Australia’s Bishops have attacked the contraceptive mentality that is eroding Catholic marriages and has infected Catholic communities.
By Anthony Barich
National Reporter
In launching God’s gift of life and love: A pastoral letter to Catholics on natural fertility methods on November 19, Australia’s Bishops admitted “poor communication, hurt and confusion” on Church teaching regarding human sexuality in the past.
In the resource, aimed at all Australian parishes and schools, the Bishops call “all the people in the Church in Australia – married, single, clergy, Religious – to a renewed appreciation of the sacredness of married love and of the great sign of love and life which our couples witness to us”.
The Bishops said that children are viewed in the Christian way of life first and foremost as a gift, not a burden; and that Christians are under siege from a society and government policies that do not support family.
“A prejudice has developed today, even in some Catholic circles, whereby large families are made to feel peculiar or unnatural,” the Bishops said.
“A fourth or fifth pregnancy is treated with sympathy from well-meaning friends instead of joy and encouragement.
“Such attitudes can cause parents to lose heart and consider that something is wrong with their being pregnant or wanting more children.”
Quoting Pope John Paul II’s 1996 Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Australia’s Bishops said all Catholics are responsible to be faithful to Church teaching in what the late pontiff termed the Gospel of Life – the sacred value of all human life from beginning to natural end.
“Often in our modern society parents feel as though public institutions and policies oppose an openness to children,” the Bishops said.
“All too often communities adopt a materialistic ethic whereby things and objects are placed above people.
“Sexual expression is reduced to the pursuit of pleasure and the possibility of conceiving a child is seen as interference rather than as a gift of married love.”
Widespread promotion of contraception, they say, has led to an acceptance of a mentality which separates procreative responsibility from the marital love union.
“Through this separation we are experiencing a loss of appreciation of children who are sometimes portrayed as being an intrusion into one’s lifestyle,” they said.
Darwin Bishop Eugene Hurley, Chairman of the Bishops Commission for Pastoral Life which issued the resource, told The Record that the Church’s teaching has the capacity to reduce divorce among Catholics and strengthen marriages.
“It demands of couples the kind of communication and care that fosters a loving relationship,” he said.
“I also think it recognises that women are treated badly when usually men expect them to take medication to treat what is a perfectly proper and healthy and wonderful process, and that this puts women at risk.
“I think many women are tired of being chemically treated for what is a sign of perfectly good health, and they’re looking for a method that treats them with dignity, identifies their fertility and enhances their relationship.”
Australia’s Bishops explain in the document the difference between avoiding conception through natural means and through contraception, by highlighting the “contraceptive mind-set” that is an intrinsic denial of the marriage vows themselves.
“Contraception alters the meaning of the sexual act itself,” the Bishops say.
To deliberately and wilfully cut off one’s fertility in the very moment that life could begin, the Bishops say, creates an intrinsic contradiction.
“On the one hand, a spouse is surrendering his/her whole self.
“Yet in the midst of that surrender there is a denial experience by the couple who, in effect, say to each other: ‘No, I will not offer you all of me. No, I will not accept all of you’. In this way an implicit falsehood becomes embedded in an activity which opposes its intrinsic value as a source and expression of total self-giving.”
By its stance, the Catholic Church is protecting the “precious meaning” of the marital covenant and the promotion of life, the Bishops said, and explain that the Church’s teaching is counter-cultural, as the concept of waiting is anathema to a society “where we have grown to expect instant gratification”.
Abstinence, they say, calls for the husband to be attentive to the wife’s fertility, thus appreciating her womanhood in a deeper way.
“To patiently endure is a feature of many aspects of the Christian life and is always aimed at bringing about an even deeper joy and love,” they said.
Natural family planning also gives hope to childless couples struggling to conceive, the Bishops say, as modern methods of natural fertility in achieving pregnancy have proved highly effective.
“By education in natural fertility regulation, diagnosis and correction of reproductive abnormalities by competent doctors can be facilitated,” they say.