The Benedict Non-Option

Hector, isn't what you are saying really that the ability to render women temporarily chemically sterile to make them capable of engaging in reproductive activity without the risk of actual reproduction which could inconvenience both her and the male who wishes to enjoy her physically without any danger of becoming a father is such a high, important, overwhelming social value in modern America that anyone who objects to this value is still not permitted to refuse to pay for that temporary chemical sterilization regardless of their beliefs that this sort of thing is completely morally abhorrent?

I've got to say that one thing which really does surprise me about some Crunchy Cons is the willingness to embrace the complete artificiality, potential side-effects, cost (including environmental impact) etc. of contraception as if it's just a given that when we seek to live more "naturally," that automatically excludes our sex lives, which should be governed by chemicals, pills, and plenty of latex. I suspect, though, that the "carbon offset" of birth control consumerism is the absence of any accidental children, since children are such a disease on the planet, and all.

But buying in to contraceptive consumerism has its effects on the rest of our society, and this situation we're in now, where it's viewed as unacceptable for an employer to refuse to pay for the temporary chemical sterilization of his female employees because this is something they *need* and which he must give them for the good of all, is only one of these effects.

viewed as unacceptable for an employer to refuse to pay for the temporary chemical sterilization of his female employees because this is something they *need* and which he must give them for the good of all, is only one of these effects.

Except that's not why EEOC says there is discrimination. The college provided contraceptive coverage in its insurance plan for awhile. Then the college changed the coverage, withdrawing a benefit of employment to the workers (who are not required to be Catholic). The decision to change benefits reflects discrimination against women, who were the primary users of the benefit.

So the issue isn't that it is unacceptable to refuse to pay, it's that the college once had no problem with offering the benefit, then changed its policy.

Worse, the college then reported the names of the employees who complained to the government in a McCarthyite tactic to scare anyone else from complaining. That's illegal, whether religious or not.

Hector, nobody is "denying" those who wish to temporarily chemically sterilize themselves all of the consequence-free sex pills they can swallow; heck, if their sexual adventures aren't all that promiscuous they can pick up cheap condoms at any grocery store pharmacy, and save the prescription drugs for the cohabitation phase of existence. Our moral objections to these things as Catholics doesn't hinge on some sort of Don Quixote-like effort to remove aids to cheap consequence-less sex from the public square.

We just object to being told that it's our duty as good Americans to pay for these things, when the fact is that it's our duty as good Catholics to have nothing whatsoever to do with them. If women "need" artificial contraception so much, why don't they get the cheap expletive deleted or expletive deleteds who is/are making the pills and prophylactics so expletive deleted necessary to cough up the dough, instead of demanding that a Catholic employer facilitate them in something the Catholic employer thinks is morally repugnant?

Why do we need Benedict when we can have Wesley?

I'm referring more to the social organization of the Methodist movement which Wesley organized, in part based on monasticism, rather than the sorry state of the United Methodist Church today.

There is I think a distinction between a monastic community and operating a college. The issue here refers not to monastic life - but to the Benedictines role as the operator of a college and as an employer. The college - which accepts and employs non catholics - is a business enterprise and as such must conform to all of the usual rules including non discriminatory practices.

I would add that while the Benedictines - especially the Cistercans - dominated medieval monasticism there were other monastic orders such as the Fransicans and Augustinians which also thrived at that time. There were also important and successful monastic communities well before Benedict promulgated his rule. Notably there were monastic establishments in Ireland and northern England which included married men and women and their children. It is unfortunate we know so little about how those communities managed.

Erin,

Most Catholics disagree with you on the issue, and see their duty as good Catholics to be somthing different (in my opinion rightly so).

Look, it's not that I don't have any sympathy for your position here. Ideally I think insurance should be provided by the government, in part so that places like Belmont Abbey don't have to make these kind of decisions. And I certainly wouldn't want tax money to pay for abortions, or for other medical procedures that I think are wrong.

