Rome Really Needs To Get Involved on This One

The U.S. bishops continue to hold diverse opinions about whether or not canon law requires one to withhold Communion from pro-abortion politicians.

Many, out of an apparent desire not to alienate those who hold pro-abortion views–as part of a "woo them back gently" strategy–resist the idea that Communion should be withheld from such politicians.

The replies given by some bishops involve arguments that strike one variously as (a) dodges of the real issue, (b) subversive of canon 915, or (c) simply incoherent.

For the record, canon 915 states:

Can.  915 Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy Communion.

This is the Church’s law. Yet some quotes from bishops in the media give the appearance that the respective bishops have never heard of this canon, which is difficult to believe after the "Can John Kerry receive Communion?" controversy of the 2004 election.

Part of the problem we are encountering at present is that bishops do not like to be pitted against each other in the press and, since there is not a consensus among them about whether canon 915 should be applied to the case of pro-abortion politicians, many are engaging in diplomatic contortions to avoid bringing the disagreement among them into sharp public focus on the eve of an election season.

So we have a significant disagreement among Church leaders on how the Church’s law is to be applied.

Well, that’s why God created the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts.

We need an authentic interpretation on this point–one way or the other.

For myself, I am strongly of the opinion that both canon and moral law require the withholding of Communion from a politician with a pro-abortion voting record (even if it’s with an "I’m personally opposed, but" dodge).

But Rome needs to sort this out for the good of the Church–both here in American and wherever in the world abortion is being promoted, which includes Rome’s own back yard: Europe.

It’s time for the Church to take a stand on this, for as canonist Ed Peters writes:

We are living through a terrible, perhaps unprecedented, unraveling of respect for Jesus in the Eucharist. Such a crisis compels all of us, I think, to examine our consciences for how our sins might have contributed to this disaster.

GET THE STORY.

Media Bias #3: Anti-Catholicism and film / criticism

SDG AGAIN! STILL NOT JIMMY!

From my review of Elizabeth: The Golden Years (opening this weekend):

How is it possible that this orgy of anti-Catholicism has been all but ignored by most critics? As with The Da Vinci Code, early reviews of The Golden Age seem to be roundly dismissive, while sticking to safe, noncommittal charges of general lameness.

That said, I do note the MSM critical community is not uniformly blind to anti-Catholicism:

Note: One of the few reviews in a major outlet that doesn’t ignore the film’s anti-Catholicism ran in my local New York area paper, the Newark Star-Ledger. Critic Stephen Whitty writes that the film "equates Catholicism with some sort of horror-movie cult, with scary close-ups of chanting monks and glinting crucifixes. There’s even a murderous Jesuit, played by Rhys Ifans like a Hammer-movie bad guy, or a second cousin to poor pale Silas from The Da Vinci Code."

GET THE STORY.

P.S. Tune in to Catholic Answers Live today at 6:00pm EST to hear my radio reviews of Elizabeth, Bella, Lars and the Real Girl, and more!

Bonus! For those of you wondering about Jimmy’s whereabouts or even if he and I are one and the same, he’ll be hosting the show!

Media Bias #2: God-talk (right and left)

SDG here (still not Jimmy!).

Stephen L. Carter in The Culture of Disbelief let the cat out of the bag (if it weren’t already) that God-talk by political conservatives is viewed far more suspiciously by media and political elites than God-talk by political liberals:

…in the 1992 campaign, the media often treated President Bush’s speeches to religious organizations as pandering—but when Bill Clinton spoke, for example, to a black Baptist group, he was given credit for shrewdness.

Even "pandering" is a mild charge; when conservatives speaking in churches, grave concerns about the separation of church and state are raised, but when liberals speak in churches, they’re credited with staking their own claim to faith and values.

This week, it seems, Barack Obama spoke in an Evangelical church in South Carolina.

Addressing a crowd of nearly 4000 people during a service livened by a rock band and hip-hop dancers, Obama spoke of creating "a Kingdom right here on Earth," and asked the crowd to "pray that I can be an instrument of God in the same way that Pastor Ron and all of you are instruments of God."

Now, let me say right off the bat that this "instrument of God" business doesn’t strike me as ominously messianic God-talk. Obama didn’t say "I am God’s instrument" or anything like that; he asked for prayers that he could be an instrument of God "in the same way that Pastor Ron and all of you are instruments of God."

