In reaction to a call from Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales for married couples to exercise “discipline in bed,” I raised the question of a wife whose husband comes home drunk every night demanding sex from his wife, even if that night happened to be within the wife’s fertile period. How could the couple then exercise discipline, by avoiding intercourse that night, when the husband was too drunk and horny to heed his wife’s pleading, and the wife too scared of physical violence and abuse to refuse his advances? Did the cardinal even know what he was talking about?
A friend writes me that her interpretation of the cardinal’s admonition was that he was precisely addressing the drunken husband, not the frightened wife. Well, why didn’t he say something along the line of “husbands should respect their wives and make sure every act of love is a result of mutual desire and willingness,” rather than go on and on about discipline in bed and how this could in turn redound to discipline in the streets, schools and government? Is he saying the wife who gives in and has sex with her drunken husband lacks “discipline?” Isn’t he adding condescension along with an apparent lack of sympathy for the very real dilemma of many wives? I can’t blame many women, who know they cannot afford another mistimed and unwanted pregnancy, for putting their trust in modern contraception rather than on the admonitions of a Cardinal, however well-intentioned.
Natural family planning may very well work for some couples, even those belonging to destitute households. But it won’t work for all couples, which is why the reproductive health bill, for one, seeks to guarantee and protect the right of every couple to information on all safe and legal family planning methods, and to gain access to them.
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Another friend, a Catholic nun, sent me some materials from the Catholic press on the occasion of the issuance 40 years ago of the papal encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” translated to “Of Human Life.” In an editorial, the National Catholic Reporter traces the gap the encyclical created between lay Catholics and the papacy, if not the institutional Church itself, as well as the continuing “cycle of dysfunction and disbelief” that besets the faithful. Here’s a major portion of the editorial, quoted in full:
The encyclical upheld Pope Pius XII’s support of the rhythm method (now called natural family planning) and in doing so, revealed its particular understanding of natural law. Its reasoning, theologians say, rested on the physiological structure of the act of intercourse while largely discounting the larger context of human love and family life.
Less than a decade after the encyclical’s promulgation, polls showed it was overwhelmingly rejected by Catholics. Eight out of 10 adult US Catholics simply disregarded it. While bishops were largely upholding the document, many priests in pastoral settings, including confessionals, were saying it was a matter for individual conscience.
By any measure, a gulf between official Church teachings and Catholic practice had begun to grow and was to continue to grow and to permeate a host of other Catholic teachings on sexuality and morality from homosexuality to the use of condoms in the fight against the HIV virus. The right of women to have special say in reproduction, then an almost exclusively male terrain, was soon added to the list.
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In the four decades since the encyclical was promulgated, the Church hierarchy, fully recognizing Catholic lay resistance to the strongly stated ban on the use of birth control, dug in. Pope John Paul II affirmed “Humanae Vitae” as a pillar of Catholic morality—as well as a pillar of papal authority.
Meanwhile, Catholic lay confidence in the institution was eroding by the year.
Torn between following the advice of a partially lay pontifical commission, created to assess the birth control issue, a commission that eventually supported changes in Church teaching, and his desire to remain consistent with earlier papal declarations, Pope Paul VI chose the later course. The need to assert Church authority persuaded him.
After all, he reasoned, how could the Holy Spirit have allowed the Church to be wrong for so many years on an issue of such importance? His decision, in the end, was more indicative of Church hierarchical dysfunction—the institution’s inability to look at matters, particularly sexuality, in light of new understandings and insights—than it was seemingly of any movement of the Holy Spirit.
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Research conducted by sociologist Fr. Andrew M. Greeley found that the encyclical so shook Catholics that by itself, it would have reduced religious practice by almost one-half. That decline never fully occurred, and the reason it did not, Greeley found, was the favorable impact the Second Vatican Council was having on the lives of most Catholics.
Repeated US surveys find that Catholics regard Church teachings on sexual morality increasingly out of sync with their lived experience and their understanding of love and intimacy.
They knew and still know that sex between husband and wife is capable of creating far more than new humans. They also know their gay sons and daughters are not disordered. The surveys have confirmed Rome’s worst fears, causing at times even more thunderous condemnations that have failed to win many converts. So the cycle of dysfunction and disbelief continues.
