by Marilen Danguilan MD

I am a Catholic. To non-believers and cynics, this statement may mean 'I am sexually repressed' or 'I am always guilty of something'. My Church is perceived as being obsessed with sex and sin. Unfortunately, this obsession has obscured the true meaning and significance of what my Church stands for - social justice and love.

It has supported several causes which strike a harmonious chord in me. I agree when it urges government and international lending institutions to cancel odious loans. I agree when it pushes government to implement a genuine agrarian reform program that gives land to the tillers. I agree when it calls on policymakers to provide more humane housing conditions and just wages for the poor. I agree when it protests against laws like the one on Value Added Tax. I agree with my Church too when it declares that population is not the cause, but an effect of, or that it exacerbates the problems of poverty and underdevelopment.

But when it comes to the issue of contraception, my Church and I differ. After much study, prayer, and reflection, I am convinced that my conscience is correct, even if it conflicts with the moral teachings of the Church. And in inner peace, I cannot but follow my conscience

I am trying to understand my Church's ban on contraception. I have to go back in time and trace the evolution of its stand. Let me walk you quickly through its history.1.

It has been almost 2,000 years since Augustine theologically linked sex, sexual pleasure, and original sin. He asserted that sexual intercourse is inherently tainted and needed to be salvaged by procreation. This was a reaction towards a group which appreciated sexual pleasure as a privilege of marital sex and which believed that unbaptized babies had access to heaven.

At about this time, women were already denigrated. Tertullian, a very influential third-century theologian, considers Eve as the cause of original sin and his judgement on women was harsh and severe: "Do you know that Eve is you? The curse that God pronounced on your sex weighs still on the world....You are the devil's gateway."

It has been close to 900 years since the monk Gratian compiled the first collection of canon law. It declared contraception a sin, but not a grave one. Then, 90 years later. Pope Gregory IX compiled existing authoritative decrees into the universally binding Decretals. In the Decretals, contraception was condemned as murder.

It was also about this time that Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) made Aristotle's writings the basis of his position on women and sex. Aristotle wrote that a woman was a misbegotten male and women were morally inferior and subordinate to men. Aquinas wondered "whether woman should have been made in the first production of things" but resolved this by finding a woman's value in procreation alone.

By this time, the anti-woman bias of the Church was well entrenched. Odo of Cluny wrote: "To embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure." Several statements of this sort have been uttered to disparage women and their bodies.

It's been 400 years since Pope Sixtus V issued the bull Effraenatam, Without Restraint, which applied to contraception and abortion the penalties designated for homicide. He was the same pope who prescribed hanging for adultery in Rome.

In 1880, 37 years after the vulcanization of rubber which led to the discovery of the [modern] condom. Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical on Christian marriage, once more reaffirming that the procreation of children for the Church is noble.

It's been 64 years since Pope Pius XI issued his encyclical, Casti Connubii, Of Chaste Spouses. During this time, the Anglican bishops held the historic Lambeth Conference in which they decided that artificial contraception was morally licit and permissible. In response, Pius XI denounced "those wicked parents who seek to remain childless" or who avoid childbearing "not through virtuous continuance but by frustrating the marriage act." Pius XI, however, declared sex lawful at those times when a couple believes conception to be impossible.

Forty-three years ago. Pope Pius XII announced that the rhythm method was available to all couples who for "medically, eugenic, economic, and social indications" wish to avoid procreation, even for the entire duration of the marriage. He warned though that couples shouldn't use this habitually for less than 'grave' reasons.

And 30 years ago, Pope John the 23rd called for "the winds of change" to blow. The winds came, for sure, but they turned into a storm of controversies. And the eye of the storm was Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Humanae Vitae, Of Human Life. Humanae Vitae categorically prohibited the use of contraception but made exceptions for rhythm or periodic abstinence.

Church history shows that several factors have contributed to the present Church's position on contraception: wrong notions of biology, such as Tertullian's view that the semen contained individuals waiting to be born and ejaculating outside the 'vessel' (woman) murdered the 'seed' individuals; Aristotle's view that females are conceived due to a weak seed or the dampness of the south wind); reactions to cultural norms and circumstances at the time; personalities of religious leaders; rival religions; anti-sexual; and sexist attitudes.

