Why do most people ignore the Church's teaching on contraception?

[jmjZelie]

I think it’s because we are raised as Catholics to be “good people”

rather than to be SAINTS.

In other words, striving to learn and follow God’s will even (or perhaps especially) when it requires sacrifice, in order to become the holiest people we can become before we die.

We want to be nice people with a nice life and don’t understand that suffering and sacrifice is what chisels us like sculptures out of stone.

We want our kids to have a nice comfortable life rather than understanding that large families are “saint making machines” since they force everyone to learn and practice virtues.

We don’t really trust God with everything.

Believe me, I’ve struggled with this one too and I had a great deal of difficulty with bearing and raising my 5, but I wouldn’t never turn to the pill and risk flushing my babies down the toilet unknowingly.

What an excellent, heartfelt post.

 

[Usige]

Yeah well, new year and all. Probably need to find out what that smell is…

You must not have any teenage boys, that’s generally the source of odd smells… oh wait, you meant smells from the fridge? Again, you must not have teenagers. Half the time they are eating the groceries between the car and the kitchen.

 

[alphawoman]

A lack of understanding of NFP by multiple players–priests, doctors, lay Catholics–both the medical and spiritual aspects, is behind low NFP adoption rates.

Family planning has become the purview of medical doctors, without due reference to faith. When metadata on family planning efficacy presented in refereed journals all source Trussell’s estimate of a 24% Pearl index per year for aggregate NFP, doctors are hesitant to recommend NFP, if not opposed to it for women not actively seeking pregnancy.

Even when we dig into the individual multi-centre trials for individual methods and see a breakdown of method and user failure rates, there is a LOT of empirical obfuscation. Drop-out rates are high in the trials–often in excess of 10% of the initial sample population, but adjustment factors aren’t used to correct for drop outs in the failure rates. Population samples are unrepresentative of the broader NFP user population. If you aren’t a 20-some thing, white, university educated, healthy weight woman with no confounding prescriptions or medical conditions, then hooray! The data may just apply to you.

What’s missing is empirical rigour, large sample sizes, and representative sample populations in the clinical trials that support NFP. If the Church threw some support behind finding a few multi centre prospective clinical trials of 10,000+ participants representative of the broader NFP using population, then doctors would have good data with which to recommend NFP. The existing studies aren’t without merit, but interpreting their results requires caution.

Frankly, if the Church wanted to build support for NFP, in addition to financially supporting clinical trials, it would encourage medical key opinion leaders in paediatrics and gynaecology to publish on the usefulness of NFP as a health indicator for all women, starting at menarche, even absent family planning motives. There are REAMS of epidemiological data that could be collected that way that are being missed out of a lack of foresight, which could then be used to develop and modify NFP methodology. The Church could easily be a leader in women’s health and spearhead a global movement to revolutionize female reproductive health. A pithy call to action to scientists in Humanae Vitae does not, IMO, fulfill the Church’s duty of care to its flock. If moral and responsible family planning is truly a Catholic priority, then the Church has to take a leadership role in generating pull through of demand for NFP because, culturally, the sell is weak for those not intimately acquainted with Humanae Vitae.

 

[loumeland]

Frankly, if the Church wanted to build support for NFP, in addition to financially supporting clinical trials, it would encourage medical key opinion leaders in paediatrics and gynaecology to publish on the usefulness of NFP as a health indicator for all women, starting at menarche, even absent family planning motives. There are REAMS of epidemiological data that could be collected that way that are being missed out of a lack of foresight, which could then be used to develop and modify NFP methodology. The Church could easily be a leader in women’s health and spearhead a global movement to revolutionize female reproductive health. A pithy call to action to scientists in Humanae Vitae does not, IMO, fulfill the Church’s duty of care to its flock. If moral and responsible family planning is truly a Catholic priority, then the Church has to take a leadership role in generating pull through of demand for NFP because, culturally, the sell is weak for those not intimately acquainted with Humanae Vitae.

Wow, very well thought out reply. My question for you now is, do you think this is done on purpose?

