Breeding like rabbits

The Dutch mother-in-law of a young friend of mine was showing me an album of family photos she had gathered so that her Filipino in-laws would get to know them better.

She belonged to a family of 11 siblings, she confided, pointing out a photo where her parents stood with the six oldest children. “At that time, they already wanted to stop,” she said, “and so my father, who was a very devout Catholic, said he and my mother should ask ‘permission’ from their pastor to use contraception.” But the parish priest quite firmly put his foot down, saying the use of “artificial” contraception was an absolute no-no.

“And so my mother ended up having five more children!” the Dutch mother-in-law exclaimed, an expression of hilarity and dismay crossing her face.

But by the time she had reached adulthood, married and had her children, she had learned her lesson, she added. “So we ended up with just two boys,” she said, smiling and pointing to her husband and son, who had just married a Filipino woman—a lawyer, an activist, and a feminist to boot. It may be safe to say this cross-cultural couple won’t be having 11 children!

We spent much of the afternoon trading “family planning stories.” I told her of my mother’s warning (shortly after I woke up from anesthesia after giving birth to my son) that, while she heartily approved of my decision to go on the pill to “space” my pregnancies, I could not be allowed to take Communion while I was on the pill. We all laughed at the notion, at the very idea that priests could withhold the Holy Eucharist and other sacraments from believers simply for the “sin” of striving to be responsible parents.

Which is why, when Pope Francis, in his remarks at the Meeting of Families at the Mall of Asia Arena last Friday, condemned what he called the “threat” to families from “efforts to ‘redefine family’ and a culture that lacks ‘openness to life,’” I was dismayed and somewhat disappointed. Before this, reports from out of the Vatican said the Pope was ready to “relax” the Church’s hard stance against contraception and abortion. But at the MOA Arena, the Pope defended Blessed Pope Paul VI’s issuance of “Humanae Vitae,” the encyclical which laid down the Church’s opposition to contraception. Not only that, he stoutly maintained the need for couples to be “open to life”—code in these parts for maintaining the ban on contraception.

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There went my and my Dutch friends’ smug assumption that the Church had adopted—or was about to adopt—a more liberal, understanding and sympathetic stance on family planning for Catholic couples under the benign papacy of this genial Argentine Jesuit.

Well, maybe I threw in the towel too early. Because, on the plane back to Rome from Manila, during a press conference, Pope Francis was asked to further clarify and expound on his stance on contraception and family planning for Catholics.

The Pope said there was a “key word” (or, rather, phrase) the Church uses on the issue, and it is “responsible parenthood.” He even mentioned his encounter with a woman who was expecting her eighth child despite the fact that all seven of her children were born by caesarean section. (Most doctors recommend at most four C-sections for a woman.) This, the Pontiff said, was “an irresponsibility” because “God gives you methods to be responsible.”

Easily the most controversial and “sound-bitable” part of the Pope’s reply was when he remarked that “some think that, excuse me if I use the word, that in order to be good Catholics we have to be (breed?) like rabbits. No! Responsible parenthood!”

He then added that in the Church, “there are marriage groups, there are experts in this matter, there are pastors, one can seek and I know so many, many ways out that are licit and that have helped this.” And as if to stress his strong position on the issue, he commended the reporter, saying, “You did well to ask me this.”

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I heard about the Pope’s airborne press conference in an early-morning (well, 8:30 a.m. is early for me) phone call from the BBC in London, which wanted to interview me regarding my reactions to the Pope’s statements, with the producer going out of her way to ask if I was a Catholic.

I was interviewed twice by the BBC Radio yesterday, and I can imagine the world’s media scrambling over themselves to gather more reactions to the Pope’s statement. Although, if you ask me, it is newsworthy and controversial only in the Philippines, where family planning remains very much a contested topic. Elsewhere in the world, couples, Catholic or not, routinely practice family planning without too much guilt or remorse.

To be clear, for the majority of Filipino couples, family planning is already accepted and supported as a concept. I say “as a concept,” because while most public opinion polls state that Filipinos believe family planning is important and that the government should support a family planning program, less than half of married couples use modern methods of family planning. The rest rely on unreliable, untested methods (withdrawal and abstinence), while poor couples lack access to family planning supplies and services. The lack of access can be due to living some distance from health centers, lack of money for “donations” for the supposedly free supplies, and simply lack of knowledge or motivation.

So while Filipino couples in the more affluent sectors already enjoy fertility rates equal to that of developed countries (one or two children), it is the poorest Filipinos who are having more children (four or five, on average) than they had planned or wanted.

Will the Pope’s more nuanced, more humane, more compassionate articulation of his stance on family planning reach Filipinos who need it most?