Contraception Insults God!

The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and from it flow all the other mysteries of the faith.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that this mystery is the mystery of “God in himself.” All that is revealed about the meaning of God’s creation, particularly the image of God, male and female, is built upon this most fundamental and essential teaching.


The life to which men and women are called from the moment of their creation is found precisely in friendship with God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and all the saints.  This pattern inherited from the Most Holy Trinity, a unity of life and love, is essential to all human relationships, and, in a particular way, to that special form of friendship between husband and wife.  Spousal love that is authentically human, after the communion of the Most Holy Trinity, is open to new life.  Why?  Because God, Love, is the source of all life and generates new life.  To prevent life is to kill love.  To step in and block the gift of the human faculty of generating new life is an insult to God who created that power.


From the beginning of the Church, in fidelity to the teaching of the Jesus regarding the human person and human love, she has expressed the truth about the Most Holy Trinity in the moral principle that being faithful in marriage means that every act of marital must be open to life.  Throughout the Church’s 2000 year history this truth about the human person and human sexuality has been taught consistently by the Church’s pastors. Practically, this means that doing anything to prevent the procreative end of the marital act is an offense against the pattern of human married love who is God Himself.  The time since the formulation of the first oral contraceptive pill, which prevents life, has been devastating for family life because the family is patterned on God.  Now, sexually transmitted diseases are epidemic, as many people divorce as remain married, and almost half of all children born in the US are born out of wedlock.


A report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention states, “Contraceptive use in the United States is virtually universal among women of reproductive age: 98 percent of all women who had ever had intercourse had used at least one contraceptive method.” A significant portion of this percentage is attributable to the “pill,” now in use for slightly over 50 years.


The moral teaching in the Catechism is clear: contraception in all its forms is a grave sin and intrinsically evil. When the Catechism says intrinsically evil, it means there is no motive that would allow one to contracept directly. More serious still are the forms that can result in the death of the embryo, such as the pill. 


Given the very clear teaching on the matter and the widespread use of contraceptives, particularly the pill, over the last 50 years, the Church in the US is faced with a chronic and pervasive pastoral problem.  It would be a mistake, however, to think that this problem is one that is only practical--only a failure of priests to teach or in the failure of the faithful to adhere to this teaching.  What is missing is the authentic concept of the human person that the Church has a duty to uphold in society.  It is the Church’s responsibility to stand as a beacon in society, illuminating the truth about the dignity of the human person.  What is lacking, however, in the preaching and teaching of many of the Church's pastors is that pastoral connection between the sin of contraception and the loss of the sense of human dignity.

The loss of human dignity associated with the rise to dominance of the pill and other forms of contraceptives in the place of human love provokes a profound sense of sadness.  Men and women united in the state of Holy Matrimony have received the gift and responsibility of showing the world a reflection of the mystery of  “God in himself.”  From that perspective, the sadness of the matter comes not so much from the sin committed, which God forgives and heals, as from the good that is lost.

Within the Church many of us, priests and lay faithful, are living with a woefully impoverished concept of the human person.  We have all but replaced the concept of the human person modeled upon the Most Holy Trinity with a false concept that leaves little room for vigorous faith and authentic human love, something we need to work to rediscover.  The only way we could be content with the status quo is to give in to the materialistic notion that life requires choices of economic prudence over the value of the divine image.  When we rediscover the truth of the Most Holy Trinity as the divine pattern for love and believe again in who we are, Catholics, all Christians, and many others will, again, see the pill for the awful curse upon the human family that it is.

(For about 12 years I wrote editiorials for the St. Louis Review.  I wrote this in 2010 and reworked it here for the blog.)

The Life-Giving Process is Sacred

I taped a television spot for the diocese today and one of the questions involved something I had written about some time ago.  It seems somewhat relevant to the debates about contraception coverage.  I thought I would post is here.  This was a response to a question which I answered for the St Louis Review.  Be sure to read the last paragraph.

'Dear Father'
What did the saints really write about abortion?
by Father Edward Richard, MS


Q: I've read people try to justify abortion by citing the writings of Sts. Aquinas and Augustine. How can they do that?

A: The argument that certain writings of Sts. Augustine and Aquinas are not consistent with the truth of Church teaching on the grave sinfulness of abortion is false. These saints taught the serious sinfulness of deliberate abortion and they believed that the child in the womb was human from the start. (See Anne B. Gardiner's article in the New Oxford Review, 2004.) In a published interview on the subject (National Catholic Reporter, Jan. 17, 2003), bioethics expert and professor Father Brian Johnstone, CSSR, stated, "There was never any question (in Augustine and Aquinas) of whether terminating a pregnancy was sinful, but rather what kind of sin it was in the early stages -- homicide or something else."

The tortuous logic of the claim originates in a 1970 article by Father Joseph F. Donceel, SJ. Father Donceel uses the medieval biology of St. Thomas Aquinas to question the arguments used by Catholics in support of the teaching identifying abortion as a killing of an innocent human being.

