My husband insists that the way he was taught Catholicism was very liberal - that the prohibitions on birth control and such are treated just as archaic dogma by the actual pastors, and even claims that in his confirmation class he was told to abstain from sex, but if you did do it, it was better to use contraception.
Now, I was confirmed, too, and I never got these messages at all (granted, we never really got much in-depth discussion of Catholic beliefs at all in my classes), and as the D.C. insurance debate shows, the Church is very interested in pursuing these outdated dogmatic principles.
So did anyone else get the same message as hubby? Was he in some schismatic sect without his knowledge? We are well out of the Church, so I don’t have a clue what they’re doing on the parish level anymore.
Depends on the area. I grew up in Annapolis, which is part of the Baltimore diocese. It’s a pretty liberal diocese…our pastor hated giving the required “choose life” sermon every year, and I was taught that if I thought things through, and came to a decision that was against church teaching, but I made it with all my knowlege, it was okay.
However, I went to college in Virginia. MUCH more conservative…hell, some of the churches still won’t let girls be altar servers. So I think it all depends on where you grow up.
I was raised Catholic in a severely dogmatic parish just outside of New York City. They were adamant about it-even going as far to say that if you had sex before marriage you were breaking the commandments (The one about not messing around with your neighbor’s wife, specifically. Even if she wasn’t married yet, she will be.)
They finally kicked me out when I asked too many "why?"s.
As a conservative and a Catholic, I’ve always been puzzled by things like “Sister Mary Ignatius,” because I went to Catholic schools in New York City in the 1960s and 70s (I’m 39 now), and was taught mostly by nuns, and NEVER heard much about sex, positive or negative.
We’d hear an anti-abortion sermon at Mass about once a year, and it almost felt like a formality. The subject of birth control NEVER came up. Not in classes, and not in sermons.
I suppose that older Catholics than myself MAY have had different experiences. And MAYBE priests in other parishes around the country DID rage against birth control from the pulpit every week. But in my parish, you’d never have known that birth control was against church teachings, if you looked to the pastor alone for guidance.
Catholic schools did, indeed, do a good job of teaching Church doctrine without actually mentioning sex. This is pretty remarkable, when you consider that the Feast of Circumcision (Jan 1) is a holy day of obligation, and that the sixth and ninth commandments (as the Catholic church numbers them) prohibit adultery and sexual coveting. The accomplished this by a wonderful routine of dancing around the issues. “Circumcision” meant “being offered up to God”, they told us, with nary a mention that an operation on one’s private parts is involved. (This explains why I was so confused about circumcision as a kid, until I found a medical encyclopedia with explicit drawings.)
I suspect that today, when issues like abortion and homosexuality are so much more commonly and openly discussed, things are necessarily different – kids are going to be exposed to this more directly.
As for liberal tendencies, I suspect this is why Pope John Paul II has been so direct in his statements about what constitutes Church teachings. He wants to prevent dogmatic drift. I have long felt that the leftward drift of American Catholicism would someday manifest itself in a crisis – the bulk of the Church would want to remain closwer to its traditional stand, but liberal Catholics would want to allow divorce, contraception, and female priests and altar attendants. A lot of this is being practiced now, but quietly. If the Vatican puts its foot down too hard, we may end up with a separate American Catholic Church.
I lived through 12 years of Catholic schooling, and found (like CalMeacham) that it simply not discussed for the most part. Certainly none of the nuns ever mentioned it! The only frank discussion of birth control we ever got was in a health class during sophomore year (taught by a lay teacher). There, we were told that the only acceptable method in the church’s eyes was the rhythm method - for married couples only, of course, so we weren’t actually taught what the method involved.
I suspect certain things (such as altar girls) are really a function of the views of the priest or monsignor running the parish. When I was young, the parish was run by an older, conservative man who put a stop to altar girls serving at masses (shortly AFTER Vatican II). In the last couple of years, though, my parents tell me that the new pastor has re-introduced altar girls, who now outnumber the boys serving…
I agree with CalMeacham about the recent history of American Catholics and the Pope’s response to leftist tendencies. I’ve been out of the loop for a while now, but I seem to recall that some compromises were made in the wording of the official catechism released a few years back that were intended to appease American bishops and reduce the risk of schism.
My mother teaches the classes just before kids get into Confirmation at our local parish (Confirmation classes are taught by the nun assigned to the dioscese who teaches about the church). She teaches about birth control, etc. but she mentions that the best choice is abstinence (and that the church stresses the only birth control method is the rhythm method), but if they do go ahead, that it’s better to use birth control than not. We havent had any complaints about what she does in class from any of the parents.
Anyway, she’s pretty liberal in her thinking. Also, the annual anti-abortion sermon (usually given by a guest speaker) seems more like something that HAS to be done instead of something the priest wants to do (he seems pretty liberal). I dont even recall any of the fire and brimstone sermons at all either.
I recently spoke to my local bishop about these matters. The way he explained it was that birth control pills are a small sin, Basically God will forgive you. Abortion is a big sin, you’ll burn in hell forever.
That would be reasonable labdude, but both are considered mortal sins by the catholic church. I have read that everytime you use birth control, you commit another mortal sin.
The concept of “mortal” and “venial” sins is subject to a lot of interpretations. Ultimately, Catholicism, like all other Christian religions, believe that God forgives just about everything. The differences between Christian faiths deal with how you earn this forgiveness (good works, predestination, baptism, etc.)
As conservative as John Paul II is, he is not going to condemn anybody for having an abortion or using birth control. He won’t like it however.
While you do not have an institution this size survive the 1675 years since Constantine if you don’t reserve a little bit of wiggle room to accommodate social, political and economic reality, the Church’s very nature IS to be the institution that says: “Well, just because everyone’s doing it it (even ourselves!) doesn’t make it right: At least have the decency to feel guilty about it”.
As was pointed out earlier in the thread, one important thing to keep in mind is the doctrine of forgiveness. Just because the Church points out that X or Y is “wrong” does not mean it’s damning the people who are doing X or Y: redemption is always at hand. In this sense the RCC at times sounds quite liberal. The whole construct of periodic confession (mandatory once a year) is a form of recognizing that your normal human will sin again, even it he/she is trying not to.
The person mentioned in the OP just happened to be brought up in a parish/diocese where the forgiveness angle was emphasized and the “still, it’s no less wrong” bit got glossed over…
…which, y’know, may have been a case of the people hearing what they wanted to hear, i.e. so stunned at not hearing visions of hellfire they leapt to the conclusion that it was all OK now.
<slight hijack>On the discussion of liberality in the American Church, I remember (it was last year) my CCD teacher saying that hell was now being refered to as more of a second chance, rather than eternal punishment, although, she could have been referring to purgatory.</slight hijack>