Category: Moral Theology

Bishop Strips Abortion Hospital of Catholic Status!

OlmstedSmall

Parts in this series: one, two, three, four, five

Bishop Thomas Olmsted of the Diocese of Phoenix has stripped St. Joseph’s Medical Center of its status as a Catholic institution.

The decision was announced Tuesday at a press conference in Phoenix.  The following is the statement released by the Diocese of Phoenix in the wake of the announcement:

St. Joseph’s Hospital no longer Catholic

Statement of Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted

December 21, 2010

Jesus says (Cf. Mt 25:40), “Whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me.”

Caring for the sick is an essential part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Throughout our history, the Church has provided great care and love to those in need. With the advent of Catholic hospitals, the faithful could also be confident that they were able to receive quality health care according to the teachings of the Church.

Authentic Catholic care in the institutions of Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) in the Diocese of Phoenix has been a topic of discussion between CHW and me from the time of our initial meeting nearly seven years ago.

At that first meeting, I learned that CHW already did not comply with the ethical teachings of the Church at Chandler Regional Hospital. The moral guide for Hospitals and Healthcare Institutions is spelled out in what are called the Ethical and Religious Directives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. I objected strongly to CHW’s lack of compliance with these directives, and told CHW leaders that this constituted cooperation in evil that must be corrected; because if a healthcare entity wishes to call itself Catholic (as in “Catholic” Healthcare West), it needs to adhere to the teachings of the Church in all of its institutions. In all my seven years as Bishop of Phoenix, I have continued to insist that this scandalous situation needed to change; sadly, over the course of these years, CHW has chosen not to comply.

Then, earlier this year, it was brought to my attention that an abortion had taken place at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. When I met with officials of the hospital to learn more of the details of what had occurred, it became clear that, in the decision to abort, the equal dignity of mother and her baby were not both upheld; but that the baby was directly killed, which is a clear violation of ERD #45. It also was clear that the exceptional cases, mentioned in ERD #47, were not met, that is, that there was not a cancerous uterus or other grave malady that might justify an indirect and unintended termination of the life of the baby to treat the grave illness. In this case, the baby was healthy and there were no problems with the pregnancy; rather, the mother had a disease that needed to be treated. But instead of treating the disease, St. Joseph’s medical staff and ethics committee decided that the healthy, 11-week-old baby should be directly killed. This is contrary to the teaching of the Church (Cf. Evangelium Vitae, #62).

It was thus my duty to declare to the person responsible for this tragic decision that allowed an abortion at St. Joseph’s, Sister Margaret McBride, R.S.M., that she had incurred an excommunication by her formal consent to the direct taking of the life of this baby. I did this in a confidential manner, hoping to spare her public embarrassment.

Unfortunately, subsequent communications with leadership at St. Joseph’s Hospital and CHW have only eroded my confidence about their commitment to the Church’s Ethical and Religious Directives for Healthcare. They have not addressed in an adequate manner the scandal caused by the abortion. Moreover, I have recently learned that many other violations of the ERDs have been taking place at CHW facilities in Arizona throughout my seven years as Bishop of Phoenix and far longer.

Let me explain.

CHW and St. Joseph’s Hospital, as part of what is called “Mercy Care Plan”, have been formally cooperating with a number of medical procedures that are contrary to the ERDs, for many years. I was never made aware of this fact until the last few weeks. Here are some of the things which CHW has been formally responsible for throughout these years:

• Contraceptive counseling, medications, supplies and associated medical and laboratory examinations, including, but not limited to, oral and injectable contraceptives, intrauterine devices, diaphragms, condoms, foams and suppositories;

• Voluntary sterilization (male and female); and

• Abortions due to the mental or physical health of the mother or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

This information was given to me in a meeting which included an administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital who admitted that St. Joseph’s and CHW are aware that this plan consists in formal cooperation in evil actions which are contrary to Church teaching. The Mercy Care Plan has been in existence for 26 years, includes some 368,000 members, and its 2010 revenues will reach nearly $2 billion. CHW and St. Joseph’s Hospital have made more than a hundred million dollars every year from this partnership with the government.

In light of all these failures to comply with the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Church, it is my duty to decree that, in the Diocese of Phoenix, at St. Joseph’s Hospital, CHW is not committed to following the teaching of the Catholic Church and therefore this hospital cannot be considered Catholic.

The Catholic faithful are free to seek care or to offer care at St. Joseph’s Hospital but I cannot guarantee that the care provided will be in full accord with the teachings of the Church. In addition, other measures will be taken to avoid the impression that the hospital is authentically Catholic, such as the prohibition of celebrating Mass at the hospital and the prohibition of reserving the Blessed Sacrament in the Chapel.

For seven years now, I have tried to work with CHW and St. Joseph’s, and I have hoped and prayed that this day would not come, that this decree would not be needed; however, the faithful of the Diocese have a right to know whether institutions of this importance are indeed Catholic in identity and practice.

EXPOSED! Catholic Abortion Hospital’s *Network*!

Chw

According to an agreement worked out last week, Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) has until tomorrow (Tuesday, December 21), to respond to Bishop Thomas Olmsted’s requirements concerning how it operates St. Joseph’s Medical Center in the Diocese of Phoenix.

Whatever happens in that case, the story just got a lot bigger.

Because CHW operates hospitals throughout California, Arizona, and Nevada, it was likely that new stories would turn up, either in Phoenix or in other western dioceses. I predicted as much in part two of this series (here’s part one, also).

I’ve been planning on doing some further scrutiny of CHW to see where the story might lead next, but the folks at American Life League have devoted the last few days compiling a dossier on CHW. I was fortunate enough to receive a couple of embargoed drafts of the report (which may have changed since the most recent one I got), but the embargo is now off, and so here’s a summary of ALL’s findings. Take it away, ALL . . . !

Catholic Healthcare West and its Anti-Catholic Activities

Catholic Healthcare West (CHW), headquartered in San Francisco, CA, is a system of 41 hospitals and medical centers in California, Arizona and Nevada. Founded in 1986, it is the eighth largest hospital system in the nation and the largest not-for-profit provider in California. According to its website:

CHW is committed to delivering compassionate, high-quality, affordable health care services with special attention to the poor and underserved. The CHW network of more than 7,500 physicians and approximately 40,000 employees provides health care services to more than four million people annually.

CHW member hospital St. Joseph’s of Phoenix, Arizona, became steeped in scandal earlier this year when the head of the ethics committee, Sr. Margaret McBride, approved the abortion of an 11 week preborn baby whose mother suffered from pulmonary hypertension.  Bishop Olmsted, prelate of the Diocese of Phoenix, investigated the case and after interviewing Sr. McBride, informed her that she had excommunicated herself by approving the abortion.  Since then, CHW has defended Sr. McBride’s decision, and after months of debate, Bishop Olmsted issued a letter to CHW declaring his intent to withdraw the Catholic identity of the hospital unless CHW met three specific conditions.

Prompted by Bishop Olmsted’s stern warning, American Life League conducted its own investigation into CHW’s activities and discovered that its scandals are not limited to one abortion in one member hospital.  In just two days, ALL found that

• CHW Arizona’s health care plan covers oral contraception and diaphragms
• CHW has granted money to at least six organizations that promote abortion, birth control and/or homosexual lifestyles
• At least one CHW member hospital promotes Planned Parenthood on its website, and another lists the provision contraception as a service
• 12 CHW members (as of 2001) performed tubal ligations
• 20 members currently refer for vasectomies by staff physicians on their websites
• CHW funded and helped create the “Healthy San Francisco” health plan, which covers elective abortion
• CHW CEO Lloyd Dean made donations to the Obama campaign and gave strong endorsements for the USCCB-condemned Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

ALL’s report goes on to substantiate its findings by providing detail—quotations and links—and you can read it here (.pdf).

It will take some time to drill down into all the citations the report provides and see how well the research holds up (and what else emerges), but CHW has some serious ‘spaining to do.

Which is not to say that they can’t.

