Posted on 01/05/2014 2:25:11 PM PST by Gamecock
September 18, 2012 (Mercatornet.com) - Back in February this year, when the battle between religious leaders and the Obama administration over the latter’s contraceptive mandate reached a new pitch of intensity, the White House defended its policy by alleging that 98 per cent of Catholic women had used contraception. If that was the case, we were meant to ask, what on earth were the Catholic bishops, for one, making a song and dance about? Hadn’t their own female constituency effectively deserted them on this issue?
The claim, quoted far and wide at the time, turned out to be a political factoid rather than a real statistic. People who analysed the Guttmacher Institute study it came from pointed out that the study was selective and self-contradictory. For a start it was based on a survey restricted to women aged between 15 and 44, so it could say nothing about women between 45 and 100. And one table showed that 11 per cent of sexually active Catholic women who did not want to become pregnant were using no method of contraception at all.
Still, nobody is pretending that hordes of Catholics don’t dissent from their Church’s “thou shalt not” regarding contraception. We do not need the Guttmacher Institute or the White House to tell us that. Nor do we need them to tell us why the many Catholics who never go to church would not bother with one of its more difficult moral teachings.
What we don’t know is why practising Catholics who do go to Mass—and even, if only occasionally, to confession—also feel entitled to reject the teaching.
Why, for instance, do “Catholic moms in minivans drop their children at the parish school and head to their gynaecologists to be fitted for diaphragms or to get a new prescription for ‘the pill’ —and think nothing of it,” as the authors of a new study, What Catholic Women Think About Faith, Conscience, and Contraception, put it.
Do the parish moms have an accurate idea of the Church’s teaching on family planning? After four decades of dissent it would be surprising if they all did. And when the teaching is presented accurately to practising Catholics are they more open to it? What are their reasons for rejecting it, and what would they like to know more about?
For all the times Catholic women have been surveyed on whether they have “ever used” contraceptives, no-one has asked those who practice their faith but not its teaching on family planning, “Why?”, say the study’s authors, lawyer Mary Rice Hasson, a Fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, D.C, and director of the Women, Faith, and Culture project, and Michele M. Hill, a Baltimore Catholic and co-director of the project.
National survey of church-going women
To answer that question a national online survey of church-going Catholic women aged 18 to 54 was carried out in June and July of last year by the polling company inc./WomanTrend. (This is a preliminary report, say the authors, as further insights are expected from focus groups and ongoing in-depth interviews with 100 of the women.) Of the 824 women in the sample, half attended church at least weekly, while the other half attended less than weekly but at least a few times a year.
Their responses confirm that, on this issue at least, church-going Catholics have been influenced far more by popular culture than by Catholic teaching on sex and reproduction. Fully 85 percent of all the women believe they can be “good Catholics” even if they do not accept some of this teaching, including the 37 percent who completely reject it.
The picture, of course, looks decidedly better among regular Mass-goers. Among young women (18-34) who attend every week, 27 percent completely accept the Church’s teaching, and among those who both attend Mass weekly and have been to confession within the past year that figure rises to 37 percent. Just 24 percent of the women who go to Mass every week completely reject the teaching on contraception, and for those who have been to confession that figure drops to 12 percent.
Even among the dissenting majority, however, not all are closed to the Church’s message on this subject. Hasson and Hill point out that about a third of these women mistakenly believe that the Church itself gives them the right to make up their own minds about which methods of family planning are morally acceptable. Many do not reject the Church’s authority out of hand.
Top reasons for contraceptive use
Mistakenly or not, 53 per cent of all women in the study who dissent in part or completely from church teaching cite a couple’s “moral right” to decide which method of family planning they will use. This makes it the top reason given for rejecting church teaching on the matter.
Two other reasons are cited frequently among this group: 46 percent say couples have “the right to enjoy sexual pleasure without worrying about pregnancy”, and 41 percent think that natural family planning is not an effective method to space or postpone pregnancy.
The authors perceive two main dynamics shaping these views: the influence of a cultural mindset that divorces sex from procreation and promises “sexual pleasure without consequences”, and a deficit on the church side in presenting Church teaching.
