A BITTER PILLAmerican Catholics & contraception

Leslie Woodcock Tentle r

At its November 2003 meeting, the U .S . Confer-ence of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) endorsed thewriting of what the New York Times describedas "an easily understandable booklet" explain-

ing why artificial contraception is always wrong. The pro-ject originated in the conference's committee for prolif eactivities and was explicitly linked to the church's campaig nagainst abortion. More was presumably at issue, though,and not only because the teaching on contraception create smajor credibility problems for church leaders in their effort sto shape abortion law and policy.

At the same meeting, the bishops also approved the tex tof a brochure opposing same-sex marriage . If procreation i snot the primary end of the sexual act, as moral theologian sonce routinely maintained it is, on what grounds does oneprohibit all but marital sex—or even limit marriage to het-erosexual couples? As Jesuit moralist John C . Ford articu-lated the argument in 1959, with reference to a statement b ya subcommittee of the World Council of Churches praisin gmarital contraception: "The logical conclusion . . .is that sexoutside of marriage, and marriages between homosexual sshould be permitted ." The bishops appear willing to alien-ate many of the married laity, whose contraceptive practicediffers hardly at all from that of other Americans, in orde rto shore up the Catholic case against same-sex unions .

It is not my purpose to debate the merits of homosexua lmarriage . I want instead to contest the bishops' seeming as -sumption that collectively reiterating the church's teachingon contraception will have only transitory negative effect son the laity . "The church teaches lots of things that we don' tpractice," Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput told a new sconference, where he acknowledged that most Catholic cou -ples routinely practice contraception . "The church's teach-ing on charity is ignored by virtually all of us also ." Likegrowing numbers of his fellow bishops, Chaput is too youn gto have adult memories of the 1950s, when a majority of mar-ried Catholics were living, or trying to live, in accord withchurch teaching. Partly for this reason, he—along with man yyounger advocates of a harder line on contraception—sim -ply underestimates the damage done to the church by Hu-

manae vitae . Commonweal readers of a certain age will know

what the married laity suffered and also know that, existen-tially speaking, being accused of grave evil in the course o fmarital sex is not the same as being accused of failures wit hregard to charity . But even older readers of Commonweal maynot remember how much damage the debate over contra-ception did to the parish clergy .

Like Chaput, I am too young—though just barely—to hav eadult memories of the 1950s . I married in 1971, by whic htime the teaching on contraception was effectively a deadletter—ignored by a substantial majority of married Catholic sand seldom enforced in the mostly deserted confessionals .Some five years ago, though, I embarked on a history o fAmerican Catholic pastoral practice with regard to contra-ception and the debate that eventually emerged over th eteaching's legitimacy . I read widely in clerical journals, pas -toral literature, popular Catholic magazines, and even pam-phlets . I digested the teaching notes of moral theologiansand the sermon manuscripts of mission preachers . Perhapsmost important, I had access to numerous letters on the sub-

Leslie Woodcock Tentler is professor of history at The Catholi cUniversity of America. Her Catholics and Contraception : An Amer-ican History will be published in the fall by Cornell University Press.

)on"t col Me opplc ,

I hru"Il dwell more structure Ohm [Flat!

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Commonweal I / April 23, 2004

ject from married Catholics and from some priests, mainl ydating from the mid-1960s . I also interviewed a number ofpriests, nearly all of whom had pastoral memories of th e1950s and many of the 1940s . Most of these men had beendisappointed by Humanae vitae and were in that sense "lib-erals ." Nearly all, though, were distressed—some deeplyso—by the current climate with regard to sexual morality .So I wasn't interviewing a group of clerical Jacobins .

What did I learn from my immersion in what, for my threechildren, was exquisitely embarrassing subject matter? A tleast three things . First, as some but too few Catholics know,the "acute phase" of the Catholic struggle over contracep-tion was relatively brief, extending from Casti connubii in1930 until Humanae vitae in 1968. Almost that many year shave elapsed since the struggle climaxed in the late 1960s .Second, the laity were simultaneously liberated by that strug -gle (for better or worse, marital contraception was the issu earound which most adult Catholics came to a sense of mora lautonomy) and deeply wounded by what they perceived asthe hierarchy's indifference to their experience as spouses.The result, when coupled with subsequent developments ,was for many Catholics a growing detachment from the

and the single, seem regularly to have preached against con-traception and in what for the times was fairly straightfor-ward language. As for the parish clergy, they virtually neverpreached against contraception or abortion prior to the Firs tWorld War. They were apparently cautious in the confes-sional too, seldom if ever questioning penitents about wha tcontinued to be called the sin of onanism . Nor was there yeta pamphlet literature on the subject, which most Catholi cperiodicals either left strictly alone or addressed in suc hopaque language that an unmotivated reader might entire-ly miss the point .

