Constitutional Law, Politics, Religion, Society

Catholics, Contraception & The Heretical 98%

By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger

Last Sunday, most U.S. Catholics heard a letter read from the pulpit imploring them to oppose the Obamacare provision requiring most healthcare plans to cover contraceptive services for women. The reason given was that Catholic hospitals and universities would have to “shutter their doors”  in order to avoid heresy and be true to the faith. As part of the concerted effort, the chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Religious Liberty announced that the Obama administration’s requirement goes against “the mandate of Jesus Christ.”  Even though the earthly mandate contains an exemption for purely religious organizations, the all-male U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is clearly on the offensive in this politically charged debate about women, privacy, and the right of families to decide for themselves the number of children they can support.

Since the 1930s, most denominations have left the issue of contraception up to the conscience of the parishioners. The Catholic Church has stood virtually alone since 1951 by requiring its adherents to use only the “rhythm method” as a means to prevent pregnancy.  All other forms of contraception were deemed an interference in God’s Plan and hence heretical.  In the early 1960s with the reforms of Vatican II in full swing, the Pope appointed a 90 person committee to evaluate the Church’s position on contraception. 75 of the 90 recommended the Church allow contraception by means other than the rhythm method.

Disregarding the recommendation, Pope Paul VI issued his famous encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which reaffirmed the Church’s solitary position. The Pope reasoned that, “The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.”  The Pope then waxed philosophic about the danger of government mandated contraception akin to that seen in China:

Careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone.

That textual cudgel has now been taken up against Obamacare.  Catholic apologists like Jennifer Brinker in the St. Louis Review have argued that the Pope was right and the government is now in the business of  pushing contraception for political reasons. Brinker even argues ironically that the mandate is a “dissolution of freedom.” Brinker reminds Catholics that disapproved contraception is a “sin” and that most Catholics don’t understand the reason for the ban.

What do Catholic women think about the Church’s unyielding stand on artificial birth control? In April of  last year, Reuters reported that a Guttmacher Institute poll showed that 98% of sexually active U.S. Catholic women used contraception methods outside of the Church’s teachings.  The numbers held up for women who regularly attended Catholic services as well as those who didn’t. In fact, the findings showed American Catholic women were just as likely to use artificial contraception as those in other denominations.

“In real-life America, contraceptive use and strong religious beliefs are highly compatible,” said the report’s lead author Rachel Jones.  Catholics overwhelmingly rely on the most common methods of birth control. Nearly 70 percent of Catholic women use sterilization, the birth control pill or an IUD, according to the Guttmacher Institute research.

What then are we to make of the schism between Church’s dogma and the reality of its followers?  Are 98% of the Church’s women sinners and heretics? Can a religion be viable if one of its fundamental tenets is  ignored on a daily basis by almost all of its “faithful”?  Can a male dominated authority maintain credibility in the modern world when it dictates to women on issues that are overwhelmingly that gender’s concern?

These questions do not seem to be troubling Church fathers.  In fact, they appear to be looking for a testosterone fueled showdown. As one recently said, “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.” They may do well to look over their shoulders as they climb up that political hill, theological banners flying. A cursory view of their ranks will likely find few honest Americans and almost no honest women.

Source: CNN

~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger

178 thoughts on “Catholics, Contraception & The Heretical 98%”

  1. raff,

    I wonder how many people wish Newt’s parents had used contraception.

    I know of at least one.

  2. The insurance coverage Congress includes contraception services, but according to the Republicans, no one else is entitled to it.

  5. No one is forcing “good” Catholics to use contraception because of this Obamacare provision. The option should be included in the health insurance coverage for employees of Catholic hospitals, colleges, etc., who are not Catholic…and for Catholics who do use birth control methods frowned upon by the bishops–none of whom have ever been pregnant, have given birth, or have had to support and raise a family.

  7. 1zb1,
    I agree wholeheartedly. The Republicans are attempting to rein in many of the freedoms women worked so hard to obtain.

  8. If you create an exception for “religious” affiliated entities in regard to this law then it is also an exception for every law. In other words, so long as you call yourself a religion you have a right (according to the Rightwing nut cases) to be a bigot. That is the real goal of the Republican/Tparty of hate.

  9. Republicans Threaten Contraception Access World Wide
    by Jessica Pieklo
    February 9, 2012
    http://www.care2.com/causes/republicans-threaten-contraception-access-world-wide.html

    Excerpt:
    The Republicans may be launching an all out assault on contraception here in the United States, but as Michelle Goldberg reports, it’s a war that has devastating global consequences.

