Francis Does It Again!

Last week Pope Francis entered the fray (yet again) with a statement suggesting that contraceptives might be used to prevent the spread of the Zika virus or to avoid a pregnancy that might be endangered by the mother’s suffering from the virus.  When asked if contraception might, in this case, be “the lesser of two evils” the Pope first drew the line on abortion, which he declared to be “an absolute evil,” even comparing the saving of the life of the mother over the child to “the way the Mafia acts.”  (A bit strong, but point taken.)  The Pope went on then to say that avoiding a pregnancy, on the other hand, is not an absolute evil, implying there might be some room here to use contraceptives both to avoid spread of the disease and to justify contraception where the virus is a threat to mother and potential child.  

Pope Francis then went on to cite the story that Pope Paul VI had agreed that nuns in the then Belgian Congo might take a drug that suppresses ovulation to avoid pregnancy consequent on rape.  The Congo, then a Belgian colony struggling for Independence in a particularly vile war, was torn by brutal warfare in the first half of the 60’s.  The Church—because of its ties to the Belgian colonizers, was a special target of the rebels and there were numerous martyrdoms of clergy, religious and Catholic laity by the Simba forces.  Religious women were particularly victimized by rape.  A fictionalized account of the violence of the time—and a stinging indictment of American involvement in what would become a most savage war—is the novel The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.  Again, this book is fiction but Ms. Kingsolver did a superb job in providing the historical setting for the novel and explaining the socio-political-economic status of the Congo on the outbreak of the war as well as what was at stake for the United States politically. 

Well, back to Pope Francis.  The Krazies are screaming heresy and are up in arms over Francis’ failure to condemn contraception in any and all cases.  The hive is swarming with angry wasps.  Even Michael Voris—who is usually somewhat trepid about a direct attack on the Pope—finds this a bridge too far.    One Loon wrote on her website “How long can the see of bishops let this go on for before they pull the plug on this shit show?”  I am not sure what “the see of bishops” refers to, but it sounds like Pope Francis might have a Simba Rebellion of his own. 

The Krazies are arguing that the claim that Paul VI authorized the nuns to take an ovulation suppressing drug to avoid pregnancy is urban legend and not true.  I don’t know what Pope Paul VI said at the time and despite my efforts at research I can’t come up with a reliable source to tell me.  But I am old enough to remember that it was reported at the time (and so it is no “urban legend”) that the Pope had authorized the nuns to take steps to avoid pregnancy.  He may have been misquoted—I don’t know—but it is, as I say, no urban legend. 

At the end of the day, the Holy Father is saying nothing different than the vast majority of parish priests would tell their parishioners.  Pope Benedict is a noted theologian.  Pope John Paul II was a philosopher.  Pope Francis is a pastor who can cut through the over-intellectualized crap for common sense solutions.  Sometimes, like the Scribes and the Pharisees in the Gospels, we take a very simple thing and build it up into a burden, heavy on others’ shoulders, and make no effort to help bear the weight.  But as Pope Francis consistently reminds us: Compassionless Christianity is no Christianity at all. 

The Pope, the Questionnaire, Biased Language, and the Liturgy

There has been a lot posted on various sites about the questionnaire Pope Francis had sent out in regards to soliciting information from the rank-and-file Catholic for the upcoming Synod on the Family.  It certainly was a remarkable gesture—to consult the laity on their experience as well as to consult the Bishops on what they think “oughta be.”  A friend of mine (white, male 60+years of age) sent me the following email with his observations and it gave an interesting take:

Father Jerry put up the Pope’s/Bishops’  questionnaire on the Our Lady of Grace web site and asked for comment, which I provided.  Bishop Jones had asked pastors to consolidate lay input on the questionnaire.  Father Tom made it clear that no comment was going to change church doctrine, but he not only urged us to comment, but also he had a meeting to discuss the questionnaire.  I had already commented on the questionnaire, so I did not attend the meeting.  Second hand reports indicate that the 15-20 attendees were all of my age.  Not what I take to be a good sign, but about what I would expect.