Most of the laity, of course, were aware that contracep-tion was wrong. They knew in a general sense that the churc hopposed it and were conscious of the stigma attached to con -traceptive devices, still illegal—if obtainable—in most Amer-ican jurisdictions . But many Catholics were probably ignorant ,perhaps in part for self-interested reasons, of the absolutenature of church teaching. Contraception, in other words,might be generally sinful but not in certain extreme circum -stances . And large numbers of Catholics evidently believedthat coitus interruptus was less gravely sinful than the use o f"devices" like condoms or pessaries .

At a time of almost breathtaking change in sexual values and behavior, church leadershad little to offer beyond what theologian Gerard Sloyan has called "prohibition s

without explanations." Among the laity, the paralysis of leadership further eroded a nalready weakened sense of connectedness to the institutional church.

church, at least in an institutional sense . Third, the debat eover contraception had particularly deleterious consequence sfor the parish clergy . Let me deal with each of these asser-tions in turn, the first at some length and the latter two mor ebriefly .

he oldest document I found in the course of m yresearch dates from 1875 : the teaching notes o fa Passionist priest who was training neophyt emission preachers . "The abominable crime o f

Onan," Father Gaudienius Rossi informed his students, wa s"more common than many suspect" and should be "repro -bated severely ." But prior to the First World War, hardl yany Passionist mission preachers spoke on the subject of con-traception—if the surviving manuscript sermons in theirarchives are any guide . (Abortion was another story .) Al -though missions were usually preached before same-se xcongregations, period conventions would not permit a fran kdiscussion of birth control when unmarried persons werepresent . Only the Redemptorists, whose missions include da "state in life" sermon preached separately to the married

These erroneous views came under increasingly sustainedattack by reform-minded priests in the late teens and th e1920s, when anti-birth control pamphlets began to appea rin churches and the issue featured with growing frequenc yin the Catholic press . By the 1920s, every religious order thatpreached missions routinely inveighed against contracep-tion in the course of its standard sermon program . By thelatter half of the decade, contraception was occasionally men-tioned from the Sunday pulpit—although usually in veile dlanguage . The principal clerical journals carried articles thatencouraged confessors to ask penitents about "sins againstmarriage" whenever the penitent gave cause for suspicionin this regard . Most parish priests, however, clung through -out the decade to older habits of reticence about marital sex ,not only as preachers and confessors but also in the contextof premarital interviews . So a good many Catholics appar-ently remained in what a gentle confessor might call "goo dfaith" ignorance of the teaching.

The situation was fundamentally altered in 1930 . The glob-al depression which began in that year prompted change ina number of Protestant denominations, where tolerant si-

Commonweal 12 April 23, 2004

lence on birth control gave way to cautious public endorse-ment of marital contraception. Partly in response to the An-glicans' "defection"—for so the matter appeared to Catholi cleaders—Pope Pius XI issued Casti connubii, his encyclica lon Christian marriage, in the waning days of 1930 . That doc-ument provided a comprehensive synthesis of Catholic teach -ing against contraception and directed the clergy to enunciat ethis teaching in clear and uncompromising terms, especial-ly in the confessional . The publicity attendant on the encycli -cal made it harder than ever for Catholics to plead ignorance .So did the increasingly heated secular politics of birth con-trol, which were covered by an increasingly respectful press .Growing numbers of Catholics, moreover, faced confessor sand preachers who felt obliged in conscience to enforc echurch teaching, even at the risk of uncomfortable frank-ness . Younger Catholics by 1930 had for the most part beenhabituated to regular reception of the sacraments; they wereapt to have recourse to confession more frequently than thei rparents had done—as often as once a month and some eve nweekly. As such, they were arguably more likely to hearclerical instruction on sexual discipline and perhaps mor evulnerable to increased scrupulosity, especially with regar dto sexual sin.

