Contraception Crisis

If the Orthodox can do it, why can't we?

What follows is a response to Ricardo Simmonds’ most recent piece, “The Roman Church looks East.” Discussing the possibility of reunification between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, Simmonds proposes that the Catholic Church could adopt the Orthodox practice of pastoral discernment called economia—basically a “this is between you and your priest” approach—regarding things like contraception or communion for the divorced and remarried, effectively “resolving” these pastoral issues by emphasizing conscience, personal discernment, and subsidiarity.

Ricardo and I have known each other for several years, and I consider him a good friend, so I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to his piece, which I found very interesting. Here’s a key excerpt:

In a nutshell, [Amoris laetitia] said divorce is complicated and couples can receive communion if they work it out with their pastors. The justification for this approach was offered in Let us Dream by Pope Francis,

“Because of the immense variety of situations and circumstances people found themselves in, Aquinas’s teaching that no general rule could apply in every situation allowed the synod to agree on the need for a case-by-case discernment…. There was no need to change the Church’s law, only how it was applied. By attending to the specifics of each case, attentive to God’s grace operating in the nitty-gritty of people’s lives, we could move on from the black-and-white moralism that risked closing off paths of grace and growth. It was neither a tightening nor a loosening of the ‘rules’ but an application of them that left room for circumstances that didn’t fit neatly into categories.”

Again, what is revolutionary for Roman Catholics ends up being common practice for Orthodox Christians. In operation are (at least) two different yet related principles – economia and pastoral counseling - that allow not only divorced Orthodox to receive communion, but also to remarry again!

“Orthodox canon law can permit a second and even a third marriage “in economia” but strictly forbids a fourth.”^[11]

Orthodox Christians hold fast to the biblical principle that marriage is indissoluble. Somehow, through twenty centuries they have managed to uphold the principle while also allowing for pastoral flexibility and understanding that life happens and can be messy. The principle of economy recognizes that strict rules cannot be applied indiscriminately.^[12] There are challenges and circumstances and finding opportunities to overcome failures and flaws must be included in pastoral discernment.

AL 304 and 305, quoting Thomas Aquinas, essentially grounded itself in economia and pastoral discernment, which go hand in hand. Whether intentionally or not, AL’s “solution” allowing the divorced and remarried to receive communion was a thoroughly Orthodox approach to moral and pastoral problems dressed in Western vestments …

The Orthodox approach to contraception is similar, or uses similar principles, to the approach to communion for divorced and remarried couples: economia and pastoral counseling. The Orthodox, like Roman Catholic’s, share the ideal that married sex should exclude artificial contraception. However, in economia within certain circumstances, the Orthodox may allow for artificial contraception in conversation with their pastor. In practice, the outcome is very similar to an Amoris Laetitia applied to contraception.

In a vacuum, Simmonds argues, the Catholic Church could never pull off a formalization of this approach to moral issues, but he suggests that a reunification with the Orthodox could create the conditions for economia to be integrated into Catholic practice. He writes,

If any Roman Pope decided, today, to change the precept of Mass attendance (or its penalty), or contraception, or make an opening for pre-Tridentine liturgies you could expect a Roman Catholic uprising, war, or revolution.

A unity with Orthodox [sic], granting the faithful free communion, would allow for all these practices without rule changes.

It’s not a matter or [sic] right or left* but of developing “mature consciences for an adult Church.”

Contraception and Mature Consciences

It is hard to deny that Catholics are not exactly hitting it out of the park on the “mature consciences” front these days. Chris Damian recently shared an Instagram video about a friend of his who allegedly received subpar reproductive health care from a doctor who was apparently committed to avoiding hormonal birth control at all costs in the name of fidelity to Church teaching. As usual, Chris then received a flood of personal messages and comments, which he compiled into a series of Instagram highlights as well as three separate Substack posts, found here, here, and here.

Substack estimates that it will take you a combined five hours to read these posts in full, so here’s the TLDR; many, many women say they have been subjected to poor treatment, substandard care, and/or outright manipulation at the hands of Catholic doctors who ideologically refuse to prescribe hormonal birth control for things like PCOS, endometriosis, etc.

