I’m sure you’ve heard the term “cafeteria Catholic,” referring to the idea that many Catholics will pick and choose which teachings they want to follow, much like someone choosing food items in a cafeteria line.
Which to my way of thinking kind of defeats the purpose of organized religion. If you’re not all in for the whole package, well, that’s not really the religion. But then again, I don’t care what someone else believes, as long as they’re not believing stuff that leads them to hurt other people.
Possibly not a true story but it was retold often in the old neighborhood.
A Priest was addressing a group of women about the time birth control pills were becoming more accessible. The Priest said that it was not allowed. A middle aged Italian women in the back row stood up and said: “You no playa da game, you no maka da rules” and then sat back down
I recall a survey from 40 years ago that said the vast majority of (North American) Catholics did not pay attention to the church’s birth control rules. After all, many churches say donate 10% of your income to the church, how many do that? (Mind you, tithes were from back in the day when the church did a lot of the social support that the government does now with your taxes).
Although, I dated a lady who was a teacher at a Catholic school back then, and she was sure that if she did get a prescription for birth control (she didn’t) that her employer would find out from the benefits provider. Also, they could fire her for not “espousing Catholic values” so getting married without the full rigamarole of Catholic wedding process, or worse, getting married after becoming pregnant, would also be grounds for dismissal. She did mention that one of her co-workers had an IUD (not sure the doctrinal status of those) and it caused serious pain.
Funny, but this is more or less how I feel as a lifelong Catholic raised with all the trappings: Catholic grade school, high school, etc. I also have some idea of the history of the Catholic church and know that priests being celebate and unmarried was not an original doctrine, but came into being several centuries after Christ to prevent them from handing down church property to their sons. So, basically a money grab. And that enforced celebacy has caused a lot of problems for the Church - I’m convinced that if priests could lead more normal lives, with wives and families, you’d see fewer sexual abuse scandals.
Anyway…given that they are, at best, unfamiliar with the pressures of normal marriages and that condemnation of birth control beyond the Onan story is not mentioned in the Bible but seems to be a human invention…I’m gonna do what’s best for me and my family in that regard and let God judge me.
And even birth control per se wasn’t the sin in the story of Onan: he was obligated by the Law to give his brother’s widow an heir, who would inherit the deceased’s herds and property instead of their going to the deceased’s younger brother Onan. In other words he was a greed bastard trying to screw a widow out of her survivor benefits.
JPII was at one point in a serious dispute with the Ukrainian Rite in the Catholic church (not to be confused with the Orthodox Church). UR priests are allowedd to be married, and the church kept the lid on this with an agreement with the Soviet Union to limit how many priests were allowed to be consecrated each year, so that it wouldn’t upset the Roman Rite folks. The problem was, without the Soviet control, apparently the Rite was consecrating too many priests and was told to limit it. They also created unsanctioned bishops, who also assumed they had the ability to make priests.
At one point I recall someone mentioning that there were 18 differerent rites in the Catholic church, and several of them allowed married priests. However, the Roman Rite, by far the largest, does not.
A priest and a rabbi found themselves sharing a compartment on a train. After a while, the priest opened a conversation by saying, “I know that in your religion you’re not supposed to eat pork. Have you actually ever tasted it?” The rabbi said, “I must tell the truth. Yes, I have, on the odd occasion.”
Then the Rabbi had his turn of interrogation. He asked, “Your religion, too… I know you’re suposed to be celibate, but…?” The priest replied, “Yes, I know what you’re going to ask. I have succumbed once or twice.”
There was silence for a while. Then the Rabbi peeped around the newspaper he was reading and said, “Better than pork, isn’t it?”
**22 **If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
So basically, causing a miscarriage is a property crime, pay the husband, not “a life for a life”.
NFP (Natural Family Planning), which the Church officially allows, is slightly more sophisticated than the calendar method, and also involves tracking temperature and mucosal consistency to predict time of ovulation. Of course, tracking time of ovulation is also effective if you’re actively trying to get pregnant.
