A Catholic Laymen Replies
SHUSTER, GEORGE N.
A CATHOLIC LAYMAN REPLIES By George N. Shuster PROFESSOR FEUER'S article indicates that he is suffering acute distress. I am not sure that the following comments will alleviate his discomfort, but...
...The weakness of Professor Feuer's argument seems to me to lie in the fact that it recognizes no frein at all except the prevention of childbirth...
...But by imposing something akin to what Irving Babbitt used to call frein vital, the Church does manage to raise that desire somewhat above the level of a bestial urge...
...which results on the one hand from the extension of life expectancy, and on the other from the desire to have children—which is perhaps attributable to that extension—is a serious problem...
...a woman has nine children by as many men...
...He may be persuaded as a private citizen that what the majority wants is bad for the country, but he is neither the Congress nor the courts...
...Argument about it can be divorced completely from theology, except in so far as there is question of the character of human destiny...
...The Biblical injunction is shared with Orthodox Judaism, but the experience is probably unique...
...The Church is quite aware that these do not in practice produce all the results which might be desired...
...By comparison, the question of whether a Catholic President of the United States would be in a position to sanction birth control as a social expedient seems to me beside the point...
...The sale of contraceptives there will not alter the stark truth that even if the exploitation of labor to increase agricultural production succeeds in some measure, the number of mouths to feed will increase faster than the supply of foodstuffs to nourish them...
...One of these is undoubtedly contraception...
...But I shall add at the outset that whatever the Catholic Church says or does will not have any influence whatsoever on the area in which the "explosion" is most evident, which is China...
...Very few men and women are proof against sexual desire...
...It would seem to be the desire to seek sexual gratification wherever it can be found...
...The issue is...
...Nevertheless, they are clearly privileged to operate their kind of "birth control station" and to argue for the benefits which derive therefrom...
...This often seems to observers rather pointless...
...It is an ethical prescription, and like everything else of the kind which is enunciated by the Church is derived in part from Biblical injunction and in part from experience...
...Even so, my knowledge suffices to indicate to Professor Feuer that the Catholic position on birth control is by no manner of means dogmatic teaching...
...a college girl is pursued as she comes out of the subway, is raped and strangled...
...What happens in the rest of the world will not be inconsequential, but will be relatively unimportant...
...It is obvious to us all that the "population explosion...
...Accordingly, the Church permits a kind of "birth control" which is based primarily on avoidance of intercourse during certain periods...
...In short, we must look upon the Catholic Church in this respect as an institution which maintains a large number of "birth control stations" by simply existing and teaching...
...But I shall merely note that if extramarital sexual relationships were ruled by some such self-restraining principle, the number of deviations from the moral code would be extra-ordinarily few in number...
...The other is that frigidity may drive the male in particular—but the female as well—into extraneous amorous involvements...
...But it does not bridle the sex urge, which if uncurbed may well lead to the kind of offenses previously listed...
...He wants something more humane and less painful than abortion or sterilization...
...By way of explanation, I shall begin by being somewhat lurid...
...Indeed, it can no doubt be counted upon to intensify it...
...If you believe that happiness results from purgation of desire and sublimation of the spirit, you will give one answer...
...When public opinion decides that contraception is to be legalized, and manifests that decision through a majority vote, there is no question whatever as to the duty of an elected President to enforce the mandate...
...If you think that the best way out is to gratify desire, within appropriate social limitations, your view of the matter will be a different one...
...For it can frequently (not always) be relied upon to remove the most serious consequence of sexual union, namely the child...
...I am not sure that the following comments will alleviate his discomfort, but hope they will provide at least a moment or two of relief...
...Of course Catholics have no right to impose their beliefs or standards on others...
...This is the one which most readily commends itself to governments and to social welfare workers...
...of course, cheerfully grant that normal married life is the principal barrier to unbridled sexual promiscuity, and that it in turn is haunted by two possibilities...
...As for the Catholic position, I am neither a theologian nor a moralist and only 10-cents-worth of historian...
...It is based on what is called "the care of souls," in the confessional or out of it...
...But let me add that the assumption that he might is a clear indication that American Catholics have failed to tell their countrymen what is on their minds and why...
...his weaknesses and his basic institutions...
...There is and can be no question here of Catholic dogma...
...But I wonder whether he takes into his purview all the moral and psychical injury which is caused by having no barrier to lust save contraception...
...Conclusions are dictated thereby which are certainly open to question, but which are supported by a good deal of evidence...
...One is that more children may be born than either society or the family desires...
...New York's current history is dotted with episodes of which these are a modest sampling: A man of 35 follows two 11-year-old children to their home and rapes them...
...I cannot imagine a President of the United States, no matter what his religious background, who would fancy that part of his job was to instruct the country about an ethical and philosophical problem of this kind...
...What is the basic cause of these things...
...I wish to come back for a moment to what was said at the outset...
...For the sex urge is the most powerful urge in the human world, but society has erected any number of barriers against its satisfaction...
...what can be deemed best for humanity, granted the nature of man...
...We may...
Vol. 42 • November 1959 • No. 41