 

[LongingSoul]

Frankly, if the Church wanted to build support for NFP, in addition to financially supporting clinical trials, it would encourage medical key opinion leaders in paediatrics and gynaecology to publish on the usefulness of NFP as a health indicator for all women, starting at menarche, even absent family planning motives. There are REAMS of epidemiological data that could be collected that way that are being missed out of a lack of foresight, which could then be used to develop and modify NFP methodology. The Church could easily be a leader in women’s health and spearhead a global movement to revolutionize female reproductive health. A pithy call to action to scientists in Humanae Vitae does not, IMO, fulfill the Church’s duty of care to its flock. If moral and responsible family planning is truly a Catholic priority, then the Church has to take a leadership role in generating pull through of demand for NFP because, culturally, the sell is weak for those not intimately acquainted with Humanae Vitae.

I can give an example of what NFP is up against. Back in the late 70’s/early 80’s when my father was in the Knights of the Southern Cross… one of their projects was against a number of the major pharmaceuticals companies who were deliberately buying out the research and prototypes of fertility awareness products for NFP, and then shelving them. They were not letting any product out there to compete with the burgeoning contraceptives market which was seen as the pharma cash cow of the future. It surely has become that for them. Unfortunately Dad has alzheimers now and can’t fill me in on what all the outcomes were, but you can bet that sort of thing still goes on. When we now know that the awful drug thalidomide wasn’t pulled from the market until years after it was known to cause deformities, you get the idea of how ethics devoid and profit driven the pharma industry is.

 

[alphawoman]

Wow, very well thought out reply. My question for you now is, do you think this is done on purpose?

Thanks, loumeland.

I think there is a lack of a cohesive strategy on the part of the Church from the Vatican down in terms of promoting NFP. Whether this is conscious or not, I suspect it arises from a misplaced hesitance at alienating dissenting Catholics in a time of declining religious participation.

My personal opinion is that the Church needs a proactive, evidence-based overarching communications strategy that provides clear, irrefutable medical and spiritual evidence in the case for NFP. The spiritual evidence is two millennia of top shelf scholarship and Jesus Christ Himself, so surely some thoughtful theologians could devise regionally tailored education and communication strategies on the spiritual element of NFP. The beauty of our faith is that we have truth on our side! Where the Church needs to substantiate its position is on the medical evidence side, which would be a feasible, if significant, undertaking.

In my experience in Canada, instruction in NFP is piecemeal and largely divested to lay volunteers, who are neither medical nor spiritual experts. I have never heard a reference to Humanae Vitae, Mulieris Dignitatem, or any other encyclicals in discussions of sexual ethics in homilies. Ever. Frankly, our priests locally are muzzled from objecting strongly to political movements to introduce euthanasia and controversial sex education curricula in publicly funded Catholic schools, so inept or nonexistent communication of NFP teaching is symptomatic of a larger difficulty with effective transmission of Catholic values.

I would love to be a Vatican strategist for communication and evangelization.

 

[revert_jen]

Why have most Catholics (several sources say at least 80-90%) disregarded what is, as far as I know, the official church teaching on contraception, which is that every sexual act within the bounds of marriage must be ordered toward procreation?

I want to pick up on just one piece of this question–the one where it says 80-90% of Catholics use contraception. Certainly some do. Possibly even a mojority of people of child-bearing age–I don’t know. But most likely nothing like 90%.

I have seen some of the questions in the surveys. They have questions about what your religion is, do you practice (how often you go to church in a month), and then whether you have used contraception.

In my case, the answer to the first would be Catholic, the second would be one or more times a week, and the answer to the last would be “yes.” So I’m one of those practicing Catholics who use birth control, right?

Wrong. I’m not even going to go into how unreliable self-report data is in general. What those answers don’t indicate is that I wasn’t ever a practicing Catholic and contracepting at the same time. I was away from the Church (going to Protestant churches) for over 10 years, and for a couple of years before that, I had been a C&E-only Catholic. Those were the times when I used contraception. There are a lot of people who stop practicing in college or when they first move out. This period might be expected to coincide with behavior that is frequently associated with contraception.