For instance, according to the dossier, “CHW Members Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, Sequoia Hospital and St. Mary’s Medical Center donated $267,704 to 17 organizations in 2010.  At least five of these grantees are actively promoting ideologies antithetical to Catholic teaching.” It then cites one such entity as “San Francisco Health Plan,” which covers abortion, birth control, and other family planning services.

Okay, so San Francisco Health Plan is covering evil procedures. But remember where we’re talking about: San Francisco. They’re crazy enough up there—and in California generally—that there very well might be a local law requiring all health plans to have such coverage. If so then CHW could argue that their action involved only remote material cooperation with evil which would potentially be justifiable according to Catholic moral theology if the good done by the health plan overall was more than the evil done by certain individual procedures it covers.

In other words, they might make the argument: “We don’t approve of abortion and contraception services, but given the local law there was no way to extricate such services from a health plan, and the health plan itself saves more lives/does more good than the lives it takes/evil acts it promotes. We therefore considered this a legitimate act under Catholic moral theology’s principles concerning remote material cooperation with evil.”

But there might not be such a law. And this might not have been their intent. Though even if all that is the case, this looks really bad.

Another point singled out in ALL’s dossier concerns a medical plan offered to employees of CHW facilities in Arizona. According to ALL, “CHW’s 2008 Arizona Medical Plan and $250 Deductible Plan cover oral contraceptives and diaphragms.”

True. But bear in mind that CHW isn’t itself an insurance agency. This is a policy offered under the auspices of a professional insurance agency (a little digging reveals it to be Aetna), and so CHW has the potential defense, “This was the best policy we could find to offer our employees, all things being considered. We don’t approve of oral contraception and diaphragms, but we could not find a policy that didn’t cover these yet still offered decent benefits. Therefore this also was justified based on the principles regarding remote material cooperation with evil” Or there even could be an Arizona law requiring insurance plans in the state to cover these (states get to make such laws).

Or there might not be such a law. Or this might not have been CHW’s motive. And there might have been plenty of Arizona-legal insurance plans that offered good benefits without covering oral contraception and diaphragms. Still: CHW needs to explain, and this looks really bad.

And then there’s this: The ALL report shows that twenty (almost half of!) “CHW member hospitals and health centers refer for vasectomies by staff physicians on their own websites.”

For example, here’s the vasectomy referral page for the St. John’s Regional Medical Center/St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital in Oxnard, California.

Now, it may be the case that none of the vasectomy services are occurring on the grounds of St. John’s Whatever. But notice that all seven of the physicians listed are affiliated with St. John’s. Even if they weren’t though, why is a Catholic hospital (apparently formally one, given the name “St. John’s,” and not only by virtue of being run by Catholic Healthcare West) referring people on its web site to where they can get vasectomies?

The “remote material cooperation with evil” business wouldn’t appear to work here. (Not in a nation that has First Amendment protection of freedom of speech and medical conscience laws). The only explanations I can think of are either, “There’s a law requiring this,” or, “We didn’t know. Our web guys put that up. Or it was the local hospital’s decision to put that up. They did it. Upper CHW management didn’t know about it. It’s not our policy, and it will be swiftly taken down.”

Yeah. . . . Maybe.

We’ll see, won’t we?

Bottom line is: There is a huge amount of smoke here, and there appears to be a fire of a systematic nature going on underneath it.

This story will get bigger, and CHW has a lot of explaining to do.

What do you think?

Catholic Abortion Hospital Smackdown: Part II

Bio_lloyd_dean_lgYesterday I reported on the situation between Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted and St. Joseph’s Medical Center, which operates in his diocese as a Catholic hospital and whose parent company, Catholic Healthcare West, has been slow to comply with the good bishop’s requirements that it implement in his diocese the U.S. bishop’s Ethical and Religious Directives (ERDs) concerning healthcare as he understands them.

You can read about that here.

What happens will depend in significant measure on the decisions of Lloyd Dean (pictured), the president and CEO of Catholic Healthcare West.

To make a long story short, Bishop Olmsted has threatened to “publicly revoke [his] endorsement of St. Joseph’s Hospital as a ‘Catholic’ hospital.”

The result may already be known by the time you read this (reports on Thursday indicated that the parties were in discussion, trying to work out an agreement), but whichever way it goes, there are some interesting canonical aspects to this case—and we’re likely to hear more about the story in the future.

So let’s get to it . . .
Who Gets to Be a Catholic Hospital?

Some in the press (including folks who should know better), have been claiming that this doesn’t mean that the hospital would have to stop calling itself “Catholic.”

For example, USA Today states:

St. Joseph’s would not be required to stop calling itself Catholic. . . . Numerous Catholic institutions, from universities to hospitals to publications, call themselves Catholic without being affiliated directly with the church. St. Joseph’s has no official connection with the bishop, but it was founded by the Sisters of Mercy, a Catholic religious order.

And the National Catholic Reporter (not Register) states:

St. Joseph’s has no official connection with the bishop, but it was founded by the Sisters of Mercy, a Catholic religious order.

Numerous Catholic institutions, from universities to hospitals to publications, including the National Catholic Reporter, view themselves as Catholic without being directly affiliated with the official church.

The terms “affiliated directly,” “official connection,” and “directly affiliated” are canonically ambiguous. I don’t know what they mean, other than that St. Joseph’s Medical Center (and the Reporter and many other institutions) are not directly owned, operated, or erected by the bishop.

What I do know is that the Code of Canon Law says the following:

Can. 216 Since they participate in the mission of the Church, all the Christian faithful have the right to promote or sustain apostolic action even by their own undertakings, according to their own state and condition. Nevertheless, no undertaking is to claim the name Catholic without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority.

And:

Can. 300 No association is to assume the name Catholic without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority according to the norm of can. 312.

The competent ecclesiastical authority for a hospital operating in a particular diocese being the diocesan bishop:

Can. 312 §1. The authority competent to erect public associations is:

1/ the Holy See for universal and international associations;

2/ the conference of bishops in its own territory for national associations, that is, those which from their founding are directed toward activity throughout the whole nation;

3/ the diocesan bishop in his own territory, but not a diocesan administrator, for diocesan associations, except, however, for those associations whose right of erection has been reserved to others by apostolic privilege.

§2. Written consent of the diocesan bishop is required for the valid erection of an association or section of an association in a diocese even if it is done by virtue of apostolic privilege. Nevertheless, the consent given by a diocesan bishop for the erection of a house of a religious institute is also valid for the erection in the same house or church attached to it of an association which is proper to that institute.

The bottom line is that the term “Catholic” implies that an initiative is run or at least accepted and approved by the Catholic Church and that it operates under Catholic theological and moral principles. The Church doesn’t want people misled by initiatives that claim to be Catholic but act in non-Catholic ways (e.g., “Catholics for Choice”). Consequently, to use the name “Catholic” you need the approval of the competent ecclesiastical authority.

It doesn’t matter whether you “call” or “view” yourself as Catholic. You can even be a Catholic institution and yet not have the right to call yourself that, as illustrated by the case of Catholic schools:

Can. 803 §1. A Catholic school is understood as one which a competent ecclesiastical authority or a public ecclesiastical juridic person directs or which ecclesiastical authority recognizes as such through a written document.

§2. The instruction and education in a Catholic school must be grounded in the principles of Catholic doctrine; teachers are to be outstanding in correct doctrine and integrity of life.

§3. Even if it is in fact Catholic, no school is to bear the name Catholic school without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority.

In light of these canons, the press should avoid such blithe statements regarding whether an institution can licitly be called “Catholic” when the competent local bishop says it is not a Catholic organization.
Who Gets to Interpret the Directives?

Another interesting canonical aspect of the case concerns the interpretation of the USCCB’s Ethical and Religious Directives, which Bishop Olmsted believes were violated. The ERDs do not address every possible medical situation explicitly, and so judgment is required to discern how a particular directive applies to a particular medical case. According to Bishop Olmsted, St. Joseph’s Medical Center violated the following directive (ERD 47):

Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.

