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, co-editor of American Catholic History: A Documentary Reader.  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.

We understand that when the Church was considering the problem of what to do about reviewing the teaching on usury, the testimony of business people was heard and considered. If there is any parallel between the teaching of usury and the teaching on family limitation, then possibly there is a precedent for the testimony of those most affected by the doctrine.  Our long identification with Christian families gives our report on how family people feel on this subject some evidentiary value.

In response to our inquiries we received a number of interesting letters, copies of which we make available to all who wish to read them. We have attempted to classify in some order those against change, those in favor of change. Most of the statements were made in response to questions about the subject outlined by Dr. John Marshall.

Almost all feel there must be a reconsideration of the Church’s stand. The solution is not clear to most but the need to be concerned is. Many of the couples have large families – 6 to 13 children – most are able to educate and support the children. Some have had intermittent financial, physical, and in a few cases, psychological problems. Many expressed the hope that the Church will change; a very few have given up and practiced some form of birth control. Most expressed dissatisfaction over the Rhythm method for a variety of reasons, running from the fact that it was ineffective, hard to follow; and some had psychological and physiological objections.  We suspect that many are not too familiar with the science of practicing Rhythm.

People are puzzled by statements they have heard or seen in print that the old arguments based on natural law are being questioned. One report came from a couple; the wife was an obstetrical nurse; the husband, a successful management engineer; who have had wide experience in the Christian Family Movement in five states. They have no personal involvement because they could not have more than three children and have adopted one.  They expressed the hope that there would be some change. They think pills are medical problems for medical research rather than theological speculation at this stage. They were horrified at the thought of the Church possibly approving of pills and later the medical profession rejecting them.

One very articulate group of six couples , all of whom are engaged in Catholic Social Action submitted a statement on the subject which we think deserves to be incorporated in this report:

 ”They believe the end of marriage, considered in its natural as well as sacramental aspects, is both personal and social – the fulfillment of the individual partners as Christians and human beings and the perfection of society.”

“The bearing and raising of children are normally the means by which this end is reached; the intention of fruitfulness is normally part of the marriage union.”

“The number of children by which a couple can best reach this end can be determined – should be determined — by the couple alone; if the decision is made to limit the number of children, this should be done on the basis of Christian charity; i.e., unselfishly, out of a love that sees some larger good to be accomplished by the limitation.”

Discussions of the morality of sex in marriage should be based on considerations such as these, not on analysis of the isolated act of intercourse.

For these reasons they urged among other things that the Church state that regulation of conception is a decision to be left to the informed conscience of the couple.”

Our impression is that this enormous problem deserves extensive investigation. The Church must convince its devoted followers that she is willing to re-open and re-examine this subject with all of the new insights of theological, as well as biological, physiological, psychological; sociological, demographic and historic background, etc., currently available to facilitate this important search for truth.

A WOMAN’S VIEWPOINT

As a woman, I am grateful for the chance to address this Commission. Neither Pat nor I consider ourselves as “experts.” Rather we look upon ourselves as “communication channels.” As much as possible, we hope to pass on to you our interpretation of how married people that we know feel about this subject that is so overwhelmingly important to them.

During our adult lives we have worked with married people. We have talked with them, argued with them, perhaps preached to them more than we like to recognize, worked with them, and, most important, we have listened to them. Our work in the Christian Family Movement, which is now active in sixty-one countries, has taken us around the world several times. Just last month we visited CFM people in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania.

Since our appointment to this Commission we have asked people how they feel about these momentous questions. We have asked them informally, in casual conversation — where so much can be said in so few words — and we have asked them in three formal, scientific surveys. So we think that we can speak with some authority on how the married people we know and work with feel.…

For more than a year we have gathered data, written and oral. Our first questionnaire went to thousands of couples. They were tabulated in a report compiled by Professor Donald Barrett of the University of Notre Dame.