    In Liberia teen pregnancy rates are high even by West African standards, birth control is largely paid for by USAID programs that are at risk of evaporating should Republicans win in 2012. With every Republican candidate speaking out against contraception and with all of them pledging to eliminate Title X, the federal family-planning program launched by conservative Richard Nixon, public health officials are legitimately worried about a coming spike in unintended pregnancies and deaths should access to contraception be taken away.

    As Goldberg notes, to put the severity of attack in some context, consider Mike Pence. Pence is one of Congress’s leading crusaders against Planned Parenthood, but even he thinks the right has gone too far. “I’ve never advocated reducing funding for Title X,” he told an Indiana radio station last year. “Title X clinics do important work in our inner cities. They provide health services for women and children that might not otherwise have access to them.”

    Just how at risk are international women’s health programs? Should Mitt Romney, the most moderate of the Republicans win the presidency then he’ll impose the global gag rule, preventing any American money from going to organizations that perform or even counsel about abortions. He will also likely withhold money from the United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, an agency that promotes reproductive health worldwide on the “demonstrably false” grounds that it supports coerced abortion in China.

    Romney has also made it clear he would slash funding for HIV/AIDS relief efforts, pulling harder to the right on international public health initiatives than even former President Bush.

  10. I want to echo Mike S and his thanks to Elaine and Swarthmore Mom for their links to evidence that the war on women is now being fought on a new front. Contraception. I mentioned this on an earlier thread, but I wonder how many of Newt’s girlfriends were using contraception when he was involved in adulterous affairs?

  13. Santorum: Obama Has Put America On ‘The Path’ Of Executing Religious People By Decapitation
    By Igor Volsky on Feb 9, 2012
    http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/02/09/421882/santorum-obama-has-put-america-on-the-path-of-executing-religious-people-by-decapitation/

    Rick Santorum continued to rail against President Obama’s so-called war against religion during a town hall in Plano, Texas Wednesday night. The former Pennsylvania senator — who has spent the last several days criticizing the government’s requirement that insurers provide contraception coverage and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision striking down Proposition 8 — accused the administration of “crushing” religion and setting the United States on the path towards executing religious people by decapitation:

    SANTORUM: They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is the government that gives you right, what’s left are no unalienable rights, what’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that, but if we do and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.

  14. At Whom Are The Bishops Angry?
    by Ken Briggs on Feb. 07, 2012
    National Catholic Reporter
    http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/whom-are-bishops-angry

    Excerpt:
    The flurry of response to the Obama Administration’s ruling that Catholic institutions must cover the cost of contraceptives has emphasized the political tensions underlying the conflict but neglects the strains created within the church itself.

    Two consequences especially seem evident, if not immediately then in the months and years come.

    They both stem from the failure of the birth control encyclical to persuade American Catholics that the prohibition made sense, in part because it left them, the ones most involved with the issue, out of the decision.

    Has the Vatican been nursing a resentment against American Catholics ever since? I think much evidence suggests this is so. But under the prevailing customs of creeping infallibilism, the encyclical cannot be declared flawed or in need of reconsideration.

  15. Catholic bishops hypocrites in birth control controversy
    http://open.salon.com/blog/ted_frier/2012/01/31/catholic_bishops_hypocrites_in_birth_control_controversy

    Excerpt;
    Everything you need to know about the Holy Crusade being waged by the Catholic bishops against President Obama over health insurance coverage for birth control can be found in this single fact: One of the loudest voices attacking the President for his “War” on Catholicism is the same guy — Newt Gingrich — let into the Catholic Church in the first place by bishops who overlooked the two wives he abandoned, as well as his admitted fondness for infidelity, and in spite of the Church’s frowning on divorce if not creepiness in general.

    “The Obama administration has just launched an attack on Christianity so severe that every single church had a letter read from the bishops all across the country,” the shameless Gingrich thundered. “Freedom of religion in America is now being attacked by Obama.”

    Maybe it’s just me, but to my way of thinking leaving a sick wife who suffers from cancer in order to shack up with a sweet young thing on my staff is a far more grievous example of the self indulgence and selfishness which the bishops hope to stamp out than is the Church’s present American Inquisition against condoms.

    The stink of hypocrisy here is so thick it is overpowering. And that is because power is what this dispute has been about from the start. This controversy isn’t about theology and never was. And if it’s a “war on religion” conservatives are whining about it’s a war the bishops lost decades ago, and with their own Church followers, who sensibly concluded that Catholic hostility towards birth control was both esoteric and antique.