Having said that, it seems safe to say that if it were Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson or Mike Huckabee who had talked about being "an instrument of God" while speaking at a church, the incident would have received front-page, top-story panic-level treatment in the MSM.

How was Obama’s speech actually covered?

As far as I can tell, the only major news venue to report on Obama’s "instrument of God" line was CNN.com — not in its feature article on the event (headline: "Obama: GOP doesn’t own faith issue"), but in a blog entry at CNN’s Political Ticker blog.

However, if you go to the blog entry today, you may be surprised to discover that the "instrument of God" line isn’t there any more.

The text of the story has changed a number of times this week. Specifically, it keeps getting shorter, with less and less coverage of Obama’s God-talk.

Here’s how the CNN blog covered the event early this week, as reproduced on other websites and blogs:

GREENVILLE, South Carolina (CNN) — After speaking to an evangelical church on Sunday in this traditionally conservative South Carolina city, Sen. Barack Obama said that Republicans no longer have a firm grip on religion in political discourse.

"I think its important particularly for those of us in the Democratic Party to not cede values and faith to any one party," Obama told reporters outside the Redemption World Outreach Center where he attended services.

"I think that what you’re seeing is a breaking down of the sharp divisions that existed maybe during the nineties, when at least in politics the perception was that the Democrats were fearful of talking about faith, and on the other hand you had the Republicans who had a particular brand of faith that often times seemed intolerant or pushed people away," he said.

Obama noted that he was pleased leaders in the evangelical community like T.D. Jakes and Rick Warren were beginning to discuss social justice issues like AIDS and poverty in ways evangelicals were not doing before.

"I think that’s a healthy thing, that we’re not putting people in boxes, that everybody is out there trying to figure out how do we live right and how do we create a stronger America," Obama said.

During the nearly two hour service that featured a rock band and hip-hop dancers, Obama shared the floor with the church’s pastor, Ron Carpenter. The senator from Illinois asked the multiracial crowd of nearly 4,000 people to keep him and his family in their prayers, and said he hoped to be "an instrument of God."

"Sometimes this is a difficult road being in politics," Obama said. "Sometimes you can become fearful, sometimes you can become vain, sometimes you can seek power just for power’s sake instead of because you want to do service to God. I just want all of you to pray that I can be an instrument of God in the same way that Pastor Ron and all of you are instruments of God."

He finished his brief remarks by saying, "We’re going to keep on praising together. I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth."

Asked by CNN if he talks about faith more in churchgoing South Carolina than he does in the other early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, Obama said: "I don’t talk about it all the time, but when I’m in church I talk about it."

Around mid-week, though, when I checked the page, the sentence about being an "instrument of God" was missing. Gone. The phrase "instrument of God" was, however, still there, only in a photo caption, not in the text of the story.

Now, though, the the story is even shorter, and even the photo caption has changed so that it no longer mentions the "instrument of God" line. Instead, the "build a Kingdom" line has been moved into the photo caption — and out of the text of the story. (Will the caption change again?)

Here’s the story as it appears at this writing:

GREENVILLE, South Carolina (CNN) — After speaking to an evangelical church on Sunday in this traditionally conservative South Carolina city, Sen. Barack Obama said that Republicans no longer have a firm grip on religion in political discourse.

"I think its important particularly for those of us in the Democratic Party to not cede values and faith to any one party," Obama told reporters outside the Redemption World Outreach Center where he attended services.

"I think that what you’re seeing is a breaking down of the sharp divisions that existed maybe during the nineties, when at least in politics the perception was that the Democrats were fearful of talking about faith, and on the other hand you had the Republicans who had a particular brand of faith that often times seemed intolerant or pushed people away," he said.

That’s it. That’s the whole story. There’s a link to "Full story," but it doesn’t link to the original version of the blog entry — only to the CNN.com feature article that never mentioned the "instrument of God" business in the first place.

Now. I don’t read CNN.com’s Political Ticker blog on a regular basis. For all I know, they could have some strange policy of commonly editing pieces down as the stories get old. It would seem an odd thing to do, and I can’t imagine why they would, but it could be for all I know.

Barring that, though, it looks as if Obama’s God-talk — which even with this low-level coverage has raised skeptical eyebrows in the blogosphere, though not in the MSM or in Washington, DC that I can tell — has been tacitly buried by CNN editors, who ignored it in their feature piece and now have even excised it from their blog coverage.

