On Women’s Health and Women’s Power: A Feminist Appraisal of Humanae Vitae

Natural Family Planning as Healthy and Empowering

If feminism is about empowering women, then these women argue that the best way to empower women is to educate them to understand how their bodies work so they can make responsible decisions about when to engage in sexual activity or when to abstain from sexual activity. This position is aligned with the norms of NFP as promoted in Humanae Vitae. Many women have found that practicing NFP is empowering. A woman learns to interpret her signs of fertility and can grow in self-awareness and self-love as she comes to appreciate her own dignity. When a woman is valued and treated with respect in a relationship, and her body is cared for by her partner, this deepens her own sense of inherent dignity and reaffirms her understanding of herself as created in the image and likeness of God.

While a variety of methods exist, the practice of NFP in most methods require that a woman record her daily waking temperature, daily patterns of cervical fluid (from menstrual flow through “dry” days to “sticky” patterns, “wet/slippery” patterns, and “dry” days), cervical position, and intercourse days. Most charts also offer sections for recording life events, stressors, illnesses, and medications that could impact the way that a woman interprets her signs of fertility. ¹⁶ Additional tests could be administered at home for ovulation prediction and/or pregnancy confirmation. While NFP charting used to require pencil and paper at one’s bedside, many women now prefer to use smartphone applications to record their fertility data. ¹⁷ As a woman reviews her cycle chart, she interprets the data in order to determine whether intercourse is likely to lead to pregnancy or not; she and her partner thus decide whether or not it would be responsible to engage in sexual activity.

Many women have been drawn to NFP because it is free of the chemicals associated with hormonal methods of birth control. They see this as part of a well-rounded approach to a healthy lifestyle. The Couple to Couple League promotes NFP in this way:

Practicing NFP is 100% natural—there are no drugs, chemicals or devices involved, which is one reason many today find it to be a positive and refreshing alternative to contraceptive methods. NFP honors our dignity as persons by respecting the natural rhythms and functions of the body. It is very common to hear couples who use NFP speak of an increased awe and respect for femininity and their mutual fertility, and a greater sense of empowerment through self-knowledge. ¹⁸

This sense of empowerment through greater awareness of and appreciation of one’s body is a common theme that emerges in NFP testimonials. ¹⁹ Feminists who advocate for natural, female-controlled birth control methods envision a world in which girls learn about the sacred power of female fertility in a way that fosters self-esteem and connection with God and nature. After criticizing the medical community for perpetuating offensive terms to describe female fertility that scare women and drive a wedge between them and their medical providers (e.g. “luteal phase defect, hostile cervical mucus, incompetent cervix, inadequate pelvis, senile gravida, and habitual aborter”) Toni Weschler offers this vision:

Imagine growing up being told that your body is a marvel of biological beauty that will orchestrate amazing changes every cycle. Rather than thinking that you keep producing infectious discharges, you’d know to identify healthy cervical secretions as a reflection of the remarkable hormonal system working within. Imagine going to the doctor and feeling knowledgeable rather than vulnerable. And instead of succumbing to douche commercials that diminish self-confidence by implying that women are dirty, you could simply disregard them, knowing that just showering with soap and water will keep you clean and feminine. What if teenagers acquired practical knowledge about their cycles and fertility even before the first day they menstruated? Not only would it increase their self-assurance, but it would enable them to identify both medical problems and normal biological occurrences, sparing them so much of the fear and confusion that comes with adolescence … Imagine being able to utilize your body’s own fertility signs to provide you with a completely natural, safe, and effective method of birth control that promotes shared responsibility and communication between you and your partner … Knowledge is power. ²⁰

Part of the problem that NFP/FAM advocates see is that few people are curious enough to spend time learning about human reproduction and the potential benefits of these empowering methods of family planning. They see high levels of contraceptive use as a desire for a quick fix or technical solution to a more complex problem of human responsibility. In this way, the practice of NFP can be likened to broader social movements around food justice and environmentalism that are suspicious of a consumerist mentality.