Because we aren’t privy to all the medical facts of the case, it’s impossible to determine which parts of this directive Bishop Olmsted believes were not fulfilled (was the direct purpose a cure? was it proportionately serious? could it not be safely postponed? what do we mean by “safely”? was the child already viable? was it not an operation on the mother that left the child intact but instead a direct dismemberment of the child?). Despite this, Bishop Olmsted seems to be making a reasonable claim in asserting that the local bishop has the right, at least in ambiguous cases, to determine the application of the bishops’ directives as they are exercised in his own diocese. It is not practical, on a medically sensitive case, to consult the entire body of U.S. bishops regarding the meaning and application of a directive, and so it would naturally fall to the local bishop to make this call.
How Might This Get Resolved?

Because different bishops might have different takes on the meaning and application of particular directives, this suggests a way that Catholic Healthcare West might respond to Bishop Olmsted’s requirements. As you may recall, his letter to CHW stated:

1. CHW must acknowledge in writing that the medical procedure that resulted in the abortion at St. Josephs’ hospital was a violation of ERD 47, and so will never occur again at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

2. CHW must agree to a review and certification process conducted by the Medical Ethics Board of the Diocese of Phoenix to ensure full compliance with the Ethical and Religious Directives of the USCCB. The Bishop and his representative from the Medical Ethics Board must have appropriate access to their facilities and protocols for review. (As hospitals and health care organizations submit to similar kinds of certifications from the government or from medical oversight organizations, it should not be unusual to have a group from the Catholic Diocese to certify that hospitals run by CHW are in full compliance with Catholic moral teaching).

3. CHW must agree to provide for the medical staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital ongoing formation on the ERD’s, as overseen by either the National Catholic Bioethics Center or the Medical Ethics Board of the Diocese of Phoenix.

If I were CHW, and if I were trying to work out a solution with Bishop Olmsted, I would accede to his second two requirements immediately and, in compliance with the first, I would propose a text like:

Catholic Healthcare West acknowledges that the medical procedure that resulted in the abortion at St. Joseph’s Hospital was a violation of ERD 47 as interpreted by the competent ecclesiastical authority, the local bishop in whose diocese the hospital operates, and so will it never occur again at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

And it would be somewhat hard for Bishop Olmsted to refuse such a formulation since he can scarcely claim to decide for all bishops everywhere how ERD 47 applies to particular medical cases.
What’s Going to Happen Next?

Hard to say, and it depends on what Catholic Healthcare West decides to do, but I expect there to be more on this case.

F’rinstance: CHW also operates another facility—Chandler Regional Hospital—which does not identify itself as Catholic—despite being run by CHW—and which according to Bishop Olmsted, “authorizes sterilizations and I know not what other immoral acts.”

The fact that it doesn’t identify as a Catholic institution—but is nevertheless run by an institution that does identify as Catholic (i.e., Catholic Healthcare West)—creates an interesting canonical situation, and Bishop Olmsted refers to addressing this situation in the near future, saying, “I recognize that my objections to how Chandler Regional operates are more involved, but I would foresee us needing to address those directly in the near future.”

He also (more than once) calls into question whether Catholic Healthcare West can be considered a Catholic organization, leading to another interesting question . . .
How Big Is This Story Going to Get?

You see, the thing is, Catholic Healthcare West is (as its name suggests) an initiative designed to serve the western part of the country, and it operates medical facilities in a variety of dioceses located in California, Arizona, and Nevada.

You can see a list of the facilities here.

Because CHW is a regional rather than a national or local organization, it falls squarely between the cracks of numbers 2 and 3 of Canon 312 §1, quoted above. The fact it operates regionally makes it the concern of more than one bishop, but not the whole conference of bishops. The most logical way to parse the situation is to say that the local facilities it runs are subject to the jurisdiction of the local bishops in whose territories they fall, while its home office is the proper subject of the bishop in whose territory its home office is located—which is to say, Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco.

This is why he gets carboned on the letter Bishop Olmsted sent, to keep him in the loop.

Only the situation is more complex than that since the case of a regional entity like this isn’t explicitly dealt with in the Code, and so Rome may need to be involved in how the case is resolved, which is why Archbishop Pietro Sambi (the Vatican’s “nuncio” or ambassador to the United States) is also carboned in the letter, to keep him in the loop.

The stage is therefore set (depending on what CHW decides to do, or has been doing) for this story to “go regional”—spreading across other dioceses in the western U.S., and especially the Archdiocese of San Francisco—or even “go global” (in a sense) if the Holy See gets involved and establishes canonical or moral principles that have application everywhere.

Time will tell.

What do you think?

Bishop Threatens Smackdown on Catholic Abortion Hospital

Embryo

Tomorrow (Friday, December 17th) there may be one less Catholic hospital in America.

Why?

Because Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of the Diocese of Phoenix has set that date as the deadline for Catholic Healthcare West (based in San Francisco) to indicate that it will comply with his demands regarding St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital, which is in his diocese. If the demands are not met, he will yank the hospital’s status as a Catholic entity.

The situation is based on a story we have covered before (more than once) in which a nun working at the hospital approved an abortion for a woman suffering from pulmonary hypertension. Bishop Olmsted informed her that she had excommunicated herself by the action. Following this, this fact was leaked to the press in an effort to embarrass the bishop and put pressure on him.

According to USA Today, the excommunication has been lifted and the nun reassigned to other duties in the hospital so that she will not be put in the position of approving abortions in the future.

Since that time Bishop Olmsted has attempted to engage Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) to ensure that there are not repeat offenses. On November 22 he wrote a letter to the president of CHW, Lloyd H. Dean (info on him), in which he threatened to remove the hospital’s Catholic status if compliance was not forthcoming. Also copied in the letter are Archbishop George Niederauer, in whose diocese CHW is based, and Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to the US. The letter was subsequently leaked to the press in an effort to embarrass the bishop and put pressure on him.

A scan of the original is here (.pdf).

So what does the bishop say in the letter? It’s quite interesting!

November22, 2010

Lloyd H. Dean, President
Catholic Healthcare Wcst
185 Berry Street, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94107

Dear Mr. Dean,

I received your letter dated 27 October 2010 accompanied by the moral analysis from M. Therese Lysaught, Ph.D. [here’s who she is—ja]Undoubtedly, the assessment from Dr. Lysaught is extensive and I appreciate the diligence with which it was drafted. At the same time, however, I disagree with her conclusion. In point of fact, throughout our dialogue and cooperative efforts during these last few months, it is more than apparent that the position of CHW is that discerning minds can disagree. Specifically, you stated in a letter to me dated 6 July 2010, “As you know, many knowledgeable moral theologians have reviewed this case, and reached a range of conclusions. If we may assume that these individuals are motivated by their faith and desire and for justice, one must at least acknowledge that this is a very complex matter, on which the best minds disagree.” Thus, it would appear that your intention is to resolve our disagreement by asserting that there is no single “correct” answer to the question of whether the procedure that led to an abortion at St. Joseph’s hospital was morally permissible under the Ethical and Religious Directives of the USCCB [Bishop Olmsted will later refer to these as the “ERD’s”—ja]. In effect, you would have me believe that we will merely have to agree to disagree. But this resolution is unacceptable because it disregards my authority and responsibility to interpret the moral law and to teach the Catholic faith as a Successor of the Apostles.

The decisions regarding life and death, morality and immorality as they relate to medical ethics are at the forefront of the Church’s mission today. As a result, the Church and her bishops have a heightened moral responsibility to remain actively engaged in these discussions and debates. I have attempted to do my part in calling CHW and your hospitals to uphold the dignity of human life, and to embrace the fullness of what the Catholic Church teaches on the immorality of those actions that are an affront to the gift or human life and its inherent goodness from God. The irony of our present state of affairs is that an organization that identifies itself as “Catholic” (CHW) is operating a hospital in my Diocese that does not abide by the ERD’s, and in the case of St. Joseph’s Hospital, has actively engaged in an abortive procedure that is immoral. Thus far, you (CHW) have insisted that you are not doing anything wrong, but that your interpretation of the ERD’s simply differs with my own. According to Catholic teaching though, there cannot be a “tie” so to speak in this debate. Rather, it is my duty as the chief shepherd in the diocese to interpret whether the actions at St. Joseph’s and other hospitals meet the criteria or fulfilling the parameters or the moral law as seen in the ERD’s.