    The bishops have tried to re-frame the issue as one of conscience and the Church’s right to be free from government interference. But as the liberal-leaning National Catholic Reporter editorializes: “The clash of rights in this case is not so neatly defined by those outside and inside the Church.”

    It is abundantly clear that in the United States, says the Reporter, “Catholics themselves do not feel conscience-bound by the Church’s teaching prohibiting the use of contraceptives,” especially where Church teaching “has been consistently rejected” for more than 50 years.

    So, wonders this prominent Catholic newspaper, is government then duty-bound to enforce a religious group’s moral teaching if that religion’s own leaders “have failed to persuade the group of its importance?”

  16. Thanks to Elaine and SwM we have ample proof as to the true motivation of those who disingenuously label themselves Pro-Life. These anti abortionists will not admit the true purpose of their movement and like panderers of the meanest sort cloak it in appeals that focus on babies. Like apple pie, everyone pretends to love babies/children. By playing this cynical card they keep the focus off what they are really trying to accomplish and suck in well meaning people in service of the real misogynistic purpose of their sick inhumane cause.

    The aim of this disgusting and immoral movement is the subjugation of women and a return to extremist patriarchy. They pretend to want only to stop abortions, yet they also now are openly adding the previously hidden agenda item of birth control. Obviously birth control would reduce abortion, but that doesn’t matter to them because it has never been about abortion, rather it is the fear that women’s sexual autonomy will free women from patriarchal control. That anti-abortionists are also against sex education has long been the tip off that controlling abortions was just the cover for this rotten agenda. Another is that their legislative proponents are against any support for mothers as single parents, pre-natal care, or health care for children. They do not cherish life, they fear and loathe independent women.

    Another component of this scam is the chastity until marriage movement. As the father of now grown daughters I must say that my daughter’s virginity was never an interest of mine, one way or another. My daughters were brought up to be independent thinkers, but given all the information and support they needed to make mature sexual choices based on their particular beliefs. They’ve made their choices and continue to do so in a mature fashion, though I’ve honestly never discussed that aspect of their lives by respecting their right of privacy, I’ve also never been interested in their particular choices. To me fathers who are so interested in their daughters sexuality/virginity are somewhat icky. I understand that as a parent you want to ensure that your child is not taken advantage of by some male user. However, I believe the best way to protect their safety is to teach them to be responsible, provide them with the facts about sexuality and to instill within them the self-confidence that a female needs independence of males whether in or out of love.

    The statistics show clearly that in the areas where anti-abortion and abstinence hold sway, the rates of sexuality and out of wedlock births is higher than in less sexually uptight areas. Planned ignorance breeds the kind of climate where unplanned pregnancies thrive. To me this misogyny is one of the premier issues of our time and the right of equality for women is a major issue.

  17. Springtime for Santorum
    Senator Wingnut’s reelection effort looks just like a remake of The Producers
    By Noel Weyrich
    Posted on February 2006
    http://www.phillymag.com/articles/contrarian_springtime_for_santorum/

    Excerpt:
    Last year, when Senator Rick Santorum published his anti-liberal, anti-feminist, anti-gay manifesto It Takes a Family, a lot of political pundits were stunned by his bad timing. Most officeholders try to broaden their popular appeal in the months before kicking off a reelection campaign. Santorum did the opposite. He dished out a heaping helping of right-wing red meat, blaming our civilization’s decay on working moms, divorced parents, and supporters of gay rights and cultural diversity. In short, the book attacked three-quarters of Pennsylvania — not a smart move for someone due to face the voters in 2006.

    Few considered that Rick Santorum probably wrote It Takes a Family for the same reason most people write books. Red meat sells, and the man needs money. On a Senate salary of $165,200, Santorum supports a stay-at-home wife and six children under age 16. The entire brood is homeschooled at the couple’s four-acre, $750,000 estate in Virginia. Without Rick’s royalties, Karen Santorum is clipping coupons, buying generic and wearing Kmart.

    Since his book title was an obvious rebuke to Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village, many assumed that Santorum was also trying to set the stage for a presidential run in 2008. But he recently ruled that out, so only one explanation remains for why Santorum seems hell-bent on alienating every moderate voter in the state: He’s done with elective office. There are six college tuitions in the Santorum family’s future, and it’s time for Daddy to cash his chips on K Street, lobbyists’ row in D.C. This year’s reelection campaign is just his latest attempt to buff up his bankable bone fides as America’s foremost right-wing nut. Already down by double digits in the polls, Rick Santorum is throwing this election.

