Update: Related Posts

-On condoms, intentionality, and the natural law

-On condoms and the Magisterium

***

In her Times Online article denouncing the Pope’s repetition of the Church’s firm stance against condoms, Ruth Gledhill states the following:

Soon after the turn of the millennium, the Roman Catholic Church was thought to be on the verge of relaxing its   absolute prohibition on artificial birth control to allow limited condom use in HIV and Aids prevention.

The ban had been enforced in the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which stated that every marital act must retain its “intrinsic relationship” to procreation. A majority on the commission set up to examine the issue wanted the ban to be rescinded, but the death in 1963 of Pope John XXIII, who was succeeded by the more conservative Pope Paul VI, meant that their majority report was ignored. The minority report was instead the line that the encyclical took when it was published in 1968. Thousands left the Catholic Church.

While I know that Ruth Gledhill will disagree with me (and the Church) on a lot of things, I will only focus on one aspect where Ms. Gledhill is simply giving a bum steer.  While her recounting of the fact that the Commission for the Study of the Family, Population, and Births gave a majority opinion in favor of permitting contraception, this does not necessarily mean that, oh, if only the Pope had listened to the expert commission, we wouldn’t be dealing with a ban on condoms now.  The existence of the Commission and the issuance of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae were spurred by the appearance of an artifice much newer than the simple sheath that goes back at least as far as the 16th century. No, the need for a commission and the encyclical that declined its majority advice was in great part motivated by the advent of the Pill.  Here was an artifice used for contraception that seemed to be only imitating, even perfecting, what nature does spontaneously, and which did nothing to alter the integrity of the marital act itself.  Indeed, there were many theologians who thought that the ban of Casti Connubii 54 applied to any barrier methods, but that room could be made for the Pill.  Nevertheless, as is well known, Humanae Vitae 14 did not bear them out.

The reason for this is that the condom has always been seen by the Church as morally objectionable even apart from contraceptive intention.  As a matter of fact, even if it were never used for preventing kids from coming into existence, its use implies a disorder because of the very nature of what it does in its normal use: a device that is employed to have sexual intercourse without passing on the male’s generative substance into the place where the woman’s (if present) may receive it.  This means that the desire of those using a condom is to have sex in a manner that structurally does not permit the primary end of sex by the very way the act is done.  And this is precisely the sin against nature.

I respond, it must be said that, as was said above, there is a determinate species of lust wherever a special notion of deformity occurs which makes for an unfitting veneral act. And this indeed can be in two ways. In one way, since it is repugnant to right reason, which is common in every vice of lust. In another way, since even above this, it is repugnant to the very natural order of the venereal act that befits the human species, which is called the vice against nature. And this indeed can happen in many ways. In one way, if without any lying together, pollution is procured for the sake of venereal delight, and this pertains to the sin of uncleanness, which certain men call “softness.” In another way, if it is done through lying together with a thing not of the same species, which is called “bestiality.” In a third way, if it is done through lying together with the undue sex, for example of a male with a male, or of a female with a female, as the Apostle says in the first chapter of the letter to the Romans; and this is called the sodomitic vice. Fourthly, if the natural mode of lying together is not observed, either as to an undue instrument, or as to other monstrous and bestial modes of lying together.

That’s St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 154, a. 11.  Of course, not many people notice St. Thomas’ mentioning of “undue instruments” in this passage.  I would gather that this is mainly because it is not translated well in one of the more popular English editions of the Summa.  One more reason that, if you don’t know Latin, you should at least have the Latin nearby when you read Thomas (forgive me for the cheap advertisement).

The condom, the diaphragm, coitus interruptus, and other unnatural modes of intercourse (fellatio, sodomy proper) are all counted as the sins against nature because they have a structure that is inherently against reason.  The primary end of the act is thwarted by the very structure of the act.  The reason that the Church has been against these is the same reason that it has been against homosexuality.  This is ably said in a famous discourse by Elizabeth Anscombe:

If contraceptive intercourse is permissible, then what objection could there be after all to mutual masturbation, or copulation in vase indebito, sodomy, buggery (I should perhaps remark that I am using a legal term here – not indulging in bad language), when normal copulation is impossible or inadvisable (or in any case, according to taste)? It can’t be the mere pattern of bodily behaviour in which the stimulation is procured that makes all the difference! But if such things are all right, it becomes perfectly impossible to see anything wrong with homosexual intercourse, for example. I am not saying: if you think contraception all right you will do these other things; not at all. The habit of respectability persists and old prejudices die hard. But I am saying: you will have no solid reason against these things. You will have no answer to someone who proclaims as many do that they are good too. You cannot point to the known fact that Christianity drew people out of the pagan world, always saying no to these things. Because, if you are defending contraception, you will have rejected Christian tradition.