In this vein, some women reject hormonal contraceptives as part of a “green lifestyle” in order to respect the natural world and their place within in. ²¹ And they find reassurance in the writings of Pope Francis, who has urged Catholics to adopt a posture of care and concern for the natural world in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home). For Pope Francis, this mindset requires that Christians recognize human interdependence with other species and adopt an attitude of care and solidarity with the natural world and nonhuman species. The pope mourns that “the earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth” ²² and rejects what he calls the “throwaway culture” in which consumers care more about convenience than long-term cost to the planet and its inhabitants. ²³ Pope Francis links environmental action and social justice as he encourages readers to adopt lifestyle choices that are responsible in terms of environmental impact as well as concern for the poor and those most often excluded. ²⁴

The pope encourages readers to adopt practices in which nature is to be valued, treasured, and cared-for, not manipulated and controlled through technological means for monetary gain. ²⁵ This vision aligns with NFP’s vision of treasuring and caring for the female body, instead of manipulating and controlling it through technological means. Further, hormonal contraceptives have been shown to have damaging impacts on the natural world, including fish populations. ²⁶ In Laudato Si, the pope insisted that “nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it.” ²⁷ Thus consumers of medicines need to be vigilant about avoiding negative impacts to the natural world that may come from their use of pharmaceuticals. As with all complex problems, there is not an easy solution to the environmental crisis; the pope encourages readers to seek “comprehensive solutions which consider the interactions within natural systems themselves and with social systems.” ²⁸ For many, this includes a rejection of hormonal contraception.

Some women reject hormonal contraceptives because they are suspicious of the claims of pharmaceutical companies, which are structured according to a profit motive. They see how profitable contraceptives are for pharmaceutical companies, and do not trust that these multinational corporations have women’s health as their highest priority. In contrast to the cost of contraceptive medications, NFP/FAM is inexpensive. Angela Franks argues that the contraception industry encourages women to be at war with their bodies, saying that “contraception must be the only case in which a person takes a pill solely in order to thwart the natural purpose of a bodily system, all in the name of ‘health.’” ²⁹ Other women argue that the contraception industry unfairly burdens women over men. Toni Weschler asks,

Why is the vast majority of birth control designed for women to use even though it is men who are fertile every single day? Wouldn’t it make more sense for birth control to be developed for the gender that is the most fertile? Given that women are fertile only a few days per cycle, it’s ironic that they’re the ones who risk the vast array of side effects and physical ramifications of birth control … to protect themselves from a man, who produces millions of sperm per hour! ³⁰

Angela Franks argues that “reproductive health” ought to refer to having a healthy, fertile, reproductive system, not the prevention of normal reproductive functioning. ³¹

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, women who write in support of NFP highlight that it fosters growth in virtue and deeper marital intimacy. Angela Franks explains from her experience that “periodic abstinence heals and integrates one’s desires.” ³² Citing low divorce rates among couples who practice NFP, Franks argues that “openness to life and spousal bonding do go hand in hand. In fact, the bonding is so powerful precisely because sex is meant to be total surrender to the other person, including surrender to the possible fruitfulness of one’s mutual love. It is this openness to the future, to something greater than just ‘us,’ that actually makes sex so thrilling.” ³³ Franks here emphasizes the importance of self-mastery in the moral life, which is a point made also by Mary Shivanadan in her support for Humanae Vitae. ³⁴ Julie Hanlon Rubio’s research has documented that couples who practice NFP have long held that they achieve deeper intimacy in part because of the way that they must communicate about their fertility. ³⁵ She argues, in her book Family Ethics: Practices for Christians, that “faithful sexual practice in marriage requires an ongoing, regular commitment to pursue the goods of vulnerability, self-sacrifice, self-love, and bodily belonging with one’s spouse.” ³⁶ Rubio explains that couples who practice NFP “find peace in doing what they believe God asks of them and take joy in nurturing neglected aspects of their relationship (both spiritual and emotional) when sex is not an option.” ³⁷

Christians who adopt NFP are still practicing the regulation of birth, but they do so without reliance on hormonal contraceptive pills, devices like the IUD, or barrier methods like condoms. The women cited here affirm this choice as the best choice for women’s health, even when they do not themselves self-identify as feminist. Christians who adopt this birth control method argue that NFP facilitates female flourishing, a core value of Christian feminism as I have presented it. While their practices are in alignment with the norms of Humanae Vitae, their argument is not a simplistic application of magisterial norms. Rather, they seek to identify a method of birth control that seeks the good for women. While the method depends on the cooperation and support of one’s partner, and requires personal effort to record and interpret one’s signs of fertility, they argue that NFP is empowering for women and that it resists a consumeristic culture and the harmful side effects of other possible birth control methods.

