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Women Speak About Natural Family Planning: Patty Crowley’s Speech to the Papal Birth Control Commission 2

February 23, 2012 by Katie Grimes

This is the fourth in a series of posts featuring some women’s experience with natural family planning.  The first two can be read here and here.  For the post that originally inspired this project, click here.  To read about the purpose of and ground rules for this project, click here.

To read about the history of the Papal Birth Control Commission and Crowley’s participation in it, click here.

Crowley’s speech was provided to be my Catherine Osborne, PhD candidate in the history of Christianity at Fordham University.  The text of Crowley’s speech is from Robert  McClory, Turning Point: The Inside Story of the Papal Birth Control Commission, and How Humanae Vitae Changed the Life of Patty Crowley and the Future of the Church. 

Patty’s Story

…We have been blessed with only 5 children of our own but have housed more than a dozen foster children during the past 20 years under the supervision of the Catholic Charities. In addition to an active professional life as a lawyer and the duties of a housewife, together during the past 20 years we have devoted much of our spare time to organizing and activating couples in the Christian Family Movement. This experience brought us into close contact with thousands of apostolic, intelligent young families who by their lives have demonstrated a great love for the Church….

CFM is known to be a sympathetic setting for large families. Since being told of our appointment and being authorized to consult our contemporaries, we have been shocked into a realization that even the most dedicated, committed Catholic couples are deeply troubled by this problem. We have gathered hundreds of statements from many parts of the United States and Canada and have been overwhelmed by the strong consensus in favor of some change. Most expressed a hope that the positive values in love and marriage need to be stressed and that an expanded theology of marriage needs to be developed.

Most say they think there must be a change in the teaching on birth control. Very few know what this change should be; they are puzzled but hopeful.

Continue Reading »

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Women Speak About Natural Family Planning: Patty Crowley’s Speech to the Papal Birth Control Commission 1

February 23, 2012 by Katie Grimes

This is the third in a series of posts featuring some women’s experience with natural family planning.  The first two stories can be read here and here.  For the post that originally inspired this project, click here.  To read about the purpose of and ground rules for this project, click here.

The following was very generously provided to me by Catherine Osborne, a PhD candidate in the history of Christianity at Fordham University.  Several years ago, Osborne co-edited  a sourcebook on American Catholic history entitled, American Catholic History: A Documentary Reader.  An edited version of Patty Crowley‘s 1965 speech to the Papal Birth Control Commission is included in that book.  Osborne sent me Crowley’s speech so that I could post it here on the blog.  Osborne also wrote a brief history of the Papal Birth Control Commission and the Patty Crowley’s participation in it, which appears below.


Patty Crowley and the Papal Birth Control Commission

The history of the Pontifical Commission for the Study of Population, Family and Births (which is usually referred to as the Papal Birth Control Commission (BCC)) isn’t secret at all, but it’s also probably not quite as well known as it should be.

The backstory to the BCC is the Catholic Church’s longstanding opposition to the use of contraception, which was reaffirmed by Pius XI in Casti Connubii (1930) in response to the Anglican Church’s decision to allow it within marriage.  The innovation introduced in Casti Connubii was that the use of ‘rhythm’ was to be allowed–it had not been prior to this.

The debate over contraception was reopened due to the invented of the Pill, but the Second Vatican Council did not take up the question; it was reserved for the specially created BCC, which met five times from 1963 to 1966.  It grew to 72 members over time.

In the last meeting, the four married women members addressed the entire meeting.  Marie Rendu, a Frenchwoman who was a promoter of rhythm, argued that “periodic continence can and does work.”

J.F. Kulanday of New Delhi, India, a nurse as well as a mother, told the commission that based on her surveys of Indian women, “women desire intercourse in marriage.  It binds the husband and wife together…intercourse…keeps their love aflame.”

