Hard Questions on the Issues

The Pope's moral stands deal with sex and complex history

The Pope and his church are out of step with contemporary Americans, including many Roman Catholics, in dealing with sexuality. In the U.S. generally, sexual pleasure has lately come to be regarded as a matter of personal gratification unconnected with social responsibility or, of course, with sin. Even among U.S. Catholics the trend is toward the belief that any individual act whatever is acceptable if it can be thought to foster love or self-esteem and enrich the life of the participants. The position of the Roman Catholic Church is that self-gratification alone is morally dangerous and that sex must be linked to commitment to marriage, children, the family, society--that its pursuit must be a reinforcement of fidelity rather than an encouragement to promiscuity. The chief issues stirred by John Paul's conservative stands on morality, however, have long and distinct histories in the church:

Birth Control. The church's hostility to contraception draws from, among other things, the Old Testament command to "be fruitful and multiply" and the need to justify marriage to early Christians in the face of attacks by otherworldly heretics. But contraception did not become a serious issue until the 20th century, when improved techniques--and laxer morals--led to widespread use of birth control devices. By 1930 the Anglican Church hierarchy at the Lambeth Conference reluctantly accepted birth control. Reacting to this, Pope Pius XI issued his encyclical Casti Conubii (On Chaste Marriage), declaring that "the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children. Those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious."

His successor Pius XII in 1951 approved the "rhythm method" of birth control. Pius XII also stated that "medical, eugenic, economic and social" motives could justify couples in limiting the size of their families. Nine years later the approval for marketing birth control pills raised the hope that such biochemical controls would be regarded as "natural" by the church. Pope John XXIII appointed a special commission to examine the matter. Its confidential, but later leaked, majority report to Paul VI in 1966 warned against avoiding childbearing for selfish reasons. Going beyond Pius XII's position, however, the report called for collaboration with "men of learning and science" to find "decent and human means" of birth control (by implication, the Pill). Morality depends on the good of the child, the couple and the family, not "the direct fecundity of each and every particular act," the report concluded. But in 1968 Paul's encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life) totally rejected this theory. It declared all "artificial" methods of birth control unacceptable, thus touching off a sustained campaign of public dissent by theologians and wide disobedience among the laity, especially in the U.S., that has few parallels in modem Catholic history.

Paul ruled out any means--before, during or after the conjugal sex act--that would render procreation impossible. The widening use of artifical methods, he added, would encourage lower standards of sexual morality. John Paul II has held a slightly different view of the reasons against contraception. Only the openness to possible parenthood, he has written, puts a sexual relationship on a "genuinely personal level." To exclude the possibility of children, he argued, limits the relationship to the pursuit of sensual pleasure. John Paul unequivocally endorsed Humanae Vitae during his U.S. trip. Opinion polls in recent years have repeatedly shown that a vast number of American Catholic couples simply do not regard birth control as sinful. Whether the Pope's stand will affect them or the practice of confession of it depends on what steps are taken by U.S. bishops and priests.

Abortion. The Pope's sermon on the Washington Mall sent shock waves through America's politically powerful Pro-Choice movement, which espouses total freedom to abort. But even among relatively liberal Catholics there is negligible backing for abortion on demand. In fact, no front-rank Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish or Muslim theologian has yet developed a serious argument for totally open abortion, though most countenance abortion in extreme cases, such as when the mother's life is threatened.

The church's opposition to abortion began with a doctrinal manual, the Didache (circa 100 A.D.), which called all abortion "murder." That view has never much altered through the centuries: the Second Vatican Council reiterated that abortion is "an unspeakable crime." Abortion did not become much of an issue among Catholics, or members of other religions, until the 20th century, when some governments began to legalize it. Modern Popes have opposed abortion for any reason "from the moment of conception," and John Paul links it to such assorted violations of human rights as mercy killing.