So the numbers that get reported make it sound like 90% of practicing Catholics use contraception, but really the numbers say that “90% of people who currently report themselves as Catholic have at some time in their life used contraception.” Many non-Catholics want the Church to change her teaching on contraception for reasons unrelated to doctrine or Truth. They try to use these numbers to indicate that the vast majority of practicing Catholics disagree with the Church’s teaching on contraception, so therefore the Church should change her teaching. This is wrong for many reasons, including:

• The Church is not a democracy. If people disagree with the Church’s teachings, it is really not an indication that the teaching should change.
• Practicing Catholics are sinners. All people are sinners. If I use contraception, that doesn’t mean I think the Church is wrong; it may just mean that I was weak and scared.
• As I demonstrated above, it doesn’t say that people were practicing Catholics and contracepting at the same time.

The publication of misleading numbers like that is harmful to people because it leads them to think, “I don’t need to confess to using contraception, because if 90% of practicing Catholics are doing it, it can’t really be important.”

So please keep in mind these issues when reading surveys on this subject.

–Jen

 

[alphawoman]

I can give an example of what NFP is up against. Back in the late 70’s/early 80’s when my father was in the Knights of the Southern Cross… one of their projects was against a number of the major pharmaceuticals companies who were deliberately buying out the research and prototypes of fertility awareness products for NFP, and then shelving them. They were not letting any product out there to compete with the burgeoning contraceptives market which was seen as the pharma cash cow of the future. It surely has become that for them. Unfortunately Dad has alzheimers now and can’t fill me in on what all the outcomes were, but you can bet that sort of thing still goes on. When we now know that the awful drug thalidomide wasn’t pulled from the market until years after it was known to cause deformities, you get the idea of how ethics devoid and profit driven the pharma industry is.

Absolutely! Now, de-link big pharma funding from clinical discovery (or concealment!) by using Vatican capital for research and you open the field dramatically for publishable, actionable data. Credible, replicable, large scale trials would be expensive up front, but the moral return on investment in terms of souls and lives saved would be infinite! The Church can’t afford NOT to support NFP clinical trials on that basis! I, personally, would be eager to offer donations to support such an initiative.

I’m stepping off my clinical trial soapbox pending further discussion so as not to monopolize this convo. It’s a pet issue dear to my heart, but it isn’t the sole contributing factor to the challenge of improving NFP adoption rates.

 

[Regina7]

Absolutely! Now, de-link big pharma funding from clinical discovery (or concealment!) by using Vatican capital for research and you open the field dramatically for publishable, actionable data. Credible, replicable, large scale trials would be expensive up front, but the moral return on investment in terms of souls and lives saved would be infinite! The Church can’t afford NOT to support NFP clinical trials on that basis! I, personally, would be eager to offer donations to support such an initiative.

I’m stepping off my clinical trial soapbox pending further discussion so as not to monopolize this convo. It’s a pet issue dear to my heart, but it isn’t the sole contributing factor to the challenge of improving NFP adoption rates.

You’re right. Why would Big Pharma promote nfp? There’s no money in it. I don’t pay anything to do nfp- nobody is making money off of me each month, whereas contraception pads others’ pockets.

 

[alphawoman]

I want to pick up on just one piece of this question–the one where it says 80-90% of Catholics use contraception. Certainly some do. Possibly even a mojority of people of child-bearing age–I don’t know. But most likely nothing like 90%.

I have seen some of the questions in the surveys. They have questions about what your religion is, do you practice (how often you go to church in a month), and then whether you have used contraception.

In my case, the answer to the first would be Catholic, the second would be one or more times a week, and the answer to the last would be “yes.” So I’m one of those practicing Catholics who use birth control, right?

Wrong. I’m not even going to go into how unreliable self-report data is in general. What those answers don’t indicate is that I wasn’t ever a practicing Catholic and contracepting at the same time. I was away from the Church (going to Protestant churches) for over 10 years, and for a couple of years before that, I had been a C&E-only Catholic. Those were the times when I used contraception. There are a lot of people who stop practicing in college or when they first move out. This period might be expected to coincide with behavior that is frequently associated with contraception.

So the numbers that get reported make it sound like 90% of practicing Catholics use contraception, but really the numbers say that “90% of people who currently report themselves as Catholic have at some time in their life used contraception.” Many non-Catholics want the Church to change her teaching on contraception for reasons unrelated to doctrine or Truth. They try to use these numbers to indicate that the vast majority of practicing Catholics disagree with the Church’s teaching on contraception, so therefore the Church should change her teaching. This is wrong for many reasons, including:

• The Church is not a democracy. If people disagree with the Church’s teachings, it is really not an indication that the teaching should change.
• Practicing Catholics are sinners. All people are sinners. If I use contraception, that doesn’t mean I think the Church is wrong; it may just mean that I was weak and scared.
• As I demonstrated above, it doesn’t say that people were practicing Catholics and contracepting at the same time.