American Catholics in the 1930s were a mostly working -class population, on whom the Depression bore with par-ticular ferocity. Not surprisingly, their birth rate decline dprecipitously in the early years of the 1930s, as did the na-tional birth rate. One can hardly imagine more difficult cir-cumstances in which to enforce a ban on contraception . Manylaypeople simply ignored the ban, at least as reported b ytheir priests . But the psychological costs of so doing coul dbe terribly high, especially for women . Many priests suf-fered too, although they were not—like some members o fthe laity—disposed to doubt the teaching itself. Still, theywere often torn between their obligation to enforce churc hteaching and compassion for the sufferings of their hard -pressed parishioners . Some priests even worried that th eteaching on birth control was generating the kind of anti -clericalism among American Catholics that had hitherto bee ncharacteristic of Europe .

It was in this crisis-ridden context that news of the so -called rhythm method was first promulgated . The theory ofa monthly sterile period in the female was not new—vari-ous nineteenth-century physicians had argued that such aperiod existed . But nineteenth-century theories were basedon erroneous assumptions : most identified as the "safe pe-riod" precisely that time in the menstrual cycle when awoman is most likely to conceive . Thus few priests by the1920s were commending "periodic continence" to their mos ttroubled penitents, although it was licit for them to do so.Late in that decade, though, researchers achieved a more ac-curate understanding of the human ovulatory cycle, whic hraised new hopes for the effectiveness of rhythm. These dis-coveries—initially known only in scientific circles—were in-troduced to a broad American audience in 1932 . That somepriests publicly attributed these developments to a benefi -

cent Providence suggests the extent of the pastoral problem sby then attendant on the birth-control question .

The secular politics of birth control were such that by the1930s the nation's bishops were almost immediately mad euneasy by public discussion of rhythm among Catholics ,since it seemed to sanction a form of birth control . In near-ly all dioceses, by the mid-1930s priests were under order snot to preach on rhythm or mention it in the confessional,save to truly desperate married penitents . Diocesan paper swere forbidden to carry ads for rhythm books and pam-phlets . But if rhythm went "underground" at the time, it didnot cease to play a role in Catholic pastoral practice . Indeed,it became increasingly central to that practice in the 1940sand 1950s . Yet not every priest gave an unreserved blessingto the practice of rhythm : as late as the early 1960s, ther ewere those who regarded the method as permissible only i nextreme circumstances . But most priests welcomed rhythmas at least a potential solution to a pressing pastoral prob-lem. Men like these ensured that, regardless of the hierar-chy's strictures, Catholics would be widely familiar with themethod, if less sure of its efficacy than many of the clergy .Many of the same priests were freed, by virtue of their fait hin rhythm, to embrace a positive view of marital sex—a sub-ject on which a significant theological discourse was initiat -ed in the 1930s. This initiative bore major fruit after Worl dWar II in such efforts as Cana Conference and the Christia nFamily Movement.

THE JUDGE GUIDO CALABRESI FELLOWSHI P

IN RELIGION AND LAW

presents

John T. Noonan, Jr.1 US Court ofAppeals, 9 th Circui t

A CHURCH THAT CAN CHANG EAND CANNOT CHANGE :

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORAL DOCTRINE

Thursday, April 22, 2004 .4:30 P .M .

Saint Thomas More

The Catholic Chapel & Cente rat Yale University

(203) 777-5537 . www.yale .edu/stm

Commonweal 13 April 23, 2004

he Second World War and its aftermath broughtfurther change, initially of a mostly positive sort .The pastoral burden with regard to birth con -trol seems to have been lightened, at least to a

degree . A recovered economy and a rising birth rate mad eit easier, certainly in the psychological order, for priests toinsist on the teaching about artificial contraception . Still,

birth control continued to be a major problem for confessor sand a source of worry for those good pastors who knew tha tit kept a portion of the laity from regular reception of th e

sacraments . At the same time, the social disruptions atten-dant on World War II gave the teaching on contraception an

enhanced legitimacy for nearly all priests and many of the

more devout laity. It was not just the nation's bishops who

were alarmed by increased divorce and the growing domi -

nance of what looked to be a purely instrumental approac h

to the values governing sex. Moreover, by the 1940s Catholic swere acutely conscious of standing alone in most of the na -tion's battles over law and sexual morality. (Those conser-vative Protestant leaders who agreed with Catholics on suc h

questions were seldom disposed to cooperate publicly wit h

a church that some still regarded as the Whore of Babylon .)

church's ban on contraception. Their example alone lent le-gitimacy to that ban and boosted morale among the clergy,for whom its enforcement was still burdensome . Devoutyoung parents, presiding over their growing broods withapparent joy and serenity, preached more eloquently to thecommunity that watched them than the most accomplishe dsermonizer could do .