To confirm the findings in this study, we made still another survey, a course of action suggested by Dr. Andre Helligers. We asked CFM “contact couples” throughout the world to fill out a questionnaire dealing with rhythm. “Contact Couples” are leaders within their CFM geographical area. Ordinarily they have worked within CFM for a number of years. They are specially devoted to its aims. To do their CFM work and to succeed at it, they must be a husband and wife who communicate well with each other and are devoted to making their marriage a success. They strive to be, in short, a happy, successful family unit, and our observations would indicate they have succeeded. We stress this point, quite obviously, to indicate that these questionnaires were not filled out by disaffected Catholics, those who may be discouraged, disillusioned, or disenchanted, or whose personal problems within marriage may have caused them to drift apart from each other and from the Church.

Naturally, we do not presume to judge the success or happiness of a marriage or the quality of a person’s Christianity. Yet if one were to ask us to select on the basis of outward appearances men and women who are indeed happy, who are committed to pursuing Christ’s work on earth, who love the Church and look to her for guidance, these are precisely the couples we would select. For the details of the surveys themselves — the facts, figures, percentage of replies, and the like — I refer you to the reports themselves. Let me summarize a few of the conclusions.

Is there a bad psychological effect in the use of rhythm?

Almost without exception, the responses were that, yes, there is.

Does rhythm serve any useful purpose at all?

A few say it may be useful for developing discipline. Nobody says that it fosters married love .

Does it contribute to married unity?

No. That is the inescapable conclusion of the reports we have received.

In marriage a husband and wife pledge themselves to become one in mind, heart, and affection. They are no longer two, but one flesh — and they must find mutual help and serve each other through intimate union of their persons and their actions; through this union an experience of their oneness and attain to it with growing affection day by day.

Some wonder whether God would have us cultivate such unity by using what, seems to them an unnatural system.

I must add that the best place children learn the importance of love is from the example of their parents. Yet these reports seem to indicate that instead of unity and love, rhythm tends to substitute tension, dissatisfaction, frustration, and disunity.

I feel that I would be disloyal to women if I didn’t also emphasize one other point: We have heard some men, married and celibate, argue that rhythm is a way to develop love. But we have heard few women who agree with them.

Is rhythm unnatural?

Yes – that’s the conclusion of these reports. Over and over, directly and indirectly, men and women — and perhaps especially women – voice the conviction that the physical and psychological implications of rhythm are not adequately understood by the male Church.

Very shortly I will quote at length from some of the responses we have received.  Many of them point out a very simple physical and psychological fact, best expressed in those simple but sad words, “It’s the wrong time.” Over and over, respondents pointed out that nature prepares a woman at the time of ovulation to have the greatest urge to mate with her husband. Similarly at that time, her husband wants to respond to his wife. She craves his love. Yet month after month she must say no to her husband because it is the wrong date on the calendar or the thermometer reading isn’t right.

No amount of theory by man will convince women that this way of making and expressing love is natural.

Listen, for example, to a couple that has been married 17 years. They have seven children and have had two miscarriages. They are both 38:

“This method of family planning is very harmful to our marriage and to many others. There has been many bad times and tears over this unreasonable law in this family.  My husband is away on long business trips and unfortunately his company doesn’t take our calendar into consideration when he has to be gone all over this country and now all over the world. He has left on trips at the wrong time of the month and arrived, all in the same month, at the wrong time of the month. Sometimes he he’s been gone weeks and arrived home at the wrong time of the month, too. This problem is detrimental to family rapport, since Mother and Father are very upset and edgy with one another since they cannot reaffirm their love a t this time.  One cannot make love by a calendar, since illness, fatigue and emotions are involved. More often than not, strangely, there is not a desire at this time, but you go through with it because it’s safe, maybe, and there may not be another time. One or the other probably doesn’t really prefer that particular time, but feels at least it is a release. This isn’t a true expression of love! It must be free! It must be spontaneous as much as is possible.”

