A Hard Pill to Swallow: Catholic Contraception Policy
While I laud Georgetown University President John DeGioia’s recent call to civility in light of rabid right-wing attacks on a Georgetown law student, we must not forget how uncivil the Catholic anti-contraception position is. In some parts of the world, it continues to cause more human suffering than any words Rush Limbaugh could utter. As someone who deeply values Jesus' moral message, I believe this anti-contraception belief has no foundation in scripture. It is not moral. It is not civil.
As we are swept up in the echo-chamber theater of the American news cycle, it is easy to forget that this anti-contraception position perpetuates the vicious cycle of starvation and suffering in lives across the globe. If, according to one CDC study, 98% of Catholic women in the United States have used birth control, this policy must also be seen through the lens of its effect on developing countries where people in need of birth control methods have trouble obtaining them.
Dogmatic opposition to birth control is much easier to maintain if one is callously quarantined from exposure to the plight of so many around the globe who don’t have access to contraceptives. I have accompanied physicians to religiously-based clinics in Africa where mothers receive HIV retrovirals, but not birth control pills. In that chauvinistic society, she couldn’t say no to sex, nor could she say yes to condoms. She thereby couldn’t say no to passing HIV on to her children. These children – if they receive retrovirals – will either end up in an orphanage or in some slum where otherwise banal diseases like diarrhea and malnutrition run rampant. If contraceptives are against God’s will, it implies this human suffering related in part to the lack of contraceptives is also God’s will. It implies that the quantity of life on this planet is more important than the quality of life.
Here we come to the crux of the matter. This Catholic stance on birth control is abominable not because it is Christian; rather, it is unconscionable because it is not very Christ-like. Although the Nazarene said nothing about birth control (or any of the other modern Culture War issues), he did pal around with prostitutes and displayed compassion to those deemed by his society as unclean, immoral, or unchaste. If there had been a drug to prevent a prostitute from getting an STD or from having an unwanted pregnancy, I most certainly think this healer would have provided prophylaxis to those in need. I doubt he would have made a bureaucratic distinction between the birth control pill for polycystic ovarian syndrome versus the birth control pill to prevent conception. Such a distinction is a luxury only enjoyed by someone living comfortably out of touch with the reality of human suffering in this world today, suffering which is preventable for the first time in human history.
Further, when Jesus said “blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth,” I don’t think he was referring to the dystopian reality of poverty, disease, and despair which is directly related to overpopulation and inversely related to women’s empowerment, education, and health. At a time when only 200 million people lived on the planet, Jesus most certainly was not referring to the projected 9 billion by year 2050. It is simply magical thinking to believe the earth – with its ecosystems currently in peril – can support that many people, especially if they have the environmental impact of a resource hog like me and most of my compatriots. Sustainable prosperity for everyone on the planet necessitates we find a birthrate more in line with the finite capacities of this planet.
If Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be in a Catholic Church preaching about an American woman’s access to contraceptives. Rather, he would be providing birth control pills to mothers in forgotten villages and slums throughout the developing world. He would be giving men condoms so they wouldn’t pass on HIV to their wives, lovers, girlfriends, prostitutes, and the children they’d have without birth control. Although these efforts may moderate the quantity of life, they drastically increase the quality of life when women can invest more resources in their current children, their businesses, and their educations. In contrast, Pope Benedict XVI informs us that the distribution of condoms “aggravates the problems.”
In contrast to the Church’s focus on female chastity, Jesus interacted positively, compassionately, and constructively with women who had more believable and realistic sex lives. I doubt he would have pinned his hopes for public health on a naïve and unrealistic abstinence-only policy, nor on impractical Natural Family Planning techniques. Not even priests today seem capable of holding to this high standard of celibacy. In light of recent child abuse scandals, Catholic pontificating on sexual mores and sexual health is a sure sign of something weaker underlying. As Jesus said, “let he who is without sin...”
The Catholic position is at odds with the spirit of care and radical compassion taught by the first Christian, Jesus. Due to my respect for the moral vision of Jesus Christ, who espoused what Richard Dawkins calls the meme of “super niceness,” I cannot respect this anti-contraceptive position, nor am I required to respect it just because it is faith-based. A policy that hurts our fellow human is not worthy of our respect, only our well-deserved public condemnation and informed criticism. In a civil society, we are called to point out the uncivil ideas in our midst, however politically incorrect it may seem. This is civility.