The publication of misleading numbers like that is harmful to people because it leads them to think, “I don’t need to confess to using contraception, because if 90% of practicing Catholics are doing it, it can’t really be important.”

So please keep in mind these issues when reading surveys on this subject.

–Jen

Jen, all good points well taken. I’d be a confounder, too, as someone who contracepted before reverting, who has used NFP, and who currently uses hormonal contraceptives for licit medical treatment of an infirmity. Good luck finding a box to check for that!

Nevertheless, there is still value in learning that Catholics do turn from Church teaching, if only temporarily.

 

[ThePCWife]

From the Protestant end of the river, people contracept because there is no village and women fear the prospect of caring for many closely spaced children all by themselves while their husband is at work all day. And also horror stories from their grandmothers about broken down bodies from double-digit pregnancies and the clawing fear of another mouth to feed when there’s already six others in five years and your husband was just laid off at the mill.

Related, support for “easy” divorce among conservative Protestant women is much the same in my experience, it’s often a belief that women who are beaten by their husbands and forced to hide money under floorboards are almost all the ones divorcing and that only rich celebrities frivolously divorce or have protracted custody battles.

The Lambeth decision was in 1930, when there was a recession before food stamps, before easy credit, before a lot of riches that make having a ton of kids relatively easier to feed, clothe and house. It was not the best decision, but it wasn’t made lightly or frivolously. I think the Catholics who ignore the Catholic teachings on contraception are also coming from that place of true fear about what it costs when the only limit on babies is a husband’s will. It’s scary and hard, and in parts of the world where women have more kids, it’s not exactly paradaisical or all that carefree to be a mother at home, even with lots of other women and children around.

People who are very blithe about how people already having kids should just haz moar should be willing to pay for some au pairs and maids and schedule play dates and pay for college and trade school and ship meals after every pregnancy and fund more doulas, and and and.

Just saying, it’s easy to talk about how terrible it is that people don’t do something hard, but it’s hard to join them in the work by assisting materially.

 

[LongingSoul]

I’ve felt the pressure to contracept especially in that period after the birth of each child while you are breastfeeding. It only came about because of slight pressure from my husband to recommence sexual relations and my feeling of guilt at denying that. In the end, I couldn’t do the contraception road because I just couldn’t deliberately go against Church teaching. I can only put that down to my knowledge of how serious a sin contracepting was from the Catholic literature my mother had given me since puberty. I really think that that type of relentless literature was powerful as both my sister and I have remained steadfast against contraception our whole lives. It has shaped our relationships and our marriages profoundly.

I think it would have been very beneficial to have lessons at school based on that literature and I really don’t know why the Catholic Education system is leary of it. Is there pressure from the rights and freedoms lobbies? I know when my daughter was in senior in 2012 each girl had to do a brochure on a social issue to promote the Catholic teaching. She chose IVF but the girls were told they couldn’t do homosexuality. The problem is that if the secular world views a thing as discriminatory they can reach into the Catholic education system and influence it.

I do believe eventually the effects of contraception will prove profoundly destructive to the human race both physically and spiritually. How can it ever be good for the human race to treat our fertility as a disability or even a nuisance? When something affects the psyche of a species like that, they evolve to eliminate it in each new generation. Infertility and sex disease is already a horrible new scourge in the Western world.

We are such a dumb world at times. Living large until nature raises up in its fury. Then everyone blames God for it!!!

 

[Usige]

It is true, God is capable of granting miracles we believe that completely!

It is also prudent that we live according to our state in life, follow the commandments and respect the natural law as God designed it.

I could jump off my roof and God could save me from harm, I could eat food and God could prevent me from getting fat, I could take artificial birth control and God could send a child into my life anyway. However these things are not likely, because God clearly created natural law and the natural order of things and He did so for a reason. When we show disrespect for the natural order we are showing disrespect for God. Saying that he can create miracles is besides the point, He created gravity, our digestive systems and our reproductive systems and when we tamper with those or tempt natural things there are consequences.