Contraception as Healthy Choice for Women and Children

Many women who have practiced NFP at some point in their lives find it ineffective, difficult, or so damaging to their intimate relationships and sense of self that they seek out other morally good options. ³⁸ Today, many Christian feminists hold the position that contraception is good for women because it enables women to have greater control over their fertility so that they can participate as subjects in the family and workplace while balancing multiple commitments. LARC and hormonal methods are often more female-controlled than barrier methods (condoms), but LARC and hormonal contraceptives have the potential for more side effects (an issue that must be weighed carefully by each individual woman as she considers what method would suit her needs best). Christian feminists are making the point that sometimes saying “yes” to sexual union with one’s partner while simultaneously saying “no” to pregnancy is a life-affirming decision that fosters love for God, self, and others. They are asserting that honoring women as subjects in their own right—capable of making decisions, worthy of respect as fully human persons—means placing trust in women and supporting them in the decisions they make. When male clerical leaders instead instruct women on God’s will for them, this undercuts women’s discernment process and is ultimately dehumanizing and paternalistic.

To name contraception as a good is to find oneself in direct contradiction to the norms of Humanae Vitae, which teaches that “each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.” ³⁹ Humanae Vitae goes on to claim that there is an “inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent in the marriage act.” ⁴⁰ Direct contraception is said to frustrate God’s design and “contradicts the will of the Author of life.” ⁴¹ Revisionist and feminist critiques of the encyclical’s arguments have been analyzed in the past five decades within this journal. Richard A. McCormick, Charles E. Curran, Norbert Rigali, and others raised serious questions about the natural law methodology employed, the appropriate roles of bishops, theologians, and priests, and the appropriate method of engagement during decades of “impasse” on this issue. ⁴² But for all of the ink spilled on contraception in the past fifty years, it is remarkable how rare the actual lived experiences of women and their experiences of contraception surface as sources for theological reflection in these pages. ⁴³ In part this is because of the self-silencing that happens when feminist theologians choose not to write about their own experiences, either to maintain healthy privacy, or to protect themselves from job loss or status loss in professional/ecclesial circles. ⁴⁴

Perhaps it is obvious to say, but contraception is a women’s health issue because pregnancy and childbirth are women’s health issues. Pregnancy transforms a woman’s body like no other medical condition. Nourishing new life in the womb is a sacred power, but it is also exhausting, scary, expensive—and for some women—deadly. The World Health Organization reports that 830 women die every day from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes, most of those deaths preventable except that the medical complications occurred in resource-constrained settings. ⁴⁵ Despite the enormous toll to women’s health and well-being, there is not the political will power domestically or globally to address these long-standing inequalities, and donor countries have even scaled back their funding for urgently needed maternal and child health programs. ⁴⁶ Racism persists in the invisibility of this problem in the US context. Women in the USA are more likely to die from childbirth or pregnancy-related causes than other women in the developed world, and according to the CDC half of these deaths are preventable. ⁴⁷ The risk of pregnancy-related deaths for black women is three to four times higher than those of white women. ⁴⁸ Facing head-on the risks of death in pregnancy is important for faith communities who wish to both honor the self-giving love of women who choose to become mothers and also respect the choices of women who avoid the dangers of pregnancy through contraceptive choices.

