Birth Control, Bishops and Religious Authority

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The Obama administration’s ruling requiring certain Catholic institutions like hospitals and universities to offer health insurance covering birth control prompted a furious response from the Catholic bishops. The bishops argued that this was a violation of conscience since birth control is contrary to teachings of the Catholic Church, as expressed in Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae.”
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What interests me as a philosopher — and a Catholic — is that virtually all parties to this often acrimonious debate have assumed that the bishops are right about this, that birth control is contrary to “the teachings of the Catholic Church.” The only issue is how, if at all, the government should “respect” this teaching.
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What the church teaches is what the bishops (and, ultimately, the pope, as head of the bishops) say it does.
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But is this true? The answer requires some thought about the nature and basis of religious authority. Ultimately the claim is that this authority derives from God. But since we live in a human world in which God does not directly speak to us, we need to ask, Who decides that God has given, say, the Catholic bishops his authority?
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It may be objected that, regardless of what individual Catholics think, the bishops in fact exercise effective control over the church. This is true in many respects, but only to the extent that members of the church accept their authority. Stalin’s alleged query about papal authority (“How many divisions does the Pope have?”) expresses more than just cynical realpolitik. The authority of the Catholic bishops is enforceable morally but not militarily or politically. It resides entirely in the fact that people freely accept it.
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The mistake of the Obama administration — and of almost everyone debating its decision — was to accept the bishops’ claim that their position on birth control expresses an authoritative “teaching of the church.” (Of course, the administration may be right in thinking that the bishops need placating because they can cause them considerable political trouble.) The bishops’ claim to authority in this matter has been undermined because Catholics have decisively rejected it. The immorality of birth control is no longer a teaching of the Catholic Church. Pope Paul VI meant his 1968 encyclical, “Humanae Vitae,” to settle the issue in the manner of the famous tag, “Roma locuta est, causa finita est.” In fact the issue has been settled by the voice of the Catholic people.
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opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/birth-control-and-the-challenge-to-divine-authority
 
If I say the sun is cold it is I, not atomic-fusion, that is in error.
 
From the Article
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The bishops’ claim to authority in this matter has been undermined because Catholics have decisively rejected it. The immorality of birth control is no longer a teaching of the Catholic Church. Pope Paul VI meant his 1968 encyclical, “Humanae Vitae,” to settle the issue in the manner of the famous tag, “Roma locuta est, causa finita est.” In fact the issue has been settled by the voice of the Catholic people.
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The author of this article reveals a fundamental mistake in his reasoning here.

If a person claims to be Catholic and rejects the teachings of the Church, are they Catholic???
maybe - maybe not…

I believe that people (Catholics) fall into three categories in such matters.
  1. Those who accept Church teaching in toto and do their best to follow it.
  2. Those who accept Church teaching but also sin from time to time - for fail for a period of time due to weakness. These might “justify” to themselves, but ultimately they recognize their own weakness.
  3. Those who claim to be Catholic yet outright reject Church teaching - and thus Church authority over them.
Groups one and two obviously can legitimately claim to be Catholic for they accept Church authority. Group three - not so much.
They may claim to be Catholic, but how can they be when they reject Church authority???
Thus, to say that, “the issue has been settled by the voice of the Catholic people”, is misleading for how can the voice of the Catholic people be comprised of those who reject the authority of the Church???

Make sense???

Now - in fairness, I will say that a significant number of lay Catholics might be quite ignorant of the precarious position they are in. Liberal shepherds, from pastors to bishops, to theologians in supposedly Catholic Universities, have, over the last several decades, clouded the waters. They themselves did not pass on faithfully the teachings of the Church…So now we are faced with this confusion.

BUT - The bottom line - as regards the above quoted article - is that the “Catholic voice” MUST BE, by definition, those who accept the Authority of the Church…

Peace
James
 
The fact that many people once believed the world was flat did not make it so.

And the fact that many people think that people once believed the world was falt does not make it so.
 
