Condemnation of Contraception is a Universal Norm

WASHINGTON, D.C., FEB. 8, 2012 (Zenit.org ).- Here is a question on bioethics asked by a ZENIT reader and answered by the fellows of the Culture of Life Foundation.

Q: Does the Catholic Church’s condemnation of contraception bind only on married couples or is it a universal moral norm?

E. Christian Brugger replies:

The Church’s teaching on contraception can only be rightly understood in the context of its wider teaching on the nature and goods of marriage.  But the norm itself against contraceptive acts, taught and defended since the early Church, binds universally—in the language of moral theology, semper et pro semper, without exception.  It singles out a particular type of freely chosen behavior, namely, deliberate acts intended to render sexual intercourse infertile. 

No Reason to Reject Standard Days Method

WASHINGTON, D.C., JAN. 25, 2012 (Zenit.org ).- Here is a question on bioethics asked by a ZENIT reader and answered by the fellows of the Culture of Life Foundation.

Q: The Standard Days Method (SDM) of Natural Family Planning (NFP) was introduced by Georgetown University and uses a bead counting method. Some Catholic doctors and priests have criticized the SDM for some/all of the following reasons:

1. It is not natural because a computer model was used to calculate the days of abstinence.

2. It is endorsed by USAID (which has links to abortion funding).

3. The original research paper left open the possibility of using a back-up method during the fertile period.

My question is: Can Catholic licitly teach and practice the SDM? -- Fr. JM, Southeast Asia

E. Christian Brugger offers the following response:

The Standard Days Method of fertility awareness is a newer and more precise variation of the older calendar (rhythm) method that used the length of a woman's menstrual cycle to estimate when fertility was most likely to occur.

Promoters of the SDM state that the newer method is only reliable for women whose cycles range in length from 26 to 32 days. Women outside this range are encouraged to use another method. Those who fall into that range and who wish to avoid pregnancy are advised to abstain from intercourse on days 8-19 of their cycle. These are the days, according to the method, when they are most likely to conceive. SDM literature reports that when the method is used correctly it has a 95% rate of effectivity.

Masturbation was commonly regarded in the past as a sin of “self-abuse.” But it makes sense to ask why or how a person “abuses him/herself” by masturbating. To answer this question it is most important to realize that our bodies are definitely not tools or instruments that we, human “persons,” use in order to do different things, among them to give us pleasurable experiences. Such a dualistic understanding of human persons and their bodies is widely accepted in secular culture and has influenced many, including some Christians. This understanding sharply differentiates between the “person,” i.e., the subject of experiences, and the “person’s” “body,” which of itself is part of the world of nature over which the “person” has dominion. 

The title of this article was suggested by a paper given in Spanish by Reynaldo Rivera called “Is it necessary to educate the heart?” at the First International Meeting on the Education of Adolescents on Affectivity and Sexuality held in May, 2006 in Mexico City. Rivera—and all the participants at this meeting—insisted that it is more important to educate the “hearts” of adolescents about their feelings and sexuality than it is to teach them the “facts of life.” [1]  Moreover, didn’t Jesus tell his disciples, “A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good” (Lk 7:43)?

In May, 2010 my article, “The Social Costs of Pornography” was posted on  http://culture-of-life.org//content/view/639/103 . It summarized a 61 page booklet, The Social Costs of Pornography: Findings and Recommendations published that year by the Witherspoon Institute.. Later in 2010 the Witherspoon Institute published a book of over 260 pages entitled The Social Costs of Pornography: A Reader, with a Foreword by Jean Bethke Elshstain and an Introduction by James R. Stoner and Donna M. Hughes.

This article will present some of the extensive evidence provided by the Reader of current scientific studies to show that use of pornography causes terrible harms to millions of people today. Because of the Internet and other new technologies those harms now affect more and more people who can access “hardcore” porn instantly from around the world.

Thirty years after the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported the first US case of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the disease continues to stretch its shroud of death across the world. This, despite the billions of dollars that have been invested in the development of vaccines, spent on anti-retroviral therapies, and strewn about in condom distribution and sexual education schemes.