Contraception can also be framed as a social good. Enabling women to make informed decisions about whether and when to have children reduces unintended pregnancies as well as maternal and newborn deaths. ⁴⁹ Catholic philanthropist Melinda Gates has called voluntary family planning access a “moral imperative” because it demonstrates that women’s lives matter and that the world is serious about reducing a “needless death of a woman or a child.” ⁵⁰ Voluntary family planning access also increases educational and economic opportunities for women and leads to healthier families and communities. Gates explains that spacing the births of children increases the likelihood of child survival rates; when women space the births of their children by at least three years, their babies are twice as likely to survive their first year of life—and 35% more likely to live to see their fifth birthday. ⁵¹ In the US context, the Institute of Medicine recommends providing contraceptive coverage at no cost to women because clinical data shows that including birth control, AIDS and diabetes screenings, and annual well-women visits improves the overall health of women. ⁵²

For a tradition that claims to uphold the equal dignity of women and men, disregard for the health of women is anathema to good ethics and good public policy. But the norms of Humanae Vitae have been problematic for the church’s social missions because for fifty years they have pitted the church against the best data from medical and social sciences. To remain consistent with Humanae Vitae and subsequent teachings, Caritas Internationalis, ⁵³ Catholic Relief Services, ⁵⁴ and Catholic healthcare providers ⁵⁵ have had to implement restrictions to contraceptives that are recommended by medical providers. This has had far-reaching damaging effects, especially for women vulnerable to HIV infection, as it has crippled the church’s response to the HIV pandemic, giving the false impression that the church is anti-science and anti-medicine. ⁵⁶

Women’s health encompasses not just physical but also mental and spiritual health. But the emotional and spiritual toll on women who want to follow church teachings but have good reasons not to be open to pregnancy can be emotionally crippling. ⁵⁷ Some defenders of Humanae Vitae accuse women who use contraception of being selfish ⁵⁸ and unloving. ⁵⁹ To be sure, if a woman’s motivations were purely selfish and unloving, this would be problematic. Perhaps my own experience can shed some light on this issue. When I consider my motivations for completing graduate school and then working in a tenure-track position, the way I work hard for my students and with colleagues while trying to have a healthy marriage relationship, and the complications I experienced during and after childbirth that would likely make additional pregnancies more dangerous, the description of contraceptive intercourse as “selfish” and “unloving” does not ring true to my experience. I have recognized and accepted my own limits as a working mom who cannot handle the work and emotional caregiving involved in parenting any more than two children with my professional commitments. While my professional work is often demanding of my time and energy, it is also where I am living out my public vocation, and where my character is every day being formed (for better or worse): where I am challenged to learn and grow and be patient and kind and generous. Family life stretches me in different ways, no less important. Sometimes, being a “good worker” is in direct tension with being a “good parent” or “good spouse.” ⁶⁰ There are only so many hours in each day. But often, the living out of my dual vocations fosters self-giving love. ⁶¹

A feminist analysis of Humanae Vitae today requires that we recognize that women can contribute to church and world beyond their childbearing capabilities. But in the everyday realities of women balancing multiple commitments, we must recognize also that women are human and bound by limitations of body and time. Scripts promoting unlimited maternal self-sacrifice must be replaced by messages affirming women’s capacities to make good choices rooted in their deepest values and within the circumstances in which they find themselves.

Contraception should be recognized as a moral good for some women because sexual expression in loving, intimate relationships is a moral good in itself; ⁶² because procreation takes a toll on women’s bodies and creative energies; because women are human, not superheroes with limitless capacity for self-gift; because increasingly women have other good opportunities that are demanding of their time, body, and emotional energy; because advances in medical sciences make such choices possible and can be wisely applied to individual circumstances with the help of a knowledgeable physician; and because contraception offers women greater power in sexual relationships that remain embedded in a world of structural violence. Too often, this latter point is overlooked in magisterial pronouncements about the illicit use of contraception. But until magisterial pronouncements demonstrate deep understanding of the constraints in which many women make choices about their fertility, and until they acknowledge the patriarchal worldview that has so informed church teachings through the centuries, church teachings will not be persuasive to feminists in the tradition. We must turn, then, to the question of women’s agency in the debate over birth control methods.

Women’s Power in the Debate about Birth Control Choices

Rosemary Radford Ruether has rightly noted that much of the controversy over some types of contraception in Catholicism is about women’s agency and a desire for women to make decisions about their own fertility. Ruether criticizes the church for the “inability of a patriarchal Christianity to deal with women as autonomous persons and moral agents in their own right.” ⁶³ Ruether was responding to arguments that asserted male control over female fertility as part of the natural ordering of God’s plan for human relationships. As but one example, writing in Theological Studies in 1961, Paul M. Quay argued that contraception was evil because contraceptive intercourse is inconsistent with the proper headship of the husband over his wife in marriage:

The woman who uses a diaphragm has closed herself to her husband. She has accepted his affection but not his substance. She permits him entrance but does not suffer him to be master. So, also, by any form of sterilization a woman deprives her husband’s seed of its power over her body. She accepts his headship only in so far as she can subject it to her own will. The sign and symbol of wifely submission, of patriarchal authority, is made over covertly to serve the purposes of a weakly uxorious male and a domineeringly feminist wife.

