“True…so this would be a good reason to skip
the pregnant part, right?”
And within a
generation, the Catholic Church stood alone among churches, as every other
church agreed to Lambeth’s “selfless” principles.
Things got interesting in the 1960s. Pope John XXIII had called the
Pontifical Commission on Birth Control in 1960 when Dr. John Rock, a Catholic
OB/GYN and a daily Mass-goer put the final stamp on what today we just call
“the Pill”. Now, we must try to see where Rock was coming from and why
people got their hopes up. The question was not, “Will the Church allow
contraception?” because assuredly it would not. You can’t rewrite Sacred
Tradition in the morals department anymore than you can proclaim that God is a
Quadrinity in the doctrine department. The question was whether the Pill
is a contraceptive. Rock had actually based the Pill on Pius XII’s logic
that it was fine for couples to have recourse to the non-fertile times of the
month for child-spacing, et cetera. Rock’s
pill was just extending that timeframe to the full month. In 1958, Pius
XII had even said it was ok to use something like the later Pill for reasons
that were exclusively medical—an approval that stands to this day. Pius
had died that same year and John XXIII died five years later. In 1966,
Pope Paul VI expanded the Commission to 58 people: doctors, married couples,
theologians…and a 46-year old archbishop whom the Communists wouldn’t let out
of Poland—Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II. It was the peak of
the 1960s: “The Summer of Love”—1967, and “The Summer of Chaos”—1968. Much
had changed in ten years, and now the majority of the Commission wanted open
approval for all contraception. The future Pope John Paul was on
the side of minority, but he differed from some of the objectors in that the
ideas he mailed to Paul VI weren’t focused on human bodies, but on human
hearts. In the end, Pope Paul went against the majority, and he took a few—but
not all—of Karol Wojtyła’s ideas, and wrote Humanae Vitae, translated
“Of Human Life”.
The year was 1968: the Tet Offensive, Martin Luther King Jr. shot, Bobby
Kennedy shot, the Chicago Democratic Convention Riots, the Black Power salute
at the Mexico City Olympics…and group of cool, smart young priests and
theologians were waiting to launch their own revolution in Washington DC. At
Catholic University of America, 34-year old Fr. Charles Curran and his associates
had gotten an embargoed copy of Humanae Vitae, read it, and already had
a biting response ready to go in front of a press conference before most
bishops had even read the papal encyclical. It was like Kennedy vs. Nixon
in 1960: one side looked vigorous, smart, modern; the other didn’t. It was
a PR disaster for the Pope and the bishops, and Fr. Curran’s brand of
theological opinion became the American norm as he took over as Theology Chair
at what is theoretically the Pope’s own university here in America.
Meanwhile, Catholics in America were all too ready to hear why the Pope was
wrong. The Civil Rights Movement had easily transitioned to Women’s Rights Movement
and then more radical feminist movements. One of foundation stones of radical
feminism was safe and accessible contraception. Now women’s futures could
be planned without fear of fickle nature. Now women could double the
income for their families. Now women could be as ruthless in the
boardrooms as men, and as rude in the bedrooms. In less than five more years,
“perfect equality” in America would be established as Roe vs. Wade was
made law of the land. At last, no woman would ever carry a burden she
didn’t want, no child ever grow up unloved, marriages would be strengthened by
only having children on their terms, divorce numbers would go down, and per
household income would go up. The American Dream was secured.
Oh, wait, no
it wasn’t. Actually only one of those happened—women planning their
futures more easily—and some research has shown that even that hasn’t created
more happiness for them in the long run.
Why? Why did things go amiss, even in the midst of loving Christian
marriages? What was it that Archbishop Wojtyła recognized, and that Pope
Paul feared? The key is recognizing that human beings aren’t like the dogs we
spay or the steers we snip. Human love runs differently. Take two dogs
that have mated. If she later sees him mating with another female, you’ll never
see her run to her mom bawling “Mom, he told me he loved me.” We’re
different. We would go bawl. The human heart wasn’t made for
half-hearted love. On some level, we truly can’t bear it. We are
woundable—woundable because our conjugal relations have a very strong connection
to a choice to love. If someone stops choosing to love you, then that past
shared bliss becomes an ache and a wound.