My first problem with the questionnaire was one of translation.  The official church (and the questionnaire) communicates in a language that I do not understand.  I have lost my decoder ring for official church documents.  

I read the original Vatican II documents and fail to ‘get it’.  I had to look up ‘natural law’ in the catechism to remind myself what the bishops’ questionnaire was talking about; Catholics younger than I probably were not exposed to the concept of natural law and they may not have had the time or the inclination to look in up in their catechism, if they had one.  I mention this, because, before reaching any serious content, the official church has a communications problem; it simply does not speak the language of the (unwashed, lay) church.  Where I had comments to make I could not reliably tell whether my comments were germane to the question under which I put my reply, but I’m confident Father Jerry sorted that out.  He has a decoder ring.

Viewed from the level of the parish, the church is absolutely dependent on women.  Our Lady of Grace would collapse were it not for the women who staff it and those who do almost all the volunteer work.  Luke makes women witness to every important Gospel event.  The questionnaire does not mention them.  What’s wrong with this picture?  After all we are talking about family and sex.

The questionnaire never addresses family issues from the perspective of a woman, not that I’m an expert on a woman’s perspective.  Implicit in the questionnaire is the assumption of the two-parent, wage-earning male, stay-at-home female family core.  That is not a model I recognize.  I have four children, all married; all of the four women in these marriages work full time; three are the primary breadwinners of the family.  The issues of sex, birth control, contraception, numbers of children, etc. are entirely different for these women than they were for their mothers, and the questionnaire simply does not adequately address them.

The questionnaire talks about marriage and marriage preparation.  I have four children, all married.  Three took their pre-Cana preparation in the Catholic Church; the fourth in the Episcopalian Church.  There was no essential difference in their preparation, and in three of the four cases the preparation shows no sign of having had any impact.  What formation in the church occurs in three of these families is 100% the result of the woman involved.  In three cases the man almost never attends Mass (unless Ann and I are in town); the children attend Mass and go to religious education because of the woman.  So much for the efficacy of pre-marriage training. 

I think the Pope’s and the bishops’ hearts are in the right place, but this process all but guarantees the Pope is going to get none of flavor of frustration that pervades the pews of my parish.  The frustration arises because the church is not talking to the laity in a language that resonates.

I give Bishop Jones credit for giving the laity a chance to speak its mind, but my background with large, bureaucratic organizations, such as the Navy, the IAEA, the Energy Department, the CIA, and the State Department, suggests that this effort will end up being a bureaucratic drill with no discernible impact on what I see from the pew.  Father Jerry’s input may reflect some of the unvarnished comments I’ve made, but they will be edited and ground up by the chancery and emerge unrecognizable church pap, unless I miss my guess.

Pete

I think this is a very interesting insight—how the questionnaire was skewed right from the beginning by language and by gender-bias.  This is not that the Pope or even those who prepared the questionnaire did anything malicious, or even wrong.  To be honest I (degree in theology, male) had not picked up the compositional bias—the questionnaire reflects my world.   (I had notice the natural law thing, but only because I am sensitive to the fact that not everyone agrees to the position that there is such a thing as “natural law,” or at least not as it is defined in Catholic moral teaching.  I have been through that argument enough not to take it for granted.)

The questionnaire is certainly a step in the right direction—a huge step in the right direction—but it serves to illustrate the importance of language and the importance of language being precise so as not to bias outcomes. In the same way, how does the language of the liturgy distort the faith to preserve certain biases. 

When I was in Grad School I did a paper in a course on Tudor-Stuart England on how the language of the 1559 Book of Common Prayer was used to reinforce certain political ideas regarding the Crown.  I have been aware ever since how our “god-language” is not always about God but about how we can keep a social hierarchy in place and in power.  Now that we have had the “new translation” of the Roman Missal for two years I am sensitive to problem after problem—not that the previous translation was better—in reinforcing certain biases.  Such problems are inevitable—we all unconsciously use language to favor our own positions. The problem is when language in consciously designed to favor the interests of one group over another.  

Why Are They Afraid of Pope Francis? 8

 

Louise Brown, the world's first "test tube

baby" with her parents and her child.

