by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk
IN A RECENT COLUMN, David O’Brien, the associate director of religious education for lay ministry in the Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama, recounts the story of Agnes and Jake, devout Catholics who conceived and delivered four children during the first five years of their marriage.
Agnes described how Jake, “wanted to be a good father and husband, and he couldn’t see how that could happen if we continued to have more children. In short, he was getting a vasectomy.”
Agnes had a strong Catholic formation, and understood that married couples should not engage in sexual acts that have been intentionally blocked or “rendered infecund.” She struggled with Jake’s new stance, and dug her heels in.
She wondered how she could possibly be an authentic witness to the Gospel “if within my marriage, I was no longer open to life? How could I minister to other women and encourage them to be bold in their faith if I wasn’t living it myself? And what do I teach my children about marriage and sex when their father and I weren’t aligned?”
She went through an emotional roller coaster:
“At first, I cried. Then I yelled. Then I argued, calmly and intelligently. Then I cried some more. I shared with my husband excerpts from Kippley’s ‘Sex and the Marriage Covenant’ and the encyclical, ‘Humanae Vitae.’ We listened to Christopher West and Scott Hahn in the car.” Nonetheless, her husband was unchanging.
As it became clear that Jake would go ahead with the vasectomy notwithstanding her protests, Agnes confronted a question that many serious Catholics have had to contend with in their marriages. She wondered whether it would still be allowable for her to engage in marital relations with her husband after the vasectomy.
She wondered whether it would still be allowable for her to engage in marital relations with her husband after the vasectomy.
When one spouse is involved in this so-called “abuse of matrimony,” the other is placed in an awkward situation. A husband can struggle with a similar problem when his wife refuses to get off birth control pills and stop contraception. While the contracepting spouse is clearly doing something morally wrong, doesn’t the non-contracepting spouse also sin by cooperating in an act that the other spouse has made infertile?
Pope Pius XI addressed this issue as far back as 1930, but the clearest teaching of the Church came in a 1997 Vatican document called the Vademecum for Confessors. It notes that cooperation in the sin of one’s spouse, by continuing to engage in the marital act when the spouse has taken recourse to contraception, can be permissible when “proportionally grave reasons” exist for doing so, and when one is earnestly “seeking to help the other spouse to desist from such sinful conduct (patiently, with prayer, charity and dialogue; although not necessarily in that moment, nor on every single occasion).”
The Vademecum and sound counselors say that participation in such an act would not be in and of itself immoral on the part of the non-contracepting spouse, but these counselors would also say that the one trying to lead the Christian life ought not to initiate sexual relations with the contracepting spouse.
Thus, while Agnes would not be obliged to facilitate her husband’s sin, she could herself, without sin, engage in marital relations with him if she thought refusal to do so might lead to other sins, such as temptations to infidelity or divorce, as long as she continued to seek and encourage a change of heart and a change of perspective in him.
While Agnes came to understand this point in her head, she hesitated in her heart. After battling with Jake for over a year, she found herself burned out and exhausted.
One night, after crying through the night, a sudden and unexpected thunderstorm came through. As she heard the intense raindrops falling, she reflected on how the raindrops were like God’s tears. She realized that God, too, is in a kind of broken marriage, a difficult marriage with the humanity He loves. She considered how the Church, while being His spotless mystical bride, has members who are often unfaithful, hurting the Lord and blocking His life-giving love.
“And yet,” she reflected, “He never holds back. He comes to us, over and over again.” Indeed, God continues to give His body to the Church on her altars, ever beckoning us to conversion and perfection.
Agnes decided that for the time being, if her husband sought marital relations, she would consent, while patiently seeking to convince him that his unilateral decision about the vasectomy was a mistake. She hoped to bring him to consider a reversal of the vasectomy. She sought to keep communication on the matter open and active, entrusting this painful trial in their marriage to God: “I lift up our marriage, our intimacy, and our continued conversion to God who knows our hearts.”[hr] Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, Mass., and serves as the director of education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org.
My parents had a family of 10 children – at the time of the “Humanae Vitae” encyclical I remember my mother saying that if the pope did otherwise it would have been a terrible betrayal of Catholics like her who made sacrifices.
In fact, a sizeable percentage of Catholics always used birth control while in principle agreeing with the Church teaching regarding it. As a woman recently told me birth control had kept her away from the sacraments.