Until this point in time, you have not acknowledged my authority to settle this question but have only provided opinions of ethicists that agree with your own opinion and disagree with mine. As the diocesan bishop, it is my duty and obligation to authoritatively teach and interpret the moral law for Catholics in the Diocese of Phoenix. Because of this, the moral analyses of theologians are important elements that should assist and inform a bishop in the exercise of his teaching authority. However, it is ultimately the authority of the bishop as teacher and pastor that is determinative, something you yourself have rightly recognized. While the issues discussed in the moral analysis you provided are certainly technical and deeply philosophical, they are also foundationally “theological.” And the theology of the Catholic Faith, as concretized in the Code of Canon Law, dispels any doubt whose opinion on matters of faith and morals is decisive for institutions in the Diocese of Phoenix.

It is now my position that our deliberations regarding the tragic abortion at St. Joseph’s Hospital have gone on for far too long, and I believe that there is little hope that you intend to conclude that this case constitutes a violation of the ERD’s. Similarly, as you are aware, since my arrival in the Diocese of Phoenix, I have sought to engage you and the officials at CHW on the topic of my absolute objection to CHW operating hospitals without following the ERD’s; namely my objections to your administration of Chandler Regional Hospital, where as an organization calling itself “Catholic,” CHW authorizes sterilizations and I know not what other immoral acts. I continue to find this particular arrangement deeply troubling. I see no basis to conclude other than that there is no intention on the part of CHW to modify or change its operations at Chandler Regional.
However, in keeping with my moral authority as Bishop of Phoenix and my interpretation of the ERD’s based on that authority, I have determined after review of the facts and circumstances that an abortion did occur at St. Joseph’s. Additionally, my efforts to convince you of the impossibility of a “Catholic” organization to operate in such a way as to not adhere to the ERD’s, has fallen on deaf ears with no apparent progress in more than six years. If actions speak louder than words, your actions communicate to me that you do not respect my authority to authentically teach and interpret the moral law in this diocese. Moreover, your actions imply that you have no intention to acknowledge that what happened at St. Joseph’s hospital was morally wrong according to the ERD’s. Subsequently, this would entail that you will not change your mode of operation in assessing future cases in which similar circumstances are present.

In sum, my interpretation of where we stand at this point is that you would have me accept that: A) while tragic, what happened at St. Joseph’s Hospital was unfortunate, but an acceptable occurrence in line with the ERD’s. Further, if the same scenario would present itself again, your administration would likely carry out the same measures with the same result. B) Chandler Regional Hospital does not have to explicitly abide by the ERD’s since it is not a “Catholic” hospital, even though operated by “Catholic” Healthcare West.

The conclusion I take away from this analysis is that you do not intend to change anything. While my objections and our correspondence have garnered your undivided attention, you have discounted my legitimate authority. Because of this I must now act. I do so not only to assure that no further such violations of the ERD’s occur, but also to repair the grave scandal to the Christian faithful that has resulted from the procedure that look place at St. Joseph’s and the subsequent public response of CHW.

Accordingly, I now ask that CHW agree to the following requirements by Friday, December 17, 2010. Only if all of these items are agreed to, will I postpone any action against CHW and St. Joseph’s Hospital. Specifically, I require the following in order for me to postpone any further canonical action directed against St. Joseph’s Hospital:

1. CHW must acknowledge in writing that the medical procedure that resulted in the abortion at St. Josephs’ hospital was a violation of ERD 47, and so will never occur again at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

2. CHW must agree to a review and certification process conducted by the Medical Ethics Board of the Diocese of Phoenix to ensure full compliance with the Ethical and Religious Directives of the USCCB. The Bishop and his representative from the Medical Ethics Board must have appropriate access to their facilities and protocols for review. (As hospitals and health care organizations submit to similar kinds of certifications from the government or from medical oversight organizations, it should not be unusual to have a group from the Catholic Diocese to certify that hospitals run by CHW are in full compliance with Catholic moral teaching).

3. CHW must agree to provide for the medical staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital ongoing formation on the ERD’s, as overseen by either the National Catholic Bioethics Center or the Medical Ethics Board of the Diocese of Phoenix.

Failure to fulfill these three requirements will lead me to decree the suspension of my endorsement of St. Joseph’s Hospital, forcing me to notify the Catholic faithful that St. Joseph’s Hospital no longer qualifies as a “Catholic” hospital because of its failure to acknowledge the Bishop’s right and duty to judge whether the ERD’s are interpreted and implemented correctly. This is a decision that will be immensely difficult for me, but one that I can and must make. I intend to publicly revoke my endorsement of St. Joseph’s Hospital as a “Catholic” hospital unless I hear from you by Friday, December 17, 2010. Only when you agree to all three terms as described above, will I agree to refrain from my public announcement regarding the status of your Catholic identity. A revocation of my endorsement of St. Joseph’s Hospital would necessitate the following actions:

• Removal of the Blessed Sacrament from all Chapels and Tabernacles at St. Joseph’s Medical Center.

• Prohibition of all Masses celebrated in Chapels within St. Joseph’s Medical Center.

• Public advisory from the Bishop’s Office issued through the Catholic Sun Newspaper and website that St. Joseph’s no longer qualifies as a “Catholic” hospital.

• Priestly ministry and other ministry to the sick will most certainly continue within St. Joseph’s Hospital, as it does in any hospital when the sacraments or pastoral care are requested by patients.

As for Chandler Regional, I simply invite you to put into motion a process for chancing your modus operandi with respect to the implementation of the ERD’s at Chandler Regional. While my decision regarding Catholic identity does not affect Chandler Regional in the same way, the issues about which we disagree are also related to the authentic identity or CHW as a whole. I recognize that my objections to how Chandler Regional operates are more involved, but I would foresee us needing to address those directly in the near future.

As the chief shepherd of the Diocese of Phoenix, I sincerely hope that you will respect my authority to be vigilant over all entities wishing to represent themselves as Catholic organizations. For the sake of the salvation of souls and in the interest of justice for the scandal that this present arrangement has created amongst the Catholic community, I ask you to reconsider your position and adhere to my requests.

Sincerely yours in Christ,
Thomas J. Olmsted
Bishop of Phoenix

cc: Most Reverend George H. Niederauer, Archbishop of San Francisco
Most Reverend Pietro Sambi, Apostolic Nuncio of the United Sites

There’s quite a bit that can be said here. This is a very interesting case, canonically. I’ll have more to say about this in a forthcoming post, but for the moment let me just say how good it is to see a bishop being so diligent and forthright regarding this case.

Go Team Olmsted!

What are your thoughts?

The Meaning of “Marital Intercourse”

Humanaevitae Over on his blog, Steve Kellmeyer has a post in which he argues against the claim that recent Magisterial documents using the phrase “conjugal act” are only addressing the use of contraception within marriage. He argues that the phrase “conjugal act” is to be given a broader meaning.

I appreciate the polite tone that Kellmeyer uses (for he is taking me to task here), and I hope to respond in the same way.

I am sympathetic to the desire to find in recent Magisterial statements a ban on contraception regardless of the circumstances. Indeed, I used to hold that this is what the documents said (in part because I was using faulty translations that rendered “coniugale commercium” as “sexual act” rather than “marital act” or, even more literally, “marital congress” or “marital intercourse”).

Over time, and in consultation with various Latin experts and experts in moral theology, I came to realize that this view is incorrect and that in its recent statements the Magisterium has limited itself to treating the use of contraception within marriage.

