West Stockbridge — Pope Francis has made another one his one of eyebrow-raising statements, which for some tends to happen on airplanes. On his trip back from Manila, after his tour of the Philippines, the Pope was challenged by a reporter to defend the Roman Church’s position on contraception in relation to the problem of the rapid and unsustainable rise of population in places like the Philippines, and other poor countries, where the addition of children to already large families, who can barely afford to raise those they have, is of particular concern. Francis, in an attempt to rebut the widespread belief that the Roman Church is impervious to such concerns, and rejects the modern notion of “family planning” altogether, told his press corps that Catholics don’t have to be “like rabbits” in their breeding habits, and should make use of well tried methods of “responsible parenting.”
The Pope was not, of course, issuing a sudden reversal on the Roman Church’s policy on contraceptive methods such as the use of condoms and the Pill. He was instead referring to what Roman Church term “natural” methods of birth control, such as the so-called rhythm method that involves limiting sexual intercourse to periods shortly after ovulation is complete, when women are not supposed to be fertile. In doing so, however, Francis is expressing a profoundly contradictory policy, as set out in Pope Paul VI 1968 document Humanae Vitae, which declares, in condemning methods of contraception that, “every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life” (Sec 11).
Though many of us may not agree with this latter principle, it at least makes some sort of internal sense. Ever since St. Paul exhorted his earlier follows to live as he did (in celibacy) rather than to marry, but said that marriage was still preferable to the sin of sex without marriage, Christianity, and in particular, the Roman Church, have, for most of their history, been extraordinarily prudish. Nearly all of the Roman Church’s most celebrated saints were said to have forsook all sexual pleasure, at some point in their lives, to live celibately. It is, in fact, a doctrine, which makes a certain amount of philosophic sense, and is heir to the Platonic tradition of distinguishing between the pleasures of the spirit (good) and the pleasures of the flesh (bad). The letters of St. Paul’s are filled practically to the point of overflowing with this sort of rhetoric.
One might believe, as I know many of us now do, that sexual relations constitute a pleasurable activity, which, though perhaps more gratifying when engaged in by a faithful, mutually loving , probably married couple, is really quire harmless provided it is engaged in with the mutual consent of both parties. The Church, with its tradition, might disagree, and declare that sexual pleasure is pleasure of the basest form which should be avoided at all costs, save for the necessity of conceiving children. And where procreation is not allowed for as the natural result of sexual relations, and indeed where such activity is undertaken in such a way that it is deliberately fashioned to prevent the possibility of pregnancy, it is morally wrong.
The odd thing is that this latter position is not the Roman Church’s opinion on the matter at all. Instead, the Second Vatican Council, in a passage actually quoted in Humanae Vitae, claimed that sexual relations can be in themselves “noble and worthy.” Far from denigrating sex altogether, and then carving out certain conditions under which it can be ennobled, the Roman Church goes out of its way to extol the merits of sexual activity between married persons, as strengthening the marital bond; as somehow symbolic of the union between God and his Church; and, in a blatant refutation of St. Paul, possessing a kind of spiritual quality. Sexual relations are not, according to the Roman Church, a sinful consequence of our fallen state, which St. Augustine thought they were, but actually a “divine gift,” which should be cherished (Humane Vitae Sec 13).
It is fairly easy to see that the Roman Church’s bizarre re-formation of its own position on sex is probably nothing more than a political re-calculation. Roman Catholics, just like everyone else in the 20th century, had learned the undeniable lesson of popular marketing in the 20th century, that sex sells. They probably feared that anti-sex teachings would soon cease to have any validity in the public eye. But, in doing so, the Roman Church sacrificed one of its greatest strengths, which is the internal consistency of its teaching. You may not like the Roman Church, or even be in any sense a believing Christian, but it is almost always the case that the Roman Church has a respectable answer to any question of doubt on faith or morals that may arise. But on the issue of contraception and birth control it has no such answer. The present Pope is merely an unwitting victim of longstanding but illogical policy that he feels bound to uphold.
Pope Francis would, I think, have been the ideal person to reframe his Church’s view on contraception because he has repeatedly shown himself capable of conciliatory gestures which, notwithstanding their great effect in changing popular attitudes towards the Church, have never actually deviated from traditional Roman Catholic teachings. The last Pope actually made a gesture in this direction, only to be silenced by liberal opponents, claiming he had altered Church doctrine, and conservative defenders who claimed the Pope did not actually mean what he said. Unfortunately, on his airplane trip back to Rome from the Philippines, Francis let the moment slip.