Now, let’s see what happens if/when one of the Republican candidate darkens the door of a church.

Interview with Cardinal George

John Allen has an interesting interview with Cardinal George which, for some idiotic reason,the NCR folks decided to put online in pdf form.

FIRST, HERE’S A BACKGROUNDER ON THE INTERVIEW.

AND HERE’S THE INTERVIEW ITSELF.

In the interview, Cardinal George has a number of things to say that have a bearing on the thesis that a broader cultural shift among Catholics is significantly responsible for declining Mass attendance and other religious practice, yet he also faults the leadership of the Church for contributing to the problem out of a sense of sociological naivete.

Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge talk about the distinction between “high tension” and
“low tension” religion, arguing that over time low tension groups tend to dissolve into
secularism.

That’s right. In the 60s, it was very important to show you could be American and Catholic.
Whole magazines were devoted to that. There was a collective sigh of relief at the Second
Vatican Council, with human freedom being so much in the forefront of the conciliar concerns,
that the tension wasn’t there anymore. I think some of the moves of the church in that period
now seem sociologically naïve, in their long-term consequences.


What do you have in mind?

Catholicism as a distinctive way of life was defined by eating habits and fasting, and by days
especially set aside that weren’t part of the general secular calendar. They were reminders that
the church is our mediator in our relationship to God, and can enter into the horarium [calendar]
that we keep, into the foods that we eat, into all the aspects of daily life, into sexual life. Once
you say that all those things can be done individually, as you choose to do penance, for example,
you reduce the collective presence of the church in somebody’s consciousness. At that point, the
church as mediator becomes more an idea for many people. Even if they accept it, it’s not a
practice. So then when the church turns around and says ‘You have to do this,’ then resistance is
there to say, ‘How can you tell me that? I’m deciding on my life for myself, and you even told
me I could!’

Cardinal George also comments on the situation with the new translation of the liturgy being prepared and notes that, while the new translations are better and the right thing is being done in preparing them, it’s still going to be a significant adjustment for people:


Bishop Donald Trautman and others worry that when that Sunday comes and you have to
explain to people that from now on they will be saying “and with your Spirit” rather than “and
also with you,” there will be a negative reaction. Do you share those concerns?

Hopefully, there will be a lot of good catechesis, which is already being prepared in all the
English-speaking countries. That [a negative reaction] will happen if it’s not well prepared. It
will be a lot harder, as we all know, to go from English to English than from Latin to English.
The Latin was foreign anyway, and this was our language. Now we’ve got something that is our
language, and we’ve got something new that is also our language with a slightly different cast.
That’s going to be hard. Beyond that, we’ve memorized. I can say the canons by heart. We can
enter into them and pray them. Even if they’re not great translations, they’re not bad, and in
many ways they’re quite beautiful. I’ve made them my own. It’s good when you say “We
believe,” and people go down the line through the Creed. We’re changing four lines in that thing.
It’s going to be difficult. People will go back again to reading it, whereas for 20 years now we’ve
just been able to remember it. That’s not going to easy, and nobody’s looking forward to it.


Is it worth it?

Oh yes. I think the translations are superior. There’s a lot of the richness of the Roman rite, and
therefore our faith, because our liturgy reflects our faith, that we will have present in our hearts
again. But it will take 20 years, maybe, before we have it memorized. I mean, I’ll probably go to
my death fighting not to say, “and also with you,” because it’s so second nature by now. People
know immediately what to do. That’s great, that’s a sign of unity. So we’re introducing a
discordant note in our unity, for a good purpose. I think the reason is very adequate, but it’s
going to be work.

GET THE STORY. (PDF WARNING)

The Nattering Nabobs of Know-Nothingism

TheviewcurrentI have never seen an episode of ABC TV’s The View.

Until Rosie O’Donnell got in trouble on it, I hadn’t even heard of the program, though it’s apparently been on for more than ten years.

From reading about the show and seeing clips of it, I have, however, come to hold a very low opinion of it.

What I have seen and read about the show leads me to the conclusion that it is shallow and bubble-headed and frequently shameful, embarrassing, and even disgusting. In other words, it swings between the two extremes of insipid, inconsequential fluff, often with prurient undertones, to completely idiotic attempts to take on serious subjects by a group of commentators who don’t have the first clue what they’re talking about.