In the future it may deal with extramarital situations, but we will have to wait to see what it says. It may say that the same principles apply to extramarital sexual acts or it may not. We will have to see.

In his piece, Kellmeyer acknowledges that

[I]t is true that the 20th century Magisterial pronouncements on contraception all discuss the “conjugal act,”

but argues that

it is NOT the case that this phrasing is only meant to reference the sexual act within marriage.

He proposes several arguments for this, but his basic argument is this:

For precedence, we have the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, who clearly forbid the use of contraceptives regardless of the marital state of the participants.

A bit later on he summarizes his basic argument this way:

In order to reconcile the writings of the Fathers with the Magisterial documents which base themselves on the Fathers, we must assume that “conjugal act” does not strictly confine itself to meaning “the sexual act that takes place within marriage”, rather, it must mean “the sexual act that is supposed to take place within marriage (but often does not)”.

For this argument to be sound one would have to show that the phrase “coniugale commercium” (translated in whatever language the Fathers and Doctors were writing in) was used to refer to sexual intercourse without reference to whether it was occurring in marriage.

This would indeed set a precedent for taking the phrase “coniugale commercium” in something other than its obvious, literal sense. If a substantial series of quotations of this nature could be produced (not just one or two here or there, which would be insufficient to show an established usage) then it would show an established prior usage that was broader in semantic range.

Unfortunately, none of the writings that Kellmeyer cites (many of which were drawn from a Fathers Know Best column that I composed) do this.

It may very well be the case that there is an established tradition of condemning contraception both in and outside of marriage, but that does not tell us what the phrase “coniugale commercium” means. The existence of a broad theme does not tell us the meaning of a specific phrase used to express aspects of that theme in a Magisterial document.

Structurally, the argument seems to be something like:

  1. 20th century Magisterial documents use the phrase “coniugale commercium” while condemning contraception.
  2. The passages in these documents that use the phrase “coniugale commercium” must express the totality of any prior Catholic tradition concerning contraception.
  3. There is a prior Catholic tradition that condemns contraception both in an outside of marriage.
  4. Therefore, by using the phrase “coniugale commercium,” 20th century Magisterial documents are condemning contraception both in and outside of marriage.

This argument does not work because the middle premise (line 2) is false. It is not the case that the totality of a prior, broader theme must be what Paul VI is referring to when he uses this phrase.

To the contrary, one cannot take passages from hundreds of years ago that, although on the same general topic, do not use the same language, and insist that they inform the meaning of a single and different phrase in a modern document, contrary to its obvious literal meaning.

I believe firmly in a hermeneutic of continuity, and thus one cannot dismiss a prior, broader tradition as being irrelevant to the modern treatment of contraception. But saying something is relevant to the modern discussion of a broad moral topic is not the same as saying that it must be what was meant by one particular phrase that has an obvious, contrary meaning.

Make no mistake; Latin has a word for “sexual” (i.e., sexualis). If Paul VI had wanted to say “sexual intercourse” in Humanae Vitae then he would have said sexuale commercium.

In fact, he wouldn’t have even needed to say that because the word commercium itself–in context of a sexual discussion–means “intercourse.” (In broader discussions it can refer to non-sexual exchanges, such as social intercourse or business intercourse, but the context tells us that this is the sexual usage.)

What “coniugale” does is specify the kind of intercourse. Not sexual intercourse in general, but specifically marital intercourse: intercourse in marriage.

This is indicated both by the immediate context of the document itself and by the historical context in which the document arose.

Humanae Vitae is not a general meditation on the subject of contraception–the kind of document that might address both marital and extra-marital sex (as with a manual of moral theology). It is specifically a document intended to offer guidance to married couples. This is established as its subject matter from its opening sentences:

The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. It has always been a source of great joy to them, even though it sometimes entails many difficulties and hardships.

The fulfillment of this duty has always posed problems to the conscience of married people, but the recent course of human society and the concomitant changes have provoked new questions. The Church cannot ignore these questions, for they concern matters intimately connected with the life and happiness of human beings.

So the purpose of the document is to answer the “new questions” (created by modern socio-economic factors and the new methods of birth control that had been developed–especially the Pill, which did not seem to violate the physical structure of the marital act, the way condoms do) that Humanae Vitae sets out to answer so that married couples may know how to properly live out their vocation.

And the document did not come out of a vacuum. It was the Pope’s 1968 response to the disastrous 1967 report that had been authored (and then leaked to the press) by the Pontificial Commission on Population, Family, and Birth, which had endorsed contraception between married couples.

The Pontificial Commission had been set up during the reign of John XXIII to deal with an upcoming United Nations population conference, but he died before it met. When Paul VI was elected, he expanded and reworked its membership and mission, tasking it in 1964 with answering three questions:

What is the relationship between the primary and secondary ends of marriage? What are the major responsibilities of married couples? How do rhythm [i.e., the rhythm method] and the pill relate to responsible parenthood? [SOURCE].

The Pontifical Commission was not tasked with writing a general moral treatment of human sexuality. It was tasked specifically with analyzing the situation of married couples and their use of contraception in “responsible [and thus marital] parenthood.”

The Commission accordingly crafted a report which, while it was pro-contraception, was focused on the use of contraception by married couples. It is not a general treatise on human sexuality. (READ IT HERE.) 

When the Commission’s pro-contraception report was leaked to the press it caused an enormous raising of expectations that the Pope would approve the Pill, and to combat this Paul VI wrote his final encyclical, which was released the next year. Humanae Vitae is his public response to the Commission’s report and his effort to deal–as he says–with the new questions that married couples face.

When he then uses the Latin words meaning “marital intercourse,” we must recognize that this is exactly what he is talking about.

While I as much as anybody would love for Humanae Vitae to settle all questions on the topic of human sexuality, the fact is that it is a document of deliberately limited scope and that its key passage is focused on the use of contraception in relation to marital intercourse.

It is not possible to shoehorn other elements of prior Catholic thought into this passage because this would violate its clear language and force it to answer questions that it is not attempting to address.

As is often the case with the Magisterium, it moves slowly and in a step-wise manner. It doesn’t tend to take on questions without strong reason. The Church already taught that sex outside of marriage is gravely sinful. The mid 20th century had brought about new socio-economic and technological factors that impinged on the question of sexuality within marriage, and this is what both the Pontifical Commission and Humanae Vitae expressly set out to address.

Rather than being a summation of the whole of Catholic thought on sexuality, Humanae Vitae is a document with a sharply limited scope intended to provide moral and pastoral guidance to married couples facing the challenges of the modern world.

There is a lot more that could be said about this (particularly regarding some of the sources Kellmeyer cites), but I hope this provides a basic response to his central argument.

I am also happy to note that he concludes by stating:

So, is the Holy Father’s private theological opinion correct? Is it the case that the use of the condom with the intent to reduce disease transmission less damnable than using the condom without that intention? Probably. Aquinas, whose love for such fine distinctions is precisely what makes him the greatest doctor of the Church, would almost certainly agree that it was.

And that is heartening.

Indeed it is.

New Developments on the Pope and Condoms

LIGHTOFTHEWORLD

Each new day seems to bring several new twists to the pope/condom story, so let’s look at what’s happening now. (PART I OF THIS SERIES, PART TWO.)

First, here are some web resources to check out:

* Ed Peters’ trenchant remarks on L’Osservatore Romano’s PR debacle

* Papal spokesman Federico Lombardi’s initial clarification of the Pope’s remarks

* Reportage on Lombardi’s second clarification

* An interview with Archbishop Burke for his take on what the pope was saying

* Damian Thompson’s latest posts (first post, second post, third post)

I don’t want to unduly pick on Thompson, but blood-crazed ferret that he is, his latest posts continue with a rather snarky, triumphalistic tone toward those he terms “conservative” (meaning theologically orthodox) bloggers, who he perceives as disagreeing with the opinion Pope Benedict expressed in his new interview book, The Light of the World ( YOU CAN ORDER IT HERE).

