Abortion: what is really the issue?

[OnDoutside]

44. "How the Catholic Church came to oppose birth control" - an article from 2018

July 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the landmark “Humanae Vitae,” Pope Paul VI’s strict prohibition against artificial contraception, issued in the aftermath of the development of the birth control pill, writes Lisa McClain


:small

At the time, the decision shocked many Catholic priests and laypeople. Conservative Catholics, however, praised the pope for what they saw as a confirmation of traditional teachings. As a scholar specializing in both the history of the Catholic Church and gender studies, I can attest that for almost 2,000 years, the Catholic Church’s stance on contraception has been one of constant change and development. And although Catholic moral theology has consistently condemned contraception, it has not always been the church battleground that it is today.Early church practice. The first Christians knew about contraception and likely practiced it. Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek and Roman texts, for example, discuss well-known contraceptive practices, ranging from the withdrawal method to the use of crocodile dung, dates and honey to block or kill semen. Indeed, while Judeo-Christian scripture encourages humans to “be fruitful and multiply,” nothing in Scripture explicitly prohibits contraception.

When the first Christian theologians condemned contraception, they did so not on the basis of religion but in a give-and-take with cultural practices and social pressures. Early opposition to contraception was often a reaction to the threat of heretic groups, such as the Gnostics and Manichees. And before the 20th century, theologians assumed that those who practiced contraception were “fornicators” and “prostitutes.”

The purpose of marriage, they believed, was producing offspring. While sex within marriage was not itself considered a sin, pleasure in sex was. The fourth-century Christian theologian Augustine characterized the sexual act between spouses as immoral self-indulgence if the couple tried to prevent conception.

Not a church priority

The church, however, had little to say about contraception for many centuries. For example, after the decline of the Roman Empire, the church did little to explicitly prohibit contraception, teach against it, or stop it, though people undoubtedly practiced it. Most penitence manuals from the Middle Ages, which directed priests what types of sins to ask parishioners about, did not even mention contraception. It was only in 1588 that Pope Sixtus V took the strongest conservative stance against contraception in Catholic history. With his papal bull “Effraenatam,” he ordered all church and civil penalties for homicide to be brought against those who practiced contraception.

However, both church and civil authorities refused to enforce his orders, and laypeople virtually ignored them. In fact, three years after Sixtus’s death, the next pope repealed most of the sanctions and told Christians to treat “Effraenatam” “as if it had never been issued.” By the mid-17th century, some church leaders even admitted couples might have legitimate reasons to limit family size to better provide for the children they already had.

Birth control becomes more visible

By the 19th century, scientific knowledge about the human reproductive system advanced, and contraceptive technologies improved. New discussions were needed. Victorian-era sensibilities, however, deterred most Catholic clergy from preaching on issues of sex and contraception. When an 1886 penitential manual instructed confessors to ask parishioners explicitly whether they practiced contraception and to refuse absolution for sins unless they stopped, “the order was virtually ignored.”

More of this article at

https://amp.breakingnews.ie/specialreports/how-the-catholic-church-came-to-oppose-birth-control-859522.html