Under the tranquil surface of postwar domesticity, how -ever, tensions persisted with regard to contraception an deventually began to intensify . By marrying so early, youn g

Catholics of this generation virtually ensured themselve smaximal fertility . Even the most idealistic couples general-ly experienced financial and emotional strain after the birthof a fourth or fifth child, sometimes in as many years . Col-lege educated themselves in many cases, these parents ex-pected no less for their children—at a time when the cost o fcollege was escalating rapidly. Nor were these couples im-mune to the vastly enhanced cultural authority of a mostlyFreudian psychology . Catholics might proudly cling to thei rown high standards with regard to marriage, but when thosestandards required the exercise of essentially celibate virtues —as they sooner or later did—it was harder and harder t o

Perhaps most troubling, increasing numbers of Catholics came to assume that formingone's conscience on sexual matters was an essentially private endeavor . The celibate clergywere inevitably, if unfairly, discredited as authorities on sexual morality by the advent of

Humanae vitae.

For growing numbers of Catholics, the teaching on birth con-trol came to stand for their church's unyielding defense o fChristian morals in an increasingly pagan world . It had als oemerged by this time as a kind of tribal marker—a proud i fonerous badge of Catholic identity .

Developments like these were reinforced in the late 1940 sby a culturewide romance with domesticity and a concur-rent revival of religiosity across the confessional spectrum .They were also reinforced by a surge in enrollments at Catholi ccolleges, fueled probably in equal parts by the GI Bill and arising tide of Catholic piety . In this altered national climate ,young Catholics—especially the well educated—embarke dwith unprecedented enthusiasm on family founding, mar-rying earlier than their parents had done, and typically bear -ing more children. They also bore more children than otherAmericans of their generation, with the college educated—in flat contradiction of demographic precedent—producin gon average the largest families of all . This Catholic versionof postwar domesticity was suffused with religious mean-ing and intensity. Young Catholics in this generation weresometimes more ardent than their priests in defending the

square those standards with the culture's assumptions abou tsexuality and marital health.

The more devout, though, seem seldom or never to hav ehad recourse to contraception : only 30 percent of Catholicwives admitted to such in a national study conducted i n1955 . Many of the "dissenters," moreover, seem to have ha dtroubled consciences. Birth control figured prominently i nconfessions heard at Christmas and especially Easter, as re -ported by many priests. Such confessions were often diffi-cult for priests, who worried at length about "recidivism "with regard to birth control and were frequently vexed b yhard cases . They were even more difficult for the laity . Theshame attendant on confessing to sexual sin should not beunderestimated, especially for penitents raised on preter-naturally high standards with regard to purity . Questionsof honesty entered in too : Could a penitent claim in goodconscience to have a firm purpose of amendment when sh eknew how likely she was to resume the practice of contra-ception? Could a penitent profess genuine sorrow for some-thing that he might not regard as intrinsically wrong? Issueslike these, addressed from a lay perspective, were seldo m

Commonweal 14 April 23, 2004

aired publicly before 1963 . But they simmered beneath thedeceptively bright surface of postwar Catholic life, and domuch to explain the anger that increasingly characterize dthe debate over birth control in the mid-to-late 1960s .

The rest of the story is well known, particularly to olde rCatholics . Numerous factors made for change : a rising leve lof education, the positive teaching on marital sex endorse dby groups like the Cana Conference, worries about overpop -ulation, even the first faint stirrings of feminism . And thenthere was "the pill." First marketed in the United States i n1960, the pill raised potential difficulties for the standar dCatholic argument against contraception, which turned o nthe "deordination" of a natural act by means of artificial bar-riers or the act's lack of completeness . Neither factor wasrelevant, strictly speaking, to the pill. Precisely for this rea-son, the pill provided an unprecedented opening for theo-logical challenges to the traditional teaching . Dr . John Rock,the pill's Catholic codeveloper, was a pioneer in this regard ,arguing in The Time Has Come (1963) for the pill's status asan acceptably "natural" mode of fertility control, analogousto the rhythm method. Rock's efforts as a theologian wer egenerally derided . But more authoritative voices were soo nbeing heard, likewise asserting the pill's fundamental dif-ference from older methods of contraception. Led by the al-ready venerable Bernard Haring and young Turks like th emoral theologian Charles Curran, the resulting debate overmarital sex had a far-reaching impact on priests as well asthe married laity.