A very dedicated couple who have worked for years in Marriage Preparation with women writes this:

“We have always been taught by the Church to strive for the ideal — the true Christian life, the best kind of marriage. However, it is psychologically sound that even a limited marriage, let alone really sound one is best achieved by two people with a good interpersonal relationship — one that is least hampered by fear, guilt and tension. No marriage will be without these tensions, just by virtue of two people living together, and then, the children entering into the relationship.

This is why it is so important for a couple to be able to maintain as loving a relationship between themselves as possible. Therefore, I feel that we must do all in our power to help the Christian couple to foster their love.

Certainly the best parents are “whole” people psychologically and it is most difficult to be whole when you are constantly “separated” from the loved one where sometimes you most need him or her in the vital emotional relationship which gets at feelings. Those who are torn by emotional upsets are not going to be able to fulfill the aim of marriage of “responsible parenthood”.

Certainly birth control is not going to solve all marriage problems, but it is another one that is constant and causes turmoil and agony in the lives of so many couples — couples who must be “whole” in order to raise “whole” people. Rhythm certainly can be the answer for some, but I would suggest that this is a very limited few. What is to be done for the millions of underprivileged who can’t even count – or for the millions who are irregular — or for those in change of life.  Is their emotional life supposed to shrivel up and die – really the worst kind of psychology!

Actually rhythm fulfills a need because for many who absolutely cannot take the risk of more children without dire consequences to the marriage, rhythm could be combined with a contraceptive in order to give the greatest kind of assurance.  With this kind of assurance many can be warm loving persons once again instead of fearful and tense.

In the realm of psychology, any simple psychology book tells us that people who are in a constant stricture in an area that should be open and free and loving are damaging themselves and consequently, others. Any emotions that are bottled up when one does not want them to be bottled up are dangerous. And how many millions of couples live in this situation daily – certainly far more than those who sublimate their desires or who are taught control. Finally, is our Church for a select few or are we trying to find solutions for the millions who need this kind of help.”

The second psychological phenomena that was seen in many of the responses is that of fear. Once again, several quotes:

From a couple married 3 years, 2 children, 2 miscarriages: “Abstinence puts a strain on marriage. Each full-term pregnancy has meant a major operation (Caesarean) –miscarriages – and pregnant again and health has taken a beating. As a result, I cannot care for husband, children, or house as I should. The fear of another unwanted pregnancy puts such a fear in sex as to make it almost prohibitive.”

A couple who has been very active in CFM since their marriage 11 years ago, both 35, 7 living children, tell us:

“Rhythm causes a lot of tension end preoccupation with the calendar. Some women can’t take that monthly anxiety period (commonly called “safe period”) of waiting to find out if they made it through another month. For me it is difficult to rely on a “safe period,” as I am always fearful that the cycle might have been thrown off by the frequent upsets of a 9-person household.

The marriage act becomes less an expression of love and more a reminder of possible pregnancy and a duty grudgingly fulfilled.  Many times I have gone through this turmoil, feeling reluctant, even resentful, and at the same time feeling guilty because my mind and heart are worrying about such things rather than thinking of my love for my husband. Add to this the anxiety of some of my friends whose husbands travel. If his weekend at home comes at the wrong time, then what?  The wife always says, “I trust my husband , but … ” The lunch hour hotel room affair is common enough in our society that even a woman whose husband does not travel wonders how much temptation she puts in his way by denying him at home.  My point here is not that the husbands are not able to withstand the temptation, but the wives, being women who want, to be generous, feel guilty and sometimes worried by this aspect of rhythm.

Another burden put on the wife is the fact that she, or rather her menstrual cycle, controls the exercise of the marriage act. “You may not” or “You may” or “I don’t know” says the calendar, thermometer, or fertility tape. It must be checked every day. It is a constant reminder that love may be expressed, or must be channeled elsewhere, depending upon the impersonal schedule of the cycle.

