Dr. Mark S. Latkovic, professor of moral theology, Sacred Heart Major Seminary
MOSAIC, Summer 2008

Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage," as the popular 1955 Sammy Cahn song made famous by Frank Sinatra has it.

 

"This I tell you brother/You can't have one without the other."

One could have said just as easily that they go together with a baby carriage.

The twentieth century saw feverish attempts to "rewrite" the meaning of this song—looking for evernew technological means of severing the God-given connection between marriage, love, sex and procreation. If, however, in the Catholic vision, marital love is a matter of total bodily self-giving (including one's fertility) and the telos (end) of sex is offspring, how can contraception be morally good?

Contraception and the Culture of Disruption

Of course, contraception is not a new phenomenon; even the ancient world was familiar with primitive forms of it.

Sacred Scripture was aware of some forms of contraception as its use of "pharmakeia" testifies (see Gal 5:19-21). Such primitive forms were condemned in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (The Didache, 80 AD). St. Augustine in his Confessions (Book IV) seems to allude to the use of contraception with his concubine before his conversion ("when children are born against their parents' will"). The Catholic Church, for her part, has always taught that contraception is morally wrong, as Judge John T. Noonan has shown in his massive 1965 book, Contraception—even though in the same breath he favored a change in that constant teaching!

Pope Paul VI courageously affirmed this teaching in his landmark but controversial encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life) in July 1968. This encyclical treated not only the morality of contraception, but also the proper understanding of marriage and the principles for the responsible transmission of life.

Much of the ecclesial dissent that ensued after the release of the document had its roots in the cultural and theological ferment of those times, and also in preceding decades, with pro-contraception figures such as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger preaching the (often eugenicist) "gospel" of abortion and contraceptive sex. Abortion would fuel the sexual revolution, but contraception in large measure would make it possible. We might call the 1960s the decade of "the Great Disruption," to borrow from political scientist Francis Fukuyama, although rightly he includes the 1970s in that disruption.

These were the days of "free love" and "free speech" movements, of calls for an "open Church" and for dialogue with the modern world (often understood as one-way instruction from the world to the Church). They were the days of anti-authority views, especially in the secular Western world. The mass media would, as today, disseminate these views into the homes of Americans.

They were also the days of Griswold v. Connecticut (what Catholic social thinker George Weigel calls "the Pearl Harbor of the American culture war"), the 1965 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing contraception for married couples based on "the right to marital privacy." Its reasoning would lead to the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion eight years later. Change was in the air and the Church was expected to keep up with the times and "adapt" her teaching to the modern age.

After all, some argued, didn't the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) call on Catholics to read the "signs of times"? Wasn't one of these signs the idea that technological fixes such as the progesterone pill would solve many of our problems, from poverty to overpopulation? Couldn't it be argued the Holy Spirit was speaking to the Church through the experience of those married couples who had found the Church's teaching (the rhythm method) not only onerous but outdated, in a world where poverty and population were increasing, where women where entering the workforce in increasing numbers, and people were giving greater attention to sexual pleasure in and outside of marriage?

Christian Marriage, Love and Procreation

Now, in fact, the Church had faced a version of this question before; better, the question had never really gone away and was now resurfacing under new circumstances. What, it was asked in the early-to mid-twentieth century, is the relationship between love and procreation in marriage? The 1917 Code of Canon Law spoke of "procreation and [the] raising of offspring" as the "primary end" of marriage (see c. 1013). But many "personalist" theologians thought this language too juridical, too impersonal, and well, downright neglectful of conjugal love.

In their attempts to incorporate love and the more personal elements of the couple's relationship into the understanding of marriage, some of these theologians, such as Herbert Doms, seemed to downplay the procreative good from their definition of marriage. Others, such as Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, were able to maintain faithfulness to the Magisterium and the Catholic tradition yet develop that tradition in positive ways. Von Hildebrand spoke of procreation as the primary purpose of marriage and marital intercourse, but of loving communion as their primary meaning.

Nevertheless, the personalists firmly accepted the Church's teaching condemning contraception. Indeed, no Catholic theologian denied this teaching before the early 1960s. Even educated American Catholics in the early 1960s fully accepted it, as sociologist Fr. Andrew Greeley noted at the time.