By 1964, the seemingly quiescent laity had acquired a pub -lic voice . Writing initially in lay-edited journals like Jubileeand Commonweal, highly educated members of the laity bega nto speak—tentatively at first and later with growing bold-ness—the language of experience with regard to Catholi cdoctrine on marriage. What to do when obedience to churchteaching caused harm to one's marriage and palpable dam -age to one's children? Lay writers probed the dilemma withhomely eloquence . Many were bitter veterans of the rhyth mmethod, which they typically excoriated as destructive o fmarital happiness and of dubious value as a means of fam-ily planning. Even those who had once endorsed the church' sstand on contraception as admirably countercultural, at leas tin the context of American hypermaterialism, now ques-tioned that position . Given the global "population explo-sion" and the expanded educational needs of the young ,both unprecedented phenomena, was it not suddenly pos-sible to sin by having a child? And what about the highlyeducated woman—for American Catholics, at least, anoth-er unprecedented phenomenon—who longed both for chil-dren and her rightful share of the world's work ?

The Catholic debate over contraception quickly migratedto the mainstream media . Probably the majority of layCatholics followed it via television and mass-circulatio n

magazines. The coverage in such venues was invariably sym-pathetic to the laity, whose sufferings at the hands of th echurch provoked a kind of incredulous horror on the par tof many media commentators . Pundits also suggested that

the teaching was bound to change, given the logic of the Sec -ond Vatican Council and the existence of a papally appoint -ed commission on the regulation of fertility . The net effec twas to raise expectations for such a change—expectation sthat in retrospect seem wildly inflated, given the tenor o fpapal statements on the subject, convoluted though thesesometimes were . More damagingly, secular media commen -tary reinforced for Catholics something that many had al -ready intuited—that their church's grave error on thebirth-control front had been its refusal to speak the languageof experience .

n the end, most Catholic laypeople solved thebirth-control problem on their own . On the eveof Humanae vitae, promulgated in July 1968, amajority of Catholic couples in their childbear-

ing years were already using forbidden means to limit thesize of their families . Paul VI's encyclical prompted everysuch couple, and also those who were teetering on the brinkof disobedience, to some hard thinking about church author-ity . Most concluded, and in remarkably short order, that a tleast on this intimate matter individual conscience reigne dsupreme. In that limited sense, the birth-control crisis wa sover—resolved, for all practical purposes, by the laity whohad forced it in the first place . Lay rejection of the teachingon contraception actually accelerated in the wake of Hu-manae vitae, especially among the young . Fully 78 percent ofCatholic married women aged twenty to twenty-four, ac -cording to a study done in 1970, were limiting their familie sby a means other than abstinence or rhythm. It would notbe long before Catholic contraceptive practice differed hard -ly at all from that of other Americans .

But as every thoughtful Catholic knows, the birth-controlcrisis had tremendous fallout . If the laity were emancipat-ed by Humane vitae, as certain radical commentators had it ,some were also embittered by its seeming rejection of th elaity's public witness . Only a relative handful, in all likeli-hood, left the church as a direct result of the encyclical. Muchlarger numbers seem to have distanced themselves from th einstitutional church in a psychic sense . Even hitherto "core"Catholics became less regular in their attendance at Mass .Growing numbers went infrequently to confession, or eve ngave up on the sacrament entirely . (The decline in confes-sion preceded the encyclical, but still had a great deal to dowith contraception .) The collapse of confession meant tha tfewer and fewer Catholics had one-on-one contact withtheir priests, a problem exacerbated by a growing shortageof clergy.

Perhaps most troubling, increasing numbers of Catholic scame to assume that forming one's conscience on sexual mat-

ters was an essentially private endeavor . The celibate cler-gy were inevitably, if unfairly, discredited as authorities onsexual morality by the advent of Humanae vitae . And sincemost retreated into silence in the wake of the encyclical,

many priests inadvertently compounded their marginal sta -tus as moral arbiters . The same might be said of their bish -

I

Commonweal 15 April 23, 2004

October, Last Sai l

Among the last boats in the harbor, our sseems glad for human company : you board,

and El Poeta rocks you lovingly.I watch you from the pebbled beach, unsure .