Fact is white Europeans are at below replacement level and the Catholics among them have adopted the anthropocentric “values” of the urban liberal bourgeoisie — feminism, gay marriage, abortion, STDs/”AIDS Walks”.
Interesting “New York Times” article that states:
“It is Hispanics who are replenishing the Catholic ranks, Luis E. Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said in a news conference.”
“The gains for the Catholic Church in this country among Latinos, from immigration and higher fertility rates, are more than making up for those Latino Catholics, particularly in the second generation, who go to other churches or turn secular,” Mr. Lugo said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/us/25cnd-hispanic.html
And a very interesting, well researched book “Catholics and Contraception” by Leslie Woodcock Tentler” – interviews with priests who were active in the 1940s/1950s, primary sources from that period, bears out the experience of Catholics in my parents’ generation:
http://www.amazon.com/Catholics-Contraception-American-Catholicism-Twent…
The “Birth Control Commission” which John XXIII set up in the unstable Vatican II period led many Catholics both priests and laity to anticipate a change in the Church teaching when there was no area of Catholic faith or morals that wasn’t questioned, attacked or rejected.
I might also add that a Catholic would get very little support for having a large family in this secularized, capitalistic society that puts a premium on “success” and individuality and has little regard for the Catholic communal values — not to mention the withdrawal of religious from the parochial school system after Vatican II when there was a mass exodus of priests and religious.
The societal and church supports that my parents’ generation had just aren’t there.
This article is another example of how out-of-touch some members of the Catholic Church is.
While it doesn’t approve of contraception, the Church should also acknowledge the difficulty of being responsible parents when there are too many children.
Isn’t it also our vocation to be loving, able parents? How many times have we heard stories of over-worked parents whose stress & lack of time resulted in child-neglects and broken homes?
Once that acknowledgement is stated, this article should also provide solutions, such as Natural Family Planning.
NFP is a wonderful alternative to secular birth control and yet the Church is not as vocal about it as its opposition to other birth controls.
Instead saying NO to this and to that, offer an alternative. Be LOUD about NFP.
Promote the alternatives. It’s more effective to give solutions than to forbid.
I remember my late mother telling me in the late 1940s/1950s the Sunday sermon more often than not on the topic of birth control being mortal sin.
There was absolutely no talk of “responsible parenthood” but rather “consider the lilies of the field” themes in those sermons.
Although Pope Paul VI issued “Humanae Vitae” in 1968 the opposition to that encyclical by priests and even bishops was very disillusioning to someone like my mother and also I am sure to a sizeable percentage of other Catholics who made difficult sacrifices.
All this history seems to have been swept under the carpet.
I remember discussing this issue with a religious who proceeded to explain the “internal forum” vis-a-vis birth control and presumably other faith/morals issues — implying mother late mother and others in her generation were not in-the-know or ignorant — nonsense.
In my mother’s generation and even I can remember being taught the importance of rightly formed Catholic conscience.
As I stated earlier, typically Catholics who did use birth control had difficulties with the “firm purpose of amendment” vis-a-vis Confession and avoided Communion.
There was never any talk of the “internal forum” — that came in the post-Vatican II period to justify the general rejection and questioning of Catholic faith and morals.
Would it perhaps help if we started asking some fundamental questions ? Example:
Until about the mid fifties the ‘position on top’ and ‘a tergo’ were condemned as serious venial sins (some theologians branded them as being ‘mortal sins’). This teaching was mentioned in a German handbook for Parish Priest: ‘Pastorale Medizin’, reprinted in the nineteen twenties. Filthy, swinish and salacious ‘caresses’ were also condemned. Because approximately 40% of young brides have to ‘learn’ to climax, this definitive teaching (deposited in Denzinger) RUINED the love life of millions upon millions of the faithful. A canon mentioned it in the thirteenth century and gives the period of penance after the penitent had renounced the ‘wife on top’ position ! I have a strong suspicion that it preceded right from the Church Fathers.
Around 1950 this ‘definitive’ teaching in Denzinger was abrogated and quietly removed. What is here the truth, 15 centuries before 1950 or the present teaching (all the 101 toe-curling positions are ok, even making a video of your performance; as long as you do not show it to the neighbours) ?
MY SUGGESTION: Right from the beginning ask your Parish Priest, Confessor, etc: Father is the teaching that mechenical contraception is intrinsically evil an INFALLIBLE teaching ? And if so, please quote me its number, so that I can look it up in Denzinger.
My experience: “uhm, ah, but surely 150 eminent theologians cannot be wrong.