Father Donceel used the outdated biology to assert that in the first several weeks the fetus went through two prior stages, possessing first a vegetative soul then an animal soul, before becoming human. More recent arguments arising out of Father Donceel's musings have gone so far as to assert that no human person exists until the eighth month when the brain is developed to a point when it is capable of a certain level of knowledge.

However, in a refutation of Father Donceel's archaic analysis, David Granfield wrote that according to Thomistic philosophy a rational soul is infused at the moment of fertilization ("Abortion Decision," 1971).

Moreover, Germain Grisez ("Abortion: The Myths, the Realities and the Arguments," 1970) summarizes the whole issue when he states, "If St. Thomas had known about the specific and individual genetic uniqueness of the zygote which makes it biologically a living organism of the human species, he would have supported immediate animation." Grisez is referring to the point that human life begins at fertilization.

The history of the matter and the unbroken tradition condemning abortion is much clearer than those who challenge the Church on this issue would allow. In his book titled "Contraception," John T. Noonan reviews the historical evidence beginning with the very earliest writing we have, the Didache, and continuing on through the Letter of Barnabas from the early second century which holds, "You shall not kill the fetus by an abortion or commit infanticide." Referring to such documents and numerous other writings the testimony of history is so strong it leads Noonan to conclude, "The Christians taught that all life must be inviolate, and, using the terms the law reserved for the killing of adults, they charged that not only the destruction of existing life but the interruption of the life-giving process was homicide and parricide. They were led to attach sanctity not only to life but to the life-giving process."


First printed in the St. Louis Review, January 14, 2005.

The Evil of the Mandate

We are going to hear all sorts of attempts to accommodate the President's Mandate "accommodation" within Catholic ranks.  The chiefs of Catholic Charities and the Catholic Health Association were obviously given the advance notice they needed to be ready to give the President the shout out on this. There will be many more. They will all make their comments based upon convoluted, moralistic platitudes about the good of providing universal access to health care which, they say, trumps participation in moral evil.  These positions will be mortally flawed.  Will they be corrected?  I would hope so.

Willing cooperation in grave evil in order to secure a benefit for oneself makes the person who cooperates equally guilty of the grave evil.  What is the goal, exactly, of agreeing with the President on this?  Is it because those who go along with the President's mandate want people to have access to these so-called preventive services?  If so, the cooperation in the program of contraception, sterilization, and chemical abortions is immoral and gravely sinful.  Is it because they want to maintain government funding and the ability to "serve" the general public?  The cooperation is still gravely sinful.

In fact, it is quite clear that these agencies and their affiliated institutions cannot cooperate in this plan to provide abortion, sterilization, or contraceptives.  Indeed, this plan of the President's is morally evil, in itself.  It is what moral theology and Catholic doctrine refer to as "intrinsic evil."  Yes, that's right.  The plan itself, not just the acts of abortion, contraception and sterilization, is intrinsically evil.

Please see the following Doctrinal Statement issued by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith on March 13, 1975.  It was called "Quecumque sterilizatio." Some will argue that this doctrinal statement does not apply because we are talking about health insurance plans and not the health care institution as the statement does.  I say, however, that this is a distinction without a difference.  As a matter of fact, on the basis of principles espoused in the document itself, one must conclude that providing the approval of a plan for such gravely immoral actions across a wide array of institutions and circumstances is itself a greater evil than a plan which consents to the evil in one single institution. 

I will post later on the abortion drug issue. 

For convenience sake, I have highlighted some of the more pertinent elements of the CDF's statement.  

RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS CONCERNING STERILIZATION IN CATHOLIC HOSPITALS

This Sacred Congregation has diligently considered not only the problem of contraceptive sterilization for therapeutic purposes but also the opinions indicated by different people toward a solution, and the conflicts relative to requests for cooperation in such sterilizations in Catholic hospitals. The Congregation has resolved to respond to these questions in this way:  

1. Any sterilization which of itself, that is, of its own nature and condition, has the sole immediate effect of rendering the generative faculty incapable of procreation, is to be considered direct sterilization, as the term is understood in the declarations of the pontifical Magisterium, especially of Pius XII¹. Therefore, notwithstanding any subjectively right intention of those whose actions are prompted by the care or prevention of physical or mental illness which is foreseen or feared as a result of pregnancy, such sterilization remains absolutely forbidden according to the doctrine of the Church. And indeed the sterilization of the faculty itself is forbidden for an even graver reason than the sterilization of individual acts, since it induces a state of sterility in the person which is almost always irreversible.  

Neither can any mandate of public authority, which would seek to impose direct sterilization as necessary for the common good, be invoked, for such sterilization damages the dignity and inviolability of the human person². Likewise, neither can one invoke the principle of totality in this case, in virtue of which principal interference with organs is justified for the greater good of the person; sterility intended in itself is not oriented to the integral good of the person as rightly pursued “the proper order of goods being preserved”³ inasmuch as it damages the ethical good of the person, which is the highest good, since it deliberately deprives foreseen and freely chosen sexual activity of an essential element. Thus article 20 of the medical-ethics code promulgated by the conference in 1971 faithfully reflects the doctrine which is to be held, and its observance should be urged. 