He continues to insist that

he did say that the use of condoms was justified in certain circumstances [emphasis in oridinal].

Not so fast, Damian. Let’s try to keep from putting words in the Pontiff’s mouth. As you yourself have noted on a prior occasion, the Pope did not use the word “justified” or “permissible” or anything along those lines.

One is tempted to ask, a little cheekily, “What part of the Pope’s statement that the Church ‘does not regard it as a real or moral solution’ don’t you understand?”

The issue requires some care, not for the least of reasons because what the Pope said is (a) not as clear as it could be, (b) there are known translation issues here (e.g., L’Osservatore Romano mistranslating “male prostitute” as “female prostitute,” prompting Lombardi’s second clarification), and (c) other differences in the different language editions of his remarks.

So let’s start with what the Pope said (English version):

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

If you’ve been following the development of the story carefully, you’ll notice that the same phrases keep coming up in this regard. In Lombardi’s first clarification he stated that

” the Pope considers an exceptional circumstance in which the exercise of sexuality represents a real threat to another person’s life. In such a case, the Pope does not morally justify the disordered practice of sexuality but maintains that the use of a condom to reduce the danger of infection can be ‘a first act of responsibility’, ‘a first step on the road toward a more human sexuality’, rather than not using it and exposing the other person to a mortal risk.

And in his second clarification Lombardi states:

“I asked the pope personally if there was a serious distinction in the choice of male instead of female and he said ‘no’,” Lombardi said.

“That is, the point is it (the use of a condom) should be a first step toward responsibility in being aware of the risk of the life of the other person one has relations with,” Lombardi said.

“If it is a man, a woman or a transsexual who does it, we are always at the same point, which is the first step in responsibly avoiding passing on a grave risk to the other.

The fact that the same phrases keep being used—without paraphrases like “justified” or “permitted” or even “lesser evil”—suggest that this use is studied. It is intentional. They are deliberately not using terms like “justified,” “permitted,” and the like.

So if the Pope has chosen not to use such words, let’s not put them in his mouth, shall we?

From what I can tell the “first step” language can be taken in one of two ways, which are as follows:

1) The decision to use a condom represents a first step toward a moral exercise of human sexuality in that it shows the person is inwardly aware that not everything in the sexual sphere is permissible (e.g., risking the life of the other).

2) The decision to use a condom represents a first step toward a moral exercise of human sexuality in that a person is concretely limiting the danger to another.

These two senses are not mutually exclusive. One can view condom use as a first step toward morality in both senses.

The first understanding speaks to the inner attitude and awareness of the person using the condom. On this view one might say, “It’s a good thing that the condom user has at least some awareness of the limits of what is moral. It’s still not justified for him to use a condom—even in the context of an act of homosexual prostitution—but at least he has some kind of moral awareness that may grow with time.”

One also could hold sense (1) and simply not address the issue of whether the use of a condom is justified in such a context. One might simply be noting that the awareness of some moral limits is a good sign and not address the question of whether the condom use is justified.

Or one could say that the moral awareness is good and that using a condom limits the evil of the sex act in question: It may still be an act of homosexual prostitution that poses some risk of HIV to the other, but at least the risk is limited. It’s thus “less evil” than it would be without the condom. This converges with sense (2), above.

Even then, though, it is still misleading to say that the use of condoms is “justified.”

Consider a parallel moral judgment: “If you are going to shoot bullets into someone’s body for no good reason, it is less evil to aim randomly than to aim directly for a vital organ.” This judgment is quite true, but it puts the accent on the wrong moral sylLAble to pass this off with headlines like “Pope: shooting bullets randomly okay in some cases.”

The fundamental moral structure of the overall act is gravely morally disordered, just as is shooting bullets into a person’s body for no good reason. Acts of homosexual prostitution (and heterosexual prostitution!) are always gravely immoral. The most that could be said is that using a condom in such acts in an HIV-positive situation might be “less evil” than not using one.

The Pope, the Church, and for that matter theologically orthodox bloggers, are right to resist misleading characterizations that try to isolate consideration of the condom apart from the larger framework of the moral act, which is gravely evil.

To focus on the condom itself and trumpet it “justified” is to miss the moral forest for a single tree. The overall moral structure of human sexuality is what needs to be the focus of attention, and thus the Pope and his assistants have been assiduously pointing to the forest, though the press (as usual) seem to have myopia.

And it’s not even certain at this point that the Pope is endorsing the “less evil” view just articulated. Many competent readers have looked at his remarks and seemed to think he was endorsing some version of interpretation (1), above (the “moral awareness is good” view rather than the “condom use is less evil” view).

When I initially encountered his remarks, this was one of the first thoughts that suggested itself.

I try to give a careful reading to texts like this, and the Pope’s initial statement, “There may be a basis in the case of some individuals” suggested that the Pope meant more than just the “moral awareness is good” view. The word “basis” seemed in this context to suggest a basis for some kind of action, like the act of using a condom, which would get us to the “condom use is less evil” view.

But I don’t consider this to be decisive since there can be translation issues affecting this, as well as the fact the Pope was speaking rather than writing and he simply may have been a bit tongue-tied or awkward in trying to get across his point.

I thus see there as still being a significant amount of ambiguity here, and I would expect further clarification with time. As things progress, we should get more evidence about whether the Pope intended the moral awareness view or the less evil view.

I also don’t view the fact that the same thing was said about females as males as being any kind of surprise. In philosophy and theology, it is common to select an extreme case for purposes of making the principles clear and then seeing how those principles apply to other cases. It makes sense to start with a male (and thus presumably homosexual) prostitute since there is no procreative potential in his sexual acts and use that to identify principles that may also apply to other situations.

It’s important to note, though, that the Church tends to proceed in a stepwise manner, starting with limited, particular cases, and then filling in the picture by considering others.

At this point we don’t even have a Magisterial action on this question (it was an interview asking the Pope’s personal opinions, after all), but Pope Benedicts remarks—and the subsequent clarifications via Lombardi—represent indicators of what the Magisterium may say in the future.

What do you think?

Understanding the Pope’s Dilemma on Condoms

Lightoftheworld

In yesterday’s post on Pope Benedict’s remarks concerning the use of condoms in AIDS prevention, I promised there would be more to follow, so here ‘tis.

For those who may not be aware, there is a new, book-length interview with Pope Benedict in which he made remarks that were sure to—and were—widely misunderstood and misrepresented in the press. “Press gets religion story wrong” is about as common a narrative as “Dog bites man” or “Sun rises in east.” Go figure.

Anyway, it’s a fascinating book. YOU CAN ORDER IT HERE.

It was inevitable that the press would parse the Pontiff’s comments along the lines of the Pope “modifying the Catholic Church’s absolute ban on the use of condoms,” as Damian Thompson of the Telegraph put it.

I want to give kudos to Thompson, though, for correcting himself very promptly. May his journalistic tribe increase!

The idea that the Catholic Church has an “absolute ban on the use of condoms” is widespread, though, so let’s take a moment to look at it.

Just how absolute is the ban?

Well, as I’ve noted before, on more than one occasion, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states (quoting Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae):

“[E]very 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” is intrinsically evil [CCC 2370].

I’ve boldfaced the phrase “conjugal act” because it’s the key to understand what is being said. Many gloss over this phrase and assume it means “sexual act.” It doesn’t. “Conjugal”—like its Latin equivalent, coniugale—doesn’t mean “sexual”; it means “marital.”

If you are having sex with someone you are (heterosexually) married to then you are engaging in the marital act. Otherwise, not. If you are engaging in sexual behavior but not with someone you’re married to then it is a different kind of act (masturbation, adultery, fornication, etc.).

What the Church—in Humanae Vitae and the Catechism—has done is say that one cannot deliberately frustrate the procreative aspect of sexual intercourse between man and wife.

That’s actually a fairly narrow statement. It doesn’t even address all situations that may arise in marriages, because there may be situations in which the law of double effect would allow the toleration of a contraceptive effect as long as this is a side effect of the action rather than being intended as a means or an end.