Bjorn Philip Beer
Writer, Software Executive, and Organic Farmer outside of Charlottesville, Virginia
Georgetown University - School of Foreign Service 2005 bjorn.beer@gmail.com
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Comments
You can object to about anything of the Catholic hierarchy's position on birth control. However, the Georgetown's President's letter can't be included in that general criticism. (Anything written by a Jesuit should be presumed to have some careful thinking behind it.)
A few years ago I even dug up a copy of the book that opened up those wounds: A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church by (former) Father James Kavenaugh. It was the 1992 version of the book, published just after his death. It was moving and sad because of what the intervening years visited upon him. Kavenaugh was practically raised as a cloistered priest, had emotional problems, and briefly fell into alcoholism. But he still stood by the protests he made back in 1962, and it's comforting to realize that the principles he raised back in 1962 still have meaning and still inspire people today.
If you were honest with yourself you would see this is an attack on the Constitutional protected rights of a religion to worship and practice freely. You hiding behind the fact that Jesus interacted with prostitutes thus we should ignore the hierachy of the Catholic Church is lazy and weak although nicely packaged. The Richard Dawkins reference was better served if referencing an episode of "The Family Feud then anything the reknown Atheist has put forth in his incessant attacks on Catholic principles.
The "Separation of Church and State" is a phrase that does not exist in the Constitution except in the minds of those that want to deconstruct this great document
That's exactly the point. The vast majority of the country *isn't* Catholic and doesn't want to be. It's the Catholic Church trying to force their doctrines on everyone who has any contact with them, right down to the janitors who mop floors in Catholic hospitals.
If it's all about "religious freedom", do you agree that Jehovah's Witness organizations have the right to deny coverage for any medical procedure involving a blood transfusion?
And, BTW, just because Mr. Beer chose not to write about your personal topic of vaccines doesn't invalidate what he did write on the topic he did choose to write about, which is birth control. If you have something to say about vaccines, by all means, write your own post.
You also assume that there is no access to birth control if you work at Catholic run organizations.
Can you site one case where somone could not get birth control that worked at a Catholic institution?
This is an attack on organized religion pure and simple.
Here Mr Beer attacks the policy not Constitutional but, at it's very core which should concern us all. He is now interpreting Church Doctrine for all of us which would be silly if not so scarily supported
Many practicing and devout Catholics in the U.S. and around the world are peace loving and charitable people, who are very happy to quietly go about practicing their own beliefs, without judging the beliefs and practices of others. To pass judgement on Catholicism based on the (I believe) minority of them who are obnoxious and insensitive in there promotion of their beliefs is an insult to the many Catholics who only wish to practice there religion in peace without forcing there opinions down anyone's throat.
Yes, the vast majority of Catholic violate church doctrine. Christians are not perfect. I tried walking on water once. Dang near drown. So what is your point? That just because people are not perfect in their faith the church should change their doctrine so that they are?
Let's talk about the law student. The question that I haven't seen an answer to is if she graduated from high school at a normal age then did four years for understudies that would make her in her early to mid twenties. She is 31 I believe. What did she do for the missing years?
She seems like a plant. We know she ran or was involved in a women's lib group that made it's bones on the BC issue. It has also been reported that she chose Georgetown Law because it's a Catholic college and the health insurance doesn't cover BC. If she needs insurance to cover her BC why didn't she chose a college who does provide it instead of one who doesn't?
Nobody seems to have heard of her, except in her circles, until the White House tried to make this an issue for a distraction for the President's reelection bid. Now, she has just sprung up, has contacts to get her invited to testify at Congressional hearings and is booked on all the liberal talk shows and avoids the others. We also found out that she is being handled by a PR firm that is run by one of Obama formal insiders.
She needs someone to pay for her BC. It's reported that she is in California for spring break. I'll bet her tab for spring break would pay for a whole year worth of BC.
I'm sure that I'm not the only one here who worked while in college. got up very early in the morning and worked a janitorial crew before classes started. I would get there and take a nap in the back of my van. If my friends saw my van there when they showed up they would check to see if I had gotten up or if I had just turned the clock off and fell back to sleep. Why doesn't she, and the rest, have jobs to pay for what they need?
