Catholics, Birth Control and Eucharist
Today’s votes by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops affecting birth control and Eucharist hit my family personally.
While I am Presbyterian (joining a new church tomorrow evening), my wife is a practicing Catholic. (What the heck is “practicing” about? I think after about 40 years she’d be good at it!) We have chosen not to have children. We are not using the rhythm method – my wife is an engineer and would never settle for a single point of failure. You are welcome to draw your own conclusions on what all that means with respect to birth control.
The bishops issued two documents today that are relevant:
- Married Love and the Gift of Life
- Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper: On Preparing to Receive Christ Worthily in the Eucharist
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The first document talks about marriage and the Roman Catholic church’s teachings. In reality, only the first page of the 12 page document talks about marriage – the rest talks about contraception, repeating Catholic doctrine stating that the Rhythm method is the only one allowed (though they call it “Natural Family Planning”) in any circumstance.
The second one talks about preparation for Holy Communion. Among other things it states that intentionally ignoring church teachings is sufficiently serious that the lay person should avoid Communion. It also repeats teaching about Confession, mortal sins, and the fact that Catholics should only take Communion in a Catholic or related Byzantine church. Also that non-Catholics should not take Communion.
Put the two together and you reach the conclusion (verified by Catholic priests in a newspaper article that I read) that any Catholic using contraception should not take Holy Communion. The newspaper article that I saw this morning cited a survey statistic that 96% of married Catholics used contraception. One activist in the Catholic church on sexual issues was quoted as saying “This should save them some money on wafers”, but I don’t expect much to change. I suspect that this new guideline on taking Communion will be ignored just as the teaching on contraception is ignored. After all, the church spokespriest was quoted as saying that priests will not be refusing anyone at the rail on this issue.
So what does that mean for us? For me – nothing. Nobody changed the rules that I live by today. For Carolyn …. well, I can’t speak for her. I assume that if you ignore the teaching about contraception, you might as well ignore this teaching as well – and I suspect that 95% of married Catholics will continue doing so.
What I do know is that the Presbyterian Church will always allow her to take Communion in one of our churches irrespective of what her church teaches about doing so. I also know that the Presbyterian Church will be happy to take her in should she get sufficiently frustrated by the differences between the Mother Church’s teachings and her beliefs. And I know (and she’s been told) that the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville always welcomes her.
It’s probably easier to live in a one-church household. We’ve done fine for all these years in a two-church household. We talk, and exercise freedom of conscience on religious issues. We support each other’s personal faith. We’re also generally on the same page on theological issues and issues of applying faith to life. That might not be the same page as the Roman Catholic church, but it’s OUR page.
One out of Three is bad
The Blogverse is up in arms about this story: When One is Enough
The gist is this – a 34-year-old feminist decides to have children with her boyfriend. She stops taking the pill and gets pregnant. She visits the doctor, who informs her that she’s going to have triplets.
Here’s where the story gets bad.
My immediate response was, I cannot have triplets. I was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year. There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, Do I want to?
Yes, that’s right. She doesn’t want all three – she isn’t willing to accept the negative effects on her lifestyle that triplets would bring.
When we saw the specialist, we found out that I was carrying identical twins and a stand alone. My doctors thought the stand alone was three days older. There was something psychologically comforting about that, since I wanted to have just one. Before the procedure, I was focused on relaxing. But Peter was staring at the sonogram screen thinking: Oh, my gosh, there are three heartbeats. I can’t believe we’re about to make two disappear. The doctor came in, and then Peter was asked to leave. I said, ”Can Peter stay?” The doctor said no. I know Peter was offended by that.
She decides to have a procedure called “selective reduction”. This involves killing one or more of the fetuses. This is generally done in multiple birth cases (think quads or quints or more) because the mother can’t possibly successfully support all of the fetuses to full term – to save some rather than losing all of them. This is the first I’ve ever heard of a “convenience” selective reduction.
I am VERY pro-choice. I would much rather see a fetus aborted than an unwanted child be born to be abused, abandoned, or worse.
The question of whether or not a rape victim should be able to abort a fetus is no question to me – unquestionably yes.
The question of whether an unintended pregnancy by a very young woman should be stopped is still fairly easy – unquestionably yes.
That’s where the line starts to blur.
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I feel the same about abortion of genetically-damaged fetuses (like Down’s Syndrome detected in the womb). I’m glad that I don’t have to make the decision, and the woman should be able to make it herself.
Then you get to convenience.
I feel strongly that it’s not right for a woman to have serial abortions as a form of birth control. Condoms are cheap and quite effective.
I feel strongly that it’s not right for a woman to have an abortion to avoid the stress of an unintended pregnancy in some cases. I think that morally you should be limited to one abortion – any more and you’re clearly not being careful enough with birth control.
In Amy Richards case – this is just wrong. She wanted to have a child, but balked at having more than one. She ended up choosing WHICH children to eliminate. This is just a selfish act.
This is also putting us dangerously close to choosing sex or other characteristics. I can see the day where you hear a woman flippantly say, “Well, it turned out to have brown eyes and I really wanted blue so I had it eliminated. I’ll try again in 6 months.” That is just plain wrong on so many levels.
As a man, I will never have to make the final choice. In my marriage, we take sufficient precautions to avoid unplanned pregnancy – I will probably never have the opportunity to make the choice. However, I would NEVER decide to get rid of SOME of the children.
The next time you are with a group of kids – imagine. If you had to choose 2 of the group to get rid of, who would you choose?
Cases like Amy Richards move me much closer to the pro-life side. Not across the line, but closer to it.
A Small Victory discusses it, along with this heart-wrenching post from Auteriffic.
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