Since the commentators are also all women, the show is clearly aimed at a female audience, and if I were a woman, I’d be insulted that ABC thinks this is the kind of junk that I’d be interested in.

The show also seems to deliberately stir up controversy in order to attract ratings by hiring sick puppies like Rosie O’Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg (note that it’s Barbara Walters in the clip who first introduces a disgusting suggestion, which Goldberg then amplifies and makes even worse; there’s plenty of sick puppyism to go around on this show).

So it comes as no surprise that, if this pack of intellectual mendicants (not in the good sense, in which Dominicans are intellectual mendicants) were to choose to take on the subject of Archbishop Raymond Burke’s statement that he would deny Rudy Giuliani Holy Communion that they’d make more errors than you could shake a stick at.

And they did.

Reading the following transcript of part of yesterday’s show (which sure sounds authentic, though I haven’t been able to verify that yet, so caveat emptor,though I have partial confirmation from another source) is like playing one of those "How many things can you find wrong in this picture?" games.

Man, is it painful!

ABC–and its owner, the Disney corporation–should be ashamed of itself that it’s putting out this kind of offensive and brainless twaddle.

Since the hosts of The View obviously don’t have a clue, ABC should get one and cancel the show.

Transcript below the fold (CHT to the reader who e-mailed).

Continue reading “The Nattering Nabobs of Know-Nothingism”

Declining church attendance

SDG here (not Jimmy) with some musings on the trend of falling church attendance, especially among Catholics..

In a combox discussion below about post-Vatican II liturgical changes, a reader suggested that post-Vatican II liturgical changes were responsible for a massive decline in Catholic church attendance. Of course church attendance has fallen everywhere, not just among Catholics — but another reader argued that Catholics have fallen away at much greater rates than their non-Catholic neighbors, implying that the fault must lie with changes in the Church:

The Church was in ascendancy until all of these shenanigans started up around Vatican II. Now? Decline in many fronts…

So what is the cause? Protestant church attendance went down by about 5-10% in the last 40 years, Catholics are down by over 60%.

Now, I’m not a sociologist. I suspect the second reader’s statistical factoid is misleading, for reasons that I may or may not touch on in a follow-up post or in the combox. Granted the statistic, though, or at least the general point behind it, I can think of a few possible factors that could contribute to such a disparity, though I don’t pretend to know what "the cause" is.

What I can say is this: Granted that the decline in church attendance has hit the Catholic Church harder than Protestant churches, it doesn’t follow that the basis for this disparity must be rooted solely in harmful changes within the Catholic Church. On the contrary, I think it is very likely that two very important factors involve ways in which the Catholic Church has not changed while the culture — including Protestant culture — has drifted further into error.

Let’s review a little history. Other than Vatican II and the 1969 missal, what other cultural changes have taken place from the 1960s onward?

Here are a few: The sexual revolution. The Pill. No-fault divorce. The Playboy Philosophy. The Me Generation. The evolution of serial monogamy. The DINK culture. The rise of what is only half facetiously called the "starter marriage."

Now, what are the most widely criticized and resisted teachings of the Catholic Church today? Here are two:

1. Divorce and remarriage.

2. Contraception.

To these two we could also add an obvious third, abortion, although there the Protestant culture is more divided, with strong areas of ongoing resistance to abortion within the Evangelical community. On the subjects of divorce and remarriage and contraception, on the other hand, the Catholic Church stands essentially alone against the culture.

Say what you like about the liberality of American marriage tribunals. The fact remains that in the Catholic Church it is still a whole heck of a lot harder to get divorced and remarried and keep on receiving communion as a Catholic in good standing than it is in any other church or ecclesial community. On this subject, what has changed over the last four decades is not the Church’s essential teaching, but the culture at large.

In an age in which skyrocketing divorce rates and multiple marriages are increasingly the norm, the Church’s ongoing fidelity to her essential teaching seems increasingly onerous and unrealistic. No other church or ecclesial community imposes the array of time-consuming, bureaucratic and potentially costly obstacles upon divorced members seeking to enter or having already entered into new unions. The Church does this out of fidelity to Jesus Christ, who declared that he who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, but the world grows ever deafer to this declaration.