Now these ladies should be willing to do what ever it takes to get through law school. I'm sorry but the average starting salary for a student is $160,000 a year. If my future relied on getting through school without having children I would do without sex or I would, if I was a female, tell the man you want sex you pay for the BC. Are you telling me that they would risk their entire future for an orgasm? And let's face it, there are ways to have sex that you can't get knocked up.
This is just a distraction started by the White House to get those who will follow the marching orders of the liberal elite, and the de facto leader of the Democratic party Bill Maher, to make sure the president gets a second term.`
The analogy would be a Jehovah's Witness school. Would they have a right to deny healthcare coverage that covers blood transfusion to their employees, including cooks, janitors, etc. who work in a purely secular capacity? Such blood transfusions, mind you, would not be performed in a Jehovah Witness facility.
As for Ms. Fluke being a "plant", did you know that Rosa Parks was too? Guess we should throw out the Civil Rights Act, shouldn't we? But you know what, you're probably right that she was a "plant". Because ordinary people just trying to go about their lives in the face of the right-wing assault of the last 30 years don't just randomly wake up one morning and decide to interrupt their busy lives to go testify before Congress. Ms. Fluke saw change that needed to be made and she decided to be that change. Good on her.
The Catholic excuse to say "you can't make us do this because it's against our religion", and argue that religion somehow enjoys special privilege in justifying the unjustifiable, is just like the Iranian or Saudi theocrats arguing that Sharia law has to apply because anything else would be contrary to Islam.
And in fact, Jesus himself derided the Pharisees and Sadducees because of their adherence to religious legalism. The Catholic church ought to ask itself: if Jesus came today in the form of a radical revolutionary (which he was in his time), who would be the modern-day Pharisees and Sadducees who accuse him of heresy?
At a time when about 13 million Americans are out of work, millions are losing their homes, and the number of people on food stamps has tripled since Obama has taken office, the "intellectuals" on the left are busily involved in the case of a 31 year old activist woman, a Protestant attending Catholic Georgetown University on scholarship, demanding that she should not have to pay for her recreational sex and the Birth Control pill to protect her social life from an unwanted pregnancy.
The Administration believes it has successfully diverted attention from the issues facing the nation from $5.00 gasoline prices already being seen in parts of the country, from an anemic economy show uncertain gains after the expenditure of trillions of dollars on government programs directed at supporters of the Administration, and loaded with waste, fraud and abuse.
And now, taking the lead from President Obama's vicious attack on the Catholic Church with his unconstitutional demand that the Church back down from its principles and provide insurance coverage for students wanting the pill for their active sex life. As Ms. Flake pointed out in her testimony, and I don't know if she sworn or not, "technically" medical issues by a female student were covered by BC pills if the therapeutic affect of the hormones would be beneficial.
The Church is not against a woman taking the pill if prescribed by a doctor for medical reasons. Neither is the religion of Islam, which also prohibits the use of birth control pills, but does not withhold approval of condoms if the "wife" approved. Orthodox Jews also prohibit birth control pills.
However, it is the Catholic Church that has been targeted by the democrats for attack. My guess is you will NEVER see an ariticle on Salon attacking the orthodoxy of the Muslim community, not if you want to keep your head on your shoulders.
And so we have another liberal "hero" write this bigoted attack on the Catholic Church, professing his love for Jesus, but more than that, having the audacity to create a Jesus walking among us today and agreeing with Nancy Pelosi. I don't think so.
Hillary is out now as an attack dog for the Adminstration, giddy with delight at the success of their diversion, comparing the outrage against a Tunisian woman by Islamist extremists to the Bishops of the Catholic Church. The Secretary of State of the United States of America putting the Bishops of the Church in the same league as "extremists."!! She should be impeached.
With respect to the 98% of Catholic woman using birth control I have no idea who made up that number, and it is a made up number. It is true, however, that in the past fifty or sixty years there has been a tremendous, if uncounted, use of birth control in Catholic families.
HOWEVER, the major mistake being made by a self-proclaimed Christian President, and Hillary Clinton a Methodist, is that I have not heard an outcry from Catholic woman against their Church. In fact, what you are seeing at Sunday mass is a "circling of the wagons" around their church. Bigotry is Bigotry, but not if it is aimed at Catholics and their religious beliefs.
There ought to be a law against such bigotry. Hey..there is!
Guess we will have to wait for a Republican President and his Attorney General before we see any litigation.
