A reader writes:
A while ago, my wife stopped taking the pill. I am ashamed to admit this, but we did not realize that the Church taught that contraception was intrinsically evil. We knew they did not "approve" of it, but we did not think it was a grave sin. We also did not know that the pill could sometimes function as an abortafacient. Anyway, when we found out, we immediately got off the pill.
Even though we had made the decision to get off the pill and to stop contracepting, I still wanted to meet with my pastor to discuss the issue of contraception in general, since I really did not understand what was "intrinsically evil" about it.
Anyway, my pastor had some interesting things to say. He pulled out a piece of paper with a [PHONY-SOUNDING TOOL FOR EVALUATING YOUR CONSCIENCE] on it. He told me that my wife and I should use this [TOOL] to make a "mature decision" whether contraception was right for us.
He stated that the most important axiom governing [THE TOOL] was this: Morality is based on reality. He said that the Church’s moral teachings were a "best case scenario" or simply IDEALS to be reached for, and that pastoral practice may not measure up to the optimum.
He basically told me that we needed to do what was right for us, in our situation.
Needless to say, I was very shocked at what the priest said. So I just came right out and asked him: "Father, are you saying that if my wife and I, after reflection, make a mature decision to continue to contracept, that it would be an acceptable decision"? He replied, "Yes."
So, can a decision by a husband and wife to contracept ever be licit?
Here is the teaching of the Church:
Every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible [Humanae Vitae 14].
Thus it is never licit to use the Pill or anything else in order to achieve a contraceptive effect.
It is extremely tempting to simply state that your priest lied to you, but I have to hold open the possibility that he is just grossly misinformed about the nature of the Church’s teachings. In any event, he grossly misrepresented them to you.
It is also difficult to resist the conclusion that he is likely to be morally culpable for this gross misrepresentation as well, since a few years ago the Pope issued an encyclical (Veritatis Splendor), one of whose key and widely-reported points was the repudiation of exactly the kind of moral theology your priest pushed on you (i.e., that the Church proposes only goals to strive and that nothing is intrinsically evil so that particular circumstances can allow one to morally do things that the Church proposes as intrinsically evil).
Whether he is culpable for his action or not, I could not recommend that you seek this man’s counsel on any matter of Catholic moral theology. He is at a minimum grossly ignorant of its basic principles and (with a significant degree of probability) knowingly subversive of it.