The further expansion of such personalist ideas could be found in Pope Pius XI's 1930 encyclical, Casti Connubii. Pius XI issued this marvelous but neglected document in the wake of the Anglican Communion's Seventh Lambeth Conference (1930) and its new-found acceptance of contraception in marriage in exceptional circumstances. He structured its treatment according to the traditional Augustinian "three goods" of marriage: offspring, fidelity and the sacrament.

Pius XI spoke of conjugal love in glowing terms, but he also condemned direct abortion, contraception and sterilization in the strongest of language. He reminded the faithful that marriage is naturally ordered to children, even if it is not simply instrumental to them. But that wasn't all the pope said.

At the same time, Pius wrote, "This mutual molding of husband and wife, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense, as the [Catechism of the Council of Trent, 1566] teaches, be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as a communion, companionship, and association of life as a whole" (no. 24).

In this beautiful passage, as moral theologian Germain Grisez notes, the Holy Father not only re-presents Trent's teaching, but implies that marriage is intrinsically a vocation and path to holiness, and thus good not only as a means to children.

The Popes, the Pill and the Pontifical Commission

In the late 1950s, Pope Pius XII was faced with judging the morality of the newly invented birth control pill. Dr. John Rock, a Catholic layman and developer of the pill, wrote a book titled, The Time Has Come (1963), arguing, in its favor, that the pill was a "natural" contraceptive. Already, the University of Louvain priest-theologian Louis Janssens had argued that the pill could be morally acceptable. Even some bishops were beginning to wonder at this time if the pill could be reconciled with Catholic conjugal morality under certain conditions.

Pius XII, however, saw that the pill was no different in moral character than any other form of contraception, even though it did not interfere with the physical integrity of the act of sexual intercourse. This fact—often taken to be the chief criterion for determining the morality of the sexual act in one understanding of the natural law—had led many to think that the Church could and would "make her peace" with chemical contraception.

Thus, Pius XII would prohibit as morally wrong any attempt to render procreation impossible before, during or after the marital act. The pill (when used expressly for contraceptive purposes), although not interfering with the physical performance of the act itself, as a condom does, would render the marital act intentionally closed to procreation.

Even though Pius XII had already condemned the pill, Pope John XXIII established in the early 1960s the Pontifical Study Commission on Family, Population and Birth Problems—of which Noonan was later made a member—to investigate the issue further. The commission's establishment would explain the Council's silence on the morality of the pill. What was at issue, however, was not the Church's teaching on the immorality of contraception. At issue was only whether the pill should be prohibited as contrary to Church teaching on contraception. (As evidence, see Gaudium et Spes, no. 51, footnote 14, which cites passages from Casti Connubii and Pius XII strongly condemning contraception, except for the latter's teaching against the oral contraceptive.)

The Pontifical Commission would produce four papers meant for the pope's eyes only, but then have them leaked to the media in April 1967, most likely to put pressure on the Holy Father to change the Church's teaching. These papers would make dubious arguments rooted in a moral theory later called proportionalism (which was condemned by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor) in its case for the Church to change her teaching on contraception. Included among these papers was the report of a minority of the commission's members that upheld the traditional teaching on contraception.

The "Majority Report" of the Pontifical Commission, coupled with the progressively-minded reading of Vatican II (especially seen in Gaudium et Spes' new approach to marriage, with its emphasis on covenant and conjugal love), added to the expectation by many that the Church would do an about-face and accept the pill and other forms of contraception. As we know, such was not the case. Three (long!) years after the close of the Council, Paul VI in Humanae Vitae would teach that each and every marital act had to remain open to new human life (see no. 11); meaning, not that spouses must intend procreation every time, but rather that contraception is always wrong.

Humanae Vitae and the Development of Doctrine

Paul VI rooted this teaching in a profound truth of natural law, that the two meanings of the marital act (the unitive and the procreative) are inseparable as designed by God (see no. 12). Like Gaudium et Spes before him, the pope refrained from using (yet did not deny) the older language of "ends" and their hierarchical ranking. Paul VI had found, with Vatican II, new language ("meanings" of the marital act) to proclaim an old truth: marriage and marital love are ordained to the procreation and education of children.

