25 Years Later, Birth Control Edict Still Divides Catholics

Twenty-five years ago today, Pope Paul VI stunned the Roman Catholic Church by issuing an encyclical against artificial birth control that set many of its members and priests on a course of defiance.

A generation later, most have not turned back.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, nine out of 10 U.S. Catholics continue to practice artificial birth control--confident that they can still be good Catholics and determined to keep the church out of their bedrooms. A survey by Time magazine and CNN last year found that 70% of U.S. Catholics believe people should have the choice of using birth control.

There is widespread agreement among clergy that rank-and-file Catholics in the United States are more independent than ever in deciding whether the church’s moral teachings should apply to them.

Perhaps more telling, priests and others say that the church has lost its credibility to speak on moral issues involving sexuality, even as the Vatican this month reasserted its view that the only good birth control is natural birth control.

John Paul II, who is scheduled to arrive in Denver next month for his third U.S. visit as Pope, has resolutely refused to reopen the matter. This month, an Italian magazine, Catholic World Report, disclosed that the Pope unambiguously confirms the 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), in a new encyclical, reportedly to be issued this autumn.

Although the Pope considers the matter closed and most members of the laity consider it moot, Humanae Vitae continues to trouble the church and is an issue that separates the orthodox from Catholics who dissent from church teaching.

Paul’s encyclical--a papal letter to the world’s bishops intended as an authentic teaching that binds Catholics to obedience--has been relegated by most U.S. Catholics to an indignity worse than contention and controversy, theologians and others interviewed by The Times said. It is simply ignored as irrelevant.

“Humanae Vitae appears to be a dead letter today. Catholic couples have long since made up their consciences about contraception,” wrote Father Charles E. Curran, a theologian who was banned by the Vatican from teaching Catholic theology in 1988, largely because of his dissenting views on human sexuality.

Although Pope John Paul II and others have counseled against “cafeteria Catholicism” in which believers pick and choose which teachings they follow, theologians say members of the laity feel competent to make moral choices.

“Some things are core and central to the faith and others are more removed and peripheral,” Curran said in an interview. “It seems to me you can’t pick and choose about the Trinity or Jesus Christ. But when you get down to those things which we have admitted are based on human reason like (opposition to artificial) birth control . . . you raise the question: What happens when it’s no longer convincing to human reason?”

At the same time, the lines separating supporters and backers of the encyclical have hardened. Most theologians who were silenced by the Vatican for speaking out in 1968 against the encyclical are unrepentant. Parish priests by their silence consent to the practice of contraception by members of their flock.

“I’ve talked to a number of priests and asked: ‘When was the last time you talked about sex?’ Everybody smiles and says: ‘A long time ago,’ ” Curran said.

Theologians who oppose the encyclical continue to be banned from teaching in Catholic universities. Opposition to artificial birth control has not only become a litmus test for elevation of priests to the episcopacy, but a symbol of the continuing struggle in the church over authority.

“If you’ve spoken out against Humanae Vitae or spoken your disagreement in any way, you simply won’t qualify. That I’ve been told by bishops. It’s pretty clear,” said Father Richard A. McCormick, a professor of Christian ethics at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. “The result of that is we’re getting some very mediocre and unimaginative episcopal leaders. Anyone with initiative, flair or independence is very likely not going to be appointed these days.”

To be sure, there are bishops and everyday Catholics who fervently support the encyclical’s teaching. This weekend, 1,400 people are expected at a six-day conference in Omaha celebrating the 25th anniversary of Humanae Vitae. Sponsored by the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha, the event will feature a satellite address by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Supporters of the encyclical contend that flouting the papal edict has led to still worse sins, including 1.6 million abortions a year in the United States, fetal tissue experiments and surrogate motherhood. The availability of the pill has led to sexual promiscuity and decisions to forgo children in the pursuit of a freer lifestyle, they say.

In addition, a U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, chaired by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, issued a statement July 13 reaffirming the encyclical’s validity.