It thus would rule out the use of a condom to prevent a husband and wife from conceiving a child, but that doesn’t address condom use in other situations. Thus far the Church has not explored the question of condom use—or other, typically contraceptive acts—in cases outside of marriage.

Why not?

The Church holds that all sexual acts outside of marriage are gravely sinful. To start exploring the question of contraceptive use outside of marriage would put the Church in a really weird position that could lead to the subversion of the very moral values it is trying to promote.

We all know how in the public schools sex-ed teachers often pay lip service to the idea that people shouldn’t have sex before marriage and then spend enormous amounts of time spelling out just how to do it and what contraceptive and “safe sex” alternatives there are. The frequent result is thus a message of, “Don’t, but allow me to give you an extended discourse on just what to do in case you decide otherwise.”

School kids recognize the phoniness and pretense of this and that it amounts to a tacit permission for them to go off and sexually misbehave.

The Church, understandably, does not want to be put in the same position. It’s about calling people to authentic moral and ethical values, not giving them advice on how to sin.

And so it’s left the field largely to moral theologians to discuss and not really treated it on the Magisterial level.

That’s something that may change, though. It’s easy to see how changing social factors—including the AIDS crisis—could cause pressure for this question to be treated on the Magisterial level. That’s one reason I’ve addressed this subject in the past, to help people understand what the Magisterium has and has not said thus far, so that if it says something in the future, they will have the context to process and assimilate it.

That this kind of work is needed was evidenced yesterday when many people online were saying how their hearts or stomachs lurched when they encountered the first press reports of the Pope’s remarks.

Now, the Holy See could in the future say that the principles articulated in Humanae Vitae regarding contraception also apply to all sexual acts outside of marriage, or some of them, or none of them. At least it could, hypothetically.

What is it likely to do in practice?

It’s hard to say, but Pope Benedict’s recent interview is suggestive. In the interview he considered the case of a male prostitute. Male prostitutes aren’t all that common from what I’m given to understand. Certainly they aren’t as common as the female variety is supposed to be. Which raises the question of why the Pontiff would zero in on this example.

Presumably, it is because male prostitutes most commonly service male clients, in which case the act is homosexual in nature and thus has no procreative aspect to begin with. The question of contraception thus doesn’t arise because there is no openness to new life in the act in the first place. He also might have chosen this example because males, whether behaving homosexually or heterosexually, have a greater chance of infecting others with HIV, but my guess is that he’s thinking of homosexual prostitution in particular.

It’s easy to see how one could look at that situation and say, “Male homosexual prostitutes are at high risk of both contracting and transmitting HIV; it would be better if they gave up prostitution altogether, but if they are engaging in this activity then the use of a condom would reduce the risk of HIV transmission, and it wouldn’t make the acts they are performing any less open to life than they already are.”

The trouble would be how to present this judgment in a way that does not cause more problems than it solves.

Pope Benedict’s remarks in the interview seem to be an attempt to do just this. He could have phrased himself more clearly, but (a) this was an interview, and in interviews one does not have the kind of leisure to carefully craft one’s remarks that writing allows and (b) he’s straining to find words that communicate the basic moral insight without leading to headlines like “Pope approves condoms!” and “Pope changes Church teaching on sex!”

All in all, his “first step on the road to a more human sexuality” approach is not that bad. Also, addressing the matter in an interview—rather than in a Church document—is a not-that-bad way of getting the subject on the table while blunting some of the problems that could result.

Or not.

One can certainly judge that it would have been better for the Pope to leave the subject unaddressed or to have addressed it in a different way or in a different venue. He himself stated repeatedly in the interview that there have been problems communicating through the press in his reign (even describing the Vatican’s PR efforts as a “failure” on one recent subject), and in hindsight he may (or may not) judge that this was the case here as well.

We’ll have to see.

I have to say that I admire Benedict’s courage.

Oh, and as I predicted, the Holy See swiftly came out with a new statement clarifying the pope’s remarks.

I couldn’t help observing (with some satisfaction) how many of the exact same notes were hit in the clarification that were hit in yesterday’s post, including the fact that the pope was speaking “in a informal and not magisterial form,” to quote papal spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi.

One last thing: Over at The Telegraph, Damian Thompson does a bit of speculating that I’d like to address.

After quoting from the post I did yesterday, Thompson ponders the case of theologically orthodox bloggers

who claim that the Pope didn’t say what he obviously did say… and then emphasise that he was only speaking in an interview AND how dare L’Osservatore Romano release these quotes out of context. Hmm. There is a strong whiff of cognitive dissonance in the air. I hate to pick a fight with bloggers I admire, and I won’t mention any names, but I get the strong impression that certain conservatives are tying themselves in knots trying not to say what they really think.

Which is that they disagree with the Pope.

I don’t know if I am a blogger who Thompson admires (though if I am, let me say that I also admire Thompson and, in fact, am envious of The Church Times having once called him a “blood-crazed ferret”). However, one might suppose that I am among those he is talking about here since I am one of two bloggers mentioned by name (the other is Eric Giunta) and I did emphasize the interview nature of the Pope’s remarks and the fact that the increasingly-erratic L’Osservatore Romano did a disservice to the public in releasing the comments the way it did.

So let me clear up any potential misunderstanding: I don’t disagree with the Pope on this issue.

There are issues I do disagree with him on (e.g., I tend to be more skeptical of claims regarding global warming than he appears to be), but this isn’t one of them.

I agree that if you’re going to engage in homosexual prostitution that it is better to do so in a way that lessens the chance of getting or giving someone a fatal disease.

I also believe that if you are going to have extramarital sex that it is better to do so with a person who is a willing accomplice rather than raping someone. However, I wouldn’t want to see false and misleading headlines like:

Akin says adultery sometimes permissible to stop rape

Akin: adultery can be justified in some cases

Akin says adultery can be used in the fight against rape

Certainly there is a disanalogy here. Adultery is intrinsically wrong and can never be done, regardless of the circumstances. On the other hand, if Pope Benedict is right that it is better for a person engaging in homosexual prostitution to limit the danger of HIV by using a condom (as I think he is) then this use does not add a new sin to the ones already being committed.

But there is a danger of sending a highly misleading message here. Headlines stating things like “condoms sometimes permissible” and “condoms can be justified in some cases” or “condoms can be used in fight against AIDS” will not be understood by the general public in the limited sense that the Pope is addressing. They will be understood way more broadly than that, and that makes them fundamentally misleading.

I do acknowledge that there is cognitive dissonance here, but it’s not dissonance caused by disagreement with the Pope. It’s caused by the same communications dilemma the Pope faces: How to communicate a moral truth about limiting the harm caused by sin without appearing to give tacit permission to the sin itself or to other, related sins.

The Pope Said WHAT about Condoms???

Lightoftheworld

Pope Benedict’s new book, Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and The Signs Of The Times, isn’t even officially out yet but is already at the center of an online media controversy.

ORDER THE BOOK
The controversy erupted Saturday morning when L’Osservatore Romano unilaterally violated the embargo on the book by publishing Italian-language extracts of various papal statements, much to the chagrin of publishers around the world, who had been working on a carefully orchestrated launch for the book on Tuesday.

Among the extracts was one dealing with the use of condoms in trying to prevent the spread of AIDS, and the press immediately seized on this (e.g., Reuters, Associated Press , BBC online).

And so we were treated to headlines like:

* Pope says condoms sometimes permissible to stop AIDS

* Pope: condoms can be justified in some cases

* Pope says condoms can be used in the fight against Aids

Particularly egregious is this statement by William Crawley of the BBC:

Pope Benedict appears to have changed the Vatican’s official stance on the use of condoms to a moral position that many Catholic theologians have been recommending for quite some time.

GAH!