What do I mean by “channelled elsewhere?” Aren’t there other expressions of love besides the marriage act? Yes, but for me this creates another problem. I “bend over backwards” to avoid raising false hopes on my husband’s part. This sounds ridiculous, but I stiffen at a kiss on the cheek, instantly reminded that I must be discreet.

I withdraw in other ways, too, afraid to be an interesting companion, gay or witty, or charming; hesitant about being sympathetic or understanding, almost wishing I could be invisible. At the same time I ask myself if my husband resents being dominated by a calendar, or if he misunderstands my cool behavior. And I wonder why I can’t shake off the fear and uncertainty during the rest of the month.

Even though we have discussed these problems together they still bother me. I have limited this opinion strictly to rhythm and its effect upon me in regard to the marriage act. Much more could be said about the effects of this tension upon the children, about my husband’s feelings in regard to rhythm, and about the early years of our marriage when we were taught that we had no reason or even right to limit or space our children.”….

Thus we see the anguish expressed by some faithful Catholics. They are not alone. Some of them have suffered terribly and are only now asking themselves if their travail was really necessary. Others, expressing their love for each other and their families, nevertheless insist that they should have done it otherwise had they been free to choose their course of action. We can only admire the courage and honesty of a woman who looks at her family of seven (or more), loving her children, and yet admitting that she wishes she had the time to do something more than “act as a referee.”

Notice how these reactions contradict what in the past has been the stereotyped, conventional way of looking at the Catholic husband and wife and their large family. These fathers and mothers, surveying their children, do not sit back with pride and satisfaction. Instead, they reflect a hardly muted bitterness as a condition in their lives that has forced them to stay apart from each other when their natures cried out for each other.

What shall we do?

Thirty years ago the Church introduced rhythm with the understanding that it was to be used only with permission of the confessor.  Today the Church permits its use and even extends its blessings to those who use rhythm for good reason and in good conscience.

Our observation and experience confirms the fact that couples the world over are consciously or unconsciously asking a question:

“Why, then, cannot the Church permit Catholics with good reason and in good conscience to select their own methods in limiting births?”

Is not the sex drive instilled by God a normal one?

Should not husbands and wives be encouraged to express their love without adding a series of do’s and don’ts?

Is it a sign of man’s dignity that he must study the calendar to express the love he feels, for his wife by an action that will deepen and intensify that love?

We think it is time for a change.  We think it is time that this Commission recommend that the sacredness of conjugal love not be violated by thermometers and calendars.  Marital union does lead to fruitfulness, psychologically as well as physically. Couples want children and will have them generously and love them and cherish them – we do not need the impetus of legislation to procreate – it is the very instinct of life, love and sexuality.

It is in fact largely our very love for children as persons and our desire for their full development as committed Christians that leads us to realize that numbers alone and the large size of a family is by no means a Christian ideal unless parents can truly be concerned about and capable of nurturing a high quality of Christian life.

We express these thoughts, as nearly as we can reflect them, of thousands of couples.

We sincerely hope and do respectfully recommend that this Commission redefine the moral imperatives of fertility regulation with a view toward bringing them in conformity with our new and improved understanding of men and women in today’s world.

We realize that some may be scandalized? [sic]  Those who have no awareness of the meaning of renewal—those who disagree with the Conciliar emphasis on personhood and those who do not understand that the Church is the living People of God guided by the Holy Spirit.

Respectfully submitted,

Patty Crowley

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. 

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.

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.

I experienced a severe bout of postpartum depression after the baby was born and in this context — with an infant, depression, and very isolated having just finished school and having no friends anywhere close to the same place in life — that we resumed NFP. It was a disaster: my fertility signals were all over the place and between the baby and the NFP we didn’t touch for months, which didn’t help with the depression or our relationship.

Then we did – once – and I got pregnant again.

In between conception and figuring out the extreme fatigue was not just another symptom of the depression, I decided I couldn’t handle having any more children, which my husband very generously accepted. I was devastated when I found out but I started a new treatment for depression and I got through the pregnancy. We were managing but it wasn’t great. We had a newborn and an 19 mo old and I was better but still struggling with depression. Again, we attempted NFP and had the same issues with the fertility signals and I got pregnant again. I miscarried very early on and I would have never thought that could be so welcome.