2. The Congregation, while it confirms this traditional doctrine of the Church, is not unaware of the dissent against this teaching from many theologians. The Congregation, however, denies that doctrinal significance can be attributed to this fact as such, so as to constitute a “theological source” which the faithful might invoke and thereby abandon the authentic Magisterium, and follow the opinions of private theologians which dissent from it⁴. 

3. Insofar as the management of Catholic hospitals is concerned:  

a) Any cooperation which involves the approval or consent of the hospitals to actions which are in themselves, that is, by their nature and condition, directed to a contraceptive end, namely, in order that the natural effects of sexual actions deliberately performed by the sterilized subject be impeded, is absolutely forbidden. For the official approbation of direct sterilization and, a fortiori, its management and execution in accord with hospital regulations, is a matter which, in the objective order, is by its very nature (or intrinsically) evil. The Catholic hospital cannot cooperate with this for any reason. Any cooperation so supplied is totally unbecoming the mission entrusted to this type of institution and would be contrary to the necessary proclamation and defense of the moral order. 

b) The traditional doctrine regarding material cooperation, with the proper distinctions between necessary and free, proximate and remote, remains valid, to be applied with the utmost prudence, if the case warrants. 

c) In the application of the principle of material cooperation, if the case warrants, great care must be taken against scandal and the danger of any misunderstanding by an appropriate explanation of what is really being done. 

This Sacred Congregation hopes that the criteria recalled in this letter will satisfy the expectations of that episcopate, in order that, with the uncertainties of the faithful cleared up, the Bishops might more easily respond to their pastoral duty. 

Franjo Cardinal Šeper
Prefect 

Most Rev. Jérôme Hamer, O.P.  Titular Archbishop of Lorium 

Secretary 

l. Cf. especially the two Allocutions to the Catholic Union of Obstetricians and to the International Society of Hematology: AAS 43 (1951) 843-844; 50 (1958) 734-737 and in the encyclical of Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, 14: AAS 60 (1968) 490-491.
2. Cf. Pius XI, the encyclical Casti Connubii: AAS 22 (1930) 565.
3. Paul VI, the encyclical Humanae Vitae: AAS 60 (1968) 487.
4. Cf. Vatican Council II, constitution Lumen Gentium, n. 25, 1: AAS 57 (1965) 29-30; Pius XII, Allocution to the Most Reverend Cardinals: AAS 46 (1954) 672; the encyclical Humani Generis: AAS 42 (1950) 568; Paul VI, Allocution to the meeting regarding the theology of Vatican Council II: AAS 58 (1966) 889-896 (especially 890-894); Allocution to the Members of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer: AAS 59 (1967) 960-963 (especially 962).

 

A Colossal Dying of the Faith

"As we know, in vast areas of the earth the faith risks being extinguished, like a flame without fuel. We are facing a profound crisis of faith, a loss of a religious sense which represents one of the greatest challenges for the Church today. The renewal of faith must, then, be a priority for the entire Church in our time." Pope Benedict XVI

On January, 27, 2012, the Holy Father met with the members of the Plenary Session of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).  The CDF is a department of the Apostolic See (the Papal Office) which, among other things, has the authority to review and pass judgment upon anything as it corresponds to or contradicts Catholic faith or morals.  In his statement, not only did the Holy Father speak of this crisis of faith and the loss of the religious sense, he also spoke of the connection this has to the search for unity among Christians.  Pope Benedict said,

Today, we see the many good fruits that have emerged from ecumenical dialogue. Yet we must also recognise that the risks of indifference and of false Irenicism, completely alien to the mindset of Vatican Council II, require us to be vigilant. Such indifference is caused by the increasingly widespread opinion that truth is not accessible to man and that, therefore, we must limit ourselves to finding rules to improve this world. In this scenario, faith comes to be replaced by a shallow-rooted moralism. By contrast, the core of true ecumenism is faith, in which man encounters the truth revealed in the Word of God. Without faith the entire ecumenical movement would be reduced to a kind of 'social contract' to which we adhere out of shared interests.

The Holy Father's reference to false irenicism in ecumenical dialogue is a reference to Pius XII's encyclical, Humani generis, which states: "But some through enthusiasm for an imprudent "irenicism" seem to consider as an obstacle to the restoration of fraternal union, things founded on the laws and principles given by Christ and likewise on institutions founded by Him, or which are the defense and support of the integrity of the faith, and the removal of which would bring about the union of all, but only to their destruction."


It is very interesting, as well, that Pope Benedict had another point to make that was, again, clearly reminiscent of Pius XII's teaching.  Benedict emphasized a "crucial problem running through all ecumenical dialogue: ... the question of the structure of revelation; that is, the relationship between Holy Scripture, the living tradition of Holy Church and the ministry of the successors of the Apostles as witness of the true faith."  Read Humani generis for more insight on these important points.