But soon enough we're sailing out, the dayunpromising and cold; the air is gray,the sun a milky yellow pearl insidean oyster's opalescent shell . We roun dthe great curved sandy point, the open seamonotonously green, while back on shorethe distant oranges and browns explai nthe ancients ' understanding of the earth' semotions: anger mixed with mourning, los sso vast that only god could suffer it .I look to you for comfort, but your eyesprefer how the horizon never ends .

Rafael Camp o

ops . Shortly after the promulgation of Humanae vitae, almostno Catholic leaders were talking publicly about contracep-tion—not bishops, not parish priests, not even moral theolo -gians . The married laity were on their own, or so the silenc e

seemed to say .Silence on contraception inevitably led to an even greate r

silence—this one around the subject of sexual morality gen-

erally. At a time of almost breathtaking change in sexual val-ues and behavior, church leaders had little to offer beyon dwhat theologian Gerard Sloyan has called "prohibitions with -

out explanations ." Among the laity, the paralysis of leader-

ship further eroded an already weakened sense of connectednes s

to the institutional church . Numerous factors were at play,of course . With Catholics no longer a "ghettoized" popula-tion, they were vulnerable as never before to America's in-

dividualist ethos and its growing climate of suspicion towar d

institutional authority . But nothing was as devastating tothe church's credibility as Humanae vitae and the paralysisit generated . No religious leadership can afford to be seenby large numbers of its putative flock as irrelevant to their

most immediate moral dilemmas .The leadership vacuum took its heaviest toll on parish

priests . They had begun the decade of the 1960s in an ap-parent state of robust confidence, especially with regard to

sexual morality—the issue around which the lion's share o fconfessions then centered . None of the priests I interviewedremembers doubting the teaching on contraception prior t othe council, save occasional private regrets about the teach -ing's rigidity. Period literature suggests that this was tru eof American priests generally . Most looked to refinement sof the rhythm method to solve the problems they regularlyconfronted as confessors . Nearly all were proud of havin gbeen gentle confessors, even with "recidivist" penitents .None anticipated that birth control would soon erupt as thesingle most divisive issue in the church. Nor did they expecta debate over celibacy, an issue with obvious relevance t othe looming debate over contraception.

Once that debate was joined, it led to a marked diminu-tion of confidence and even moral authority for growingnumbers of priests. It was lay experience, after all, that ulti-mately set the moral agenda with regard to birth control . Acelibate clergy seemed more and more irrelevant to the de-bate, not only in the eyes of the liberal laity but in those ofmany priests themselves . Growing numbers of priests, in-deed, found it hard to square their celibacy with the posi-tive theology of marital sex that increasingly framed thedebate. Did the celibate's moral witness not suffer by com-parison to the other-centeredness of married love? Was thevery ideal of celibacy not premised on a truncated, eve ndamaging, view of the psyche? Young priests in particula rwere more and more troubled by such doubts .

Difficulties in the confessional intensified the problem . Itwas not just that penitents were fewer in number, a tren dthat was evident by 1966. More painful was one's inabilityto give firm guidance to the many penitents who still asked ,and now sometimes argued, about church teaching on con-traception. By the mid-1960s, that teaching looked to manypriests to be in a genuine state of doubt, although most bish -ops were instructing their clergy to uphold it . In the circum-stances, many priests believed they could go no further tha ntelling their more assertive penitents to follow their consciences .

Humanae vitae thus had the effect, particularly for younge rmen, of exacerbating an already corrosive crisis of priestlymorale and identity . Roughly half of American priests, ac-cording to a 1969 survey, disagreed with the encyclical's con -clusions. But relatively few were willing to make thei rdisagreement public, either for fear of a punitive bishop o rreluctance to put a tolerant ordinary on the spot . Given theperiod's romance with authenticity, it was almost inevitablethat many such men should feel a bit cowardly, and evendishonest . They might feel superfluous, too, faced with amostly empty confessional and a laity seemingly at hom ewith its newly won moral independence . Coupled with aflood of resignations from the priesthood and sharply di-minished seminary enrollments, the situation was terriblydamaging to clerical morale. By the late 1960s, growing num-bers of men were doubting the meaning, and not simply the

efficacy, of their lives as priests .Humanae vitae might best be understood as having termi-