At that point, my husband and I decided that that we were not willing to subject my mental health or our marriage to the anxiety of that came with the “threat” of another pregnancy – that is what it felt like – or the isolation of extended periods of abstinence and I went on birth control.

Almost seven years after the birth of our first child, I still struggle with depression so we have come to the conclusion that our family is probably complete. We are both at peace with that but it has been an isolating decision. We were part of a young families group in our parish — all very gung ho about NFP (we think) – it is certainly not a group in which anyone openly considers the “grey” of contraception… and we weren’t comfortable anymore so we dropped it. The priest we had at the time was not especially understanding of the challenges of parenting, so we didn’t even consult him (he used the example of *mothers* “dumping their children at daycare” as an example of how we are always “looking for the quick fix and easy way out” in a homily. I got up and left).

So, I listen to these celibate, childless men — many of whom were complicit in, lied about, or continue to make excuses for those who lied about sexual abuse and consequently ignore the suffering of the victims — unequivocally and without a trace of compassion condemn my choice and I struggle with being very angry at them. I think their recent history indicates that there has been far too much concern with protecting magisterial authority at the expense of discerning the truth, which might require talking to a few women.

In light of that and stories like Dominga’s, the AIDS epidemic and, frankly, the fact that the earth does have a carrying capacity, I have profound doubts about the the truth – even worse, the motivation – of this particular teaching and by extension magisterial authority in general as exercised by this particular group of men.

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.

But non-married Catholics (gay and straight; single and vowed) as well as married Catholics for whom NFP is a largely positive experience also need to hear these stories.  If we really are the body of Christ, then we need to know when members of the body are suffering, especially when the church is a source of this suffering.

And finally, these stories make an essential and irreplaceable contribution to moral reasoning.  Without them, can we really expect to know the truth about God’s will for marital sexuality?

For these reasons, I am going to begin featuring the stories that originally appeared in the comments section of this post.  I also want to invite any Catholic person to share with us the story of her or his personal experience with this issue.  You can submit via email (witheology@gmail.com) anonymously or provide us with a pseudonym if you so desire.

Note: I will be monitoring the comments’ section very strictly.  The entire point of this project is to create a space where people feel safe.  This is not the place to argue about or criticize those who are brave enough to share their stories with us.  The only comments that will be approved are those expressing support, affirmation, and solidarity.

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.

Are Catholics who believe this ruling violates their first amendment rights being consistent?   Given everything else U.S. Catholics believe, does it make sense to believe that providing birth control inclusive health insurance to employees of Catholic hospitals makes the Catholic church morally culpable if these employees use their health insurance to buy birth control, and, following from this, that mandating birth control inclusive coverage violates the 1^st amendment rights of Catholics and/or the Catholic Church?

I propose the following thought experiment to help us (U.S. Catholics) figure out if what we say we believe about Obama and birth control is coherent. This thought experiment consists of three scenarios and a question.  If we can genuinely and with conviction answer yes to each of the three questions listed below, then we have good reason to think our outrage over President Obama’s ruling makes sense; if we answer ‘no’ to any of these questions, then our outrage does not make sense and we need to reconsider our reaction.

Scenario One:

Imagine that many of this nation’s hospitals and health care facilities were run by an extremely conservative group of Muslims.  Imagine that the leaders of this branch of Islam thought that it was immoral for women to be treated by male doctors.  Imagine that, wishing to obey Allah in all things, they refused to provide their hospital employees with health insurance plans that covered women’s visits to male doctors.  Imagine that this extended even to their non-Muslim employees.  Do you think these hypothetical Muslim hospitals should be allowed to deprive even their non-Muslim employees of this coverage?