Okay, first of all, this is an interview book. The pope is being interviewed. He is not engaging his official teaching capacity. This book is not an encyclical, an apostolic constitution, a papal bull, or anything of the kind. It is not published by the Church. It is an interview conducted by a German-language journalist. Consequently, the book does not represent an act of the Church’s Magisterium and does not have the capacity to “change[] the Vatican’s official stance” on anything. It does not carry dogmatic or canonical force. The book (which is fascinating and unprecedented, though that’s a subject for another post) constitutes the Pope’s personal opinions on the questions he is asked by interviewer Peter Seewald.

And, as Pope Benedict himself notes in the book:

It goes without saying that the Pope can have private opinions that are wrong.

I don’t point this out to suggest that what Pope Benedict says regarding condoms is wrong (we’ll get to that in a moment) but to point out the status of private papal opinions. They are just that: private opinions. Not official Church teaching. So let’s get that straight.

Among the disservices L’Osservatore Romano performed by breaking the book’s embargo in the way it did was the fact that it only published a small part of the section in which Pope Benedict discussed condoms. As a result, the reader could not see the context of his remarks, giving the reader no way to see the context and guaranteeing that the secular press would take the Pope’s remarks out of context (which they would have anyway, but perhaps not this much). Especially egregious is the fact that L’Osservatore Romano omits material in which Benedict clarified his statement on condoms in a follow-up question.

So L’Osservatore Romano has performed a great disservice to both the Catholic and non-Catholic communities.

Fortunately, now you can read the full text of the Pope’s remarks.

Also, in anticipation of the controversy that these statement would produce, Dr. Janet Smith has prepared a helpful guide to what the Pope did and did not say.

Let’s look at the Pope’s remarks and see what he actually said.

Seewald: . . . In Africa you stated that the Church’s traditional teaching has proven to be the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV. Critics, including critics from the Church’s own ranks, object that it is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms.

Benedict: . . . In my remarks I was not making a general statement about the condom issue, but merely said, and this is what caused such great offense, that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. [EMPHASIS ADDED] Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease.

As a matter of fact, you know, people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.

Note that the Pope’s overall argument is that condoms will not solve the problem of AIDS. In support of this, he makes several arguments:

1) People can already get condoms, yet it clearly hasn’t solved the problem.

2) The secular realm has proposed the ABC program, where a condom is used only if the first two, truly effective procedures (abstinence and fidelity) have been rejected. Thus even the secular ABC proposal recognizes that condoms are not the unique solution. They don’t work as well as abstinence and fidelity. The first two are better.

3) The fixation on condom use represents a banalization (trivialization) of sexuality that turns the act from being one of love to one of selfishness. For sex to have the positive role it is meant to play, this trivialization of sex—and thus the fixation on condoms—needs to be resisted.

So that’s the background to the statement that the press seized on:

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality. [EMPHASIS ADDED]

There are several things to note here: First, note that the Pope says that “there may be a basis in the case of some individuals,” not that there is a basis. This is the language of speculation. But what is the Pope speculating about? That condom use is morally justified? No, that’s not what he’s said: that there may be cases “where this [condom use] can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way to recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed.”

In other words, as Janet Smith puts it,

The Holy Father is simply observing that for some homosexual prostitutes the use of a condom may indicate an awakening of a moral sense; an awakening that sexual pleasure is not the highest value, but that we must take care that we harm no one with our choices.  He is not speaking to the morality of the use of a condom, but to something that may be true about the psychological state of those who use them.  If such individuals are using condoms to avoid harming another, they may eventually realize that sexual acts between members of the same sex are inherently harmful since they are not in accord with human nature.

At least this is the most one can reasonably infer from the Pope’s remarks, which could be phrased more clearly (and I expect the Vatican will be issuing a clarification quite soon).

Second, note that the Pope immediately follows his statement regarding homosexual prostitutes using condoms with the statement, “But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.”

By “a humanization of sexuality,” the Pope means recognizing the truth about human sexuality—that it must be exercised in a loving, faithful way between a man and a woman united in matrimony. That is the real solution, not putting on a condom and engaging in promiscuous sex with those infected with a deadly virus.

At this point in the interview, Seewald asks a follow-up question, and it is truly criminal that L’Osservatore Romano did not print this part:

Seewald: Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?

Benedict: She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.

So Benedict reiterates that this is not a real (practical) solution to the AIDS crisis, nor is it a moral solution. Nevertheless, in some cases the use of a condom displays “the intention of reducing the risk of infection” which is “a first step in a movement toward . . . a more human way of living sexuality.”

He thus isn’t saying that the use of condoms is justified but that they can display a particular intent and that this intent is a step in the right direction.

Janet Smith provides a helpful analogy:

If someone was going to rob a bank and was determined to use a gun, it would better for that person to use a gun that had no bullets in it.  It would reduce the likelihood of fatal injuries. But it is not the task of the Church to instruct potential bank robbers how to rob banks more safely and certainly not the task of the Church to support programs of providing potential bank robbers with guns that could not use bullets.  Nonetheless, the intent of a bank robber to rob a bank in a way that is safer for the employees and customers of the bank may indicate an element of moral responsibility that could be a step towards eventual understanding of the immorality of bank robbing.

There is more that can be said about all this, but what we’ve already seen makes it clear that the Pope’s remarks must be read carefully and that they do not constitute the kind of license for condom use that the media would wish.

More to come.

PART TWO OF THE SERIES: UNDERSTANDING THE POPE’S DILEMMA ON CONDOMS

PART THREE: NEW DEVELOPMENTS ON THE POPE AND CONDOMS

Prejudice in America—Part II! . . . (Moral Values)

A_million_ways_to_go_green_badge In my previous postwe talked about whether anti-Catholicism is the last socially acceptable prejudice remaining in America, as is often claimed.

We saw that, while what counts as “socially acceptable” can be debated, there are a number of easily namable prejudices that are quite acceptable in America, including prejudices against conservative Protestants (Evangelicals and Fundamentalists), against organized/western religion as a whole, and against Muslims (in the sense of actual undue hostility, not just prudent caution due to 9/11). (There is also, of course, some anti-Semitism, but it is not socially acceptable in general American culture.)

Contemporary America’s socially acceptable prejudices go way beyond religion, however. Let’s name a few non-religious ones . . .

1) Prejudice against large families: This is something that some Catholics end up experiencing. Stories about of people with large families encountering those who sneeringly ask them (even in front of the children), “Haven’t you heard of birth control?”

This form of prejudice—originally inspired by the Rev. Thomas Malthus and reinvigorated in the 1960s & 1970s—is particularly short-sighted since children are the economic future of the country. We need more children to stave off a demographic winter like the ones poised to sweep across Japan and Europe.

This leads to another prejudice . . .

2) Prejudice against non-environmentalists: Environmentalists have been so successful in worming their way into American media culture that you can’t watch TV or listen to the radio without a constant, Chinese-water-torture-like series of exhortations to “Go green,” minimize your “carbon footprint,” and promote “sustainability.”

Story after story focuses on environmental issues with either no challenge at all to the environmentalist viewpoint (it is simply assumed to be true) or with only lip service (frequently sneering lip service) given to alternative viewpoints.

3) Prejudice against traditional values concerning homosexuality:  Homosexuals have achieved great success in framing their cause in terms of the civil rights model, with the result that objectively disordered behavior is commonly treated as normal, and anyone who disagrees with this is treated as a pariah.

The way the trend is going, expect anyone with traditional sexual values to be regarded as the equivalent of a Klansman within a generation.

On the other hand, there is also:

4) Prejudice against homosexuals: While the Holy See has been quite firm that homosexual behavior is objectively disordered and not to be given societal approval, it also recognizes that there is such a thing as unjust discrimination against homosexuals (see also here, and here).

While conscientious Catholics studiously avoid such prejudice, not everybody is a conscientious Catholic, and all one has to do is look at the bullying behavior of teenage boys toward those they even suspect of homosexual tendencies to see the malice that is out there.

These prejudices go beyond religion and into the realm of moral values, but then there are prejudices that are at best only peripherally related to such values.

Those will be the subject of our next post.

What are your thoughts?