The latter can be deduced from the fact that 72 per cent of women surveyed said they rely mainly on the homily at Sunday Mass for learning about the faith, and yet just 15 per cent of that group fully accept the Church’s teaching on sex and reproduction. The weekly Mass homily, the authors say, “seems to represent a lost opportunity when it comes to conscience formation on the contraception issue.”
As for cultural influences, they seem likely (although the authors don’t say so) to account for at least some of the scepticism about natural family planning given the systematic bad press NFP is give by mainstream family planners and the media.
For the pastors of the Church, all this represents a steep challenge. Yet Catholic women may be more receptive to the Church’s view of things than first appears.
Openness of the “soft middle”
Importantly, the survey shows they are more open to children than the average American, their “ideal” number of children averaging 3.5 (or 4 if money were not a factor) compared with the American ideal of two or fewer.
Also, say the study authors, “When presented with an accurate description of the Church’s teachings on family planning many Catholic women show reluctance to completely reject the Church’s teaching.”
Instead, three groups emerge: “the faithful” (who fully accept the teaching—13 percent of the sample), “the dissenters” (who completely reject it—37 percent), and the “soft middle” (who accept “parts” of the teaching). In addition, a significant number of women in the “soft middle” (about half of weekly Mass-goers) show openness to learning more about church teaching on contraception and natural family planning.
Good will shown by many women in the “middle” represents an opportunity for the Church, the authors point out—and natural family planning may be a good starting point for communicating the Church’s teaching about procreation. About one in four of those who attend Mass regularly shows an interest in learning more about the method: hearing from other couples about the health and relationship benefits of NFP, what doctors say about it, and scientific evidence about its effectiveness. Such messages may be more persuasive than spiritual or authoritative ones, the authors suggest.
But alongside their message that many Catholic women are “reachable” the authors warn that the task is becoming more complicated. While the survey shows 10 percent of church-going women have had abortions (lower than the national average), 17 percent of younger women have used emergency contraception. This means that the Church has to inform women about the potentially abortifacient nature of EC “as well as arguing more persuasively that contraception itself is wrong.”
The Catholic bishops are fighting the Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate—that is, the policy of forcing all employers, including Catholic institutions such as hospitals and schools, to provide full cover for contraceptives, sterilisation and emergency contraception in their health insurance plans—as an attack on the free exercise of religion, which it is.
But in light of the information in “What Catholic Women Think…” the mandate may be a blessing in disguise. By forcing the issue of contraception to the top of the Church’s public agenda it has created an opportunity for the Church to have an internal conversation on the subject—the kind of opportunity that perhaps has not been seen since Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae in 1968.
The study from the Women Faith and Culture project shows that such a discussion is long overdue.
Nevertheless, I know many men and women of the Catholic faith that have "accepted children lovingly from God" (marriage vow) within a year of their nuptials, and also that have had more than 2.4 children over time...
THESE are the men and women that need to set an example for their families, and be the "teachers" for others. For too many people, the priests that celebrate Mass are not really "people", they are just "holy MEN", and somehow "irrelevant" to day-to-day life and issues. Too many people think that because priests are celibate, they don't really know anything about "married life" and family life.
There are many choices for ALL women and men today, which can bring a lot of confusion. The only thing I can say is, be a good example, take advantage of a "teaching moment" when you can, and then remember..."with God, all things are possible"!
see previous post...”grass roots”!
My experience:
I preach about contraception a couple of times a year, along with abortion. I always try to do so indirectly, because of the presence of children at Mass. I praise Humanae Vitae, mentioning what it was about. I praise Cardinal O’Boyle of Washington, who was the only American bishop to teach HV, the only one who suspended priests for dissenting from it.
It is enough to guarantee that virtually NO people, male or female, of child-producing age, come to Confession.
I can’t believe that most priests’ experience is much different.
Gee, can you think of a reason why a survey on use of birth control might exclude a large number of postmenopausal women?
It is a heart issue, lack of obedience is a heart attitude. We want to be our own bosses.
The Church’s opposition to contraception is not a “policy.”