To them I say this: thanks to you and your ilk and this ridiculous birth control drummed up phony "controversy" I have taken my self from a devoutly committed lapsed Catholic to a strongly convinced anti-Catholic. I will not ever be convinced otherwise by any number of multitudes of good and charitable works performed by individual Catholics that the authoritarians ceaselessly tout as justification for the malevolence and malfeasance, though the inevitable sheer irrationality of their arguments always betrays them as merely distractions.
And for that you mindlessly devoted Catholics, remember that scandal is one of the great sins of your church. I refer you to Matthew 18:6 "it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea."
If only.
Dienne Anum, you need to reevaluate your critique of I Love Life's comments. The comments were clearly couched as a hypothetical in your scientific and statistical terms. As you know, correlation can coincide with causation. More to the point, when one is speaking about the social sciences, the question of root cause rightly should never be absent. In this case, it's the lowering of standards in general. It is also important to remember that there is contribution and that no one subcategory need be the sole cause. Contraception has contributed to greater laxness, which has impacted negatively in many areas of existence on this planet.
Also, to those who may think otherwise, the moral failings of certain members of the Roman Catholic Church is irrelevant to these facts.
Pull you head out of where you have it buried and get with the program. There is nobody working for one of the Catholic hospitals that has ever lost or was denied a job because they took the pill or used some other form of BC. If 98% agree and use BC I would guess Catholic operations are having trouble finding employees.
Show me one. You can't, can you. If there was one the liberal media would have her on all the talking head shows. You know why that is? It's because you are lying about this being an issue of access. It is not. It's an issue of payment and the government getting involved where it shouldn't be so the president can have an issue to distract you from all the real stuff that is going on. You are taking it hook, line and sinker.
"Because ordinary people just trying to go about their lives in the face of the right-wing assault of the last 30 years don't just randomly wake up one morning and decide to interrupt their busy lives to go testify before Congress"
Know why that is? Because "ordinary people" can't get near Congress to testify. Go ahead. Call and tell them you want to testify about anything. See how quick you get blown off and the cold shoulder. This chick isn't a plant. She knew exactly what she was doing in picking a school that didn't cover BC. She is also no Rosa Parks. Ms. Parks had just had enough and did something. This "lady" planned and figured and what she did was calculated to cause problems. She is just a trouble maker she doesn't come near Ms. Parks.
Even when I was a practicing Catholic, I used the pill. I blatantly ignored the rules.
The only constant in life is change and it's time the Church makes some serious changes. I mean, let's get real. Jesus isn't Catholic. Jesus would be in the trenches, healing, easing suffering and dispensing the pill.
--r
That is a classic.
Mr. Usher-a wonderful defense of I Love Life -and an excellent point regarding the negatives that contraception has brought to society without dismissing the positives.
I do not agree with all Church Doctrine but, the sanctity of Life is really not an area I see much negotiation taking place. The Church is a rudder for many and as flawed I am, I appreciate the guidance even when I wish to ignore it.
While I'm not nearly so civil as you, I raised some points on this matter that are in desperate need of airing if this experiment in self-government is to continue much longer:
The Bogeyman
.
The Catholic Church stopped asking what Christ would do ages ago.
Rated and thoroughly enjoyed, thank you.
I share your sense of what Jesus would be like, were He here to wade through these cultural wars. We often forget that He was truly a revolutionist to many, at least in a historical sense; the acts of being true were in conflict with the government and the perception that He was in conflict with the faith in which He was raised and brought into; they would sell Him out as one unlike themselves. Yeah, He would be right there advocating for our Blacks, Hispanics, gays and of course, our women -- who have given more and remain challenged at almost every turn. Is this the church that He envisioned? I have a hard time with this. Where are we anyway?
This viewpoint is insanely shortsighted and stupid. Freedom of religion means ALL religions. This means that all companies must abide by the legalities of the federal government. Religious practices are personal. Companies, despite the bone-headed, greed-oriented ruling of personhood, are not personal in that regard. They must abide by federal law. If a person who is Catholic decides not to take birth control, that is their decision. That's freedom of religion at work. However, preventing others from being covered by a federally mandated health plan for birth control, that is not about freedom of religion.
It's about living in a secular country with freedom of religion but wanting to make others practice your religion only.
