Adam Kotso
writes:
To many observers, the Catholic hierarchy’s opposition to birth control seems nonsensical — they might as well oppose ice cream. It seems like a win-win: the liberals are happy that women get reproductive freedom, but meanwhile if you’re anti-abortion, it seems like avoiding unwanted pregnancies in the first place is the best possible solution. What’s not to like? Or more to the point: why are they making this, of all the many Catholic moral teachings, the cross they’re willing to die on, even as the laity has long since stopped caring?
Adam Kotsko
I don’t think we can explain this simply through misogyny or fear of feminine sexuality, etc., because there are plenty of misogynists in the world who don’t make a point of picking a fight with the president of the United States over birth control. This birth control issue seems to be almost exclusively a Catholic “thing,” so it has to have a Catholic-specific explanation. I propose that the answer can be found in a historic compromise set forth by one of the most influential thinkers you’ve never heard of: namely, Clement of Alexandria, a second-century Christian philosopher. [...]
The point at issue was of course not birth control, but whether marriage should be permitted for Christians. This question makes sense in light of the fact that Jesus and Paul, the two major founding figures of Christianity, were themselves celibate — and in the Roman world, counterintuitive as it seems to us now, there was a huge attraction in celibacy. The sects of Christianity that required celibacy actually grew much more rapidly than the more moderate versions.
At the same time, a celibacy requirement obviously presented a huge obstacle if Christianity was to be a mainstream movement, since it automatically excluded many people (including many of the rich and powerful, whom Clement was eager to court). Possessing the Catholic instinct for having things both ways, Clement came up with a solution: celibacy would be the elite path, but marriage would be permitted for the average believer.
Unlike Paul, who permitted marriage purely as a release of sexual tension, Clement’s rationale for permitting it was to limit sex to reproductive purposes. [...] He believed (or at least said) that there was a real danger of a slippery slope and claimed that there were some Christian sects that allowed a total sexual libertinism, which was throwing the movement into disrepute. Hence the need to limit sexuality to its obvious and natural purpose: reproduction.
This compromise obviously had its influence in the East as well, but its effects were arguably more intense in the West, where all clergy were eventually required to be celibate. Over the course of the Middle Ages, the stigmatization of non-reproductive sexual activities (including homosexuality) picked up speed, resulting in the invention of the category of sodomy. (Fun fact: Tertullian, a theologian writing at roughly the same time as Clement, argued that the sin of Sodom was indulging in marriage.) [...]
Fast forward to the aftermath of Vatican II, where a spirit of reform and openness to the modern world dominated — and one of the innovations of the modern world was of course The Pill. A council of experts recommended that the Catholic Church change its anti-contraception stance, but in 1968 the pope rejected their recommendation and reaffirmed the status quo in the infamous encyclical Humanae Vitae. In retrospect, this moment could appear to signal the premature death of the “spirit of Vatican II.”
This is strange: in the wake of Vatican II, the Catholic hierarchy was willing to make radical changes to the liturgy, to dethrone Thomas Aquinas as the standard of all theology and philosophy, to rethink its stance toward other religions, etc., etc. Why go to war over such a small and seemingly harmless issue? [...]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005:
The 9-11 Commission writes a report detailing security lapses in the runup to 9-11.
In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission [...]
The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system.
Tweet of the Day:
Santorum topping Romney on the first night of our Michigan poll. This may be the biggest surge yet
— @ppppolls via web
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