Speaking of abortion, let's consider that for a moment. It's pretty clear, from looking at abortion rates across the globe, that there are several factors that affect them. It's simply liberal/feminist nonsense to say that strict laws against abortion do not depress the abortion rate: of course they do. Logic, history, and statistics tell us so. But by the same token, cross cultural comparisons tell us that contraceptive availability (and other factors like how much a society invests in trying to help mothers with children) has an even bigger effect on lowering the abortion rate. It's no accident that, say, Sweden (which, btw, restricts abortion more than we do) has a lower abortion rate than, say, Nigeria, or that the countries of the world with very low abortion rates tend to be the ones where contraceptive use is high. Almost all abortions could have been prevented if the Pill had been used assiduously. That isn't the sole reason why I support contraception, of course, but it's a very important one. Whatever your personal feelings about contraception, I would assume you think it's a lesser crime than prenatal homicide. I think that just as pro-lifers (and I consider myself in that camp in general) ought to support laws against elective abortion, they also ought to support increased access to contraception (and, of course, to much expanded government efforts to support mothers with children). Certainly pro-lifers lose a lot of credibility with moderates on the issue when they oppose efforts to make contraception more available.

See this article here: it looks at the evidence for and against the claim that increasing access to contraception decreases abortion rates.
http://www.fhi.org/en/rh/pubs/network/v21_4/nwvol21-4abortcontception.htm

Well, Rod, elections have consequences. By the way, how is that choice you made last November (in the Presidential election) working out for you now?

Hey, this is interesting, North Carolina law does have a religious exemption - defined as follows:

State Law Has Religious Exemption

North Carolina is among at least 24 states with laws mandating that insurers that cover prescription drugs also cover any contraceptive approved by the Food and Drug Administration, according to the National Conference of State Legislators.

While the state’s law does provide an exemption for religious organizations, it narrowly defines what constitutes a religious organization:

* The entity must be organized and operated for religious purposes and be tax exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.
* The inculcation of religious values is one of the primary purposes of the entity.
* The entity employs primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity.

Faculty who complained about the health care coverage changes say Belmont Abbey fails to meet most -- if not all -- of the criteria for an exemption. While the college is a 501(c)(3) organization, most of the employees are not Catholic, and religious indoctrination is not the college’s primary aim, according to Blandford.

I suppose it's useless to point out that the Pill can function as an abortifacient by preventing implantation? Oh, that's right--we've redefined pregnancy to exclude the unimplanted embryo, because even though there is no change whatever to the embryo's unique DNA upon implantation it would be awfully inconvenient to consider the unimplanted embryo as a human life and worthy of any sort of protection. So instead of insisting that human life begins at conception when a creature who has her own DNA is present, we have to pretend that human life doesn't begin until implantation, or until there is a heartbeat or there are measurable brain waves, or until the entire body of the fetus has emerged from the birth canal ('cause if the head's still inside, you can still kill her if you want to) etc.

And Hector, the idea that if we just shoved pills down the throats of every single third-world woman, imposing our contraceptive imperialism upon cultures who still value children, abortions would cease, is absolutely laughable. Widespread contraceptive use creates more demand for abortion, not less, because no method aside from complete surgical sterilization is 100% effective. All that happens, just like here in America, is that you have people using birth control under the assumption that they can't possibly get pregnant while doing so, who then rush off to the abortion clinic when it turns out that, well, actually, yes you can. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 54% of all American women have reported contraception use in the month in which they became pregnant and had abortions. 79% of pill users said they had used the pill "inconsistently." And that's here in America, where birth control is extremely easy to get and to use; in addition to method failures, which exist in lower numbers, the "user failure" rate of artificial birth control is extremely high. How "consistently" do you think third-world women will take their pills, given the reality that some of them don't even have access to clean water on a regular basis, let alone given that some of them have strong religious and cultural objections to birth control which are almost never respected by the people in the West who seem to be on a mission to make sure there are fewer people born in these cultures?

I have to admit that I struggle sometimes with a very wicked temptation when these sorts of issues come up. That temptation is to say, "Fine. You want Catholics to pay for you to exterminate yourselves, demographically speaking? Here you go--have all the birth control you want, and by all means keep your reproductive efforts to well below replacement level." But this is a serious failure of charity, one I have to work hard to suppress.

Thanks for that informative link, Hector.

Erin, I think you are misunderstanding how things work in a democracy. The voters of North Carolina decided, via their elected representatives, that coverage for contraceptives should be included in employer-offered insurance policies, with a few well-defined exceptions as noted by John E. I'm don't understand why you claim that you are paying for this. Isn't it Belmont Abbey that pays in this case? You aren't even a citizen of North Carolina, as far as I'm able to gather from your postings.