The Church's stand on contraception therefore may not be divinely ordained as Pope John Paul II wants us to believe. He said: '"We are not dealing with a doctrine invented by man." Rather, he continues, it is a teaching "written by the creative hand of God in the nature of the human person." And those who question the doctrine, he declares, may well question "God's holiness" .2.

Today, the Church pushes natural family planning as the only method - not one of the methods - which couples can use. For the Church to say that this is the best for couples, especially for women, patronizes adult decision-making.

The Church pursues this anyway with such single-minded intensity at a time when so many women are dying from abortions and pregnancy-related causes. It pushes this line when AIDS is on the rise, when couples have serious reasons for spacing children, and when one birth control method is not sufficient or effective for a human being's entire reproductive life.

The Church's teachings on contraception are untenable. The Church offers no proof, no scriptural texts, and no solid reasoning that lead to the conclusion that every procreative act must be open to new life.3.

It puts undue emphasis on the biological aspects of 'the act' which it perceives as something distinct and isolated from the totality of the human being. It [is] fixated on sex as sinful and of women as the source of sexual temptations and impurity.

It does not take into account the historical context and the evolution of the meaning and purpose of sexuality in marriage as stated in Gaudium et Spes: sexual intercourse within marriage is noble and worthy; marital love is a value in itself, apart from procreation.

It also ignores the Vatican II warning on the dangers of prolonged sexual abstinence.

Likewise, it pays no heed to the advice of St. Paul when he wrote "..Where the intimacy of married life is broken off, it is not rare for its faithfulness to be imperiled and its quality of fruitfulness ruined." And it almost pays no respect to the dignity of human beings born into this world without the possibility of being fed and educated decently.

Question such as these have been raised: Does sexual intercourse during the infertile period lead to what the Church calls a 'contraceptive mentality'? Doesn't periodic abstinence constitute a barrier method that separates egg and sperm in time, in much the same way that the pill does?

Is the unitive-procreative connection inseparable? On what basis does the Church declare that separating these two aspects of marriage by way of contraception, is intrinsically evil? Why must choice of a birth control method be a basis for salvation or condemnation?

Why does the Church stand alone on contraception, one that has its foundations in natural law, and which therefore should, in theory, correspond to the universal moral experience of humankind?

Surely, what several Catholics, in good standing, think and feel in their hearts must count for something.

But I have not lost hope. I still believe in my Church. And I know that one day, a century late perhaps, the Church might 'open another window on the world' and call 'the winds of change' to blow. This time, the Church may yet declare that sex, and an entire human being's sexuality comes from God, and is beautiful, creative, erotic, life-giving, and life-enhancing. And it will recognize and appreciate that this is not a desire for licentiousness or sexual laxity but is simply a celebration of ourselves.

Endnotes 1. For the Catholic Church's History, I relied heavily on Maggie Hume's Contraception in Catholic Doctrine: The Evolution of an Earthly Code; John T. Noonan Jr. who authored Contraception: A History of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1965; and Ute Ranke-Heinemann's Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven. Penguin Books, 1990. 2. Religious News Service/Washington Post, Nov. 19, 1988 and Commonweal, Feb. 10, 1989, as cited in Maggie Hume's Contraception in Catholic Doctrine: The Evolution of an Earthly Code. Washington, D.C.: Catholics for a Free Choice, 1991. 3. Bernard Haring, Charles Curran and Gregory Baum level their criticisms against Humanae Vitae in The Catholic Case for
Contraception. London: Arlington Books, 1965.

Marilen J. Danguilan MD, a Filipina, is an international women's health consultant, a government health policy analyst and a women's health rights activist. She is the author of Making Choices in Good Faith: A Challenge to the Catholic Church's Teachings on Sexuality and Contraception, WomanHealth 1993. This paper was presented at the SoutheastAsian Regional Consultation of the Independent Commission on Population and Quality of Life, September 1994, Manila.