Thanks for such a clear response.

 

[HCTC]

It is true, God is capable of granting miracles we believe that completely!

It is also prudent that we live according to our state in life, follow the commandments and respect the natural law as God designed it.

I could jump off my roof and God could save me from harm, I could eat food and God could prevent me from getting fat, I could take artificial birth control and God could send a child into my life anyway. However these things are not likely, because God clearly created natural law and the natural order of things and He did so for a reason. When we show disrespect for the natural order we are showing disrespect for God. Saying that he can create miracles is besides the point, He created gravity, our digestive systems and our reproductive systems and when we tamper with those or tempt natural things there are consequences.

When a couple who is using bc conceives a child, I don’t think it is a miracle - nor do most people. It’s not that uncommon. I do believe that every pregnancy is the result of God’s Will.
I also believe that the Gospels are there for our edification. The circumstances of the birth of Jesus and John the Baptist demonstrate, in my humble opinion, the power of God’s Will in the matter of procreation. I’ve thought for sometime about why God give Mary the opportunity to consent. Some people say it is because He knew that she would. While that is obvious, it seems to me that He gave Mary the opportunity to consent for our benefit - to demonstrate to us that we have the opportunity to consent, or not. God wants our consent, but I believe that He wants us to consent freely - consciously.

 

[roseofshannon]

Yes, of course he wants us to consent.

All babies are conceived with the consent of the parents unless it’s a case of rape.

On another note:

Mother Theresa had an eternal perspective on this subject.

She said that contraception is a greater evil than abortion because with abortion the child has an opportunity for eternal life, whereas with contraception, the child that should have been conceived according to nature, will not be, and has no such opportunity.

NFP is of value, but without understanding our call to sacrifice, it’s a hard sell.

We are taught from the earliest age in our culture that the highest form of love = sex.

The truth is that the highest form of love = sacrifice.

Laying your life down for another is the highest form of love, and that’s what we are called to.

This life will be over before we know it.

 

[Abu]

Probably because they have not been well formed in Catholic teaching and/or in the practice of NFP.

The great teaching from Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii (1930), and from Pope Paul VI in *Humanae Vitae *(1968) (which was required only because of the advent of the “Pill”), clearly define what is acceptable, and what is not, before God.

**Answer by Fr.Stephen F. Torraco on June 19, 2006 (EWTN): **
“If you want an objective reason as to why contraception is a serious evil and NFP is not only morally justifiable but also praiseworthy, that objective reason is this: with contraception, there is the deliberate rupture of the intimate link between the unitive and procreative meanings of the marital act. With NFP, there is no such rupture. Even in the case in which a couple, using NFP, resorts to the infertile period for marital relations so as to avoid pregnancy (assuming for the sake of argument, for serious reasons) there is no such objective rupture of that link precisely because there is nothing there to contracept. You need to understand that morality is not simply about results. It is also about our actions in and of themselves. The argument to which you refer (the results are the same with NFP and contraception) is purely utilitarian and does not take into consideration the entire human act. Furthermore, as I have pointed out several times, the condoning of contraception quite logically is also the condoning of genital activity with anyone or anything, as well as of in vitro fertilization and cloning. The Church’s teaching on contraception does not at all depend on faith. It is a clear and rational defense of the very essence of civilization.”

 

[paperwight66]

MotherTheresa had an eternal perspective on this subject.

She said that contraception is a greater evil than abortion because with abortion the child has an opportunity for eternal life, whereas with contraception, the child that should have been conceived according to nature, will not be, and has no such opportunity.

.

Do you have a source for that saying, please?

Sometimes quotes are given of things Mother Teresa is supposed to have said which then turns out to be untrue.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

Do you have a source for that saying, please?

Sometimes quotes are given of things Mother Teresa is supposed to have said which then turns out to be untrue.

I too would like to see the source. It does not sound right.

 

[kptrs]

I too would like to see the source. It does not sound right.

Me, too. Contraception is a mortal sin, I won’t dispute that. But I have to think that actually killing a human life is worse than preventing its beginning.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Me, too. I don’t believe Mother Teresa would say that.