But there is a strange and disturbing trend now evident in the new cases of HIV/AIDS being reported, and it concerns women of reproductive age.

In the most important and obvious sense there is certainly sex in Heaven simply because there are human beings in Heaven. As we have seen, sexuality, like race and unlike clothes, is an essential aspect of our identity, spiritual as well as physical. Even if sex were not spiritual, there would be sex in Heaven because of the resurrection of the body. The body is not a mistake to be unmade or a prison cell to be freed from, but a divine work of arto designed to show forth the soul as the soul is to show forth God, in splendor and glory and overflow of generous superfluity.

But is there sexual intercourse in Heaven? If we have bodily sex organs, what do we use them for there?

Not baby-making. Earth is the breeding colony; Heaven is the homeland.

Not marriage. Christ's words to the Sadducees are quite clear about that. It is in regard to marriage that we are "like the angels". (Note that it is not said that we are like the angels in any other ways, such as lacking physical bodies.)

Third Principle: Sex Is Spiritual

That does not mean "vaguely pious, ethereal, and idealistic". "Spiritual" means "a matter of the spirit", or soul, or psyche, not just the body. Sex is between the ears before it's between the legs. We have sexual souls.

For some strange reason people are shocked at the notion of sexual souls. They not only disagree; the idea seems utterly crude, superstitious, repugnant, and incredible to them. Why? We can answer this question only by first answering the opposite one: why is the idea reasonable, enlightened, and even necessary?

The idea is the only alternative to either materialism or dualism. If you are a materialist, there is simply no soul for sex to be a quality of If you are a dualist, if you split body and soul completely, if you see a person as a ghost in a machine, then one half of the person can be totally different from the other: the body can be sexual without the soul being sexual. The machine is sexed, the ghost is not. (This is almost the exact opposite of the truth: ghosts, having once been persons, have sexual identity from their personalities, their souls. Machines do not.)

WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 11, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Anyone interested in the rise of the phenomenon of public dissent by Catholics from the Church’s moral teaching in the last 40 years is familiar with the controversy generated by the publication of the papal encyclical "Humanae Vitae" issued by Pope Paul VI on July 25, 1968.

That publication was preceded by five years of careful review on the part of the Pope on all sorts of questions related to the regulation of birth. Part of that review was entrusted to a study group made up of ecclesiastics and experts, popularly referred to as the "Papal birth control commission."

Butterflies, blushing, giddiness, throbbing heart, are all symptoms of…..(drum roll)  yes, those bothersome, endearing, often dangerous yet exciting experiences we so commonly call “love.”   But can and should this sudden onset of attraction be worthy of the title of love?  What’s more, is it necessary to romantic marital love or is it something to be discarded as mere play of the emotions, a stoicly held distraction from virtuous love?

Surely, all of us can remember an instance, likely in our youth, where someone struck us with Cupid’s arrows.  Maybe it was the “bad boy” who came to land in our circle.  He was tall, lean, broad–shouldered, rugged and a fitting candidate for Michelangelo’s model of David.   Shameless as it may sound, many of us must admit that our ‘David’ made us tingle all over and left us acutely aware of his every flinch. 

Are moral judgments against homosexual behavior anything more than the expressions of emotional bias or narrow religious beliefs?  Two recent and highly divisive political decisions, one in the U.S. and the other in the U.K., would have us believe they are not.  The first, of course, is the Obama administration’s recent announcement that it thinks that the federal law known as the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional and consequently that it will no longer defend the law in court.  DOMA was passed in 1996 in response to early political initiatives to legalize same-sex marriage.  The law defines the term “marriage” for use throughout the entire body of federal law as a “legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” and the term “spouse” as “only a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”  The law also protects states from being legally forced to recognize as a marriage a same-sex relationship given legal recognition as a marriage in another state.  DOMA passed both houses of Congress by huge majorities and was signed by President Bill Clinton.  Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking on behalf of the Obama administration, harshly criticized the “moral disapproval” of homosexual lifestyles expressed by those who passed the law saying it reflected “stereotype-based thinking and animus.”  Holder also said he doubted whether “reasonable arguments” could be made in defense of DOMA.

