A smaller but purer Church

By ABRAHAM V. LLERA
October 3, 2010

When Jesus’ disciples started to peter out one by one because of Jesus’ “hard teaching” about the faithful having to eat Jesus’ body and drink his blood to have eternal life, did Jesus stop them?  No, Jesus allowed them to go.

Today, we see before us unfold a similar situation – Catholics of every stripe and hue refusing to heed the Church’s “hard teaching” on contraception, claiming “My conscience tells me that we have an overpopulation.  We must assure full availability of contraceptives. (P-Noy)” or complaining “Can someone tell me where in the bible it say's you are NOT allowed to use contraceptives? How can helping the less fortunate, by giving them a choice be the ‘selling out of their soul? (a Facebook reader)’"

Should the Church go out of her way to stop them?  No. I say the Church should try to reason with them up to a certain point, but beyond that to let them go hang.

We should remember that, although Christ died for all (cf John 11:52; 2 Corinthians 5:14-15; Titus 2:11; 1 John 2:2), making heaven possible for all, yet not all will make it, for the simple reason that God will not force us to love him. Salvation, in other words, does not happen in a mechanistic way without the free participation of each human being.  It’s perhaps a recognition of this certainty that the synoptic Gospels (Mt 26:28; Mk 14:24) – in conjunction with Is 53:11-12 – in their institution narratives use “for many,” not the “for all” found in the translations into the vernacular of the formula “pro multis” that has been in use in the Roman Rite in Latin for centuries.

In other words, the Church can be likened to a membership club, where individuals who share similar beliefs band together, but who are free to go whenever membership doesn’t appeal to them anymore.

In other words, everyone who’s lucky to have been born Catholic or fortunate enough to have converted to Catholicism should be ready to accept what the Church teaches as something which Jesus himself would confirm were Jesus here with us the same way he was when he taught with his Apostles.

This is because it’s one of the three requirements for membership in the Church.  For those who may not know it yet, there are three requirements before one can be considered inside the Church.  First, he must have been baptized a Catholic.  Second, he must accept everything that the Church teaches as God’s truth.  Third, he must accept the authority of the Pope.  If all of the above are present, one’s a Catholic.  If just one of the three is absent, one is not Catholic.

Now contraception is something that has been taught by the Church consistently for 2,000 years.  Detractors might insist that to be a dogma, the teaching must be declared by the Pope ex-cathedra, one of the requirements being that the Pope have the intention of deciding finally a teaching of Faith or Morals, so that it will be held by all the faithful, that without this intention, which must be made clear in the formulation, or by the circumstances, a decision ex-cathedra is not complete. Now since contraception has not reached this point, it could not be considered binding to Catholics.

This objection by detractors, notwithstanding, the faithful are bound to obey this teaching by the Church.  In the first place, the fact that it is not dogma now in the sense described above doesn’t mean it couldn’t become one, ever. It should be remembered, dogmas are normally pronounced when questions about an issue reach a point that the Pope would have to step in to clarify. Dogmas are not pronounced simply because the Pope woke up one morning feeling like making something a dogma.

Besides, we have to remember, that when a Pope teaches, all the faithful should listen, and popes have consistently taught against contraception for 2,000 years.

In the present controversy, it is clear that it will be wistful thinking to hope that P-Noy, any of the multitude of women on contraceptives, the doctors and health workers who prescribe them, the pharmaceutical companies which make them, the med-reps who push them, and the drug stores which sell them would change their stance in the near future.

That being the case, I believe the Church should simply announce one Sunday Holy Mass, that anyone who has anything to do with contraception is NOT a Catholic, and has no business attending Holy Mass, or availing of any of the sacraments.  Anytime, however, that he or she decides to stop having anything to do with contraceptives, the Church will welcome him back with open arms, much like the Father did with the Prodigal Son.