What the future John Paul II saw was that it wasn’t about bodies and body parts. No,
the heart was the real treasury of right and wrong —and the battlefield of
those two— and our bodies are how we express what’s inside. And he started
by saying that in our hearts the real opposite of Love isn’t hate, it’s
Use. If I hate you, well, “So long, get out of here, I don’t
care”. But if I use you, I keep
you around for what I can get. And he defined Love, as we still do
today, as “to make a true gift of yourself”. Love = to Give, but then to
Use = to Take. The things that drive both of these come next. What
allows you to Give, to Love, to take the chance, is Trust —trust you’ll accept
this love and love me back. Its opposite, which gets people to Take and
Use, is Grasp. I can’t trust, I can’t wait, I want what I want, and so I
grasp. So you see the next one already: What I Want over here vs. What’s
Good For You on this side. Likewise, Love and Trust think of the Other
person and see them as an End in themself, while Use thinks of one’s Self and
sees the other as a Means to my own happiness. Put them all together and
you get: seeing someone as a Person vs. seeing them as an Object.
With that as background, let’s look first at contraception
used outside of marriage. First, consider what kinds of relationships
these are: the hook-up, the affair, the just-taking-a-test-drive living
together couple. The whole reason they are kept not open to life is
because there’s a lack of commitment. It’s a nice “you get what you want; I get
what I what.” The reason they don’t want to risk new life is that they
know this is Using. A contracepting woman is basically seen by men like a
rental car: all of the convenience, none of the obligation. Perhaps you’ve
heard of men chiding a buddy who’s dated or lived with a woman a long time but
not proposed to her, and he quips to his buddies: “Hey, why buy the cow if the
milk is free?” That’s a horrible worldview. And you know what? It is
the contraceptive that makes sure that the milk is always free. Think
about that. Contraception is not the modern woman’s best friend; no, it’s
modern man’s dream come true. So my first question is: Why would
you want to bring these kinds of products and their worldview anywhere near
your marriage?
The second and more important question is why does contraception wound love?—because
this was the problem the two popes saw. It’s because the marital act is different
from most human acts. Hunger draws you toward food, and when you engage
the food the result is you’re satisfied. Hunger has achieved its end. When
you’re attracted to and love someone, you’re drawn toward them, but when
you engage them the results are an intense bonding and the possibility
of new life. And so we say the two ends of the marital embrace are babies
and bonding, or life and love, or —most precisely— the procreative and the unitive
dimensions of it. The fatal flaw in birth control is that it tries to isolate
the two ends of marriage —“I’m just looking for bonding now”— and so, minutely,
imperceptibly, unintentionally it damages them both. After 2,000 years of
closely watching human nature, the Church’s conclusion was that you can’t intentionally close the door to life
without inadvertently closing out
love too. You may think you are getting that one still, but it’s being
diminished.
Many people think that’s a stretch. Let me borrow an example from Dr.
Janet Smith to demonstrate how openness to life protects openness to
love. Picture a college age couple. They’re seniors; they’ve been
dating about four months. They’re having a picnic one afternoon and the
guy stares intently at the girl, and looks deep into her eyes and says: “We’ve
been dating a while now, and, well I can’t keep from saying it anymore: I want
to have a physically intimate relationship with you.” Ladies, don’t be too
impressed. If you say “no”, there are a hundred more women on this campus
who might say “yes”. But…if he stares at her and looks deep into her eyes
and says: “We’ve been dating a while now, and, well I can’t keep from saying it
anymore: I want to have children with you. I want my kids to be tucked
into bed by you. I want the girls to act like you and the boys to want to
stand up to defend you.” Ladies, call your mom. That’s a marriage
proposal. We know the difference in a love that is open and willing
to make another human being with someone.