Colette Potvin, from Canada, mother of five and veteran of three miscarriages and a hysterectomy, later recalled that when it was her turn to speak, “I felt like I was naked up there.  But it seemed to me we hadn’t been asking the right questions at the Commission.  When you die, God is going to say, ‘Did you love?’ He isn’t going to say, “Did you take your temperature?” [Potvin's speech is excerpted in Robert McClory's Turning Point: The Inside Story of the Papal Birth Control Commission, 105-106.] Per McClory: ‘A long silence followed [her speech]. It was broken by de Riedmatten: ‘This,’ he said, ‘is why we wanted to have couples on our Commission.’”

Potvin’s survey of 319 French Canadian couples, presented to the Commission, indicated that 7 percent were “fully satisfied with the Church’s current marriage doctrine” while half “found rhythm ‘an anguished and difficult task’” and the great majority said that they did not experience growth “because much of their time ‘is spent in the great struggle to avoid the failure of rhythm.’” (107).

The longest speech was Patty Crowley‘s.  Crowley, along with her husband Pat, were the head of the worldwide Christian Family Movement, and she based her speech partly on the results of a survey of her membership.  To read the post featuring Crowley’s speech, click here.

Ultimately, only four members of the commission dissented from the majority’s conclusion that artificial contraception within marriage should be allowed.  (The majority’s final report to Paul VI, “On Responsible Parenthood,” is included in an appendix in McClory.) Acting against the commission’s rules, Jesuit John Ford and the other three dissenters submitted a so-called ‘minority report’ in favor of retaining the existing teaching.  The result of Paul VI’s decision in favor of the minority position was, of course, Humanae Vitae. 

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Women Speak About Natural Family Planning: K’s Story

February 21, 2012 by Katie Grimes

This is the second in a series of posts featuring some women’s experience with natural family planning.  The first can be read here. For the post that originally inspired this project, click here.  To read about the purpose of and ground rules for this project, click here.

K’s Story

NFP has been the biggest struggle in my marriage and has really has tested my faith. My husband and I grew up as evangelicals and became Catholic in college, before we were married.   The Catholic Church is more reflective on sexual ethics than the church or my upbringing, so NFP and the Theology of the Body appealed to me on a philosophical and theoretical level.

After college my husband and I were married in the Church and were determined to make NFP work for us.  I took a year off from school to work and save up money for graduate school.  We were trying to avoid children in order to further our educations and save up money for a house.

My job was really stressful and my signs were difficult to read.  My husband and I were virgins on our wedding night, and the long periods of abstinence were adding additional stress on our marriage.  With these circumstances in mind, it’s no surprise that I became pregnant within the first year of marriage, right after enrolling in graduate school.

Working, graduate school, and caring for a baby were simply too much for me.  My husband and left graduate school so that he could work and I could devote my time to mothering.  For my husband to obtain decent employment, we had to move across the country, away from friends and family.

We were barely scraping by, but we were slowly starting to save money and secure a stable life for our family.  We decided to continue practicing NFP, despite the difficulties of reading my signs while breastfeeding.  During this time the recession hit, my husband’s company faced large budget cuts, and he was fired.

This happened the week after I learned that I was pregnant with baby #2. We were frugal and had 3 months worth of money in savings, but we eventually had to move the entire family across the country, so my husband’s parents could support us.

I’ve struggled with being angry at God and at the Church for unplanned pregnancies and financial problems. It’s one thing to experience financial difficulties without kids, but it’s a completely different thing when you are responsible for the lives of those you love. Each baby has brought a new crisis into our lives, things that would not have happened had we been in a stable position before having kids.

Sometimes I wonder if the Church’s teaching on sexuality places a greater burden on the poor than it does on those with means. The refrain I hear with NFP is to “try another method” or “take another class.”  But I seriously have anxiety issues over having to face another pregnancy with no money. How can I know if another method will work better, when the only way of testing this is to wait and see if I
get pregnant?  The stakes are simply too risky when caring for two children under 3, both still breastfeeding.

