Forty years ago, the Roman Catholic Church released its historic papal encyclical forbidding the use of contraception, a teaching that sparked almost unparalleled protests within the church from theologians, priests and laity.Known as "Humanae Vitae" - or "Of Human Life" - the encyclical condemned all forms of contraception, including the pill.
A generation later "Humanae Vitae" still remains the church's official teaching. And yet use of contraceptives has become widespread among American Catholics, while issues such as AIDS pose new challenges for the 40-year-old teaching.
"It depends on how the question is asked," said Robert McClory, a journalist and Northwestern University professor who wrote "Turning Point," a history of Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical. "But polls show that 75 to 90 percent of Catholics don't accept the current teaching."
"The best estimates we have is 80 percent," said Monsignor Steven Rohlfs, formally with the Diocese of Peoria, now rector at Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md. "Most people don't even understand the church's teachings on it anymore. They've never been educated in it. They think it's like fish on Friday - they think it's some disciplinary law like taking holy water when you come into church. But it's much more profound than that."
1968: A church divided
With Vatican II (1962-65), the Roman Catholic Church took another look at its ban on contraception. Pope John XXIII appointed a small commission to look at a very narrow question: Whether the new birth control pill fell under the church's traditional prohibition.
After Pope John's death, Pope Paul VI expanded the commission, which then looked at a broader issue: Whether the church's stance against contraception made sense at all.
The commission decided it didn't, and in 1966 voted 57 to 4 to recommend the Pope change the teaching. Morality in marriage was based on mutual love, the commission decided, not on whether artificial means were used to regulate birth. It also said that the traditional teaching was not infallible and lacked solid Biblical foundation.
But the Pope sided with the minority. Any artificial means of inducing sterility for the purpose of preventing conception - from condoms to the pill, from the diaphragm to sterilization - was a grave evil no matter what the reason. The decision sparked unprecedented criticism and open dissent within the church.
"The whole affair," writes Catholic historian Thomas Bokenkotter, "precipitated the most serious crisis for papal authority since Luther."
Health care consequences
The 1968 decision had a number of long-term consequences that influence non-Catholics and Catholics alike.
One involves Catholic health care providers and the clash between the church's moral teaching and common medical practice.
For instance, when OSF Saint Francis began hiring primary care physicians in the 1990s as part of OSF Medical Group, many of the physicians wanted to prescribe oral contraceptives. Much anguished discussion ensued, said Joseph Piccione, corporate ethicist for OSF Healthcare System.
Yet a middle ground was found. No contraception of any kind would be distributed within the four walls of the hospital itself, Piccione said.
But in medical group offices, physicians would be permitted to prescribe oral contraceptives - provided they did so in what was termed "limited private practice" and not as employees of OSF. A number of conditions had to be met, including signage that explicitly states that the physician who prescribes oral contraceptives is not acting as an employee of OSF.
Even so, this accommodation - which was reviewed by Catholic ethicists nationally and became a model for dealing with the contraceptive dilemma - was made with great reluctance by the OSF board, Piccione said.
OSF's Catholic leadership also has influenced another area: Insurance. Since OSF no longer owns OSF Health Plans - it was sold to Humana earlier this year - ethical questions regarding contraception are largely moot. Before the sale, however, OSF had to use a third party administrator to pay for what it considered morally unacceptable practices such as vasectomies, tubal ligations, pharmaceutical birth control or hysterectomies unless the latter were required for a patient's health.
Elsewhere, the church's moral stands have led to showdowns in court.
For example, a recent California court case pitted the church against state law that required contraceptives to be included in employee prescription drug plans. The church didn't want the law to apply to its charity outreach programs. The California Supreme Court decision required the church to comply.
Internationally, AIDS has posed a particularly difficult dilemma since most of the world's health agencies promote condom use as an important tool for stopping the spread of the disease. Faced with epidemic levels of AIDS in South Africa, Bishop Kevin Dowling openly defied church teachings in 2005 and spoke out for condom use. Meanwhile, Vatican officials are wrestling with the question of whether or not condom use might be licit when an HIV-infected man is married to a noninfected woman.
Dual legacy
McClory argues that "Humanae Vitae" has diminished the Catholic Church's global moral authority and made it an unwelcome partner at international tables.
Others, such as theologian Janet Smith, argue that current moral ills - including an epidemic of pornography and family breakdown - were predicted by "Humanae Vitae" and are the fruit of widespread contraceptive use.
Among the laity, contraception is common. But there are signs of changes as younger priests, trained under Pope John Paul II, talk about the teaching and about natural methods of family planning as alternatives.
"I hear about it so much more, really in the past 10 years, than I ever did when I was growing up," said Bret Taylor, who attends Peoria's St. Mark's Church with his wife, Julie. "You're hearing it more from the pulpit. I don't think they have some of the hang-ups that some of the priests had in the '70s when this came out."
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(Source: pjs)