David Quinn
The liberal view of sexual relationship is so dominant it is coming to regard any opposing views as a form of bigotry, writes David Quinn
The Catholic Church places contraceptive use among acts it considers “intrinsically evil”. This is extremely strong language, rarely heard today.
When Pope St Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae in 1968, reiterating and confirming the Church’s age-old teaching against artificial contraception it caused a firestorm of protest. Contraceptives such as the pill are an extremely convenient way of preventing pregnancy and married Catholics who already had several children considered Humanae Vitae very unreasonable, and it is indeed a hard teaching.
But strictly speaking, from the point of view of Catholic doctrine (and all Christian doctrine until the 1930s), it is intrinsically wrong to use artificial contraception because it deliberately interferes with the true nature and purpose of sex which is to be both unitative and procreative. This is not to say that every sex act has to be aimed at pregnancy, but that artificial barriers should not be put in the way.
Natural
The Church allows natural family planning because this uses the natural infertile period each month to plan your family. It works with nature, in other words, rather than against it. Natural family planning is about as effective in preventing pregnancy as the condom and about half as effective as the pill.
I say all this by way of introducing a Vatican document issued last week which deals with the issue of whether the Church can bless same-sex unions. It says it cannot do this. It was issued because in some parts of the world, not least Germany, clergy and other Catholics are saying the Church ought to bless same-sex unions.
The most controversial passage of the short document says: “he [God] does not and cannot bless sin”.
Understanding
This cannot be understood without also understanding the totality of Catholic teaching about sex. The Church believes that all sexual relationships must be marital, and therefore it believes that all sex that takes place outside marriage is wrong. But even inside marriage it believes that using artificial contraception is wrong, or to use its very strong term, ‘intrinsically evil’, because sexual intercourse, as mentioned, must be both unitative and open to procreation. That is, it must be a reproductive act, at least in principle. If a male-female couple are infertile, that is not their fault, the Church says. The act is still reproductive by its nature, even if a given couple can never, or no longer, have children.
The Church opposes artificial contraception for the same reason it is against homosexual acts; because it believes both go against the true, reproductive nature of sex. Once you drop opposition to one, it becomes much easier to drop opposition to the other.
Some Christian traditions now teach that sexual intercourse need not be orientated towards procreation, that doing so does not contradict its nature and purpose. But once you go down that road, then why does it have to be unitative, that is, an act of physical love and unity? The purpose of sex is then whatever you want it to be. It can be purely and solely for pleasure, and this is obviously precisely what modern societies now believe.
In fact, what we have here is a very major clash of worldviews. One, the Catholic view, is that some sexual acts are wrong by their nature, even if they appear to harm no-one else, whereas the liberal view is more or less that no sexual act is wrong unless it is non-consensual and does harm to another person.
Liberalism believes this because it has ditched the belief that sex has an inherent, intrinsic design and purpose.
For a very long time, the Christian teaching on sex was dominant in the West, and versions of it were elsewhere also, and in some parts of the world, still are.
Then, for a few decades the two views co-existed in an uneasy tension. But now we seem to be moving into a new phase in which the liberal view of sex and sexual relationship is so dominant it is coming to regard any opposing views as a form of ‘hate’, and ‘bigotry’, the public expression of which might even have to be outlawed, and certainly massively socially discouraged.
Therefore, the Church must mute what it has to say about contraception, same-sex relations, divorce, cohabitation, casual sex and so on.
To a large extent, in the West at least, it has already done so, and certainly it almost never attaches words like ‘sin’ or ‘intrinsically ‘evil’ to those activities.
This is partly justifiable on prudential grounds. The vast majority of married Catholic couples use artificial contraception and telling them they are engaged in ‘intrinsic evil’ (meaning the act is wrong by its very nature), will only alienate and annoy them.
Pope Francis is urging a softer approach that places less emphasis on ‘hard talk’, and condemnatory language, and more emphasis on mercy.
Teaching
On the other hand, he is not changing the actual teaching on these matters. He is not free to do this even if he was so inclined. He is as bound by the revealed truth of God as every other Catholic.
He believes instead in pastoral ‘accompaniment’, that is, bringing someone gently towards the truth, rather than lecturing them every inch of the way.
But if we do come to the point where certain Church teachings around sex are classified as ‘hate speech’ and even outlawed, then we will have arrived in a whole new world where, for the first time ever, Christian leaders will have to be willing to break the law in order to proclaim what they believe to be true about the nature of sex and sexual relationships.