The Church opposes contraception because contraception is a form of sodomy. It does similar damage to the human psyche.
Most Catholics who vote voted for Obama. Tell me more about how “most” Catholics value human life.
Public school, no PSR after Confirmation.
I don’t understand why NFP (the use of human intelligence to enjoy sex and avoid pregnancy) is alright, but a diaphragm is not.
The author argues that NFP is effective, so why is it acceptable?
Amazin’ the insights you can achieve when you don’t read the article!
Father, I honestly think a large part of the issue is that Catholic couples aren’t informed. They don’t realize that natural family planning is not complicated, doesn’t require long periods of frustration and abstinence, and doesn’t result in ten children unless they want it to. One thing a parish might do is to make available some of the excellent books written about the Catholic view on marriage and natural family planning. There are also some Catholic doctors who speak about it.
It's a reasonable question.
One big thing is that most of the laity have never been taught that contraception is wrong:
In many cases, the Church indirectly supports it through cooperation with "zero population growth" efforts. Note that I say "indirectly" -- you'll end up having CCHD grants or CRS efforts that end up going to groups that have this "zero population growth" as part of their charter. NOTE: That's one big reason I refuse to give a dime to either the CCHD or CRS collections.
In those rare cases where the laity have heard that artificial contraception is evil, most have a flawed understanding of conscience.
So imagine this: a young man or woman sees his or her parents using contraception as he/she grows up. This young man or woman may have 5 minutes of discussion in 8 years of religious education about how contraception is wrong, but no other presentation of the topic. This young man or woman literally never hears discussion of contraception from the ambo. This young man or woman literally never reads anything in the Archdiocesan newspaper or in other Catholic publications. And friends, neighbors, school-mates, etc., are all using it. Chances are, how is that young person's conscience going to be formed?
Don't get me wrong: I am not trying in any way to make an excuse or to try to justify something here. There is a bad, bad problem here and it needs to be fixed. But fixing it is going to take a lot of time (which a lot of these poor souls don't have) and a lot of courage (which I only very, very rarely see displayed with our hierarchy).
I understrand your intentions here, but this is a non-solution. How th' heck would a priest know which women (and men) in the congregation have "had abortions ---(they or their spouse with either their approval or connivance)--advocate gay rights and use birth control"?
Alternatively, the priests could preach on the need for repentance and sacramental Confession for ANY serious sin before daring to approach Communion, and make a good, specific, comprehensive list of the most likely sins --- tha seems to have been St. Paul's approach.
But first of all, as the article suggests, make sure people know what the teaching is, to begin with. My bet is that the VAST majority of Catholic men and women could not even accurately state what it is, let alone why.
The amount of ignorance in the pews would blow your mind.
The stories I could tell...
” - - -
The author argues that NFP is effective, so why is it acceptable? “
Because it is *natural* - as, created by G-D.
That's a biggie, no doubt about it, but it still doesn't answer the question: why don't they use NFP rather than sin against their own bodies by contraception?
NFP can be used very successfully to either avoid or achieve pregnancy, and it involves understanding and respecting --- instead of trashing --- your own normal, healthy bodily integrity.
Contraception is so anti-woman it makes me want to scream.
Exactly!
I don’t think that they understand that the Church actually wants them to have babies.
I still think that NFP is the failing here. The Church teaches Catholic women that they can (in some way) avoid pregnancy (and enjoy sex) if they want. That opens the door to the idea that avoiding pregnancy is acceptable.
People think with intent.
If the Church wants Catholics to reproduce, they should say so instead of advocating an out.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
The difference being, NFP works with the woman's body and honors its design, and its Designer.
Contraception works against the woman's body, and shows either ignorance or contempt for its design --- just as if her healthy, normal, fully-functional female sexual physiology were a disease, a design flaw, or a damned nuisance.
What an insult to the woman. What an insult to God!
Yes, but the intent is the same. To enjoy sex without consequences. The camel’s nose is under the tent.
Do you see how a person could rationalize a diaphragm with that logic?
Either sex is an enjoyable practice that produces children or not. As soon as there’s an easy out, people will use that to justify other things.
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