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The trouble with silence on contraception

The RC ban on birth control fosters distrust and hampers the Church’s work, argues Quentin de la Bédoyère

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IN 1966, Roman Catholic mass attendance in England and Wales was two million, and the number of RC marriages was 45,000. Exactly 40 years ago, on 25 July 1968, Pope Paul VI promulgated his encyclical Humanae Vitae, confirming the traditional prohibition of contraception. By 2005, mass attendance had declined to about 800,000, and in 2003, the number of RC marriages was 11,000.

The sequence of these events is related. Fr Andrew Greeley, an American priest and sociologist, claims that the decline is “powerfully related to changing attitudes on sex and authority — and to nothing else that we can specify” (his italics). He dates this decline to Humanae Vitae, and not the Second Vatican Council, which preceded it.

Expectations for the encyclical had been high. The pill, which did not interfere with the conduct of the sexual act, would surely provide a lawful means of contraception. The grapevine said that the papal commission had strongly recommended that the traditional teaching should change. In the event, the prohibition on barrier contraceptives was confirmed, and extended to the pill.

The papal commission was originally called by Pope John XXIII in 1963 to provide the most compelling scientific evidence in support of the Roman Catholic position, not to reconsider it. It completed its work in 1965.

From an early point, deeper questions had begun to arise: was the teaching, held since Augustine, that the primary end of marriage was procreation consistent with the growing scientific knowledge that, by nature, only a minority of marital acts could be fertile? Any reversal of a doctrine taught so firmly by Pius X in 1930 would be grave.

What developed was a broad agreement that the starting point should be the marriage bond, which was typically expressed through the marital act. There was no prevailing reason why its biological structure should be preserved in every instance: natural family planning — the systematic use of the infertile period, barrier contraceptives, and the temporary suspension of fertility through the pill — were simply different ways of modifying natural outcomes suited to various circumstances, and best decided by the couple.

The commission emphasised a generous openness to procreation as the proper fruit of marriage. The majority report was approved (reputedly by 64 to 4), after separate votes by the bishops on key questions.

Yet it was authority and the continuity of tradition that won. It was understood that Pope Paul VI, who had supported the freedom of the commission, was privately persuaded by the opposing minority that he should hold the line.

I have a thick file of cuttings on the immediate reactions. The Catholic Herald (8 August 1968) summed these up: “No papal encyclical in the history of the Church caused so much controversy as Humanae Vitae.” It was a tumultuous time, and accompanied by many clerical secessions.

There were saving graces, however. Vatican II had recently emphasised the sacrosanctity of personal conscience, and, although Humanae Vitae was cited as certain and irreversible, it was not understood to be infallible. As was quickly pointed out, this meant that it was fallible.

Many diocesan bishops across the world left open the bolthole of the responsible conscience. An analysis at the time showed that more than half the dioceses softened or reinterpreted the message. The German bishops, for example, made it clear that a conscientious decision to reject the ruling must be respected, while others asked the faithful to continue to attend the sacraments, notwithstanding their difficulties with the teaching.

A more recent survey (The Naked Parish Priest, Stephen Louden and Leslie Francis, Continuum, 2003) suggested that two-fifths of the RC parish clergy in England and Wales did not support the total ban, and another fifth were uncertain. Surveys among the laity have routinely shown that four-fifths reject the teaching. A survey of Roman Catholics in The Tablet this month suggested that 47 per cent had never heard of the encyclical.

There are consequences. Those Roman Catholics who lacked confidence in following their consciences against firm teaching have moved to the margin of the Church or, sadly, beyond it.

They have left behind a collusion of silence. It is bad manners to ask a priest about his personal belief, for they know that he is sworn to orthodoxy. In return, the clergy do not push the encyclical. I have not heard a homily touching on the subject for years, and the sacrament of confession is little used now.

The doctrine must be taught in schools by teachers, who mainly do not believe it, to youngsters who put it in a little box and throw away the key. Their last day at school is so often their last day as practising Catholics.

The public work of the Church, through charities such as Cafod, is hobbled, and open to accusations of inconsistency in matters of abortion and AIDS.

This collusion of silence — perhaps more respectably known as pastoral prudence — has served us well over the ages. Perhaps those looking in from outside are better able to judge whether it is preferable to bickering and schism.

But it promotes distrust. Most serious of all, the voice of the Roman Catholic Church, which has a profound contribution to make on the values of marriage and sexuality, is largely ignored by its members, and dismissed as irrelevant by secular society.

The orthodox doctrine is firmly maintained by the Magisterium, either sincerely or under authority. But the community of the Church does not believe it. It has been taught, but it has not been received.

Quentin de la Bédoyère is Science Editor of The Catholic Herald. Here he writes in a personal capacity.


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