Authority, Part III

We've seen the how the Catholic and UMC approaches to the abortion issue were handled, but lets look at a less cut-and-dry case in this installment.

In the last installment, we saw how the it was really a no-brainer for the Catholic Church to uphold the Divine principle of the sacredness of life from conception to natural death.  In the case of contraception, we have a slightly more difficult situation.

In the later part of the 1950s, more effective means of artificially preventing conception were developed.  In addition, modern economic systems made traditionally large families difficult to maintain.  The question was presented to Christians: is contraception really that wrong?  In 1951, the Anglicans, and their Lambeth Conference, decided that it rare cases, contraception among married couples was ok (which makes no sense to say, because even the Anglicans in the 1950s still maintained that no couple that wasn't married should be having sex...oh well).  By 1962, every Christian denomination had followed suit.  These ecclesial groups used the feelings of their faithful to judge their morality. Lets be honest here.  When faced with the possibility of having sex whenever and long periods of abstinence, whats a guy/girl to do?  Walk the narrow road?  Heck no!  In addition, while still knowing that killing an unborn baby is evil, it is simple to say that preventing that baby to be born is not (plus, you get sex whenever you want it).  Thus, Protestant groups, using their emphasis on conregations' feelings, gave in to the allure of contraception.

The same dilemma was presented to the Catholic Church.  Dedicated to solving the dilemma in a responsible way, the Church didn't put it up for a vote.  Rather, Blessed Pope John XXIII called for a commission to study the theology, morality and logistics of both sides of the dilemma (maintaining what the Church had alway taught, or doing what the Protestants did).  Six years later, the commission presented their findings to the Holy Father, Pope Paul VI.  Anyone who was alive at that time heard that the Church was going to change Her teaching on contraception. (The reason they heard this was because someone sympathetic to changing the doctrine had let slip to the media that the majority opinion in the commission was that it should be changed.)  In 1968, Humanae vitae was issued, which upheld the Traditional doctrine of the evil of contraception.  The principal author of Hv, Karol Wjtyla, the future John Paul II, argued that changing the doctrine would be a huge, huge error.  The Church had always taught the evil of contraception (Augustine, Jerome, and even Calvin equated contracepted sex as murder).  To change it now would be to ignore the Tradition of the Church, and to cause the Magesterium to lose all credibility.  Wojtyla and others in the minority (including, as I understand it, Joseph Ratzinger), used the consistent teaching of the Magesterium against contraception in its arguement.  Thus, the Magesterium ruled decisively.