National Review has an article today by Conrad Black, a Catholic, and major shareholder of the Catholic Herald, advocating for the Pope to overturn the Church’s teaching on contraception. Because, well you know, it makes us look like we are not hip, or something. His absurd arguments make one shudder.
… He appears to have been elevated because of his pastoral success, universally conceded integrity, and irreproachably modest and outspoken advocacy of the poor, as the most ingenuous and unassailable possible messenger for the traditional Catholicism that is now, especially in its attitude toward contraception, not supported by more than a small and very doctrinaire section of the laity. The Church well knows that its views, restated by successive popes but largely dissented from even by the bishops, are a counsel of perfection. But this counsel is maintained in a way that invites scorn and incredulity as the prohibition commended as moral duty shows no recognition that sexual intercourse has, for billions of people, become a mere extension of the pleasures of heterosexual affection, because of the ease with which it can be assured not to be a procreative act. When almost any coupling with a woman of child-bearing age presented the potential for conception, the Church could plausibly counsel caution for moral as well as practical reasons. But for better or worse, the evolution of mores and the progress of paramedical science in the contraceptive age has routinized the sexual act.
…
There must be a dogmatically respectable way to execute a dignified climb-down and declare the sexual act a consequential moral commitment appropriate to and generally reserved to marriage, but sometimes unexceptionable when undertaken with contraceptive precautions, and reprehensible only if entered into wantonly. By clinging to the objection to contraception, even among married couples, the Church conveys the false impression of wishing to make sex risky and inaccessible, of opposing useful science, and of putting its hostility to safe sex ahead of its mortal opposition to abortion, a much more defensible and important cause that would be directly assisted by ending the failed war on contraception. The Roman Catholic Church, with all respect to the long traditions involved, should not be in the business of appearing to be the party of joyless behavioral philistinism, and should not needlessly subject itself to unjust imputations of hypocrisy. The secondary controversy over an all-male clergy can probably be dealt with by laicizing more activities with equal opportunities for women.
I find his line of thinking morally reprehensible and completely lacking reason. First, Black make no allowance for truth about the sexual act. That mores and science have routinized the sexual act is no argument in its favor nor do they have any bearing whatsoever on the true nature of the act itself.
As a result of the routinization of the sexual act and contraception, we have routinized baby murder as well. How many hundred of millions of babies have perished from the face of the earth because of routinization of the sexual act and the contraceptive mentality. This is what happens when the mores and science evolve to deny the fundamental truths about ourselves.
The Church is not here to confirm untruth in the service and extension of the pleasures of heterosexual affection. The natural pleasure associated with the act have consequences natural to the act. The Church can never confirm that which is not true, period.
Black’s contention that ending the Catholic ‘war’ on contraception would allow the Church to focus more on abortion is absurd in the extreme. Contraception and abortion are intrinsically linked and no amount to science and shifting of mores will change that. They are one.
As for Black’s knock on a very ‘doctrinaire section of the laity,’ as a member of that section I can tell you that it isn’t really that hard. I thought it would be, but its not. For truth is good.
And there is a better term for that ‘doctrinaire section of the laity,’ its called Catholic. I wish you would join us.
March 21, 2013 at 1:08 pm
Mr. Black has entered the background noise of those condemning Church teachings. I feel like I just watched Strange Brew for the 4000 time. It's the same each time. So are the "good Catholics" who want to be identified as Catholic without doing all those things that are identified as…Catholic.
Christ sacrificed everything for us and yet, we nano be bothered to follow some simple commands that lead to ultimate reward because they are hard (say the 'they're hard part in your whiniest voice).
March 21, 2013 at 1:38 pm
Mr. Black has also praised FDR – so he is not the brightest bulb in the world.
