No papal decree has been more flouted in the last half century than
its repeated insistence that artificial birth control is morally wrong
and sinful and none has alienated – or been ignored by – more Roman
Catholics.
Many religious organisations have opposed birth
control. Muslims and Jews don't like it either, and the Church of
England only revised its opinion in the 1930s to enable family planning
within marriage.
Originally the opposition was probably about preserving
tribal and religious identity: no opportunity to increase numbers
should be lost (thus the sin of Onan in Genesis was about wasting
sperm). This also makes sense of opposition to homosexuality.
The
Roman Catholic Church, however, has found itself wriggling on a
particularly dogmatic hook over the last 42 years, stuck with a doctrine
that many of its adherents, certainly in western countries, simply
ignore. A 2002 US survey found 96% of sexually active Catholic women had
used birth control.
A 1966 papal commission on birth control
recommended (by 30 votes to 5) that opposition be relaxed. But the then
Pope Paul VI took fright and reinforced Vatican opposition in the 1968
encyclical Humanae Vitae, which has remained the church's position ever
since.
The church argued that artificial birth control devalued sex's
purpose and diminishes responsibility, particularly with men, opening
the way to exploitation, abuse and rape.
Officially, as Pius XI ruled in
1930, frustrating the procreative act is "an offence against the law of
God and of nature, and those who indulge in such acts are branded with
the guilt of a grave sin".
Successive popes have strongly opposed
any relaxation of church policy. John Paul II's 1995 Evangelium Vitae
ruled against abortion and contraception as slayers of potential
children whom God intended to create.
In 2007 Benedict himself inveighed
against the "dangerous individualism" of Italian Catholics for not
having enough children and, on a flight to Africa last year, he claimed –
in defiance of virtually all informed medical opinion – that condom use
could actually make the AIDs epidemic worse by increasing sexual
activity.
In this, the Vatican has shifted its opinion somewhat by
arguing not only that artificial controls are morally wrong, but that
the use of condoms is ineffective in preventing infection.
Most
notoriously, in a BBC documentary in 2003, the late Colombian cardinal
Alfonso Trujillo, who was president of the pontifical council for the
family at the time, argued that the AIDs virus could percolate the
rubber of condoms.
He also said that, because condoms are not entirely
effective in preventing HIV infection – only 90% or so – they are
unsafe: "There is that 10% where, due to different causes, a risk
remains. "
This position has taken little account either of
widespread practice by many Catholics, or of the relevant experience of
many women in Third World countries, or of current medical knowledge and
experience.
SIC: TG/UK