    It’s not just Santorum’s silly rhetoric — that the “right to privacy” may lead to court-approved infanticide, that career women have been brainwashed by radical feminism, that unmarried couples are “wrong” to live together. His actions speak even louder. In recent years the Santorums have been caught supplementing their income with methods popular among desperate low-lifes: They cheated the government, and they filed a back-related medical malpractice claim.

    Two years ago, while our rugged individualist Senator was penning a book that extolled the value of homeschooling, his family was getting free online curriculum services worth about $30,000 a year, courtesy of the small school district in Western Pennsylvania where the Santorums claim residency. When the Penn Hills school board noticed that the putative Santorum homestead outside Pittsburgh has only three bedrooms and was rented out to someone else, it demanded a refund. A legal technicality over filing dates sank the school board’s case, and Santorum claimed, absurdly, that he was being persecuted by liberal Penn Hills Democrats. He was right about one thing, though. It takes a family to rip off a village.

    Even more strangely for Senator Self-Reliant, in 1999 Karen Santorum filed a $500,000 medical malpractice claim — the exact kind of claim Senator Santorum has long fought to outlaw in Washington. In testimony redolent of bleeding-heart-liberal whining, Santorum told a court his wife’s chiropractor-induced back troubles caused her to gain weight and damaged her self-esteem. The jury of softies, touched by the Senator’s tales of having to drag the family laundry upstairs for his afflicted spouse, awarded Karen Santorum $350,000. An indignant judge cut the award in half, but the fact remains that the Santorums scored tens of thousands of dollars on Karen’s achy back, while the Senator demands legal caps on pain-and-suffering awards to amputees and quadriplegics.

  18. Swarthmore mom,

    Here’s another excerpt from the Mother Jones article:

    Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who won the non-binding Missouri primary as well as the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses on Tuesday, has also slammed Obama’s decision. But he’s also gone farther than that, suggesting that any form of birth control is immoral. “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay,” Santorum, a devout Catholic, said in October. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” As Salon’s Irin Carmon has documented, Santorum thinks Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court decision that said states can not deny married couples access to contraception, should be overturned.

    http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/republican-war-birth-control-contraception

    *****

    God help us if Santorum becomes president!

  19. The Republican War on Contraception
    Not satisfied with restricting abortion rights, the GOP is now coming after your birth control.
    —By Nick Baumann
    Thu Feb. 9, 2012
    http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/republican-war-birth-control-contraception

    Excerpt:
    Last year was not a great one for abortion rights. First, congressional Republicans attempted to deny statutory rape victims access to Medicaid-funded abortions (twice). Then GOP-dominated state legislatures pushed record numbers of laws limiting abortion rights, including proposals that could have treated killing abortion providers as “justifiable homicide.”

    Yet in the past six months, social conservatives have widened their offensive, and their new target is clear: Not satisfied with making it harder to obtain legal abortions, they want to limit access to birth control, too.

    “Contraception is under attack in a way it really wasn’t in the past few years,” says Judy Waxman, the vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women’s Law Center. “In 2004, we could not find any group—the National Right to Life Committee, the Bush campaign, anyone—that would go on the record to say they’re opposed to birth control,” adds Elizabeth Shipp, the political director for NARAL Pro-Choice America. “We couldn’t find them in 2006 either, and in 2008 it was just fringe groups. In 2010, 2011, and this year, it’s just exploded.”

    Last year was not a great one for abortion rights. First, congressional Republicans attempted to deny statutory rape victims access to Medicaid-funded abortions (twice). Then GOP-dominated state legislatures pushed record numbers of laws limiting abortion rights, including proposals that could have treated killing abortion providers as “justifiable homicide.”

    Yet in the past six months, social conservatives have widened their offensive, and their new target is clear: Not satisfied with making it harder to obtain legal abortions, they want to limit access to birth control, too.

    “Contraception is under attack in a way it really wasn’t in the past few years,” says Judy Waxman, the vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women’s Law Center. “In 2004, we could not find any group—the National Right to Life Committee, the Bush campaign, anyone—that would go on the record to say they’re opposed to birth control,” adds Elizabeth Shipp, the political director for NARAL Pro-Choice America. “We couldn’t find them in 2006 either, and in 2008 it was just fringe groups. In 2010, 2011, and this year, it’s just exploded.”

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