And people will object: “But Father, we are going to be open to having
children, but that doesn’t mean we always have to be open every time we
touch! We’ll be open to new life at least 80% of the time.” Hmm… Would
you say it’s a good marriage if the couple is faithful —physically— to each
other only 80% of the time? Would it be a healthy marriage if 20% of the
time one of them is abandoned by the other? Because the wedding vows of the
Church ask if a couple is willing to 1) stay together for life, 2) be faithful
to each other, and 3) be open to having and rearing children. Doing any
vow just 80% of the time is not good. The heart knows when it’s being accepted
fully and when it’s being seen as a timeshare condo. Natural Family
Planning, which seeks to know when the least fertile times are, differs by
saying “We’re always open to life; God can do whatever He wants. It seems
unlikely He’d gift us with new life here, but that’s His decision.”
See, it all comes down to Trust, and trust is something that shrinks, and
grows, and changes with only the minutest of observable signs. The root of
Grasping is fear; fear ruins people and relationships. But St. John the
Apostle writes to us: “But perfect loves casts out fear!” Tiny acts of Love and
Trust keep fear out and make the relationship stronger, while not trusting
erodes what looks like a good marriage.
I want to share with you a scene from one of my favorite movies, Four
Christmases. The story is about Brad played by Vince Vaughn and Kate
played by Reese Witherspoon. They are a couple that never wants to get
married, get tied down, or have kids. Most of this stems from the divorces
of their parents, which is why they have four Christmases to go to. On
this one day though they begin to see little ways in which they aren’t
trusting, aren’t loving openly, and are fearful. Here’s the key
conversation after Kate takes a pregnancy test. It even uses the words
I’ve been using:
Brad: Listen,
if there's one thing we've learned by being forced to be around our families
today it's about the dangers of procreating. Besides, that's not the things
that we want in life.
Kate: Brad,
I realized it today. I thought for sure, I'd always known that I didn't want to
have kids and I took this test, I'm waiting to see if it's positive or negative
and I thought, for just a second. I felt...different. You know? I felt hopeful.
Like maybe it would just happen and we'd be forced to get over all of our
fears.
We have spent
so much of our relationship creating all these boundaries you know, and making
sure that we don't limit ourselves with responsibility...and obligation, and I
don't wanna live like that anymore. Because that's not loving at all.
I'm tired of
being one foot in. I want us to be open, to love each other... however it's going
to be. And if one day that means we get married if we have kids one day I
feel like that's okay. I wanna be in a relationship... that goes where it needs
to go.
Openness to life safeguards the openness to love. Even in marriage,
contracepting is being “one foot in”; it’s a boundary created by worry about
obligation. Openness in one part of a marriage extends into the others.
We long to be
loved fully, unreservedly, unconditionally. Birth control says I love
everything about you except one little thing: your fertility, your
sperm, your femininity.
Do you
remember maybe ten years ago a Dr. Pepper commercial featuring a song by the
singer Meatloaf? For those who don’t, there’s a dating couple and she
drags him to all the worst scenarios: she’s in the car all cramped up while
he’s in the drugstore, they’re folding her clothes at the Laundromat, going to
yoga, he’s holding her purse while she shops. And all the while, as he
sucks it up out of love, the song is saying “And I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love….” But at the end —the last straw— she reaches for
his can of Dr. Pepper, and he leaps off the couch and runs out the door as the
chorus belts, “…I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that!” Dr.
Pepper Love is not unconditionally love. There is one condition, one thing
is off-limits: don’t take my drink! He loves her a lot, but not
entirely.
Contraception
in marriage is a Dr. Pepper kind of love. I say I love everything about you, but I don’t. I don’t want to
give myself to you entirely; I’m holding one thing back. I can’t
trust that you’ll love the whole me. Contraception is like saying: “I love
you so much. I long for you. I want to make love to you. Now,
would you mind putting this bag over your head first,
though? Thanks. Now I can enjoy this without distractions.”