Sugar-coating NFP is not helpful, and I’ve seen Catholics attacked and hounded on Catholic forums for admitting that NFP has been a rough spot in marriage. People will say that NFP was not the problem; rather “poor communication” was the problem, or “lustful behavior,” or “selfishness,” or anything but NFP.

We decided to practice complete abstinence for a year, in order to study Theology of the Body again, try to re-learn my fertility signs, and decide if we would continue practicing NFP.  For a year we practiced the sleep-in-separate-rooms-so-can-follow-Church-teaching-but-not-have-kids method of family planning.

We were afraid of disobeying Church teaching and going to hell, but strict abstinence put more stress and strain on our already stressed marriage.

When the year was up, we decided to cease following Church teaching in our married life, finding inconsistencies with Humanae Vitae and Theology of the Body–things we did not see early in our marriage when looking at these documents with rose-colored convert glasses.   Giving up NFP has greatly helped heal our marriage and has given me psychological relief to my anxieties surrounding sex and becoming pregnant AGAIN.

For us the pressure of feeling like we had to perform on certain days combined with the frustration of “off-limits” days, and the unplanned pregnancies–-it was all very stressful and very hard on our marriage.  Nearly two years after abandoning NFP, I still feel like I am recovering emotionally from the whole experience.

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Women Speak About Natural Family Planning: MJ’s Story

February 19, 2012 by Katie Grimes

This is the first in a series of posts featuring some women’s experience with natural family planning.  For the post that originally inspired this project, click here.  To read about the purpose and ground rules for this project, click here.

MJ’s Story

I have gone back and forth on the issue of birth control, but was committed to NFP when we first got married.

The sexual inexperience combined with the long periods of abstinence was definitely a strain (it often felt like we’d been sold a bill of goods) but it worked as a means to delay conception for over a year so that I wouldn’t give birth till I finished my master’s program. Continue Reading »

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Women Speak About Natural Family Planning: Tell Us Your Stories

February 19, 2012 by Katie Grimes

As some of you probably remember, about a year ago, we at WIT published a post entitled “Women Speak About Natural Family Planning.”  When I wrote the post, I was expecting it to be controversial and indeed it remains among our most commented-on posts.

But something happened that I was not expecting.   Women started writing in, sharing not their opinions but their stories.  They spoke of the toll adhering to the church’s teaching on contraception took on their physical and mental health as well as their marriages.

I found these stories to be incredibly moving and incredibly important.  And I realized that there really is nowhere that Catholic women (and men!) can share their stories about things like this with each other.  Catholic couples struggling with this issue typically have to deal with it privately without the guidance and support of their communities.  Just when these couples are most in need of their communities is when they find themselves most alienated from them. Continue Reading »

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Obama, Birth Control, and the Body of Christ: Thoughts on the HHS Ruling

February 9, 2012 by Katie Grimes

As many of you know, a few weeks ago, President Obama mandated that Catholic hospitals would have to begin providing birth control inclusive health care coverage for their employees.

Opponents of this decision claim that, in making the Catholic church provide birth control-inclusive health coverage to those who work in their hospitals, the federal government is forcing the Catholic church to do something that violates its religious beliefs.  The Catholic Church is being persecuted, they cry.   Catholics should not simply oppose this decision; they should be outraged about it.  Indeed, many Catholics are acting as though this is the worst thing a U.S. President has done in a really, really, really long time.

But, I don’t want to tell these outraged Catholics that they’re wrong; I want only to figure out if they’re making any sense. Continue Reading »

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Visions of Hope: Emerging Theologians Envision the Future of the Church

February 1, 2012 by Megan McCabe

This Spring, March 9-11 to be exact, a conference will take place at Boston College, organized by the BC Theology Graduate Student Organization and ICMICA-Pax Romana. At the conference, “emerging theologians” will gather to hear presentations and engage in dialogue about the reception of the Second Vatican Council as we face current challenges and envision the future of the Catholic Church.