We should note here that while these stories range from the slightly cringe to the full-blown dystopian, it does not necessarily follow that the Church ought to change its teaching on artificial contraception. What does follow is that there appears to be an alarming number of Catholic doctors who are illiterate in the Catholic moral tradition. It is no secret that the Church already makes provision for the use of hormonal birth control used therapeutically for other health issues, such as PCOS or even severe acne, as long as there is no intention to contracept. (No time to get into double-effect here; read here for that discussion.) Catholic doctors with a “mature conscience” would know this and practice accordingly.¹

Stiff Catholic Syndrome?

The response to Damian’s video relates to Simmonds’ post in interesting ways. As I said before, it’s easy to see that many Catholics experience a kind of moral paralysis when it comes to the contraception issue, and this occasionally causes them to do bizarre (dare I say, immoral?) things like lie to their patients so they won’t have to prescribe them the Pill.

Simmonds points to the neo-Scholastic movement in Catholic theology as a main driver of this “stiff Catholic syndrome.” The neo-Scholastics sought to make the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas authoritative in Catholic philosophy and theology; in part, this meant systematizing Thomas’ thought in the form of manuals (think: rulebooks) of moral theology, intended mainly to help priests call balls and strikes in the confessional. Though they were ultimately outgunned by the ressourcement theologians at Vatican II, there is certainly a case to be made that the manualist mindset still has many rank-and-file Catholics in a vice grip, as Nicholas Senz writes here, choking out true discernment with an overemphasis on “the rules” and a fear of committing mortal sin.

Catholics can certainly learn from our Orthodox friends on this score; Orthodoxy traffics comfortably in uncertainties and tensions where Catholicism tends to seek clear answers and formulations to moral and spiritual questions. Here’s what an Orthodox friend of mine had to say in response to Simmonds’ argument:

[E]conomia isn’t necessarily a term that makes it down into daily parish/pastoral life; it’s rather the official Orthodox approach to canon law that effectively forbids application of doctrine to be pre-mandated or universally applied, and rather requires and welcomes pastoral judgement in applying that law. This is very harmonious with Orthodox apophatic theology (which resists positive propositions to describe the divine), emphasis on practice rather than black and white “rules” (as seen in devotional and liturgical practices like fasting, prayer, and church attendance), and the tradition’s overall emphasis on mystery and respect for the tension between messy human life and the divine ideals.

I 100% resonate with [Simmonds’ piece] from the orthodox side. In a nutshell, the church just refuses to call pre-formed judgments on particular situations. This does put a lot of pressure on Parish priests and confessors to discern various situations correctly—and for sure, there’s room for abuse of that responsibility. BUT in my experience, this approach really is powerful in dissolving the distracting kind of guilt that trips so many Christians up AND incentivizes the development of strong individual consciences.

The robust Catholic intellectual tradition is one of the Church’s greatest assets and continues to be a guiding light for Catholics and non-Catholics alike in fields such as bioethics, law, politics, and business. If it has a shadow side, though, it is that Catholics, with their embarrassment of riches, mistakenly believe that they should be able to give hard-and-fast answers to every last question.² A healthy sense of the otherness and mystery of God—something the Orthodox have in spades—can keep Catholics from ossifying into those ideological mummies Pope Francis talked about.

This Is a Hard Teaching; Who Can Accept It?

I agree with Simmonds that the issue of contraception is rapidly approaching a point of no return for the Catholic Church. So few Catholics embrace this teaching to begin with; many of those who do report extreme difficulties in their marriages and sometimes their physical health as a result of choosing not to contracept. Read Paul Fahey’s piece at Homiletic & Pastoral Review for a good example of what I mean.

I can only speak anecdotally, but many of the faithful Catholic women in my life are frustrated, not necessarily by the teaching itself (though some are), but by the naïve optimism with which it is taught and advertised to young engaged couples. It works better than birth control! Your marriage will be bulletproof! You’ll be so sexually fulfilled and experience the most incredible intimacy with your spouse!

Song of Songs IV, Marc Chagall

The NFP crusaders of the world need to get a grip on reality and recognize that, in many cases, none of that is true. It can cause real strain on a marriage to practice “NFProbably,” making sex more stressful than enjoyable. Seasons of trying to avoid pregnancy mean that the woman must abstain from sex when she wants it and can only do it at times when she has minimal interest. And for the love of Pete, it doesn’t “work better” than birth control.

