Catholic Teaching and Religious Liberty: Understanding the Nuances of the Contraceptive Debate

Since the time of the French Revolution, liberal democracies and the Roman Catholic Church have experienced a great deal of conflict, both ideological and political. The most recent of these debates focuses on mandate of the Obama administration that will force Catholic Institutions to provide contraceptive coverage and sterilization treatments in their health coverage.

Unsurprisingly, this debate has released torrents of charged rhetoric flowing in both directions. However, I don’t believe that the public understands the full scope of the philosophical differences that have led to this debate. Some claim that the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to President Obama’s mandate generates a war on “poor women and families who will suffer the most.” This idea is ridiculous. The poor have always been loved by the Church. Indeed, the largest non-governmental charity organization in the United States is Catholic Charities. In addition to this multi-billion dollar network, many individual dioceses, churches, and monastic orders assist the poor with their own programs. In addition, the Roman Catholic Church also strives to alleviate the situation of the poor by focusing on social justice for all peoples and nations. The idea that the Roman Catholic Church wars against the poor demonstrates a profound ignorance of the Church’s mission and doctrine. Instead, the Catholic Church opposes Obama’s mandate for more important reasons than mere class conflict. It opposes the mandate because it needs the freedom to live its teachings on the sanctity of human life.

This Catholic theology is based upon the basic Christian idea that human life is sacred, because it is made in the image of God. Because human life is sacred, it is infinitely valuable and can only be possessed and governed by God. Thus, only God can decide the time of our births and the time of our deaths. Catholicism opposes the use of contraceptives for the same reasons that it opposes slavery, suicide, eugenics, euthanasia, racialism, murder, and abortion, because each of these acts cheapens and weakens the innate dignity of the human person, making him or her something to be controlled by another. While the issue of contraceptives may seem small when compared to these other evils, the holistic nature of this theology makes any attack against one part of it an attack against all of it, and any compromise in one area compromises the entire theology. Because of this, the Roman Catholic Church refuses to take part in any action that directly or indirectly supports contraception. To force Catholic institutions to administer contraceptives violates their own beliefs, by forcing them to subscribe to church teaching merely in name, and not in action.
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