As for contraception, if anything it is probably an even bigger issue. As prevalent as divorce and remarriage have become, contraception is ubiquitous, literally taken for granted. The question in our contraceptive culture is not whether to contracept, but only which type(s) of contraception to use. (The mere fact that one particular type of oral pharmaceutical has an undisputed and unambiguous claim to the definite term "The Pill" itself speaks volumes.)

Although surveys suggest that many Catholics are willing to keep coming to Mass in spite of dissenting from the Church’s teaching in both theory and practice, it remains a major impediment to fully appropriating and embracing one’s Catholic identity. It is a wedge driving untold Catholics to qualify their acceptance of the Church’s teaching and pastoral authority, making it easier to dissent and distance themselves on other issues and finally to abandon the Church altogether.

On a fundamental level, whatever mistakes and questionable decisions may have been made within the Church in the 1960s and beyond, on these two issues it is what the Church has done right that has pushed away some who might not have been pushed away in Protestant churches.

This isn’t to say that mistakes and questionable decisions haven’t made both issues a bigger stumbling-block when they need to be. For instance, I know a couple seeking full membership in the Church who have been trying to get an anullment hearing in another country for several years. Not just the Church’s teaching, but the imperfections of the Church’s leadership obstruct their way.

Nor am I claiming that liturgical changes in the 1960s and beyond — both authorized and otherwise — haven’t been factors at all.

I’m simply noting that the factors are complex, the social changes over the last few decades are complex, the issues are complex. We can’t simply conclude that if more people are falling away from the Church, the only possible explanation is limited to what the Church is doing wrong. At least in some cases, it may be what the Church is doing right.

Many disciples stopped following Jesus after his "hard sayings" in John 6, saying, "Who can accept this?" The same dynamic is at work today.

Vatican’s Top Liturgical Liberal Steps Down

It’s been predicted for some time that B16 would remove Marini from his office as the papal master of ceremonies.

And now he has.

His replacement is . . . Marini!

That is, Archbishop Piero Marini is being replaced by Fr. Guido Marini.

Same last name. Two different guys.

In case you haven’t been aware of who Piero Marini is or what the papal master of ceremonies is, basically he (Piero Marini) is the guy who, as master of ceremonies, plans the pope’s celebration of the liturgy.

Want to know why there were Aztec dancers gyrating all over the place at the canonization of Juan Diego?

Piero Marini.

Want to know why John Paul II’s vestments for the Third Millennium celebration looked like a costume from Star Trek Voyager?

Piero Marini.

Want to know why liturgical law was disregarded regularly at John Paul II’s major celebrations of the liturgy?

Piero Marini.

I don’t know why JP2 kept him around, particularly as he started tightening up on liturgical abuses through the latter part of his reign.

I mean, if you’re trying to tighten up the celebration of the liturgy for Catholics all over the world, not using one’s authority as pope to authorize deviations from the norms at your own liturgies would seem to be a good first step.

Otherwise, it’s easy for liturgical dissidents the world over to say, "Well, the pope had this (e.g., dancing) at his own Mass, so it’s obviously okay for us to have it, too."

But for whatever reason, Pope John Paul decided to retain the services of Piero Marini.

Once B16 was elected, it was widely expected that he would replace Marini, though not immediately lest it look like a slap.

Some have thought that the case of Benedict’s tie-dyed vestments in Austria (more on those later) might have precipitated the replacement.

So who’s the new Marini?

EXCERPT:

The new Marini, according to Italian observers, does not bring a sharply defined ideological profile into his new position. Though he served as the master of ceremonies in the Genoa archdiocese for both Cardinals Dionigi Tettamanzi and Tarcisio Bertone (today the Vatican’s Secretary of State), Guido Marini, 46, has an academic background in canon law and spirituality rather than liturgy.

GET THE STORY.

Bad News In Connecticut–Part II

In my prior post, I mentioned that I’ve received multiple requests for comment on the Connecticut Plan B situation. The following reader expresses the sentiments of many when he writes:

Jimmy,

What is going on in Connecticut right now?  The Bishops there have
released a statement, explaining that they will now allow Plan B to be
administered in their hospitals…where they previously stated (or
implied) otherwise.  Curt Jester & American Papist have coverage on
this, but I just don’t understand the issue.

Specifically, why is contraception allowed after rape (since it’s
sex without the proper intent etc etc) but is NOT permitted after
casual, recreational sex that also lacks the proper intent?