Sometimes the man will use a condom for the same reasons; sometimes for more characteristically masculine reasons of selfishness. In either event he no longer dominates his wife as person, he does not permit his activity to penetrate her; he takes no responsibility for her … Such mates perform what appears to be the act of love but is only a sham. ⁶⁴

Here, Quay is unapologetic in his presentation of patriarchal marriage and the implicit power relations that he finds healthy for Christian spouses: husbands are to dominate like masters, and wives are to submit. Contraception cannot be tolerated because it empowers women to make choices about their fertility. Quay’s assertions are in alignment with the theology of marriage presented by Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii (1930), in which wifely duties included “ready subjection” and “willing obedience.” She is described as the “heart” in comparison to her husband, who is “the head.” ⁶⁵ This kind of language is deeply problematic for Christian feminists because of its stereotyping of gender roles and the resulting unequal distribution of power in the marital relationship as symbolized, and makes it difficult to trust that church leaders have women’s best interests at stake when they promulgate teachings that reinforce male power and control over female bodies. Did Humanae Vitae depart from this view of male headship?

When Humanae Vitae was promulgated in 1968, Paul VI’s description of married love as fully human, total, faithful, exclusive, fecund, and responsible did not contain explicitly patriarchal assumptions of wifely submission to male authority. ⁶⁶ But neither did Humanae Vitae affirm women’s explicit control over their fertility. On the contrary, it asserted that women were “not free to act as they choose in the service of transmitting life, as if it were wholly up to them to decide what is the right course to follow.” Rather, they “are bound to ensure that what they do corresponds to the will of God the Creator. The very nature of marriage and its use makes His will clear, while the constant teaching of the church spells it out.” ⁶⁷ In other words, women are not in control of their fertility, but are called to submit to God whose divine will is known and communicated by clerics (all men) through the official means of promulgating magisterial teaching. This twisting together of natural law, ecclesial power, and sexual norms creates a web of confusion for women who seek to make decisions about their bodies and reproduction in an empowering church environment.

The problem with describing marriage as an egalitarian partnership is that many experience this as an unrealized ideal. While in an earlier section we saw that there are good feminist arguments for supporting NFP, some women have raised concerns that NFP is not safe for women when egalitarian marriages cannot be guaranteed. Martha Mapasure and Susan Rakoczy conducted a study of African Catholic married women in which several respondents indicated that it would not be possible for them to practice periodic abstinence because their husbands would not comply; Mwayi from Malawi said, “I cannot tell amunaanga (my husband) that I am waiting for when I won’t get pregnant; it will be war in that house.” ⁶⁸ Mapasure and Rokoczy demonstrate how many women in the African context lack relational power in their marriages that would enable them to practice NFP. One woman in the study recommended instead that the church continue to promote procreation and NFP while also “leaving other options” for women who cannot manage NFP. ⁶⁹ Melissa Browning’s study of Christian marriage in East Africa has identified gender inequality as a barrier to right relationship. ⁷⁰ She cites Obed Kealotswe, a pastor and theologian from Botswana who says “the general nature and belief is that women are made for men, and they have to satisfy the sexual desires of men.” ⁷¹ Browning also identifies practices such as child marriage, female circumcision, and marital rape. ⁷² The pervasiveness of gender violence, even in Christian marriage, may speak to the ways in which church teachings on the human dignity of women have not been “fully received” by the faithful. Until they are, sexual norms must be presented in a way that recognizes the reality of the constraints in which women act.

