Church with balcony inside blueprint3/10/2024 Many Catholic women have been grappling seriously with Paul VI's prohibitions in Humanae Vitae. Maybe it's time for the church's institutional leaders to catch up with the feminists.įor Catholics, these discussions have an added dimension, because they involve questions about obedience to institutional teaching and the primacy of conscience. So maybe it's not the feminists who need to catch up with Humanae Vitae. Ironically, the people who often seem least invested in these issues are not secular feminists but rather religious traditionalists. Young people, both religious and otherwise, tend to be serious about such ethical issues as consent, care for the other and respect for boundaries. And these injustices are exacerbated for women in less advantaged demographics.Ĭontrary to what Campion and others seem to think, many in our current generation have the opposite of an "anything goes" approach to sex and relationships. In a capitalist society that only values profitable productivity and treats reproductive capacities as a problem to be solved, women may be coerced to use birth control. ![]() The same misogynistic, racist, classist and colonialist sins that existed in the past still influence gender relations and expectations.Ĭontraceptive methods as they exist today do place unequal burdens on women. Yes, as feminists have been pointing out for decades, there are ethical issues associated with birth control. ![]() If they ignore history and attempt to pin the blame for sexual violence on anything so recent as access to effective birth control, they either haven't educated themselves sufficiently, or aren't arguing in good faith. What is new is that survivors are finally feeling empowered and supported enough to take a stand, not only against the individuals who prey on the vulnerable, but against the systems that enable this.Ĭultural analysts should know this. Maybe it's time for the church's institutional leaders to catch up with the feminists. Maybe it's not the feminists who need to catch up with Humanae Vitae. Women and young people have been abused, coerced and assaulted for centuries. Sexual abuse of minors by powerful religious leaders is nothing new. If anything, increased access to birth control offered women some relief from some of the burdens that a patriarchal culture placed on them. Long before contraceptive use became mainstream, women entering marriage knew they had no guarantee that their partners would prioritize their physical and emotional well-being, or even treat them with compassion and consideration. They know the systems are rigged against them. ![]() Even today, victims of powerful predators are often afraid to say anything. This points to a broader disposition to give preference to the wealthy, powerful and dominant, in direct violation of the "preferential option for the vulnerable" at the heart of the Gospel.Ībuse of young people by older religious leaders may not be a symptom of the patriarchy per se, but it is absolutely a symptom of a civilization that rejects justice and equality in favor of dominance hierarchies. The Catholic church couldn't bring itself to condemn slavery absolutely until 1993, undermining the popular claim that the church is the best defender of the vulnerable and reminding us that the magisterial authorities have been wrong before. Though the early church offered a blueprint for radical gender equality and respect for the dignity of the person, Christian civilizations replicated the gender biases and other injustices of pre-Christian societies.Ĭonsider that chattel slavery, which involved kidnapping, trafficking, abuse and rape of women and girls, continued unchecked in Christendom for centuries. The practice of polygamy, widespread in many cultures in the past, allowed men to utilize women as toys for pleasure or tools for breeding. ![]() Despite romantic fantasies about a better, nobler past, for most of history there was no expectation that men would treat women with basic respect, let alone "reverence." In the Hebrew Scriptures and the Homeric epics, men renowned for honor and heroism casually treat women as objects to be used and discarded.
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