It’s understandable, given the Church’s strong stand against contraception and abortion, why this issue would be so confusing. In order to make sense of it, we need to look at several things, but first

THE BIG RED DISCLAIMER: What I am about to write is not indicative of my own view. I’m trying to explain the apparent reasoning of the Connecticut bishops. I’m not saying that they are correct or incorrect. Rome could rule either way on this, and it may well get involved. What I’m trying to do is explain a position, not defend it.

The starting point to understanding the apparent reasoning behind the Connecticut bishops’ statement is a close reading of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae. Here’s the key line in Latin:

Item quivis respuendus est actus, qui, cum coniugale commercium vel
praevidetur vel efficitur vel ad suos naturales exitus ducit, id tamquam finem
obtinendum aut viam adhibendam intendat, ut procreatio impediatur.

Now, I’ve given this in Latin so that you can see the key term coniugale commercium. Coniugale means "conjugal/marital/pertaining to or proper to marriage." Commercium means "commerce/traffic/relations/intercourse/sexual intercourse."

You could translate this literally as "conjugal intercourse," "conjugal relations," "marital intercourse," "marital relations"–things of that nature.

Which is how this passage is translated when it’s quoted in the Catechism:

2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "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" is intrinsically evil

Unfortunately, some translators are sloppy in how they handle this text (which is particularly unfortunate, since it’s a key text in a sensitive document). For example, the English translation of HV on the Vatican web site renders this:

Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.

That’s a loosey-goosey translation, and if you go with that one, what the Connecticut bishops said will be absolutely inexplicable, since the use of Plan B to prevent ovulation or fertilization clearly would be "specifically intended to prevent procreation . . . as an end . . . after sexual intercourse" (rearranging the elements of the quote a bit).

But that’s not what the Latin original says. It doesn’t say "sexual intercourse," it says "conjugal intercourse" and "conjugal" means "marital."

Paul VI phrased himself very carefully in this area, and what he did
was say that you can’t use contraception to thwart the procreative
aspect of marital intercourse. His language does not explicitly
address the issue of the procreative aspect of intercourse
outside of marriage.

Of course, intercourse outside of marriage always involves grave sin to begin
with, and it seems reasonable to conclude that if contraception in
marriage is an evil, contraception outside of marriage only compounds
the evil of non-marital sex. One day the pope or the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith may clarify that this is indeed the case.

But this goes beyond what can be shown from the language of HV. The way HV is phrased
in the original Latin (and in the literal translation of the passage
given in the Catechism), all you can say with certainty is that Paul VI
condemned all use of contraception within marriage.

He did not address–or cannot be ascertained certainly as addressing–the situation of sexual relations outside of marriage.

Thus, some have held that at least some forms of contraception (ones
that aren’t abortifacient, for example) might not compound the evil of
non-marital sex. Some might argue that, although non-marital sexual acts are gravely wrong,
contraceptive non-marital sex might be less gravely wrong than non-contraceptive non-marital sex since it has a lesser risk of bringing a child into the world outside of wedlock.

By divine law, children have a right to be conceived only within a
family that has a father and a mother who are married to each
other. To the extent that they may cause children to be conceived
outside of wedlock, non-marital sexual acts can be viewed as grave sins against
charity regarding the child that may be conceived, as well as other
affected parties (such as innocent spouses).

In case of rape, one pursuing this line of argument might maintain, there is no sin in the victim using at least certain forms of contraception since the victim is not married to the rapist (apart from cases of marital rape) and did not consent to the sexual act.

Thus the U. S. bishops Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (4th ed.) states:

Compassionate and understanding care should be given to a person who is
the victim of sexual assault. Health care providers should cooperate
with law enforcement officials and offer the person psychological and
spiritual support as well as accurate medical information. A female who
has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential
conception from the sexual assault. If, after appropriate testing,
there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she may be
treated with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm
capacitation, or fertilization. It is not permissible, however, to
initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or
direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the
implantation of a fertilized ovum [n. 36].

The issue of non-marital contraception is a theological hot potato that the Holy See will eventually have to sort out, because this issue is not going to go away, as the situation of the Connecticut state law illustrates.

But if–and note the "if"–the Church ended up endorsing the view that contraception is impermissible within marriage but potentially permissible outside it then it would allow for a variety of situations, such as:

  • Nuns in dangerous situations where they may be raped could use at least some forms of contraception

  • Women who have been raped could be given at least some forms of contraception

I’m not defending these views. I’m just pointing out that they are not expressly precluded by the language used in Humanae Vitae or, to my knowledge, by subsequent Magisterial documents.

