Correspondence

...5. True also, the rhythm sometimes misses a beat...

...Your risk is greater...

...Second, neither [the editorial nor] article acknowledges, much less engages, the rich teaching on marriage coming from the magisterium, from Gaudium et spes to the present: e.g., the need for marriage to serve the common good...

...I am one who is now ready to consider the possibility that I should be admiring his wisdom...

...It testifies to the weakness of the central arguments of Humanae vitae that Cort defends them with such dust-in-the-eyes attacks on straw men...

...Rhythm was already giving way in 1968 to the sympto-thermic and ovula-tion methods of natural family planning, both of which are very effective for avoiding or achieving a pregnancy...

...God knew better than we did...

...This appears to exclude purposes and consequences (not just Mr...

...Finally, while we recognize that Humanae vitae has its female as well as male defenders, we note for the record that we received no correspondence on this editorial from women...

...Let's not ignore it...

...Enough food, enough fresh air, enough clean water, enough birds and animals, enough sources of energy...

...Some of their conclusions: (a) "The world today produces enough grain alone to provide every human being on the planet with 3,600 calories a day...

...We did not write, " the time has come to listen to mature Christians," but "the time had come,"~referring to the midsixties and the majority voices on the papal commission...

...There is the smugness of the phrase "the time has come to listen to mature Christians...

...The church is a complex body, not a simple amoeba...

...There's a risk element there, true, but a kind of divine risk, a kind of divine logic and relevance...

...Not well argued...

...the fact that marriage engages the total person—body, instinct, feelings, aspirations, will, and thought—in a historical process of conversion and sanctification with a particular shape to it...

...Paul VI, an intelligent man not given to willful expressions of blind reaction, ignored the vote and the advice of even more expert authorities and a few months later launched Humanae vitae into the teeth of what soon became a negative gale...

...the harmony between unifying love and self-giving love...

...One must admire his courage, if nothing else...

...JOHN J. SULLIVAN, JR...

...We are now reminded that not every document from Rome or the pope is an infallible teaching...

...Rome cannot be viewed as an ecclesiastical automat into which problems are put and answers dished out...

...recent unbridled Congregationalism as expressed in a dogmatic and anti-intellectual pentecostalism will warn us that no one element of the church's structure can be either unchecked or ignored...

...Third, Commonweal's editors extol the goodness of marital sexuality as...

...The church's teaching on responsible parenthood and fertility regulation exists because of its concern about the integrity of marriage (in spite of the alleged theological or philosophical flaws in papal reasoning...

...Mention a problem of hunger, poverty, sickness, ignorance, unemployment, maldistribution of wealth and income, and immediately you hear this universal solution: contraception and abortion...

...the Tablet, April 23, 1988) you run a very great risk, when all truth is known, the risk of a sad and harrowing contrition...

...And how much longer will the conventional Catholic wisdom hold out against abortion...

...Reproductive and sexual ethics could use the wise and moderating influence of many, but not all, elements of Catholic tradition...

...I would like to express a dissenting view...

...Moreover, if the "feminist drive for equality" is a "moral movement," why does it adopt such a masculine, domination-approach to fertility...

...The whole point of Humanae vitae—the topic at hand—was to pass moral judgment on the use of methods of contraception other than those that depend on detection of periods of infertility...

...the relationship between individual dignity and freedom and the human need for community and love...

...Treating it as a disease is to disintegrate one's gift of self in marriage...

...and the identity between the family's being a community and its mission in society to extend community...

...And only in very limited circles is contraception seriously proposed as what Cort calls a "universal solution" for the world's injustices...

...3. As Gandhi said, "There's enough in the world for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed...

...In 1967 I was a delegate to the World Congress of the Lay Apostolate in Rome...

...Which is more mature...

...Good luck...

...Not attempting to be a theological Pollyanna, may I suggest that Paul VI 's tragic mistake can have beneficial consequences for individual Catholics and for the church at large...

...Finally, neither article nor editorial addresses the magisterium's rationale for the moral advantage of natural family planning over contraception, namely, that natural methods show more respect for the natural cycle of the woman and the couple's fertility and require a mutual effort of the husband and wife (Familiaris consortio, 32...

...Are you implying that NFP users are immature because they have chosen to integrate mutually their fertility into the sexual, covenant-sacrament of marriage...

...If I read this correctly, John Paul II is advocating the fullest mutual bodily involvement of husband and wife, including the wife's menstrual cycle and the couple's fertility, as a moral advantage in the couple's love relationship and in the marriage's contribution to society...