nated a necessary and, in fact, long-delayed conversatio n

Commonweal 16 April 23, 2004

within the church . What is sex for? What is the nature ofmarriage? We need answers to these questions today no les surgently than in the 1960s . We know that reverence for lifemust lie at the heart of an authentically Christian sexua lethic. But what does this mean on a crowded planet, wherewomen rightly claim equality, and reproductive technolo-gies are evolving with bewildering rapidity? For a brief fe wyears in the mid-1960s, American Catholics did indeed talkabout these problems as a church. True, the conversation wa ssometimes awkward and even painful . Necessary conver-sations often are, especially when they center simultaneouslyon sex and authority . Too much anger attended the conver -sation's latter stages, a reflection in part of a souring nation -al mood . But it was a genuine conversation nonetheless, t owhich many Catholics—priests as well as laity—brough ttheir most intimate concerns and experiences .

When this conversation was abruptly terminated, the ef-fect was to isolate its various parties and exacerbate thei rsuspicions of one another . Most of the laity simply claime dthe realm of sexual decision making as peculiarly their own,relieved on one level by clerical silence, but resentful of ittoo . I am not the only Catholic parent to have felt abandone dby the church as I steered my offspring through the churn-ing seas of adolescence after the "sexual revolution ." Thebishops, for their part, mostly retreated behind high admin-istrative walls, venturesome for a time about social justic ebut oddly disconnected about sex . The result has been a now-pervasive tendency for the laity to regard their bishops asnot only remote but even dishonest, at least on the sexua lfront—a problem that preceded the current sexual-abus escandals and contributed to the laity's outrage over the be-havior of bishops .

or priests, the abrupt termination of the conver-sation was especially isolating . Their status asmoral authorities was disastrously undermined ,as we have just seen . And their own pressin g

issues with regard to sex—mandatory celibacy, first andforemost—were essentially swept aside . The priests I inter-viewed bore frequent, if sometimes inadvertent, witness tothe frustrations thereby generated . A surprising numberwere eager to talk to me, despite the delicate nature of mysubject matter . Some actually spoke in terms of unfinishedbusiness—or a truncated conversation, if you will . Others ,after first asserting that they did not remember much aboutpastoral practice in the distant 1950s, were subsequentl ymoved to detailed recollections of their long-ago privatewrestling with the birth-control problem . Perhaps most im-portant, nearly all evinced distress at what they saw as th echurch's present-day impotence about sexual morality. Ratherlike the laity, many of these men felt abandoned by th echurch—fumbling as finite individuals with the hard prob -lems of contemporary sexuality, wondering what words t ospeak to the seemingly alien young .

That the priests I interviewed were so admirable madetheir distress especially hard to contemplate. They were ob -

viously a self-selected group, given my subject matter andmode of locating interviewees . Typically I asked priest-col-leagues or the interviewees themselves for the names of like -ly prospects . I did not strive for geographic balance, givenmy limited research budget . The majority came from theupper Midwest, where progressive currents in Catholicis mhave long been particularly strong . At the same time, thesewere men who had stayed in the priesthood, even as man yof their confreres were leaving. And few gave voice to rad-ical views, whether on theology or politics .

What were they like—my self-selected population of priest -interviewees? To a man, my informants were gracious an dintelligent ; nearly all were widely read ; most were psycho -logically acute . They exhibited a splendid sense of humo rtoo, usually of the dry variety . With one or two exceptions,they were deeply pastoral in orientation—immersed in thelives of their far too numerous parishioners, defining thei rpriesthood in terms of service. Even those who were offi-cially retired were still actively involved in parish ministry—happy, in many instances, to have surrendered th eadministrative burdens of a pastorate for a life wholly cen-tered on liturgy, Christian education, and various parish ac-tivities . But for all their energy and commitment, the priest sI spoke with were often uncertain about the efficacy of theirministry and deeply unhappy about their relations with au-thority in the church.

It has been a great comfort for me to think of them in thesedispiriting days . Yet I have often wondered about their cur -rent mood . Do they feel even more estranged from their bish-ops? Even more uncertain about their role in the lives of manyof the laity, perhaps especially the young? On both counts, I sus-pect the answer is yes . All the more reason, then, not to presentthem—as an episcopal fait accompli—with "an easily under-standable booklet" explaining why contraception is alway swrong. Priests like these deserve better. So does the laity.

"I 'm riot sure ,Iu aai cull Itamllu I/- -

11 .bu ulunn't) nu /list ~irr 1 v e /Fee trill ?

F

BALO O

Commonweal 17 April 23, 2004