A Catholic couple who never has sex at all would not be considered married, as consummation is part of marriage. But they could have sex just once.
The Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church is the only one that doesn’t allow married priests, and even there, the rule is not set in stone. There have been dispensations granted for a few exceptions (when an already-married priest converts), and the possibility is considered open that the rule might be changed at some point in the future (in contrast to, say, the rule against female priests, which is said to be absolute and unchangeable).
The current count is 24. They’re mostly small regional enclaves in the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe that developed their own rituals and use native languages, but all pledge allegiance to the Pope, accept the traditional doctrinal teachings of the Church of Rome and have a full voice in Catholic councils, election of the Pope, etc. Some individual Eastern bishops do not allow married men to be ordained priests, but none of the churches allow priests to marry after ordination, and none alow married priests to become bishops.
It’s also effectively abstinence if you also follow the rules about when a women is kosher to have sex with. Whoever wrote those rules had some basic understanding of how to get pregnant.
Some friends of ours are very observant Catholics, to the point that the husband of the couple became a Catholic deacon when he retired from his career as a doctor.
When they were fairly newly married, and visiting some mutual friends for dinner, the wife went to the bathroom. She came back out, told her husband, “we have to leave in an hour”…with the implication, “so we can go home and have sex.” They did, in fact, conceive that evening.
Where I live and where I grew up, here in Chicago, it was around a lot of Catholics. Almost nobody gave a shit what the church had to say about birth control. Of the Catholics whose contraception habits I know or can infer, there’s only one that doesn’t use birth control (given they have seven kids). Hell, I went to a Catholic high school run by a religious order, and even back in the early 90s, we got told about birth control and how to use it. I mean, we weren’t officially told it was okay, we were just told that if we’re gonna do it, it might be a good idea to use it to prevent disease and pregnancy. My mother is what I would characterize as a devout Catholic, never missing mass, going to all the optional masses, having pictures of Jesus and the pope all around the house, and I remember finding their stash of condoms tucked away in the back of the towels in the closet. I feel like the percentage of Catholics, at least around here, that stick to the no contraception thing is quite low, but all I’ve got is anecdotes. I’m always a bit mystified and taken aback when people think Catholics, as a rule, don’t use birth control. We’re not supposed to, but … My church is also openly supportive of LGBTQ+, so we come in varieties.
So another anecdote and experiences from my German Catholic upbringing: My mother is not as devout as yours, no pictures of Jesus and the Pope (although a crucifix in the bedroom), but she as well as my father follows the faith, and they both deeply believe in the Church and God. My mother used to sometimes get into little rants against contraception pills, especially prescribed to teenage girls, when I was in puberty. I only had one sister, so two kids, and just like you, when I was a teenager, I stumbled into the condom stash in my parents’ bedroom (I swear it was an accident, I wasn’t sneaking). So I thought “Well yeah, that’s why I only have a sister.” I already knew darn well the stand of the Catholic Church against all artificial contraception, and saw the hypocrisy in this, though apparently that was already the norm in German Catholic households, because in all my related and acquainted families, two kids were the norm.
True, there are three levels to this, not two: What the Church officially says, what the members of the Church say, and what the members of the Church actually do. When the ACA was in the works, there were a lot of Catholics with two children, who were ranting about how it covered evil birth control.
It’s interesting as just personally, I’ve never heard anyone argue against birth control, and I grew up in a surrounding where it felt like the whole world was Catholic (Polish, Lithuanian, Italian, Irish, Mexican). Abortion? Yes. That was a minefield, most opposed. Contraception? Never got debated.
It’s actually a little more nuanced than that. A marriage between two Catholic willing participants in the Church is considered ratified, but it is only consummated upon the first sexual union between them. A ratified but not consummated marriage is not indissoluble. A fully consummated Catholic marriage is. Although of course you still have the concept of annulment, which can be obtained for any marriage (whether consummated or not), and is the ruling that a valid marriage never existed ab initio.
Whoever wrote those rules had some basic understanding of how to get pregnant.