...And how could we, or the world, ever compensate for the loss of them...

...To the Editors: When in your editorial [July 15] you speak of the sense of asceticism and the obedience of the "Other couples far smaller in number'' who have accepted the Humanae vitae precepts, you seem to overlook those couples who have acted not out of asceticism nor obedience but out of a firm conviction that artificial contraception is wrong and who have kept the faith according to their convictions...

...c)' 'In India, home of over a third of the world's hungry people, the real-location of a mere 5.6 percent of current food production would wipe out hunger...

...There is something about Paul's argument for "openness to the transmission of life" that I find hard to ignore...

...Those practicing NFP with a contraceptive mentality are in fact behaving (Continued on page 510) (Continued from page 506) in an "open to life" manner since they have not altered themselves or the sex act...

...But I see church teaching as an invitation to wholeness in marriage...

...Both ideas are present in Gaudium et spes, Humanae vitae, and Familiaris consortio...

...To the Editors: After Humanae vitae, no one can underestimate or trivialize the often enormous anguish of both those who remained on the Bark of Peter and those who jumped ship...

...Its reference point is the covenant of marriage...

...John Cort's letter criticizes a number of attitudes and policies that are as abhorrent to us as to him, which as a former editor and long-time reader of Commonweal he well knows...

...Frank Schweigert is also right: the papal and conciliar documents he cites do contain rich material for reflection, deftly summarized in his letter...

...We only wish this maturity had been acquired in a less costly way—both for individuals whose faith did not come unscathed through this crisis and for a culture left without persuasive guidance about sex...

...Humanae vitae may have been one dramatic force impelling us to shed a one-sided and monolithic papalism just as the experience of Gallicanism helps us to avoid excessively nationalistic local churches...

...Contraception appears to contradict the intimate, covenant promises of marriage...

...To us, this is not natural law reasoning but sheer physicalism...

...And—the point of our editorial—there has been a tragic squandering of the church's moral resources to counsel a world paying, as we wrote, "the terrible human costs of our culture's disarray in sexual matters...

...The encyclical concluded that such use is "equally repugnant to the nature of man and woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will...

...However, women can be viewed as victims of "sexist'' doctors (or their own husbands) in light of the documented side effects of the pill and I.U.D., all the while being sold on its freedom benefits...

...Simplistic ecclesiastical fundamentalism is as harmful to faith as is scriptural fundamentalism...

...b) Less than half the world's arable land is presently cultivated...

...We have now had twenty years to observe the effects of "the contraceptive mentality" (your contribution) that vote represented...

...Will no one speak for them...

...a source of delight and comfort" and "the ability...

...The ascetical and relational value of abstinence or continence may not always be obvious or easy...

...In short, it seems that God's commandment to Adam and Eve: "Be fruitful and multiply...

...If you can suppose that you are wrong (and some very respectable and even saintly people firmly believe that you are wrong—see Mother Teresa's stern declaration...

...4. I can no longer dismiss the pope's distinction between birth control by natural means (the rhythm) and unnatural means as illogical and irrelevant...

...They could measure this loss against the losses that fall on others: the crippled, the handicapped, the unlucky...

...to control the number of children...

...FRANK schweigert The editors reply: Frank Arricale is right: Humanae vitae has indeed helped some Catholics rise above our own church's special form of fundamentalism...

...To the Editors: The Humanae vitae "Anniversary Waltz" editorial and Robert Hoyt's "How Odd of God" shed more heat than light in your July 15 issue...

...But then, if it hadn't, we might not have had three or four of our children...

...This is "mature...

...This is why: 1. I am fed up to the gullet with the colossal cop-out that the "contraceptive mentality" has become in the field of social injustice...

...Even your editorial implies that...

...But he, like Messrs...

...So I was not always a dissenter from the current conventional wisdom...

...CHARLES BALSAM Office of Family Life Ministry Diocese of Beaumont A moral advantage St...

...We don't know the "progressives" that Cort hangs out with, but the ones we know who concern themselves with developing countries see unchecked population growth as one factor among many in the continuing struggle for development...

...I think there is something of value here, and it merits our efforts toward further development...

...The risk this minority of couples took was the loss of satisfaction they might have had if they had enjoyed sex without restriction...

...I assisted Barbara Ward and others on the wording of a resolution that urged the church to "leave the choice of technical means for achieving responsible parenthood to the parents, acting in accordance with their Christian faith...