You might find the above line of reasoning entirely implausible, but I’m not advocating it. I’m merely trying to help with the "What on earth are they thinking?" factor of this situation.

If you are of the opinion that the above views are wrong, you might well conclude that the Holy Spirit will prevent the Church from ever endorsing such views and that he may guide the Church into a clear-cut rejection of those views.

But that has not yet occurred, at least in Magisterial documents that I am aware of.

In fact–and this is pure speculation and should not be taken as anything other than the pointing out of a possibility–the Connecticut bishops may even have consulted with the CDF for advice about how to handle this issue.

That leaves the question of whether the policy they announced is a good one, and, speaking only for myself, I can only say that I find the announced policy to be troubling.

There are disputed claims about whether Plan B will prevent the implantation of a newly-conceived child. The manufacturer’s own label for the product (see links to American Papist and Curt Jester) say that it may have this effect. Legal disclaimers of this nature are notoriously broad–in order to prevent future lawsuits–and they frequently list potential outcomes for the use of drugs that are either not possible with the drug in question or which are very unlikely. Because of this kind of language in medical disclaimers, as well as a lack of knowledge about how Plan B actually works, there is ambiguity about whether or not it is abortifacient.

That ambiguity is what generates a lot of the tension within the Connecticut bishops’ statement, and it is one of the things that I find troubling about the whole situation.

I’m far from being an expert on Plan B, but any time there is a possibility that something is abortifacient, I want to apply the Deerhunter Principle: If you’re out in the woods hunting, you cannot open fire if the result is reasonably foreseen to involve the possible death of a human.

Bad News In Connecticut

The recent statement by the Connecticut bishops that they will allow Plan B to be used for rape victims in Catholic hospitals is causing a great deal of consternation in the Catholic community, and I have received numerous requests for help in figuring out what is going on.

I’ll do my best to help, but let’s begin with some background.

FIRST, HERE IS AMERICAN PAPIST SUMMARIZING WHAT HAS HAPPENED SO FAR.

AND HERE’S COVERAGE BY THE CURT JESTER.

Some of the early coverage of this was hampered by the fact that the statement of the Connecticut bishops did not seem to be on their web site, making it hard for people to know what they said without the lens of the news media.

The statement is now there, but it’s in a Word doc, so here’s the full text of it in html:

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Connecticut Bishops Statement On
Plan B and Catholic Hospitals

Issued September 27, 2007

The Catholic Bishops of Connecticut, joined by the leaders of the Catholic hospitals in the State, issue the following statement regarding the administration of Plan B in Catholic hospitals to victims of rape:

The four Catholic hospitals in the State of Connecticut remain committed to providing competent and compassionate care to victims of rape. In accordance with Catholic moral teaching, these hospitals provide emergency contraception after appropriate testing. Under the existing hospital protocols, this includes a pregnancy test and an ovulation test.  Catholic moral teaching is adamantly opposed to abortion, but not to emergency contraception for victims of rape.

This past spring the Governor signed into a law “An Act Concerning Compassionate Care for Victims of Sexual Assault,” passed by the State Legislature. It does not allow medical professionals to take into account the results of the ovulation test. The Bishops and other Catholic health care leaders believe that this law is seriously flawed, but not sufficiently to bar compliance with it at the present time. We continue to believe this law should be changed.

Nonetheless, to administer Plan B pills in Catholic hospitals to victims of rape a pregnancy test to determine that the woman has not conceived is sufficient.  An ovulation test will not be required.  The administration of Plan B pills in this instance cannot be judged to be the commission of an abortion because of such doubt about how Plan B pills and similar drugs work and because of the current impossibility of knowing from the ovulation test whether a new life is present.  To administer Plan B pills without an ovulation test is not an intrinsically evil act.

Since the teaching authority of the Church has not definitively resolved this matter and since there is serious doubt about how Plan B pills work, the Catholic Bishops of Connecticut have stated that Catholic hospitals in the State may follow protocols that do not require an ovulation test in the treatment of victims of rape. A pregnancy test approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration suffices. If it becomes clear that Plan B pills would lead to an early chemical abortion in some instances, this matter would have to be reopened.

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Commentary later.