Anscombe speaks here of contraception in general.  But her remarks apply even more aptly to those forms of what are often called contraception that are also instances of the sin against nature.  As a matter of fact, to quote a working idea of William Diem, a fellow Thomist and friend of mine at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas, all the artifices and acts that today we call contraception fall into the moral species of either the sin against nature or direct sterilization, temporary or permanent.  And these were condemned before Humanae Vitae.

There are of course those who think that St. Thomas is, at best, just one opinion among many, at worst, the cause of all our problems in theology today (yes, I have heard this one!), or, splitting the difference, that he’s on old fuddy-duddy whom the Church has surpassed.  Nevertheless, even the Church’s jurisprudence makes the distinction between the sin against nature and other forms of contraception in defining what consummates a marriage, as the New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law explains.

Despite what is maintained by many, the Church’s morality definitely contains as a strong component the fact that we are supposed to act according to our nature (and by that is meant our common nature as rational sensate beings, not our individual constitutional nature).  The modern mindset repugns this immediately, as it tends to see nature as a limiting force, to be overcome by personal freedom.  Catholic Moral Theology has a different approach: nature is our friend.  Our personal freedom has to rationally make use of the powers given in our nature in order to achieve the perfection of that nature, which includes our ordering to the common good.  And the more the common good comes into play, the more “norms” are found regarding the use of something that really isn’t ours to use as we will.  Sexuality certainly enters that sphere.  A man may do what he will with the faculties that are his alone (walk on his hands, wear earplugs and blindfolds, eat what he will). But when he uses those faculties, or more properly half-faculties (as Luke Gormally explains), that by their very structure are ordered to others and to the common good, his freedom is not the arbiter of what ends he may use them for.  Like a company car, they have been given for a certain purpose that is bigger than the individual, and they come with terms of use (see De Malo, q. 15, a. 2, ad 12).  And the breach of these terms is grave to the degree that the good to which they were ordered is lofty.  That is what has traditionally been meant by the natural law as it applies to sexual mores.

I respond, it must be said to the first question that, as is clear from the things said before, that action is said to be against the law of nature which is not fitting to the due end, whether because it is not ordered to it through the action of the agent, or because of itself it is disproportionate to that end. However, the end which nature intends from lying together is the offspring to be procreated and educated; and, so that this good might be sought, nature put delight in intercourse, as Augustine says.  Whoever, therefore, uses lying together for the sake of the delight which is in it, not referring it to the end intended by nature, acts against nature; and likewise also if the lying together be not such as could be fittingly ordered to that end (In IV Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 3, qc. 1).

So what was Pope Benedict supposed to do?  Many would have him open condoms up to everybody, making it almost a moral obligation upon him, as if he would sin by bringing so much damage into the world by not loosening up.  This reminds me of an episode of The Office (American version) where the annoying but lovable Dwight sets the building on fire to get back at everybody for not paying attention to his fire drill instruction.  The panic that ensues causes Stanley to almost have a heart attack.  Dwight is ordered to apologize to Stanley.  He does so only minimally, and the ladies of the office exclaim, “Dwight, you almost killed Stanley!”  Dwight quickly yells in response, “Yes, I force-fed him butter and lard for fifteen years and prevented him from doing any exercise!”

Pope Benedict isn’t killing anybody.  He is not forcing anybody to get AIDS.  In fact, he has a program for not getting it.  The Pope proposes the moral teaching of the Church.  And the same Church that “bans” condoms because they entail the same species of sin as homosexuality is also the Church that teaches us that homosexuality, extra-marital sexual relations, and drug use are also not acts in accordance with reason, as they do not bring us to our perfection.  Nor are these some kind of rules for membership.  They are simply the way to acheive our final end.  If any Catholics should be blamed for helping spread the AIDS virus, such blame is more squarely laid on those who promoted a sexual morality that clearly does “aggravate the problem.” The Pope on the other hand is just doing his job, as Fr George Pitcher points out.

posted by Kevin F. Keiser