Some of you right now think I’m crazy. You’re thinking “not in the
marriages I know!” To which I say: “Oh, really? Then why are there so many
faked headaches in so many bedrooms across this country? Why can
some comedians make a living out of jokes about being denied by their spouses? Why? Because
we have antennae in us for when we’re being used. Humans —and I think
especially women— have sensors for picking up tiny, imperceptible little hints
that “this is not a gift”. And the surest way to shift from Give to Take
is to disconnect the relationship from its openness to life. It says, “I want the
bonus without the burden.” Sorry, honey, I love you, but not enough to
risk there being another of you in the world.
And people
may still say: “Well, our marriage is fine. Our group of friends are all
in good shape.” I’d say: “That means you’re coping well.” Seriously,
talk to a couple who has contracepted before and then quit. They literally
had no idea what they were missing, what little bits of communication were
skipped, what possible moments of Use were allowed to sneak by —bits and
moments that they can see clearly now. I know probably a dozen couples at
least, of various ages, who would love to tell you about how they’ve been
changed. Seriously, give me your number, I’ll have them call you. I’m
not kidding. There are some who literally consider the day they learned
there were other options the best day of their last 25 years.
I could go on for another 20 minutes demonstrating how contraception actually
took money away from families (see The Two-Income Trap by Warren &
Tyagi), how much of our poverty today is caused by the single parenthood that
contraception has made common, and how infidelity, divorce, and marital
unhappiness have grown —not shrunk— since contraception became
widespread. But I want to end with a story about how we know “what love is”
by how it acts.
In Iowa, in the late 1940s or early 50s —before all these things were
available— there was a farm couple that had had a very rough, incredibly
dangerous last pregnancy. And as her body was returning to normal she went
to see the doctor. And now she’s in the kitchen twisting her apron to bits
waiting for her husband to come in from the field. He comes in and can see
she’s upset and instantly wants to know what the doctor said. Her eyes
already are brimming with tears as she says: “He said…he said I just can’t get
pregnant again…not till we have some idea what’s wrong…it’s too dangerous…so
we’ve either got to stop all together…or maybe there may be a day or two when
we know for certain that it’s safe.” And the farmer’s brow gets all
furrowed and his face turns red, and now she’s really crying as she turns away
from him thinking, “I knew it. I knew he’d blow his stack. This is
too much for him.” He meanwhile has sat himself down at the table and is
clenching his fists and is just glaring straight ahead. She sits down and
sobs to him: “Look, maybe there a chance…maybe we can be careful and…a few more
times…” At that he slams his fist down and shouts, “No, I don’t care what
that doctor says!” And she thinks, “I knew it! We’re over
now. This isn’t…” But he cuts across her thoughts and says: “I don’t
care what he says. We’re not doing it. At all. I’m not taking
any chances. I don’t care how long we have to wait; I don’t care if it’s
months or years. It’s not gonna happen. I don’t care if it’s hard on
us, if it’s hard on me. I’ll get through that. But no, I’m not doing
anything that could even begin to take a risk with you.”
We know love when we see it. I promise you, that that marriage was not
hurt by this. They waited two full years before the doctors could discover
and fix her problems, and I promise you that marriage did not grow
weaker. It only grew stronger, because they saw what love was, and what
love does, and what love doesn’t do.
We know Love
when we see it. Paul VI and John Paul II saw it at afar even when the
world didn’t.
The world
said that unbridled freedom was the only thing and unsacrificial love was the
only way to have it.
Did they
deliver on happier, long-lasting marriages, less unplanned pregnancies, and
less infidelity?
Or were the
popes right: that affairs, divorce, out-of-wedlock birth, general immorality,
and disrespect for women would increase?
We are not
wrong on this.
We weren’t
wrong 50 years ago, and we aren’t wrong now.
We have
nothing to be ashamed of in this.
We should be
proudly claiming it again.
We must be
fearless.
We know what love is, and contraception isn’t anywhere near to
it.