Do what they will as the nature of the law was the motto of Aleister Crowley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley) – I prefer the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
God Bless and Protect Pope Francis
March 21, 2013 at 1:41 pm
The National Review has been pushing against the church for years. Buckley, the founder of NR, was a member of the masonic Skull And Bones, so it should come as no surprise that NR is now openly allowing Anti-Catholic trash in the print and on-line versions. We should also remember that Buckley got rid of good Catholic writers like Sobran and Buchanan, and exiled them from 'respectable' conservatism.
March 21, 2013 at 2:39 pm
Conrad Black is 68 years old.
He was a young man in the 1960's, the decade that started with the introduction of the Pill as a medical breakthrough and ended with the release of Humanae Vitae, which was condemned as backward. He grew up in an era where Catholics used the rhythm method and had lots of "rhythm babies" as a result.
The people in the 1960s were both very naive about the negative side of contraception and unaware that there was a positive alternative. (Pope Paul VI had access to the early research on modern Natural Family Planning, which almost certainly influenced his decision. Yet the Church did not see promoting this as its place.)
His attitude is common of those of his generation, including Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi (who had several "rhythm babies" herself), and William F. Buckley.
Conrad Black is very much a product of his generation.
March 21, 2013 at 2:53 pm
Conrad Black is a major shareholder of the Catholic Herald? How sad.
March 21, 2013 at 3:13 pm
I'm slightly comforted by the fact that all but a couple of NRO commenters have completely panned the article.
March 21, 2013 at 4:12 pm
The cheapness of food and the proliferation of McDonalds has routinized overeating. Is maintaining a healthy weight – which is difficult but doable – "a counsel of perfection" or simply good living?
The wide availability and relative inexpensiveness of tobacco, drugs and alcohol has routinized addiction. Is abstinence from these things – which for some is very very hard and even painful – "a counsel of perfection" or simply a way to avoid disaster?
In EVERY OTHER AREA OF LIFE discipline is good. ONLY with sex is it (not only bad with a capital "B") but absolutely impossible and intolerable to even consider. I'm with Matt. Waiting for the right time of the month seems more difficult in concept than it is in practice.
March 21, 2013 at 4:14 pm
Wow. The Catholic Herald uh? I'm a little confused. It is my understanding that the Catholic Herald is the official newspaper/magazine for many, many diocese, and the bishops are the main publishers. So is there a corporation that owns the name Catholic Herald where Mr. Black is a shareholder? It would be wonderful if each diocesan Herald would print a rebuttal assuming they independently control the content.
March 21, 2013 at 6:06 pm
So Satan is now speaking to us through Conrad Black. He never fails to find willing vessels. All Catholics know that the prohibition on contraception is from Natural and Divine Law, and there is not a thing the Holy Father can do about this definitive teaching in an authoritative way, even if, may God forbid, one was ever elected, who thought otherwise.
I would rather that these hypocrites had both the decency to personally confront the fact that they are simply not prepared to live up to the conditions necessary for salvation, and the integrity to say so publically rather than continuing to call themselves Catholic. In that way, having left the Church, we can but hope that they may realise that there really is nowhere else to go, and repent and return, under Our Lord's terms.
March 22, 2013 at 1:12 am
Heterosexuals are doing such a great job at contracepted marriage that the divorce rate has plummeted since the sixties, right? Spouses that feel used are usually the ones who head out the door. Sexu`al availabilty 23/7/365 can make for some very used people.
March 22, 2013 at 2:50 pm
Does he not seem like… a dirty old man?
March 24, 2013 at 3:16 am
I am so thoroughly done with aging boomers telling us that we now must accept and accede to their grotesque re-making of the sex-act into the mundane, banal, scratching of an itch they made it into through contraception.
The porn-ification of our society is just the way it is and we need to pass out condoms lest anyone catch a disease from using themselves as a toilet or heaven forbid! become pregnant.
What a depressing and well, just plain icky, world view.
Those of us who hope to work for something elevated and sacred in our union with our spouses are 'old-fashioned' and 'out of step'. Puuuulease! Keep your world, I'll keep trying to live in the Catholic one.