It seems to me that a generalized objection to paying for any form of subsidized health care that includes contraceptives belongs in a different discussion. But, if that's your beef here, I would say that, again, you don't seem to understand what is entailed by living in a representative democracy. I understand that you object to certain views held by other voters and by your representatives. Yeah . . . join the club! I feel sick with rage and shame when I reflect that people elected by me and my fellow citizens have made my America a place where real human beings--not characters on a TV show--were TORTURED TO DEATH. My government has made me complicit in this shame, and I must live with that fact. I have to live with the knowledge of all the people murdered in an unjust war, dead children, destitute women, crippled men. I have to live with the fact that my decisions, earlier in life, to continue supporting so-called conservative candidates, and to gloss over and rationalize their many misdeeds, empowered the people who did these things on my behalf. I also have to live with the fact that by remaining a faithful, generously contributing member of the Catholic Church for so many years, I helped facilitate the rape of children. So, I welcome you to continue trying to convince other voters that you are right and they are wrong, and that they should give up contraception because the Church says so. Have at it. But there's not much use in being enraged because a democracy functions via rule of the majority.

Forgive me if I've missed this but why are we are assuming that Rod is against contraception? He's an Orthodox Christian and (forgive me for being provocative here) our Church is much more rational and nuanced about this issue than the RCC. There are some Orthodox who believe that any use of artificial contraception is immoral. However, the mainstream view in Orthodoxy is that certain forms of birth control can be used after consultation with the couple's spiritual father.

For example, I am currently pregnant and because I work (have student loans to repay) my husband and I believe that we should space out our children. We will discuss this with our confessor and take his advice about which methods are acceptable. Now under the RCC view this makes us "anti-child" which is frankly nuts.

One of the real weaknesses of the hardline approach is that there are no discussions between an RC couple and their priest about anything other than natural family planning. So when most couples conclude that it doesn't work for them, they simply go out and do what they need to do without talking to their priest and sorting out their reasons for wanting to delay having a pregnancy.

NFP does work for some couples and it should always be the first method used but it doesn't work for all women. My cycles are too unpredictable for it to work for us. We tried to use it to get pregnant and we were never able to pinpoint exactly when I ovulated.

I've never been convinced by the RC position (even when I was RC) given that I've known too many couples who used articial birth control and still had decent sized families and weren't "anti-child." I also don't believe in the myth of the happy big family. That's not the ideal situation for every family.

From the Gaston Gazette, August 11, 2009:

The EEOC determined that the college retaliated against eight faculty members who filed charges with the EEOC by identifying them by name in a letter to faculty and staff. "The identity of an individual who has filed a charge should be protected with confidentiality during the Commission's investigation. By disclosing Charging Party's name, a chilling effect was created on Respondent's campus whereby other faculty and staff members would be reluctant to file a charge of employment discrimination for fear of disclosure."

David Neipert, a former associate professor who filed charges against the college, said the problems caused from the contraception issue caused him to seek out another job. "I was labeled as someone who promoted abortion in a Catholic community. In my opinion, that's a lot of damage."

Neipert said the concern was solely about contraception, but others focused on abortion and contraception as word spread in Catholic circles. The Senior Fulbright Scholar in law said he tried to warn the college that they should get a lawyer's counsel before taking away contraception and thought that would be the end of the issue.

Re: I don't think you can make the same claim about synthesized progesterone. To be sure, dioscorea does occur in non-animal natural sources, like yams, but it takes a *lot* of steps before it becomes anything that has any steroidal effect. Certainly yams were not to be found in any medieval pharmacoepia as a contraceptive.

The Man from K Street,

It's a synthetic version of a naturally occurring human hormone, which we have receptors for.