“The Social Costs of Pornography: A Statement of Findings and Recommendations” is a booklet, edited by Mary Eberstadt and Mary Ann Layden and published last year by the Witherspoon Institute. The booklet summarizes a consultation of 54 scholars held in Princeton, N.J. in December 2008 sponsored by the Witherspoon Institute and co-sponsored by the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. A sampling of participating scholars includes Hadley Arkes of Amherst University, Gerard V. Bradley of Notre Dame University’s Law School, J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas, Mary Eberstadt of the Hoover Foundation, Jean Bethke Elshrain of the University of Chicago, John Finnis of Oxford University, Robert George of Princeton University, William Hurlbut, M.D., of Stanford University Medical School, Mary Ann Layden of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Psychiatry, Margarita Mooney of the University of North Carolina, David Novak of the University of Toronto, Roger Scruton of Oxford University, Gladys Sweeney of the Institute for the Psychological Studies, and W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia.

Dr.s Richard P. Fitzgibbons, M.D. & Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D. explain the early signs of Gender Identity Disorder, the sources of the disorder and counsel parents on strategies that can be counterproductive as well as strategies and therapies that are helpful and effective. 

Patrick McCrystal’s Who’s at the Center of YOUR Marriage…The Pill or Jesus Christ? Contraception’s Disintegrating Effect on Marital Harmony, is a very helpful book, rooted in the author’s and his wife’s personal experiences and research. In 1993 McCrystal, an Irish pharmacist, resigned his position in an Irish drugstore rather than fill prescriptions for the “contraceptive” pill.  Disappointed to find that no one would hire a pharmacist with pro-life views in “Catholic” Ireland, McCrystal’s profession led him to a new vocation. He and his wife Therese became actively involved in the Ireland Branch of Human Life International, where he served as its Director from 1997 to 2004 and decided to write this book in 2008, upon the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae. The book was published in 2009 in Dublin by Human Life International Ireland.

WASHINGTON, D.C., DEC. 1, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Now that the media furor has subsided regarding Benedict XVI's remarks about male prostitutes and condoms, I thought a brief consideration of one relevant unsettled question in Catholic moral theology might be valuable to ZENIT readers.

The journalist Peter Seewald and Pope Benedict are named as co-authors of the book, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times, published by Ignatius Press. In it Seewald asks Benedict a host of questions on such matters as these: What caused the clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church? Was there a "cover up"? Have you considered resigning? Does affirming the goodness of the human body mean a plea for "better sex"? Can there be a genuine dialogue with Islam? Should the Church rethink Catholic teaching on priestly celibacy, women priests, contraception, and same-sex relationships? Is there a schism in the Catholic Church? Is there any hope for Christian unity? How can the Pope claim to be "infallible"? Is there a "dictatorship of relativism" today? [1]

My recent Zenit pieces on marital consummation precipitated a delicate question related to the satisfaction of spouses—particularly wives—in marital conjugal relations.  I offer here some general thoughts on the question.  This essay’s content may not be appropriate for children to read.

WASHINGTON, D.C., SEPT. 8, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a question on bioethics asked by a ZENIT reader and answered by the fellows of the Culture of Life Foundation.

Q: If a husband and wife have a baby as a result of contracepted sex, was their marriage consummated?

What if spouses use contraception intending to minimize but not entirely impede the possibility of procreation? Have they contracepted? Especially if they actually conceive a baby as a result of the behavior?