Pope Francis has instructed the preparatory commission for the 2014 synod on  “The Pastoral Challenges on the Family” to circulate a questionnaire to the world’s bishops—which they are in turn to circulate to the parishes—ascertaining the current practices (not theory) of Catholics on artificial contraception, reception of the Sacraments by the divorced and remarried, couples living together before marriage, and the place of same-sex couples and their families in the life of the Church. 

This questionnaire (which my pastor says he as not yet received as our Archbishop seems tied up with other things right now) has generated a fascinating and contradictory set of responses.  The Neo-trads are waving their hands and saying—“nothing new, nothing new; been done before.  Keep moving, nothing to look at.  Nothing happening here.  Keep moving along….”  The Vatican II types are all enthused saying that “finally we are back on track with the Council—yeah, Francis.”

The neo-trads have a point.  This is not the first time that the Holy See sent out questionnaires to ascertain the sensus fidelium.  Previous synods were often preceded by questionnaires sent to the bishops to help prepare the lineamenta (agenda or working document).  Pope Pius XII wrote the world’s bishops before defining the dogma of the Assumption in 1950.  What is different this time, however, is that the bishops are to pass the questionnaires on to the parishes.  In other words the fidelium are going to get to have some consensus in the consensus fidelium.  Don’t get me wrong—nobody should expect that we are going to have magisterium by democratic vote.  Don’t expect any radical change in Church teaching.  When the dust settles, I don’t expect much to be different, but that isn’t important.  What is important is the process.  Change process will produce—in time—changed product. 

Blessed John Henry Newman pointed out that in the ancient Church there were three requirements for a doctrine to be established. Doctrine took the reflection and study of the theologians; pronouncement of the bishops, and the consensus fidelium.   Consensus fidelium might best be translated as the “harmony of God’s Faithful People.”  It doesn’t mean everyone agrees or that the majority agree—it only means that the People of God, the priests, deacons, and laity (as differentiated from the magisterium: the bishops and from the theologians) have come to hold this doctrine in their collective heart.  

Right now we as a Church are faced with the tremendous moral complexities of living in the twenty-first century.  Scientific, Sociological, Medical, Anthropological, Psychological developments—note, I hesitate to say “advances” because—as a historian I believe the jury is still out on how “good” some of these developments are—have changed the ground rules of possibilities.   At the same, the virtual disappearance of philosophy and theology from our educational systems has left most in our society unable to critically reflect on the moral implications of the choices facing us today.

Case in point.  It is only in the last generation that it has been possible for a child to be conceived in vitro.   Louise Brown, the first child so conceived was born in 1978. The various givers of the Law in Deuteronomy or Leviticus could not have imagined such a thing; nor could Saint Paul—or even Jesus.  Neither Augustine nor Aquinas—or Bellarmine for that matter—could have imagined it.  The understanding of embryology—or even a scientific appreciation of conception—was not in the realm of their intellectual universe.  The “Tradition” doesn’t supply easy answers to this dilemma as it is beyond the minds of those whose writings convey our historic faith.  This is not to say that there are not principles we can find in the scriptures or in the authors that can’t be applied to a solution, but it would be misleading to say that the Tradition supplies a moral resolution without a careful reexamination of precisely what the Tradition was meant to say and a dialogue of that Tradition with the insights of modern science.  So here is the case.  Martin and Susan, devout Catholics who attend Mass every Sunday in their parish—he being an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist and she teaching third-grade CCD—find themselves unable to have children.  They married fairly late, tried Natural Family Planning for two years to conceive, and finally went to a fertility clinic where they were told in vitro was their only hope.  Now despite their being good Catholics, the Church’s problems with in vitro is not on their radar screen.   Sure they heard it in Pre-Cana, but it didn’t register—they never expected to have this problem.  If they attended some adult education program they may have heard it, but even in the best parishes relatively few attend adult ed—especially when it is on reproductive morality.  No, Father doesn’t preach against in vitro from the pulpit any more than he mentions masturbation, oral sex, or contraception from the pulpit.  “Our commission for the pulpit is to preach the Gospel, not teach sex-ed” one priest said to me.  Martin and Susan could have checked the catechism of the Catholic Church—but they never even suspected that something was wrong here.  They wanted a child.  They would love to have several children.  There was nothing selfish in their decision—which is not to say that it was right, but their motives were generous.  “I only heard about it after the course was chosen” said a priest friend of their families.  “I suppose I would have said something if they had asked me beforehand, but frankly I knew their intentions were good and I wasn’t about to take away their happiness when they told me they were expecting.  I think we need to find ways to raise this question in people’s consciences, but I honestly find that most people can’t grasp the problem and just saying that such and such is a sin doesn’t hold water anymore.  You have to be able to explain to people just why it is morally wrong.” 