There are quite a few plants that have contraceptive effects. There's a central American yam that is known to reduce fertility in the peccaries that feed on them, there are African plums that reduce fertility in baboons by simulating pregnancy (same way as progesterone), and the ubiquitous neem oil, in addition to its insecticidal and medicinal purposes, appears to have anti-ovulatory properties (while apparently not, unlike many plant-based contraceptives, causing abortions).

sigaliris: a democracy is founded on individual conscience. That's why the law allows individuals to object by means of conscience and not all can go to war because of that overriding factor. Democracy is not the majority imposing on the minority. An exception clause could be included here for conscience. But I don't see why it would even have to be. No-one is dieing because they don't have contraception here. And abortifacients also bring in the question of unborn life. That is also not mentioned in the NC laws. Lets not impose our views.

Your Name, as a follow-up to your comment,

I recently had a similar argument with one of the bloggers at First Things. In their opinion even the "withdrawal" method (Coitus interruptus) was considered as sinful and destructive as contraceptive medications and devices, in part because it separated the act of sex from reproduction. Despite sharing the same fundamental problem, the blogger had no problem with the "rhythm" method (or other calendar tracking methods used by cultures world-wide for thousands of years) that permit couples to 1) choose when to become pregnant, 2) engage in sex exclusively for pleasure, and 3) needlessly waste sperm.

Erin and others,

There are people, I know as I am one of them, who need the pill for medical, not contraceptive reasons. It should be covered by medical insurance.

I had some sympathy for Belmont the first time this subject was discussed, but it is not true that a religious community cannot live by its own norms, without imposition by the government. IF the monks at Belmont Abbey did ALL the work of their mission themselves, then they could choose their own moral standards for their own health care. The problem is, they have hired a bunch of non-monks, even non-Catholics, for whom this is their JOB, not necessarily their vocation. It reminds me a little of the small group of Afrikaners, while their daddy's were still top dogs in South Africa, who realized that if they truly wanted to live in "white only" communities, they would have to withdraw from the dominant economy, and form communities where they did all their won work! (Once Afrikaners started HIRING - or enslaving, or a mix of the two - darker skinned neighbors to do their own work, they weren't a people with a unique mission anymore. Now I have more respect for monks than I do for Afrikaner separatists, but their are, for example, abbeys in Indiana who have won court cases against the IRS, on the ground that the monks do all their own work, the institution makes no profit, it is self-sustaining, there are no employees. Belmont can not make such a claim.

Erin: I have to admit that I struggle sometimes with a very wicked temptation when these sorts of issues come up. That temptation is to say, "Fine. You want Catholics to pay for you to exterminate yourselves, demographically speaking? Here you go--have all the birth control you want, and by all means keep your reproductive efforts to well below replacement level." But this is a serious failure of charity, one I have to work hard to suppress.

It's good that you realize that this is a serious failure of charity, requiring work--you are to be commended. I guess I'm a little curious as to why the vehemence, the near ferocity, of your feelings here, which you've expressed before when contraception comes up (and I think you've confessed the tendency toward lack of charity on such issues before, too). Even Rod in his Catholic days was much more temperate, and I always appreciated that he was very candid that NFP was not the solve-all-problems cakewalk its supporters often paint it to be.

The average couple can not use NFP perfectly throughtout a marrage, without any other sexual outlets except completed vaginal sex when they ar avoiding pregnancy and have the 3 child family. That is well known. Some can but most can not. All this pap about irregular cycles is more or less a lot of smoke. They simply will not abstain enough to make it work perfectly all the time; period.

However, the modern gift of knowledge of fertility awareness can be a great gift. With effort and time couples can develop, with themselves as the judge of the pace, a marriage with little or no latex or kinkyness. It takes time. It is like the chaff falling off the wheat. First, learn fertility monitoring and immediately corral any contraceptive or oral sex practice into a corner. No need for big guilt. Later, reduce the latex use as your planned childern are born and as you mature.

Try hard to avoid latex and or BJ's etc during Lenten and Advent cycles as a start. The only contraception that should be tolerated is that which is scheduled for the scrap heap before menopause. Learn and practice what works for you and your spouse as you mature construct a marriage "la naturale". A little bit or order or planning in a marriage ( a plan to remain married!) is good thing.

Re: Instead, it implies that Christianity can only "win" by out-breeding the unbelievers.

If this is where Erin and Rod are placing their bets, then I'm sorry to say they will be disappointed. If demography is destiny, then the future won't belong to Catholics, Orthodox or any other liturgical confession- it will belong to conservative Muslims, Mormons, and Pentecostals.