A Discussion of Birth Control? In 2012?

A Discussion of Birth Control?  In 2012?

At first it took me a little time to figure this out.  I’m not really into culture wars, social wars, war on women, or war on terror.  That rhetoric really doesn’t get people very far in having a real discussion because it frames the discussion before it even starts.  However there have been some aspects of this discussion that have been really troubling to me.  One of the first is that so many Republican women are supporting Rick Santorum.  Why?

Then I had an “Ah, ha,” moment.  By not using artificial birth control methods, right-wing women can assure their husbands that, “This is the wrong time of the month, dear.  We couldn’t possibly!” thus keeping their rather smug, autocratic and authoritarian husbands at bed’s length.  What better excuse is there than that!

Seriously, however, this whole argument is pretty much a political set-up.  For one thing, for centuries Catholic teaching (which this current crop of conservative Catholic Bishops like to pretend doesn’t exist if it doesn’t correspond to what the Republican National Committee wants) has rested on the tripod of the hierarchy, the theologians, and the sensus fidelium, which is the experience-fed wisdom of the laity.  These three sources of teaching have been described as “complementary and mutually corrective” by, I believe, Cardinal Avery Dulles.  Thus, the fact that 98% of Catholic women have used birth control should be taken into account, to say nothing of their husbands, by the Bishops in their discussions of religious liberty.  Which is another political set-up, in my opinion.

For one thing, the Bishops are demanding that what they believe, in opposition to a massive majority of Catholic women, many Catholic men, and a great many theologians, must be the norm by which this whole controversy is measured.  This completely ignores the religious liberty of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus, and people of all other religious or philosophical beliefs, or believers in non-belief. 

This goes back to the 16^th century in Europe after the beginning of the Reformation when all of the people, regardless of their consciences, had to conform their beliefs to that of the ruler of their city or country.  This became really difficult if a Catholic ruler was deposed by a Protestant and everyone had to then be Protestant, and that one would be run out by a Catholic, and, oops, there we go again!  Back to the old Papacy.  Europe fought a real war for 30 years over just this kind of thing, which is basically why our wise founding fathers and mothers insisted on the First Amendment to the Constitution.  Of course this really cut down on the secular power that prelates of any organized religion could wield in America, which was the whole point in the first place.  It would appear that some of our conservative American Catholic Bishops are longing for the old days.

As a Catholic woman who dearly loves her Catholic faith, I assert that in this instance, and in a couple of others I can think of at the moment, some of our Catholic Bishops are clearly out of balance with the other two legs of the tripod on which our Catholic teaching rests.  In a sense I am glad that this tripod is out of balance.  If it tips over, the hierarchy will have to reevaluate itself and, one would sincerely pray as a result, reform itself.

In the meantime, I have made up a little mantra regarding birth control that I think ought to be taught to all of our children:

Before you screw

You ought to do

Those things

You know you need to do.