It's so clear and obvious. But, since it's about sex and women (oh noes!), it's been muddied with this nonsense about freedom of religion. Businesses backed by the Catholic church are not churches. They employ both Catholics and non-Catholics. They should respect that situation. Or, they should get out of the business of being in business. It really is that simple.
As for creating a state religion, or pretending "but we're all Christian!" ... no, we are not all Christian. And I will again ask the question I always ask, the one always met with the sound of cowardly crickets. Let's pretend you got your way and we became a theocracy. Just which Christianity would we be practicing? Would it be Catholicism? Protestantism? Let's not pretend those two sects get along. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, after all. If it's Protestantism, which one? Baptists? Evangelicals? Methodists? Church of Christ? Church of God? I can't remember them all! And they all have completely different belief systems. These situations are notorious for people killing each other, insisting one group follow the other. We have to maintain freedom of religion. So that everyone can practice his or her religion.
Part of freedom of religion is paying for federal programs with which we do not agree. How do you think the Quakers feel about paying for war? They probably don't like it. How do you think atheists feel about churches paying no taxes? But, we do that, at least in part, to keep church and state separate. And so on.
I would love to get my tax money (and by the way, nothing from your taxes will be going to this situation) back from all the wars. I would love to get my tax money back from a lot of things I do not support and in which I do not believe. But, I am a citizen of the United States, and living with and cooperating with others is part of that citizenship.
I know none of this will convince you. You want to believe you're right. But, I have to tell you, if you help to bring on a theocracy, be aware that, no matter how devout you imagine yourselves, you'll never be safe, even if you're the one leading others to the gas chambers.
If you really want freedom of religion, you'd work on being a better citizen, and stop trying to force your religious beliefs on others. And let me be clear. If you try to force women to live in with some sort of American Evangelical law, where women wear a costume to cover their bodies, stay at home and bear children only, you better be prepared for the fight of your life.
"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
Thomas Jefferson
A lot of great stuff said in the comments section. The last comment stuck with me. Jay Richer quotes Thomas Jefferson: "To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
I believe TJ was speaking about tax dollars going to religious institutions. TJ also said: "I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
Keep in mind that TJ is the guy who said he swore "eternal hostility against every from of tyranny over the mind of man."
TJ also re-wrote the first four books of the New Testament. He removed all of the hocus pocus, miracles, etc, and tried to distill the thing that Jesus was pointing to. Most of us, just stare at that finger.
Best regards,
Bjorn
That effort was give to evey congress until recently.
What do you do when a prominent right wing talk show host attacks you about your views on contraceptive access in the developing world? This is what I did when Laura Ingraham attacked me: http://open.salon.com/blog/bjorn_philip_beer/2012/03/20/the_ire_of_ingraham Enjoy my new article “The Ire of Ingraham.”
Much ink has been spilled about the 98% statistic. To clarify, the study was of sexually active women in a certain age range. (see link below, which calls 98% into question as well). When this 98% statistic is used, it's obvious we're not comparing Catholic senior citizens to Protestant senior citizens or atheists senior citizens. The study was of 15-45 year old women and clearly shows that their sexual practices regarding birth control are indistinguishable from the general public. In other words, the independent variable of "Catholic" has no effect on the dependent variable "birth control use."
Trying to keep my article in the 800 word range, I can't explain each statistic. But clearly the statistic is about women of childbearing age. Post-menapausal and Pre-menarchal women would obviously not be included in a study about birth control.
However, even after this technical clarification, the point stands: in this country, catholic women of childbearing age use birth control like any other woman in this county. In other countries, they aren't so lucky.
Here's a candid review of that stat: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/have-98-percent-of-catholic-women-used-contraceptives-not-quite/2012/02/14/gIQAZszTDR_blog.html
Further, in my haste I said CDC was the source. It is actually the Guttmacher Institute: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Religion-and-Contraceptive-Use.pdf This study shows the following:
"Among all women who have had sex, 99% have
ever used a contraceptive method other than natural
family planning. This figure is virtually the same,
98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women."
and....
"Only 2% of Catholic women rely on natural family
planning; even among Catholic women who attend
church once a month or more, only 2% rely on this
method (not shown). Sixty-eight percent of Catholic
women use highly effective methods: sterilization
(32%, including 24% using female sterilization,) the
pill or another hormonal method (31%) and the IUD
(5%). "
My point remains the same (or is perhaps strengthened with the statistic that only 2% of Catholic women use NFP).