Pope Francis’ inventory is going to discover that there is a wide breach between theory and practice, but it will also show us that we cannot rely on old answers to new questions.  We need to restore philosophy to the academic curriculum—and not just some vague survey of thought but applied philosophy: ethics.  We need to teach people to think critically and to anchor their thought in intellectual discipline.  Science does not provide the ultimate answers to human existence.  At the same time, moral theology requires a strong dialogue with science—and dialogue implies an equality of parties in the discussion—so that the moral conclusions are consistent with the scientific knowledge to which they are meant to respond.  And in the meantime, we need to remember our task is not to judge but to absolve.   

"The Pill" --and a World Gone Upside Down

Paul VI--the Pope who decided

against the Pill in his encyclical

letter, Humanae Vitae

Someone recently brought to my attention an essay on “how the Pill changed everythying.”  George Weigel was the essay’s author but at first I could not remember that and so I googled  “the pill changed everything.”  Lots of articles came up, most in praise of the Pill and its changes to better the lives of women.  Weigel’s article was not so generous in its laudatory remarks about contraceptive pharmaceuticals.  I personally have mixed feelings about the effects of the Pill, but my primary purpose as a historian is to note them and let the reader make his or her own judgments.  That is not to say that I am objective—no one is every truly objective and every historian has his or her bias, especially on an time as crucial to our modern world as the Pill.  We need to be aware of our biases and to try to be as transparent about them as we can—or at least to let our readers be aware of them so that the reader can compensate in making his or her evaluation.

      Ironically the main scientist in developing “the pill” was John Rock, a Catholic obstetrician and gynecologist.  Rock wanted to develop a method of contraception that worked within the Catholic Church’s concept of using the natural fertility/infertility cycle so that women could make a choice in becoming pregnant while remaining sexually active.  To be honest, Rock had always pushed the boundaries in regard to birth control.  Actually, as a scientist and academic (he was a professor at Harvard) he did not support Church teaching on contraception.  As early as 1931 he signed a petition advocating the legalization of birth control (which at that time was illegal in Massacusetts) and in 1949 he co-authored a book teaching methods of contraception.  Moreover he was a pioneer in the fields of freezing sperm and of in vitro fertilization.  He was, however, a practicing Catholic, he had founded a clinic to teach the rhythm method, and he attended Mass and received the sacraments regularly.  His motivation in developing the Pill was to make available a means of contraception that worked within the boundaries of Catholic moral teaching—i.e. a “natural” method, a method that employed the feminine fertility cycle to cause or avoid pregnancy.  

     Well, the Pill did cause a stir when it first became available in the’60’s and the Church had to consider it independently of previous papal teaching which condemned contraception that did not follow “natural” methods.  The Pill, with its interdependency on the ovulation cycle, was a complex issue that had not been anticipated by previous papal teaching.   Shortly before his death, Pope John XXIII convoked a commission to study the issue.  Paul VI enlarged this commission to 58 members, including married persons, men and women, in addition to scientists, theologians and bishops.  That alone was a remarkable choice—not for centuries had laity been given such a significant voice in developing Church doctrine.  In 1966 the commission issued its report to the Pope suggesting that hormonal contraceptives might be acceptable.  A minority of the commission who disagreed issued a report forwarding a contrary argument.  In the end, Paul VI went with the minority report. 