In the American context, the fierce dispute over abortion now concerns whether traditional Jewish and Christian teaching should be incorporated into secular law. Catholics themselves are divided. Many Catholic Congressmen oppose abortion personally but want no constitutional amendment to control it. But for John Paul, activism is essential on human rights. "If a person's right to life is violated at the moment in which he is first conceived in his mother's womb," he has said, "an indirect blow is struck also at the whole of the moral order." He urged the cheering crowd in Washington to "demand that society give all life its protection."

Divorce. In Washington, John Paul spoke out for the "indissolubility" of marriage and warned against "the fear of making permanent commitments [which] can change the mutual love of husband and wife into two loves of self--two loves existing side by side, until they end in separation." Eastern Orthodox and Protestants have allowed divorce, at the very least in the case of adultery, citing the statement of Jesus Christ in Matthew 5: 32. But for centuries Roman Catholicism has held to stricter parallel verses in Mark and Luke. Its doctrine holds that a divorced spouse who remarries lives in a state of adultery. The current argument within Catholicism is about whether or not the church should come to terms with the millions of Catholics now into their second marriages and still eager to be on good terms with the church.

A number of U.S. dioceses and parishes do quietly permit remarried Catholics to receive Communion, but official policy remains against it. Regarding the related matter of annulments, John Paul is reported to take a dim view of those now granted in the U.S. on markedly liberal grounds.

Women's Role. It was during his U.S. visit that John Paul spoke for the first time against the ordination of women as priests. He did not elaborate on his reasons, but pure tradition is one of them. The Catholic Church (like the Eastern Orthodox churches) has never ordained women. Reacting against the decision of some Anglican churches to do so, the Vatican in 1977 issued a decree stating that the policy on women is an act "in fidelity to the example of the Lord." That means in effect that if Jesus had wanted women priests he would have chosen a female apostle. (Some Protestants who take the Bible literally and oppose the ordination of women cite the dictum in the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy that women should not have "authority" over men in the church.) The ban on women appears for Roman Catholicism to be mainly a question of custom and discipline rather than doctrine. If so, a Pope would be free to change the rule.

That he might do so is precisely the hope of a research report on Women in Church and Society, published last year by the Catholic Theological Society of America. But the equality of men and women, stressed in America, is not yet a subject of such pressing interest to Catholics in those parts of the world (Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia) where the majority of Roman Catholics live.

Celibacy of the Clergy. The rule that Catholic priests may not marry is quite clearly not a matter of doctrine but of discipline. Any Pope is free to change it. In his Holy Week letter to the priests of the world, as in his U.S. remarks, John Paul has firmly indicated that he does not intend to be the Pope to do so. In addition, the celibacy vow binds a man in perpetuity, he says. The candidate who feels a vocation has a long time to decide and must be sure before saying yes. After that he must keep his word. John Paul has not approved any of the thousands of pending requests from priests to be released from their vows and revert to lay status with church approval. The Pope is now awaiting a report on the "laicization" of priests from a special commission. The matter may be taken up at an extraordinary meeting of the College of Cardinals, scheduled for next month.

It is often forgotten that Catholicism's first Pope, St. Peter, took his wife along on his missionary travels. There are also married priests in Roman Catholicism, in Eastern Rite jurisdictions that follow the ancient practice similar to that of the Eastern Orthodox. Eastern Rite priests for the most part may marry before ordination but not afterward. Bishops and members of religious orders must be celibate, however. Celibacy was required of the Latin clergy as early as the 4th century and reaffirmed by the Second Lateran Council of 1139. Unchastity grew into a scandalous problem before the Reformation. One of the handful of nonnegotiable church reforms demanded by early Lutherans was marriage for clergy as a means of ending hypocrisy and lasciviousness on the part of priests. Today liberal Catholics echo Protestant arguments: the celibacy requirement, they feel, is unnatural, demeans marriage, reduces priests' understanding of the laity's problems and is an invitation to sexual scandal.

The most recent formal statement of the Vatican view was Paul VI's 1967 encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus. It said that the priest follows the example of Christ, who "remained throughout his whole life in the state of celibacy, which signified his total dedication to the service of God and man." The tradition makes possible, he said, a "love without reservations" for the people that a priest serves.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.