The lack of attention in official church teachings to violence against women remains a source of concern for feminists working in this area and a stumbling block to further feminist engagement with ecclesial leaders on this issue. The reality of domestic violence was not addressed sufficiently in Humanae Vitae. While it is good that the document condemns marital rape as unloving (13), it failed to address patterns of gender inequalities sacralized by marriage teachings. It also did not satisfactorily address other forms of wife abuse include verbal abuse and physical violence. Humanae Vitae contributed to the sense of the invisibility of violence against women by writing about marriage in such a way that assumed home was safe for women and that marriage relationships were loving.

Statistics tell a very different story. Global estimates published by the World Health Organization indicate that 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. When people are socialized to think that men should have power over women and that women should be subordinate to men, they are more likely to approve of male violence against women. ⁷³ To the extent that magisterial teachings present the natural law in a way that identifies males as authorities and females as servants of men, church teachings contribute to this socialization. ⁷⁴ With the rise of the #metoo movement, the prevalence of violence against women is becoming more widely known. Such statistics challenge any claims to “safety” in the home or in community for women.

Sexual violence has been overlooked in church teachings because Humanae Vitae does not view sexuality in terms of relationship justice but in terms of classicist natural law norms. ⁷⁵ This is perhaps the greatest flaw of Humanae Vitae and the way it has been applied since 1968. Had the document lifted up relationship justice as a normative framework for discussing reproductive choices, it would have been a more helpful resource for women facing abuse in sexual relationships otherwise sanctified by the church through the sacrament of marriage. ⁷⁶

The absence of violence in a relationship does not necessarily mean that the relationship is equal. Women bear the majority of the burden for unpaid household and care work; women do on average about 2.5 times more of this work than men. ⁷⁷ Because women continue to bear disproportionate burdens in reproduction, child rearing, and household tasks, and given the lack of social supports for those additional burdens women face, many Christian feminists argue that access to safe and reliable methods of birth control is essential to the promotion of women’s health. This position is not anti-male or anti-family, but is reflective of Christian feminist concerns that gender inequality is pervasive in culture and society—and even in Christian marriages—and so a preferential option for women in unequal relationships requires special concern for women’s health and power. While NFP literature assumes that heterosexual marriages are egalitarian and that women should have equal power in relationships, sexist power dynamics influence human culture and socialization to such a large extent that feminists insist that gender inequalities must influence pragmatic, everyday choices for women and policies.

Most readers would be appropriately horrified to read Fr. Quay’s description of marriage from 1961. We recognize, in 2018, that “wifely submission” to male headship is incoherent with the claim that females have full human dignity. We recognize that men who seek control over female bodies are dangerous. We recognize that male control over female fertility is dehumanizing and unethical. But embedded within our ecclesial structures, liturgical rites, marriage practices, and ethical teachings are assumptions that are deeply suspicious of whether women can be trusted to make good decisions about their fertility. For some women, this worldview fosters self-doubt, shame, and toxic guilt that can be difficult to name and even hard from which to heal. What is needed is a profound call to respect the moral reasoning and ethical capacities of women who face challenging discernments about how to regulate their fertility, and trust that they have the means to discern the call of the Spirit even in their female embodiment.

Moving Forward

Some areas of common ground between Christian feminists who promote NFP and Christian feminists who promote contraception can be identified. Christian feminists on both sides of this debate share the assumption that female fertility is a good in itself even if in particular circumstances some women have discerned that the responsible decision is to abstain from potentially procreative sex or use a form of contraception to prevent pregnancy. Christian feminists on both sides of the debate demand respect for women as subjects and affirm that sexual relationships should be equal, mutual, noncoercive, and pleasurable for both partners. Feminists on both sides of the debate bemoan the lack of social support for childbearing women, and call all Christians to work for wage justice, workplace safety, parental leave policies, healthcare coverage, affordable day care, adequate breaks for pumping breastmilk, adequate time off from work for prenatal visits and access of essential healthcare, scaled-up medical infrastructure in resource-constrained settings that would enable all women to have skilled birth attendants at childbirth, and sexual education programs that explicitly affirm the equal dignity of women and men. Neither side believes that women only contribute to the church and world by bearing children. Neither side accepts the claim that coerced sex or coerced pregnancy is consistent with the vision of a God who is love. And it should be said that women on both sides of the debate recognize the sacrifices that are sometimes required in order to make responsible decisions about one’s fertility (whether abstaining from sexual activity, spending time charting one’s cycle, taking a daily pill, or accepting unpleasant side effects of hormonal medications).