“When a society permits sexual behavior to be torn from its moorings in human love and marriage, when it treats sex as a mechanism for personal pleasure, it encourages a destructive mentality and diminished the value of personal commitment and of human life itself,” the committee declared.

The committee dismissed concerns by environmentalists and others about world population growth as “unsubstantiated claims.” Ironically, its statement was issued the same week that the respected Worldwatch Institute, a Washington think tank, reported that population growth is reducing average food intake for the world as a whole.

But some church observers believe that U.S. and European Catholics were making up their minds about artificial birth control at least several years before Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae in 1968. The birth control pill, for instance, had been on the market since 1960.

Moreover, the church had just come through exhilarating changes as a result of Vatican II, which was called by Pope John XXIII and closed in 1965. Many changes set in motion by Vatican II were carried out by Paul VI--including the English Mass.

There was great expectation that the church would change its historic teaching against artificial birth control, as many mainline Protestant denominations had.

Indeed, the papal commission recommended a change. But in a stunning decision, Paul VI upheld the ban against all but natural birth control.

His decision unleashed a torrent of protests. In the United States, theologians called news conferences declaring that the encyclical was not an infallible teaching or central to the faith and could in good conscience be ignored.

Many noted that Pope John VI had short-circuited consultations with his bishops before issuing the encyclical, calling into question when the Pope’s primacy should take precedence over decisions reached in concert with his bishops in the spirit of collegiality.

For most Catholics, the governance of the church and issues of authority were viewed mainly in the abstract. The real issues for them were how to support growing families, the ability to provide for children and to educate them--and what was essential to living the life of a faithful Catholic.

“Catholics in the pews have in practice recognized the legitimacy of dissent from a particular non-infallible teaching while still remaining faithful Catholics,” Curran said in an interview from Dallas, where he is a professor of human values at Southern Methodist University.

Since Humanae Vitae was issued a generation ago, there have been stepped-up demands from the grass-roots to admit women into the priesthood, and to allow priests to marry. Members of the laity and many in the clergy are at a loss to justify the church’s stand against using condoms, particularly in light of the AIDS epidemic.

But, Catholics have remained Catholics, even in the face of stinging new revelations of sexual abuse by members of the clergy--and criticism of the church hierarchy for its belated response to the problem. The sharp surge in resignations from the priesthood and the drop in those seeking ordination that occurred in the wake of the encyclical have leveled off, although the U.S. church still faces a severe shortage of priests that will grow more acute in the years ahead.

By 2005, the number of priests is expected to be 40% below the 35,000 who were in the priesthood in 1966. And when Catholic population growth is taken into account, the reduction in priestly service will be 90%, according to Joseph O’Hara of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate in Washington. The decline in the number of priests is attributed to many factors, including greater participation by the laity in worship services, and the Vatican’s continued refusal to wave the celibacy rule.

Father Andrew M. Greeley, a sociologist and author at the University of Chicago and at times a biting critic of the church hierarchy, said church attendance, which plummeted in the late 1960s, began to stabilize in 1985.

“If everyone left who didn’t believe in Humanae Vitae, not only would the church be empty but there would be no priests there to say Mass,” said Father Thomas Reese of Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University in Washington.

Still, many in the church say the underlying issue of authority and credibility remains.

Recently, Bishop Kenneth E. Untener of Saginaw, Mich., compared the church’s refusal to openly confront the issue to a dysfunctional family.

Greeley said dissent within the church should give the Vatican pause.

“It should be of concern to the church when the majority . . . are not in agreement, and no matter how much the Pope says that they can’t do it, they do do it,” Greeley said. “We need dialogue. The church should shut up for a while and find out why people take this stand.”

Other theologians agree that that is not happening.

“Right now,” McCormick said, “the people who disagree are simply marginalized. The Holy See consults, honors and appoints to positions those who they know will agree to the positions they have taken. As long as that goes on, you’ll have a dysfunctional family. . . . The credibility of the church will continue to suffer. The people will not turn to the Pope and the bishops for enlightenment on these matters. That’s a shame.”