...It can be viewed as a "cross'' and a blessing...

...True, the phrase about "Christian faith" (my contribution) implied some ambiguity, but the intent was clear...

...Balsam, Sullivan, and Cort, seems particularly unwilling to address the core issues of either the encyclical or our editorial...

...Charles Balsam comes closest to the argument between Humanae vitae and its critics when he tells us that people with a contraceptive mentality who use the techniques and technologies of "natural" family planning "are in fact behaving in an 'open to life' manner since they have not altered themselves or the sex act...

...I think some in the NFP movement could develop a bit more compassion in this regard...

...They do not see the concerns about the pill as "more arbitrary and ungrounded...

...It was a pro-pill, anti-abortion resolution, and it passed the Assembly of Heads of Delegations by a vote of 67 to 21, with 10 abstentions...

...Balsam and Schweigert, though they appear to claim more for NFP than statistics and many former practitioners would, clearly mistake our editorial if they read into it a judgment upon the choice individual couples made in 1968 or make now...

...Paul, Minn...

...At the (Continued on page 505) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 482) very least I am persuaded that I should cease and desist from expressing the kind of lofty disdain that once characterized my opinions on the subject...

...In any case, Messrs...

...A papal fundamentalism, especially on the part of American Catholics, has begun to fade...

...Balsam's "values and attitudes") from ethical judgment of human acts, and to accept bodily "behaviors" as a sole and sufficient norm...

...2. You also hear, and from progressive people who should know better, their clincher argument or "fact," namely, that the world is facing the stark, staring reality of overpopulation...

...The encyclical did not merely say that contraceptive methods deemed artificial are less good than those deemed natural, it said the former were objectively sinful...

...That' s enough to make most people fat...

...To the Editors: The twentieth anniversary of Humanae vitae has inspired negative comments ranging from "tragic error'' [the Editors] to'' intellectual scandal" ["How Odd of God," by Robert Hoyt, July 15...

...Not proved...

...Fertility is a gift, an interpersonal power to invoke life...

...I do not wish to downplay the struggles of many couples conscientiously resorting to contraception...

...Loyal and mature Catholics are beginning to realize excessive ultramontane tendencies are as harmful to the universal church as are rejections of the unique Petrine mission...

...Many liberal Catholics so extolled Quadragesimo anno and Rerum novar-um as modern gospel that they forgot Pascendi and Testem benevolentiae as medieval death rattles...

...This is a myth, a myth that has been exposed and exploded by food experts, most notably by Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins in their book, World Hunger: 12 Myths (1986...

...popes can sometimes be anachronistic as well as prophetic...

...First, "recourse to fertile periods" is no longer equated with the rhythm method...

...A dissenter recants Roxbury, Mass...

...Even if the intentions are the same, the behaviors are different, though strictly speaking, continence is not a behavior...

...Hoyt is correct to point out that "not . . . much truth [is] to be derived from contemplating the intimate structure of the sex act...

...Chauvinism and sexism will continue as long as the fundamental sexual reality of couples is flawed by the unequal sharing of so beautiful and creative a gift...

...This raises the question of which has more impact on the human person: values and attitudes, or behaviors...

...But in defending the physicalist outlook of the encyclical and the authority of the papacy, Rome keeps that influence from being felt...

...The necessary dialogue and dialectic among the papal, episcopal, and congregational dimensions of our trinitarian-structured church are essential ingredients of a people constantly growing in the awareness of what revelation means in and to each age...

...It means that one's spouse, usually the wife, is responsible...

...FRANK C. ARRICALE Comparative risks Lackawanna, N.Y...

...What we said and repeat is that couples can and should make conscientious decisions, but that such decisions do not resolve "the dilemma in which the whole church now finds itself.'' The very authority question Humanae vitae tried to solve now confounds us with a vengeance...

...JOHN C. CORT Open to life Beaumont, Tex...

...Balsam's whole letter is unfortunately based on a misreading of our editorial...

...fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28) is not yet outdated...

...To the Editors: I am disappointed in Commonweal's assessment of Humanae vitae ["Anniversary Waltz" and "Sex: How Odd of God," July 15...

...differentiation and specialization are part of the complexity...

...The problem is the control of greed and its conversion to a minimal regard for justice, the release of human genius from the production of destruction and its conversion to the production of those things that are truly useful and necessary...

...emphasis added...