     I am not anxious in this entry to write about Humanae Vitae. We will do that at some other time.  What I am writing about is the Pill.  Even though the Pill was rejected by the official levels of the Catholic Church, it has been embraced by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.  All studies show that at least in the developed world there is no substantial difference in the percentage of Catholics who use the Pill (or now other means of contraception) than in the general population.  But contraception is only part of the consequences of the Pill.

     The Pill became the occasion where Catholics began making their own decisions regarding everyday questions in their lives rather than unquestioningly following Church authority.  I don’t think it was just the Pill.  There were other questions of the day in which many rank and file Catholics were not willing to follow the lead of the hierarchy but were starting to think for themselves.  The Church’s embracing of a fairly radical “social justice” agenda in the 1960’s put the hierarchy ahead of the average American lay Catholic when it came down to questions of economic justice, peace, and even civil rights.  As Catholics climbed into the ranks of the professions and rose into economic and political power, their opinions became quite independent of the magisterium.  Even today on questions of distributive justice or of the death penalty most American Catholics reject Church teaching  

      But even more serious than encouraging Catholics to think independently of the Church’s magisterium, the Pill has broken the connection between sex and reproduction and this has made us redefine the purposes of sex.  This affects not only questions of family planning, but of the very nature of sexual relationships. Americans—and probably most people in the developed world, no longer acknowledge that there is an inherent connection between sexual intimacy and reproduction/ family life.  This works various ways.  With sex and reproduction no longer two sides of the same coin we are not only very open to in vitro fertilizaiton or even surrogate parenthood, but genetic engineering.  At the same time that we are willing to create life by design, we have lost our scruples about destroying life that is somehow or other defective or even superfluous.  And then, since we have changed the nature of sexual relations from essentially reproductive to purely recreational, we are far more encouraging of non-committed sexual relationships.  We now find that the majority of American households are “non-Traditional” and in this we are “behind” Europe.   Only a generation ago the heir to the British throne had to marry a woman who had no previous sexual experience.  That same heir’s son was able to live with his fiancée before their marriage without any social stigma.  But then the Brits have always been loony.  More to the point, here in America there is no social stigma whatsoever to a couple’s living together before marriage and the attempts of some clergy to require couples to live apart for six months before the wedding leads only to deceit and ridicule.  And then there is the issue of same-sex couples and—since sexual intimacy is no longer linked to reproduction—why not?  

     Traditional Christian morality has been turned upside down by “the Pill.”  Now, despite the tone of the above paragraph, I am not sure this is all bad. That is not to say that I agree with the new morality—because I don’t.  It isn’t morality at all. It is just making one’s life choices without much moral reflection.  But the situation invites us to construct a moral framework from the ground up.  In fact, the situaiton not only invites us to give serious thought to today’s complex questions and to build anew a moral framework on the foundation of the Gospels, but it requires us to do so.  The old answers aren’t working.  It doesn’t mean that the new answers will be all that different, only that they must be rethought and expressed in ways that are consistent with the modern sciences—both the physiological and social sciences—if the Gospel is to have credence in our contemporary world. 

Lions 1, Christians 0

Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport,

spokesperson for the Bishops'

Conference regarding the

contraception mandate in the Healh

Care Law

There they sat: Roman Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport William Lori, President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Dr. Matthew Harrison, Union University Professor of Moral Philosophy Dr. C Ben Mitchell, Yeshiva University Director of Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Ethics Professor Dr. Craig Mitchell—five men testifying before Congress on the pressing question of the implications on Religious Freedom for the Health Care Mandate for Contraceptive Coverage.  What is the problem?  Well the problem is this: appearances.  The battle is won not by facts but by emotions and whoever thought to put an all-male panel of witnesses up on a question that is not only about protecting religious freedom but also about women’s health must be a secret agent for the other side. 

