Does the Catholic Church approve of contraception?
I don’t mean what’s called Natural Family Planning, which the Vatican justifies only by tying itself in bizarre theological knots. I mean the use of artificial birth control.
Well, no; but yes.
Say what?!
No issue more divides lay Catholics from the Vatican than contraception. The Vatican teaches that every marital sexual act must be open to procreation, and the use of artificial contraception by married couples is intrinsically evil: a mortal sin punishable by eternity in hell.
Yet well over 80 per cent of Catholics worldwide believe there’s nothing wrong in using artificial contraception.
How did this moral gulf arise between the Vatican and the faithful?
To understand, we have to go back to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).
Pope John XXIII, in a moment of divine inspiration and to the horror of the Vatican bureaucracy, summoned all the Catholic bishops of the world to Rome. He wanted to breathe a new spirit of openness into the church; to transform it from a fearful fortress of absolute truth, besieged by a secular world in thrall to such modern ills as freedom and democracy, to a church reaching out to and sharing the joys, griefs and hopes of all humanity. He wanted a church that would be like Jesus.
Thus his opening remarks:
“It pains us that we sometimes have to listen to the complaints of people who . . . see in modern times nothing but prevarication and ruin . . . . But we disagree with these prophets of doom . . . . The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another.”
In 1963, because of the popularity of the “pill”, John established a small commission to study birth control. After John’s death in 1963, his successor Paul VI vastly expanded the commission.
After three years of exhaustive examination and discussion, the commission in 1966 concluded by large majority – 30 of 35 lay members, 15 of 19 theologians, and nine of 15 bishops – that the ban on artificial contraception should be lifted and it should be left to married couples, inspired by Christian values, to determine what method of contraception to use. They argued that it was not each sexual act that had to be open to procreation but marriage in its entirety. They reasoned that the distinction between avoiding pregnancy in ways conforming to natural physiological processes and using an artificial intervention was not meaningful, since humans have always used medical technology to bring nature under their control.
The report was leaked to the Press and raised huge expectations among Catholics worldwide that the Vatican would lift the ban.
But a minority faction advised Paul that to support the commission would be admitting the Vatican had been in error: its authority would be irreparably undermined.
Paul heeded their advice, rejected the report, and in 1968 issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), reaffirming the traditional position.
This encyclical was met with a torrent of unprecedented open dissent. Not just from the laity and the majority of Catholic theologians, but also the clergy. Many bishops publicly advised the faithful to prayerfully study the encyclical, examine their own conscience and choose what was best for their circumstances.
Paul, flabbergasted by the reaction, never issued another encyclical during his papacy.
Since then, however, the Vatican has doubled down on its opposition to contraception and misguidedly imposed Humanae Vitae as a litmus test for Catholic orthodoxy.
Now here’s the thing.
The Catholic Church is not just the Vatican; it’s the wider communion of all the faithful, who also contribute to doctrinal development.
So when the overwhelming majority of the faithful hold to a moral belief over time in response to careful theological reasoning, common sense, scientific evidence, their conscience and lived experience, then one can only conclude that the Holy Spirit is enlightening the faithful.
The wider Catholic Church therefore recognizes that the use of artificial contraceptives can be a responsible and moral act.
• Peter Laurie is a retired diplomat and commentator on social issues.