What if allowing Muslim hospitals to refuse to pay for these visits would mean that women would receive inferior medical treatment?  Would you still maintain that the 1^st amendment granted these Muslim hospitals the right to refuse to cover women’s visits to male doctors?

Scenario Two:

Imagine learning that a devout Catholic business owner provides her employees health insurance, which covers birth control. Do you think that she incurs guilt if any of her employees decide to use their health insurance to buy birth control?

And if it makes a difference, imagine further that this Catholic business owner herself believes that birth control to be evil and she goes out of her way to share with her employees the benefits that natural family planning brought to her marriage.  Her employees know that she thinks birth control is wrong.  Don’t ask yourself whether you think her decision to provide this coverage is right (I argue that this is a slightly different question) but ask yourself whether she incurs guilt for her employees’ deciding to use their health insurance to buy birth control.

Scenario Three:

Think now of the current, actual reality of being a citizen of the United States of America.  Our tax dollars fund many things that violate the church’s teaching. Do you think that paying taxes in the United States of America makes a tax-paying Catholic morally culpable for unjust war, torture, the death penalty, and the enforcement of immigration laws? Do you think that the government is violating the religious freedom of Catholics when it insists that they must pay all state and federal taxes? Or, do you agree with the government that Catholics should not be able to pick and choose where there tax money goes to?

I can only guess how most U.S. Catholics and their bishops would answer the first two, but I have already received their answer to the third.  Catholics are allowed to pay taxes, even though they fund unjust war, torture, the death penalty, and unjust immigration laws.  Even though torture, like birth control, is an intrinsic evil.  Even though the mere fact that something is intrinsically evil does not make it more evil than something that is only circumstantially evil.  The magisterium considers masturbation to be an intrinsic evil while war is only evil in certain circumstances.  Yet no one would think teenaged masturbation a greater evil than unjust war.

I personally am undecided as to whether or not simply by paying taxes I am implicated in the evils my taxes help fund.  My point is simply that I do not see how we can think the federal government making Catholics pay taxes that fund evil is acceptable but its making Catholic hospitals provide health insurance that covers birth control is not.

To summarize, if Muslim hospitals should not be allowed to refuse to pay for their female employees’ visits to male doctors, if we do not think private business owners are necessarily morally responsible for what their employees decide to do with their health insurance, and if we do not think a Catholic is necessarily sinning or being deprived of their 1^st amendment rights by having to pay taxes, then I do not see how we can justifiably be this upset about the HHS ruling.

Perhaps we think that this recent HHS ruling is different because the government is forcing the church to do something it thinks is wrong.  If outrage over this ruling is truly motivated by a concern to preserve the moral integrity of the church, then I think we have it entirely backwards.  As Catholics, we should be much more worried about the evil we do willingly than the evil we are forced to do.

Also, if we are going to circumscribe the limits of licit material cooperation in evil so narrowly that providing birth control inclusive health insurance to even non-Catholic employees makes us morally culpable in their sin, then I suggest we need to seriously re-consider many practices the Church considers not just to be morally acceptable but in fact morally good.  For example, I am not really sure how providing birth control inclusive health insurance constitutes illicit material cooperation in evil when having a military chaplaincy does not.  In fact, it seems likely that through the military chaplaincy the church has cooperated in the evil of unjust war not just materially but formally.

How can we be this upset about the HHS ruling when we have so little outrage for so many other things?

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:

the continued fallout of the clergy sexual abuse crisis;
conflicting understandings on the relationship between the church and the world;
divisive questions of sexual ethics and the role of women in the church;
debates about the reform of the liturgy; and
questions of how best to address the growing shortage of priests in Europe and North America.
In light of these complex issues and realties, what will the future of the Church look like? Emerging theologians and young church leaders (broadly, those under 40) are in a unique position to offer hopeful visions which might help the Catholic community address internal and external questions. The fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council offers an important moment to take stock of the present ecclesial situation and to look ahead with hope to the future.