     The debate about requiring religious institutions to provide contraceptive coverage in their mandated health care programs for their female employees is not unlike the debate about the legalization of abortion that had involved many of the same parties and which has divided our society for decades.  It is not a one-issue question.  I wish some of my fellow pro-Life Catholics would listen—LISTEN—to some of my friends who are pro-choice.  We on the pro-Life side of the argument are concerned about unborn babies.  And yes, we will use that language—babies—because that is what they are and we will not mask the critical implications of this debate with euphemisms that take away the personhood from these victims of intra-uterine slaughter.  Having said that, we need to sit down and listen to the pro-choice camp speak of their concern for women and for the complexities with which unplanned and unwanted pregnancies often confront women.  And we need to let them choose the language for their argument. Fair is Fair and we need to admit that pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing present women with limitations to their educational opportunities, to their careers, to the economic security of their families, to the stability of their relationships.  At times pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing even present serious threat to their health, if not even to their lives.  I have found that when I sit down and talk about abortion with my pro-choice friends that we are not even talking about the same agenda.  And if I want to protect the lives of unborn children then I have to be involved in protecting women from being put in the difficult positions that make abortion the only practical solution to their dilemmas. 

    This debate about the Health Care Mandate for Contraception is very much the same.  I am concerned about religious groups not being forced to provide services which they regard as morally unacceptable.  But that is only one side of the question.  I must also be concerned that women have access to services which my religion may say is morally wrong but which is legal.  Being legal doesn’t make something right.  I am not saying that.  But neither do my religious beliefs  make it wrong.  We have reached a social consensus on the legitimacy of birth control—as indeed we have on abortion.  I have the right to work to change that social consensus; indeed if I believe something is wrong I have an obligation to work to help my fellow members of society see why it is wrong, just as its advocates have a right to work to try to convince me.  But neither do any of us have a right to force society to live under the minority opinion and neither should any of us be forced to act against our consciences because the majority believes differently than do we. 

     This debate gets messy because there are those who in their religious zeal would wish to prohibit women from having access to contraception under any and all circumstances.  And here, we should say "prevent people from having access" as there are male contraceptives as well as female.  To proscribe contraception entirely is clearly an extremist position but there are some in the Church—bishops, clergy, and laity—who would have contraception be illegal and generally unavailable.  Such a position does not help any rational discussion. 

      Then there ere are those who realize that contraceptives are a part of modern medical protocols but who believe that they should be in the realm of private choice and paid for by the consumer out of her or his own pocket.  They may believe this because of religious reasons or, more likely, because they do not favor publicly funded health care of any sort for anyone.  They need to be honest and admit that their oppositoin to "ObamaCare" is not moral, it is purely political.

      Neither of these is a good position for us Catholics to be in.

      Then there are those who recognize that universal health care is—in general—in accord with the fundamental values of our Christian faith/  Among these are many who may or may not  be opposed to contraceptives but who recognize that contraceptives are a part of modern medical protocols and and as such should ordinarily be covered by health care as are other protocols; but who also believe that those religiously owned institutions (though not individual employers) whose religious traditions consider contraception to be immoral, should not be required to offer that coverage.  At the same time they should not begrudge their employees to have access to contraceptives provided through and by other means for which the religious institutions do not have to pay or be involved. 

     That might sound like I agree with “The Obama Compromise”

      Well, I don’t.  For one thing, it isn’t a compromise.  Eleanor Holmes Norton, the “Delegate” to Congress form the District of Columbia claimed that the Administration had worked out a compromise between the religious institutions and the insurance companies.  That is not quite the truth.  The Administration did not sit down with representatives of the religious organizations involved and with the insurance companies and hammer out a solution to which all could, admittedly with some reservations (that is how compromises usually work), agree.  But it is too late now.  The president slipped the trap into which incompetent advisors had led him.  The Church will not have to provide—directly—contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients to employees of its schools, universities, administrative offices, hospitals, and other institutions.  I have doubts that the insurance companies will provide these out of their own generosity; it seems more a shell game, but what can we say?  I am not back in the Obama camp but I am sure that most of my friends who had concerns are. The President is to be congratulated on creating an appearance of reasonableness.  Bishop Lori, on the other hand, by sitting with an all-male panel has been left with egg on his face—and the Church’s—for not understanding that perception has more to do with winning than reality and thus the Church has lost.  More on this to come.  In the meantime, would their purpled mitered majesties please get some professional advice  on how to handle public relations?