In teaching that man was not permitted to break the connection between the unitive and the procreative meanings, Paul VI was affirming the notion that these two meanings are interdependent: that is, if you attack the one, you attack the other because both goods are intrinsic to the nature of the marital act (see no. 13). John Paul II, in his 1981 apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio (see no. 32) and in his writings on the "Theology of the Body," would develop these ideas in profound ways.

In fact, as Grisez argues, Vatican II, Paul VI and John Paul II, in a remarkable development of the tradition, would treat parenthood as part of the communion of married life. Paul VI sums up this development nicely when he writes in Humanae Vitae: "As a consequence [of God's plan for marriage], husband and wife, through that mutual gift of themselves, which is specific to them alone, develop that communion of persons, in which they perfect each other, so that they may cooperate with God in the generation and rearing of new lives" (no. 8). This vision of marriage and the marital act would find its way into the 1983 Code of Canon Law, particularly in the language that speaks of "the good of the spouses" (see c. 1055).

According to Paul VI, however, not all ways of regulating birth are immoral. He taught that recourse to the natural cycles of the reproductive system is fundamentally different in moral character than contraception (see no. 16). For the pope, then, use of periodic abstinence, or what we today call natural family planning or NFP (not to be confused with the unreliable calendar method), was not an attack on the good of human life-in-its-transmission, as is contraception. But the crucial moral difference did not rest on the fact that one was "artificial" (the pill) and the other "natural" (NFP).

One might put the matter this way. For Paul VI, contraception is a choice to impede new human life from comingto-be by doing something before, during or after freely chosen intercourse—whether as an end or as a means (see no. 14). NFP, on the other hand, does not involve an intention to impede the transmission of life. It is, rather, the choice to abstain during the fertile period.

Simply put, the moral difference between the two ways of regulating fertility is this: contraception (as its name implies) is always anti-procreative, while NFP is simply non-procreative. Married couples can practice the latter (have sexual relations during the infertile period) when they have a good reason for not bringing new life into the world—and there are such reasons—recalling, too, that conjugal intercourse during the infertile period can realize other legitimate spousal values (the expression of love and affection). But only the choices to welcome more children, to be open to their coming-to-be, and the use of NFP, are exercises in "responsible parenthood" (see Humanae Vitae, no. 10).

A Call to Commitment

Towards the end of Humanae Vitae, before the pope offers pastoral directives such as the promotion of chastity, he reflects prophetically on what would be the consequences if contraception became widespread (see no. 17). Sadly, his predictions have become all too true about the "moral fallout" from contraception.

Paul VI argued that widespread use of contraception would lead to marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. The Holy Father also warned that contraception would lead to disrespect for women, where men would treat them like sex objects. Finally, he warned of the danger of governments using contraception coercively to solve problems of overpopulation. The "one-child only" policy in China, for example, has proven out the pope's fears. His other "prophecies" would also prove true, borne out by social science data on such problems as rising divorce rates. One might argue just as well—contrary to popular belief—that there is a real connection between contraception and greater reliance on abortion.

"In preserving intact the whole moral law of marriage," Paul VI writes in Humanae Vitae, "the Church is convinced that she is contributing to the creation of a truly human civilization. She urges man not to betray his personal responsibilities by putting all his faith in technical expedients. In this way she defends the dignity of husband and wife" (no. 18).

This is the ultimate legacy of Humanae Vitae: its contribution to building a truly human civilization, a "civilization of love," with a "culture of life" at its heart. This is why we read the document today and why I hope we will keep on reading it for the next forty years. The teaching can surely be a hard one to practice, but assisted by God's grace, it is possible! If only more of us Catholics would give the document a "second chance."

In a spirit of conversion, let us commit or recommit ourselves to the teaching of Humanae Vitae. Let its inspiring vision of the human person, marriage and conjugal relations serve as an impetus to not only learn about Paul VI's teaching but to boldly live it.