Contraception & Catholicity. God Help Us!

The Tablet [London]
April 1, 2006 

‘Now, it seems, contraception has become the acid test of Catholicity’

Clifford Longley

Judging by what he has said on the subject, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O¹Connor of Westminster must agree with the recent statement of Cardinal Godfreid Daneels of Brussels that a married man with HIV-Aids must use a condom when he has sexual relations with his wife. Otherwise, Cardinal Daneels explained, he is putting her life at risk.

This issue may have reminded Cardinal Murphy-O¹Connor of one of the arguments put forward against the absolute ban on artificial birth control that Pope Paul VI announced in his encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968. The question was asked: what if doctors had declared that a woman¹s life would be in danger if she got pregnant again? Wouldn¹t the use of a condom or some other reliable birth control method be essential, if the husband was not to put his wife¹s life at risk? The answer was clear: Pope Paul VI¹s ruling applied even in this extreme situation. If periodic abstinence from sex was not reliable, they must abstain altogether.

This is deep water, about to get deeper. Let us suppose a man and his wife are patients of a GP in London who has opened an NHS clinic at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth. According to a recent statement by Cardinal Murphy-O¹Connor, who has responsibility in these matters in respect of this celebrated Catholic hospital, doctors at St John and St Elizabeth (whether Catholic or not) treating patients (whether Catholic or not) must abide by a code of ethics in line with Catholic teaching. Hence ³referrals for direct abortion, for amniocentesis for purposes other than safe delivery, and for contraception, and to prescribing with contraceptive intent, particularly when what is prescribed is or may be abortifacient (e.g. by impeding implantation)² are not permitted. (En passant, if something is forbidden in all circumstances, what is added by the phrase ³particularly when ...²?)

If one partner in a marriage has HIV-Aids and they ask for medical advice, must they be advised by their GP at St John and St Elizabeth that they are forbidden to use contraceptives? Or must they be warned that they have an obligation to do so? And what about the next pair in the waiting room, a couple who want to know whether they can use contraceptives because they have been told that another pregnancy would endanger the woman¹s life? Would it be a good idea for one of them to go out and get Aids? And what kind of tortuous moral gymnastics does it take to say yes to the first case, and no to the second?

I was disappointed to find the reference to contraception in the cardinal¹s statement concerning the St John and St Elizabeth hospital. I hoped we had long since got over that hurdle. Indeed, we seemed to get over it the day in 1968 that Bishop Derek Worlock pronounced his famous remark: ³birth control is not the acid test of Christianity². He was trying to calm down a substantial rebellion against Humanae Vitae among the Catholic laity. His secretary at the time was Fr Cormac Murphy-O¹Connor.

As a result the Catholic community settled into a harmonious ³agreement to disagree². The laity tacitly agreed not to push too far in one direction, and the bishops agreed not to push too far in the other. There were to be no ³acid tests² on the issue, either way. But now, in order to safeguard St John and St Elizabeth¹s Catholic identity, it seems contraception has indeed become the acid test of Catholicity.

Let us put the matter another way. If an intention to dispense birth control advice is a critical disqualification from practising medicine in a Catholic context, then certain conclusions follow. It must be a great evil. If so, it must be dug out root and branch, at whatever cost. The bishops have to break their tacit silence on the subject and issue a forthright and unequivocal declaration to the effect that the use of contraceptives is a mortal sin, leaving the sinner liable to eternal damnation if unrepentant and requiring both sacramental confession and a promise never to do it again before the individual may receive Holy Communion; and order it to be read in all the churches under their command. And they have to say that priests who are not prepared to apply the letter of the law have no further place in the priesthood.

Such a declaration would of course reduce, at a stroke, the Mass attendance figures by three-quarters, as Catholics drowned out their bishops¹ words by voting with their feet. But who cares what they think? If Catholic truth is at stake, what are mere numbers?
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