Over a decade into the 21st century, the human community faces an increasingly complex social and historical context. While the phenomenon of globalization and its effects have engendered hope in bringing people and cultures together in many profound ways, new inequalities, conflicts, and sorrows are dividing people and communities worldwide. Technology, culture, and communities are changing and developing at a pace never before seen in human history.

Such complexities and changes have deeply impacted the Catholic Church and other faith communities around the world both positively and negatively. In the midst of these external dynamics, the Catholic Church has also faced a number of internal challenges and divisions in the five decades since the Second Vatican Council. Despite the many positive and uplifting moments, theological insights, and movements that have taken emerged in the church since the Second Vatican Council opened fifty years ago, the ecclesial community faces a number of unresolved issues, including: Continue Reading »

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Tough Cases, Women’s Lives, and the Pro-Life Movement

January 24, 2012 by Megan McCabe

Yesterday was the March for Life in Washington, D.C. And while this annual event inevitably leads to reflection and debate, I was particularly struck by an op-ed, “Why We March for Life,” that a friend shared on facebook. In this piece the author, Danielle Bean, argues that young people, particularly young women, have tapped into the pro-life movement because it is a pro-woman movement:

The young people at the annual March for Life assert the unpopular truth that women deserve better than abortion, and instead offer women real choices: genuine alternatives to the harm that abortions cause…Young pro-lifers are determined not to fail women. Continue Reading »

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An Upcoming Conference at Notre Dame!

January 24, 2012 by Elizabeth

Just wanted to let our readers know that the Gender Studies Program at Notre Dame is hosting an interdisciplinary conference entitled “Food Networks: Gender and Foodways” THIS Thursday, January 26, through Saturday, January 28. If you click on the link, you’ll see details about locations and time. You’ll also get to see the intricate conference schedule, which showcases an impressive range of topics surrounding food and gender in various social contexts.

I will be doing a presentation on weight and gender and theology, as I am often wont to do, but I will also be eager to witness presentations on such things as the formation of the relationship between mothering and the branding of foods in the United States; gendered expectations surrounding the kitchen in France; something called “The Bitch in the Kitchen” (how could you not be curious about that?); the place of Julia Child in feminist and post-feminist consciousness; the relationship between cooking and specific constructions of masculinity; the connections between food, capitalism, and “queerness”…and on and on. This is a very rich conference indeed, and one that seems refreshingly daring for Notre Dame.

So, if you’re in the area, try to make it out to a few things. How could a conference with that poster NOT be fun?!

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A Correction

January 20, 2012 by Katie Grimes

I want to thank commenter Brad for bringing to my attention an error I made in yesterday’s post White Supremacy, U.S. Citizenship, and the Body of Christ.  As he so helpfully reminded me, Patrice Lumumba was assassinated three days before JFK was inaugurated so it would therefore have been impossible for him to have ordered Lumumba’s assassination.  It was Eisenhower and not Kennedy who ordered the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Lumumba.  Eisenhower was also still president when the CIA participated in a second attempt on Lumumba’s life which was successful.

I tried to re-trace my steps to find out exactly how I got this misguided notion in my head in the first place, but the best explanation I can muster is that I somehow got my dates confused.  I sincerely apologize for misleading anyone who read yesterday’s post.

While obviously I would have worded some of my post differently had I known better, I still think there is something quite chilling about the relative apathy, indifference, or even approval shown by most white Catholics in the US to Lumumba’s assassination that suggests a failure of the baptismal imagination.  Further, even though it is quite understandable why JFK’s presidency and assassination had a deeper impact on Catholics living in the US than did Lumumba’s, we should still be troubled that white Catholics in the US in generally did  not recognize Lumumba or the people of the Congo as their own.

Again, I sincerely apologize and regret my error.  Mistakes like this are a good reminder of the importance of community and humility to moral inquiry.

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