Catholic couples in the trenches of young parenthood who are resolved to live out the Church’s teachings faithfully need better accompaniment from our priests, mentors, and friends as we do this very hard and unconventional thing. Translation: we want the sacrifices required of us to be genuinely acknowledged. We need less apologetics and more support. We don’t need anyone to tell us that, actually it’s really not supposed to be hard, it’s supposed to be fun! And rewarding! We need priests and lay leaders who understand what a shit show it is trying to make ends meet these days; how scary the prospect of adding another $300 a week (AT LEAST) in daycare expenses sounds to your average middle-class family; how devastating postpartum anxiety and depression can be; how strange and painful and physically demanding pregnancy and delivery are.

And then, yes, we need those same people, from that place of empathy and understanding, to encourage us to hang in there and keep going. To reassure us that we will never go it alone. To remind us that we have a Crucified King who is radically and irrevocably in it with us and who never asks us to do anything that is not for our ultimate good.

If that doesn’t happen, in my opinion we are about to see a mass Exodus of young families from the Catholic Church, or at minimum, a full-blown crisis of dissent and dismissal of this important teaching, which has the potential to be profoundly life-giving if the right supports are in place, but can also crush people if their leaders expect them to shut up and fall in line.

I find Simmonds’ argument for a stronger sense of economia in Catholic praxis compelling, but not because I think the Church should (or even can) change its teaching on contraception, but because it’s a new and interesting way of framing the pastoral issues in Amoris laetitia that Catholics couldn’t seem to resolve using the categories Francis put forward. It may be that on this issue, Francis just came with too much baggage for some traditional Catholics, and that they were never going to be persuaded by him, even if he was right. If so, Catholics who want to carry forward Francis’ pastoral vision may need to find different words to articulate that vision.³

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I’ll end by sharing briefly what the Catholic teaching on contraception has meant for me. To state the obvious, it forces my husband and me to look at the reality that sex has the power to create life. It makes it impossible to pretend otherwise. And because this is true, everything is at stake in marriage: your body, your health, your future, your finances, your life. Sex, with its life-bestowing potential, determines what is going to make us laugh and cry for the next forty years (God willing). It determines who will be around our dinner table at Christmas when we are older. It determines who will be at our bedside when we take our last breaths. Could we be putting anything more on the line when we say those words, “all the days of my life,” and hand over our own bodies, in all of their God-given limitations and powers, to the one we love? Could we be conformed any more to Christ than when we say to our spouse, and to the child who may be silently and miraculously breathed into existence, “this is my Body, given up for you—whatever that might mean for me.”

Love is a matter of life and death; sex is the broker, the guarantor of these stakes. Humanae vitae and the Church’s teaching on contraception are definitive teachings of the ordinary magisterium; they aren’t going anywhere. Will our pastoral praxis need to adjust to the circumstances of our time? Probably. But what cannot be lost is the Good News: that death has been swallowed up in victory, that sacrifice is never in vain, that the lowest place we’ve ever been is also the closest God has ever been to us. Only in light of the Cross, the tomb, and the stone that had been rolled away, do the hard teachings of our faith have any resonance.

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1. Similarly, women need to be empowered for self-advocacy when they go to the doctor. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes in a clinic knows that effective patient advocacy is the difference between good health care and bad. Why do we expect our doctors to take one look at us and know exactly what we need? Or assume that the first medical opinion we get is the best one? If you’re looking for that kind of omniscience, go talk to a medium or something; doctors may be experts in their field, but they are also limited human beings who don’t have all the relevant information when you walk in their office.

So, my girls: know your body. Know your medical history. Understand the options you are likely to be presented with, and make sure you are crystal clear on what the Church teaches. This is all part of adulthood. No one is going to do the work for you. Be strong, sisters. And if you need to bring someone with you who will speak up for you in the doctor’s office, do it.

But I digress. Check out Bridget Busacker, Caitlin Estes, Haley Baumeister, and Elizabeth Kulze for more on this discussion.

2. This same Orthodox friend has cited to me the doctrine of Transubstantiation as an example of what the Orthodox would say is an “over-systematization” of something that should be revered as a mystery of faith, and thus given a certain amount of distance from doctrinal hair-splitting. There are, in reality, very good reasons why the Church felt it necessary to clarify its doctrine on the Eucharist (and they have little to do with Orthodoxy, as they were Reformation-era questions). But her argument here illustrates a difference of emphasis between Catholics and Orthodox, one on the cataphatic and the other on the apophatic dimensions of theology.

3. For what it’s worth, I think this is exactly what is going on with Pope Leo XIV.