How much in other words does your argument rely on the physical act of contraception as blocking consummation and how much are you presuming that the act shows a particular intention that would foreclose consummation? Maggie Gallagher -- Washington, D.C. (http://www.marriagedebate.com)

E. Christian Brugger offers the following response.

WASHINGTON, D.C., AUG. 25, 2010 (Zenit.org).- On Aug. 13, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the approval of a new "emergency contraceptive" called "Ella." Its competitor, Plan B, is said to "prevent pregnancy" up to 72 hours (3 days) after intercourse. Ella boasts of 120 hours (5 days) of post-coital effectiveness. The drug is produced by the Paris-based pharmaceutical company HRA Pharma and will be marketed by Watson Pharmaceuticals based out of Morristown, New Jersey. The FDA advisors voted unanimously to approve the drug.

The “conventional wisdom” prevalent in the United States, European Nations, and the United Nations is that the best way to prevent HIV/AIDS in Africa (or anywhere, for that matter) is to practice “safe sex,” that is, to make use of condoms and other prophylactic devises. The Catholic Church is regularly criticized for its failure to urge the use of condoms and “safe sex” in Africa and is blamed for the AIDS “epidemic” in sub-Sahara Africa.

WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 28, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a question on bioethics asked by a ZENIT reader and answered by the fellows of the Culture of Life Foundation.

Q: Does a contraceptive act of sexual intercourse fulfill the Canon Law requirements for Consummation? Regards, SG. A. -- Cape Town, South Africa

E. Christian Brugger offers the following response:

WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 14, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a question on bioethics asked by a ZENIT reader and answered by the fellows of the Culture of Life Foundation.

Q: Can you tell us what is the latest Church teaching about couples seeking a Catholic marriage, wherein one or both of the spouses are impeded from having children by a tubal ligation and/or vasectomy? Can a priest assist at such a marriage, if he were to know about the situation? Or is it enough that he ask them to consider a reversal? Seems like these cases are becoming an epidemic, and every priest seems to be handling this question differently. -- Fr. I.S. Belleville, New Jersey, USA

E. Christian Brugger and William E. May offer the following response: 

WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 16, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a question on bioethics asked by a ZENIT reader and answered by the fellows of the Culture of Life Foundation.

Q: Are there any conditions to follow Natural Family Planning (NFP) by a married couple, or is there blanket approval by Catholic Church? Wouldn't NFP be against life if the intention of the couple involved in sexual act is just pleasure and not life, provided they don't have any valid reason to postpone pregnancy? In this case, can NFP be also considered similar to using condoms? Thanks and Regards -- D.R.P, Bangalore, India. 

E. Christian Brugger offers the following response:

In 1960 the Food and Drug Administration approved the oral contraceptive known as “The Pill.” To celebrate the Pill’s 50th birthday Elaine Tyler May, Regents Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Minnesota, has published America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation (New York: Basic Books, a Member of the Perseus Books Group, 2010, 214 pp.).

“The Social Costs of Pornography: A Statement of Findings and Recommendations” is a booklet, edited by Mary Eberstadt and Mary Ann Layden and published last year by the Witherspoon Institute. The booklet summarizes a consultation of 54 scholars held in Princeton, N.J. in December 2008 sponsored by the Witherspoon Institute and co-sponsored by the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. A sampling of participating scholars includes Hadley Arkes of Amherst University, Gerard V. Bradley of Notre Dame University’s Law School, J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas, Mary Eberstadt of the Hoover Foundation, Jean Bethke Elshrain of the University of Chicago, John Finnis of Oxford University, Robert George of Princeton University, William Hurlbut, M.D., of Stanford University Medical School, Mary Ann Layden of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Psychiatry, Margarita Mooney of the University of North Carolina, David Novak of the University of Toronto, Roger Scruton of Oxford University, Gladys Sweeney of the Institute for the Psychological Studies, and W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia.

Andrew Koppelman and others say “It certainly does!”
Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at Northwestern University, and others claim that contraception definitely prevents abortion. This April (2010) Koppelman posted a commentary, “How the Religious Right Promotes Abortion,” [1] that was immediately attacked byspokespersons of the “Religious Right” (e.g., Michael New of the Witherspoon Institute). Koppelman judges it to be “astoundingly stupid and tragic” to argue over this. Continuing, he said, “One of the rare areas of common ground between opponents and supporters of abortion rights is that neither side thinks that unintended pregnancy is a good thing.  We should be able to come together on measures that would actually reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancy, and thus, inevitably, reduce the abortion rate.  That might even help the anti-abortion cause in the long run, because it would reduce the number of American women who have had abortions…. Yet instead, we are having this silly argument.  It is dispiriting.”

