One of the remarkable features of the campaign of Senator Santorum, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, is his recalling and insisting upon the traditional Catholic social values: opposition to contraception, abortion and genetic manipulation, the unity and indissolubility of marriage and the defense of marriage against invert lifestyles.
As he recounts these things in his speeches, I feel vague feelings of guilt as a priest. I remember some of my training by the good priests of the Archdiocese of Dubuque at Loras College years ago. One priest in charge of training of seminarians made a comment one time that one of the worst sins of a priest, perhaps the worst, was telling people that some sinful thought, word or deed was not sinful. Faithful Catholic people would be deceived into ways of conduct that are evil, and while they would not be guilty of sin (because they lack a proper intention) they would bring about the effects of sin, the increase of evil in the world, to the discouragement of the good, the enrichment of the evil and the gratification of the perverse.
As a bishop, I share the guilt of the whole body of American bishops who in November of 1968 betrayed Pope Paul VI, in effect telling people not to take Humanae Vitae seriously. With all these thoughts about Senator Santorum and contraception, I ran across an article by a woman who is a convert to the faith. Laura Locke entitled her article: "Contraception's Dark Fruits: The legacies of artificial birth control are the strongest arguments against it." This article appears in the March-April 2012 edition of Catholic Answers Magazine. I thought to myself, what could someone with such an unusual background know about this, and yet as I read the article, I concluded that she must have been moved by the Grace of God.
Ms. Locke pointed out something that I had forgotten: all Christians, of whatever stripe, held that contraception, birth control, was a violation of God's will — until the beginning of the 20th century. When some Protestants changed their minds, the popes reacted kindly but firmly: Pius XI with Casti Connubii; Paul VI in Humanae Vitae; and John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio and in his "Theology of the Body." In all these encyclicals, the maddening thing about them is not their condemnatory tenor, which is absent, but the patience with which the central truths of the faith are explained.
Ms. Locke disposes of the non-Catholic canard that there is nothing in the Bible against artificial birth control. She points to Genesis 38:9 (see also, Dt. 25:9-10). She takes up the often-made claim that the use of contraceptives, and resulting smaller families, leads to improved marriages and happier, more successful children. She recalls, first of all, the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which clearly states that Catholic married people do not have to have an unlimited number of children (CCC 2368, 2370). She also extols Natural Family Planning (NFP) for which we have ample resources in the Diocese of Rockford. NFP demands discipline, of course, but it is praised by many who note the lower divorce rate among people who practice NFP (less than 1 percent according to the National Survey of Family Growth by Dr. Robert Lerner of the University of Chicago, 2000) as compared with the skyrocketing divorce rate since the 1960s and the rapid expanse of birth control.
Do large families handicap children? Make up your own mind. The studies have shown, in fact, that due to the increased sibling connection, children from large families have better social skills (Journal of Marriage and Family, Ohio State University, May 2004) and do better at school (Family Composition and Children's Educational Outcomes, Institute for Social and Economic Research, 2011).
A common argument is that use of contraception reduces the number of unwanted children and thus of abortions. One could reduce both by the execution of large numbers of women or widespread sterilization just as easily. The lady writes trenchantly, "At the time, many married couples ... bought into the idea that using contraceptives was the only way to take anxiety about pregnancy out of their sex lives. This, of course, soon led people to realize that they could also take the anxiety about pregnancy out of pre-marital sex — and the sexual revolution was born. We are now suffering the results."
Sexual activity outside marriage increased dramatically since the early 1960s. Worse, it was a subtle shift in how children were seen — not so much as gifts from God, but as either inconveniences or conversely, trophies, thus creating attitudes towards the sacredness of life which are much more evil, e.g., abortion is no more serious than liposuction.
Some have said that the use of contraceptives helps women gain increased freedom, prosperity and control over their lives. It has given great freedom to men, but it has devastated women. Men have much easier access to sex today compared to yesterday when the price of sex for young men was to get married, act responsibly and stick around. Consider also the ascendancy of pornography, which is an assault on the very well being of women, solidifying the image of women as sex objects, fueling the number of young females being forced into prostitution around the world, and a high rate of sexual abuse of girls and women, even in the United States — a doubtful liberation at best.
From 1960 to 2000, the number of children in single-parent families headed by women has tripled and many studies show that coming from single-parent families plays a major role in the persistence of poverty.
Ms. Locke concludes her article thus: "At first blush, the unchanging teachings of the Catholic Church, as history rumbles by, are not always easy to follow or understand. As we know, many of Christ's own followers were dumbfounded by some of his exhortations and teachings. But as the Church calls us to put our trust in God and uphold timeless virtues such as fidelity and self-control, we will find both great wisdom and great love waiting to be rediscovered."