In an effort to empower and listen to the voices of some emerging theologians and leaders, theology graduate students at Boston College (BC), together with the International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (ICMICA-Pax Romana) and other partners at BC plan to organize an international colloquium in March, 2012 on the theme of Visions of Hope: Emerging Theologians Envision the Future of the Church. The three-day gathering will be guided by, five subthemes:

The Future of Catholic Ethics
The Future of Dialogue
The Future of Liturgy
The Future of Ministry
The Future of Ecclesiology

Check out the website for more details and a program, and click here to register! (WIT’s own Elizabeth will be presenting a paper and several of the rest of us will be in attendance.)

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.

This idea that the pro-life movement is pro-woman is something the women at WIT discuss fairly frequently in our own conversations. But, for the most part, I am not going to get into that line of thought in any exhaustive way. Instead, I zeroed in on this passage from Bean’s piece:

Some say we should allow for abortion, especially in the hard cases, when a pregnancy is unplanned and unwanted. At the March for Life, however, young Americans boldly reject the idea that the value of any human life is diminished because it is unplanned or unwanted.

So, I want to think some about what this passage indicates about “the hard cases” for abortion and how rhetorical treatment of such cases reflects how “pro-woman” the pro-life movement is. Now, to be perfectly clear: I do not circulate frequently in circles dedicated to stopping or limiting abortion. Rather, I am drawing from comments that have been left here at WIT and 18 years of Catholic education, which has involved exposure to pro-life perspectives both in the classroom (especially in grade and high school) and conversation with classmates and peers in theology graduate programs. This being said, I do take what I have encountered to be typical but not exhaustive.

What I’m having a hard time with is Bean’s blatant dismissal of “hard cases” which many people are concerned about in the abortion debate. In fact, Bean completely mischaracterizes such cases as pregnancies that are “unplanned or unwanted.” As far as I can tell, this description does not accurately represent hard cases, at all. Tough cases are often those involving pregnancies that are wanted, but for various reasons a woman’s life is at risk, like the case in Phoenix. [Whether or not this case meets the qualifications of the principle of double effect has been a matter of some debate]. Another kind of “tough case” is seen in situations like the case of the 9 year-old girl in Brazil in 2009 who became pregnant with twins after being raped by her stepfather—a pregnancy feared to be dangerous for the girl’s survival given the her extremely young age and thus body size. In failing to accurately represent the tragedy and pain of such cases, Bean also fails to convince me that her take on the pro-life movement is, in fact, actually concerned with women’s lives.

From what I have personally encountered in abortion debates (again, in no way do I claim that this is exhaustive analysis of the pro-life movement), such cases are often quickly dismissed as irrelevant for the abortion debate. At best this dismissal takes the form of moving past it as an issue: “Yes, that is difficult but the proper Christian/Catholic/pro-life positions holds that abortion is still not justifiable.” What bothers me about this kind of instance is not so much the final conclusion, but the easy way in which a scary and difficult “tough case” is tidied up. To my mind, in an effort not to pit one life (a woman’s) as more valuable than another life (unborn child), this kind of move has the effect of actually dismissing the value and dignity of a pregnant woman’s life, in favor of the unborn as somehow more valuable (or innocent). Worse, however, are those times in conversation or opinion pieces that conclude that since such tough cases are such a tiny fraction of abortion cases, they are irrelevant to the discussion of the moral significance of abortion. This line of thought is shockingly utilitarian—especially in a Catholic context that affirms the dignity and worth of each life, regardless of how few or many are lost in a given situation.

At this point, I am unwilling to make any statements about how these difficult cases should be adjudicated. What I am saying is that these “hard cases” deserve to be taken seriously as tragedies by the pro-life movement. And until they are no longer so swiftly dismissed (as Bean herself did) I will view with great suspicion any statements that the pro-life movement is a pro-woman movement.

EDIT: Because the topic of abortion often quickly leads to heated argument and polemics, only comments relating directly to the statements of this post will be approved. 

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?!

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.