The April 10, 2010 bulletin of iMAPP Marriage News [1] highlighted this issue. It focused on the Witherspoon Foundation’s recent conference and book, The Social Costs of Pornography.[2]

After summing up Marriage News’s report of the Witherspoon Foundation’s conference and book on the social costs of pornography, I will present the masterful analysis of pornography and “pornovision” offered by a prominent philosopher/theologian during the last quarter of the 20th century, namely, Karol Wojtyla, better known as Pope John Paul II.

Duke University Champions
Most Americans know that Duke University’s Men’s basketball team is the 2010 champion of college basketball. But few know that Dr. Monique Chireau, a Duke University expert in obstetrics and gynecology, is a champion of abstinence only programs as the way to help teenage girls forbear having sex, whether allegedly “safe” or “less unsafe,” and as a result avoid getting pregnant and at the same time avoid contracting an STD or sexually transmitted disease.

In 2006, Cardinal Carlo Martini, retired archbishop of Milan and a respected biblical scholar, expressed his opinion that it was morally permissible and prudent for married couples to use condoms when engaging in genital intercourse to prevent transmission of HIV. In doing so, he made his own the view of Dominican Cardinal Georges Cottier, the former theologian of the Pontifical Household, and a number of bishops.

“I want to have children with you.”  These are the opening words of the U.S. Bishops’ new document on reproductive technology, Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology,
issued on November 17 (www.usccb.org/LifeGivingLove/lifegivinglovedocument.pdf ).  The document is addressed specifically to married couples suffering from infertility and considering their options.  It attempts to balance a sincere empathy for their bitter experience of loss with clear guidance on ethically legitimate alternatives: “The Church has compassion for couples suffering from infertility and wants to be of real
help to them.”  The text acknowledges the temptation they can experience to cut a ‘faustian bargain’ in order to secure the object of their desperate desires.  And it encourages them to hope in God even in the face of human disappointment.  Specifically, it asks whether certain forms of assisted reproduction are consistent with the flourishing of marriage and with the duties we owe to nascent human life.  In the words of the statement: “Some solutions offer real hope for restoring a couple’s natural, healthy ability to have children. Others pose serious moral problems by failing to respect the dignity of the couple’s marital relationship, of their sexuality, or of the child.”

When God made man, he did not make a conscious subject aware of itself as a self to which he then added a body as an afterthought. Rather, when he made man, "male and female he created them," and he blessed them, saying: "Be fertile and multiply" (Gen 1:27-28).

Here I examine Charles J. Reid, Jr’s “Marriage: Its Relationship to Religion, Law, and the State,” Douglas Laycock’s “Afterword,” and offer final comments.

I summarized pp. 157-176 of Reid’s chapter in Part I of this review; in them he showed that traditionally in Western civilization and particularly in Anglo-American history marriage was regarded as “a divine institution.” Here I focus on the section “Marriage and the State” (176-187) and on his “Conclusion” (187-188).

1.    Ms. O’Leary, can you begin by helping us understand what is meant by feminism, and whether there are particular distinctions among feminists that are important to recognize?

It is important to distinguish liberal feminism from radical feminism and these from the search for authentic womanhood based on the truth about the human person.

If you were looking for another indicator of the cultural malaise to which our young are subjected today, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) delivered last week.   At the 2008 National STD Prevention Conference in Chicago, March 11th, they issued results of a nationally representative survey which found that slightly more that one in four (26%), or 3.2 million, teenage girls between ages 14 and 19 have contracted a sexually transmitted disease (STD).  Among those infected, about 15% had more than one disease.  Some groups had about twice the national average – nearly half of young African American women or adolescents in the survey had an STD.