Now, I recall seeing on the news about seven to ten years ago or so that the Pope went to some third-world country and actually sanctioned the use of contraceptives there due to the fact that the country was incredibly poor, mostly Catholic, and HIGHLY overpopulated.
My roomate’s big time Catholic guy (not annoyingly evangelistical kind, but the actual intelligent, well read on the subject and understands what he’s talking about kind), and this little tid bit of information has come up on more than one occassion. The problems is, he doesn’t recall hearing of this event, and simple google search has turned up nothing (I don’t know what other type of research he’s done for it, but so far, it’s come up negative). So, I’m wondering, does anyone out there remember where it was that this occurred, and do you possibly have a cite? Thanks.
I can’t believe he would sanction the use of contraceptives either to control birth rates or prevent disease. The Catholic church is extremely obstinate on certain issues, and this is one of them. The day it stops being so will be the day it turns into something like Episcopalians/Anglicans, constantly letting the doctrine “adapt” to modern times and leaving adherents with a less effective moral compass or benchmark.
Speaking as an (ex-RC) atheist, I actually respect the Catholics’ inflexibility on issues like the sanctity of life, though I disagree with it in terms of practical details. With new technology coming along (eg, stem-cell technology), we need someone to remind us of the moral fundamentals.
Anyway, to recap - there is no way I can imagine the Pope would sanction the use of contraceptives, except (at a pinch) maybe as items that can be blown up into big balloons at parties for fun. Did a quick google search, and found everything to support the notion that they are 100% anti-contraceptives.
He may have sanctioned what some might call birth control, the only two methods approved by the church.
One of them is abstinence. Enough said.
The other is “the rythmn method”, using a calendar to determine the safest days to have sex without pregnancy. The RC church DOES promote and encourage this method, which when you boil it down is a sort of modified abstinence.
Actually, the Rhythm Method (a.k.a., Vatican Roulette), is not what is currently promoted.
Natural Family Planning includes Rhythm (calendar watching) along with several other separate methods (basal temperature, mucus flow, and another I always forget). It has the advantage of requiring nothing that is not already found in the home and does not require the support of large pharmaceutical companies.
It’s failure rate is in the low single digits when followed assiduously and approaches the success of the pill and condoms when rigorously maintained.
As to the OP, I have never heard that story, either, although I could envision the pope promoting NFP over a distribution of estrogen-based pills in some third world country and the story coming back that he was actually “promoting” birth control.
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(I’m not going to debate the effectiveness or appropriateness of NFP. It clearly does not have an overall effective rate approaching that of the pill–mostly because it is time consuming and interferes with spontaneous sex.)
Obviously, if you’re not sexually active, the church wouldn’t care one way or another.
If you are sexually active, particularly if you are married, it would depend on who in the church you asked.
Humanae Vitae was not a two-line statement that “Contraception is bad. Don’t ever do it.” It was a typically long and nuanced statement on general policy with a lot of “we believe A, that logically leads to B in most conditions where C does not apply, taking into consideration the needs, pains, and desires of the people in the context of the love of God, therefore this is how believing people should behave.”
You can find Catholics who would boil Humanae Vitae down to “Thou shalt not use contraceptives.” and others who would come up with a more nuanced view. (Anyone who claims that the subject is “free choice” is wrong, but it is also not an absolute mandate.)
IANAtheologian, but as I understand it, if the medication is prescibed for some purpose other than birth control, and all reasonably-available treatment options result in infertility, then infertility is viewed as an unfortunate side-effect. If there’s another reasonably-available treatment of similar effectiveness which does not result in infertility, then Catholics are expected to use that instead.
I’ve also heard that on occasion, nuns will be allowed to use the Pill if they’re stationed in a region with high rape rates, just in case. Of couse, nobody wants them to be raped, but should it happen, a pregnant nun is a bit of an awkward situation. Then again, my source for this information was one of my high school religion teachers, whose knowledge of theology was pretty much limited to the part about “everyone except him goes to Hell”, so this information might be suspect.
I know you said you weren’t going to debate this, but as a physician I still have to take exception to this assertion you put out. No good study shows the numbers to be low, even when followed assiduously. The studies that show low numbers are small, full of flaws, and/or the data doesn’t stand up to statistical analysis for application to a larger population. The skills needed for the theoretical perfect practice necessary to attain the results claimed is probably beyond the ability of 99+% of the population.
However, I suspect that, if the Pope himself had made the sort of public concession described in the OP, the author of the above article would have mentioned it.