Of course, the bishops’ teaching on birth control is an authoritative teaching of the church.
It’s not the bishops’ teaching. It’s the Church’s teaching, and has been so for 2,000 years.
Until 1930 it was also the authoritative teaching of every protestant denomination.
It was not the Church that moved.

The Church has taught consistently that artificial contraception, sterilization, abortion inducing drugs–things required by the HHS mandate–are moral evils.

It’s just wrong to say it might not be an authoritative teaching of the Church. It’s always been an authoritative teaching of the Church. And that won’t change.
 
“In fact the issue has been settled by the voice of the Catholic people.”

It is not the blinding ignorance of this statement that should be troubling but the fact that voice of the Church in this country has become so confused and circumspect that serious people actually believe nonsense like this. The failure of the bishops to defend Humanae Vitae - not simply when it came out but even today - lies at the root of this rot.

Ender
 
JimG said:
Of course, the bishops’ teaching on birth control is an authoritative teaching of the church.
It’s not the bishops’ teaching. It’s the Church’s teaching, and has been so for 2,000 years.
Until 1930 it was also the authoritative teaching of every protestant denomination.
It was not the Church that moved.

The Church has taught consistently that artificial contraception, sterilization, abortion inducing drugs–things required by the HHS mandate–are moral evils.

It’s just wrong to say it might not be an authoritative teaching of the Church. It’s always been an authoritative teaching of the Church. And that won’t change.
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I agree with what you have here; we have fallen into the trap of feeling that morality is subject to a vote.
 
AnotherVoice said:
I agree with what you have here; we have fallen into the trap of feeling that morality is subject to a vote.
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As I mentioned, until 1930, every protestant denomination had the exact same teaching on birth control as the Catholic Church.
It was taught to be a moral evil. This teaching was held by both Catholics and Protestants.

And then, in 1930, at the Anglican Lambeth conference, they took a vote.

Well, maybe it would be okay for married couples in cases where there were grave reasons. . .

And so began the moral decline.
 
The author is a loon. Applying his definition of what a “real” Catholic is, I would be a “real” atheist. I believe in God, believe in organized religion, view atheism as harmful to society, but as long as I call myself one I should counted as an athiest. Any actual athiest who takes offense at me being catagorized as an atheist; or takes offense at my views being held as valid by researchers/media/govt/etc is simply an out of touch reactionary who wants to pervert what atheism really is. Additionally, these actual atheists can be ignored/discounted as long as some news article somewhere claims them to be in the minority in regards to their views.

Funny, when I read 1984 in high school I thought it was fiction. Guess they need to move it to non-fiction (or do what the author of the article did and redefine non-fiction).
 
Just look at the fruit of contraception…women hate their husbands, birth rates below the replacement rate, women being objectified by men…
 
And, as always, Mark Steyn makes some great points on the recent aspiringate controversy:
Kathryn, Michael, since we must tread this grim path, my problem with the Aspirin gag and subsequent apology is that it wasn’t so much a joke as a bit of ancient folk wisdom – a bit like the old line that the second child takes nine months but the first takes whatever God wills, as they used to say when picking out the gift for the September baby of March newlyweds. These are lines about societal views of sex, and, while they’re certainly “antiquated” (in Michael’s word), the response to Mr Friess suggests an attempt to criminalize not the gag so much as the attitude underlying it.
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nationalreview.com/corner/291425/re-re-re-bad-jokes-mark-steyn
 
A small bit of good news:
As a priest, Father Landry has tried, gently, to lead couples away from contraception. “I know from their having told me that many of the couples here have stopped contracepting,” Father Landry said. “In terms of the numbers, it’s probably between 15 and 20 couples who have explicitly told me that.”
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Father Landry gets his message across in several ways. First, he talks to engaged couples about their plans for a family. To facilitate that conversation, he gives them a questionnaire.
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nationalreview.com/corner/291424/teaching-it-kathryn-jean-lopez
 
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