It is not enough to point out this common ground. The church must be a place where women with different viewpoints and lived experiences can enter into respectful dialogue with one another in a context of discernment. We must seek a new way forward that supplements the legacy of Humanae Vitae with the far richer body of wisdom in our tradition focusing on the exercise of prudence. The time has come for the church to reject the teaching methodology employed by Humanae Vitae, in which moral norms were stated as if they could be deductively applied in any new setting. Instead, it is time for an approach to sexuality that fosters appreciation of the sacred power of female fertility and that locates control over fertility choices in the bodies of the women who bear the burdens of those choices. In short, it is time for a “both/and” approach that celebrates the cases in which NFP is life-affirming for women, while simultaneously holding out the possibility that contraceptive sex could be similarly life-affirming for other women. Instead of fostering top-down pronouncements, the church should affirm an invitation to all believers to discern in their own contexts what the virtue of prudence requires.

In her essay, “Contraceptive Use and the Authority of the Church,” Jean Porter has helpfully pointed out that the issue of contraceptive use provides an opportunity to reflect on the scope and limits of authoritative judgments and of the church’s teaching authority. Porter recovers a scholastic understanding of the natural law that is concerned “in its primary sense with our basic capacities for moral judgment, or with the basic principles through which that judgment operates.” ⁷⁸ She rejects the claim that the norms within Humanae Vitae have been taught infallibly and that ongoing debate is fruitless and/or counterproductive. Instead, we must continue forward in an ecclesial natural law discernment process through which the whole church undergoes an “extended process of rational discernment” that combines scriptural warrants, theological reflection, analysis of history, and reflection on current practices. ⁷⁹ In such a communal discernment, Porter notes that the Christian tradition has upheld “a normative link between sexuality and procreation,” at the same time that “other ideals and considerations” must be taken into consideration. ⁸⁰ Porter writes,

There is a case to be made that some acceptance of contraceptive use, within the context of an institutional commitment to both marriage and procreation, is actually necessary to safeguard other natural law commitments, which are arguably even more central to Christian moral practices, and which have also progressively transformed our understanding of marriage. ⁸¹

The full equality of women both within marriage and within society as a whole, Porter concludes, is itself a natural law ideal, and one that is central to Christian belief and practice. The fact that it is thus far not realized wholly in Christian ecclesial practices, sexual norms, and marriage practices, means that more work must be done to foster deeper appreciation of this more expansive understanding of the natural law. Porter concludes that “a judicious use of contraceptives, which respects the overall openness of the marital relation to children, can actually be a way of safeguarding and expressing natural law principles in a contemporary context.” ⁸²

Needless to say, this kind of moral reasoning has not had a perceptible impact on church leaders and on the pastoral programs run by the Catholic Church. ⁸³ Instead I am calling for a wider ecclesial deliberation on the contested issue of contraception as Porter envisions a robust natural law ecclesial discernment process. This should be an ecclesial deliberation that takes seriously the experiences of all believers. It should be an open-ended and dialogical discernment process, not one that prematurely shuts down dialogue for fear of scandal or that begins with the end already in mind. ⁸⁴

It is not enough for women theologians to simply have a voice in responding to church documents that are promulgated from the Vatican. Women need to be at the table—advising, consulting, engaging as equals with church leaders who construct the theological teachings for the faith community. Papal documents should be citing the published work of women. But for this to happen, church leaders must recognize that they have something to learn from women. For many, the idea seems to be unreasonable. Emmanuel Katongole has recently argued that “the major challenge facing the church is not simply pastoral, namely whether the church can recognize, affirm, and defend the dignity of women, but ecclesiological, namely whether the church can be the space and community where women feel particularly at home, and where their voices and gifts of leadership are welcomed and nurtured.” ⁸⁵ In paving the way for Vatican III scholars from Africa have identified key issues that must be addressed for the church to move forward; ⁸⁶ to theirs we need to add voices from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Indonesia, and so forth. The challenge will be how to speak in such a way that both names universal human values and norms while also satisfactorily addressing the diversity of experiences in particular contexts.

Perhaps what is needed most of all is to adopt the recent developments by moral theologians in our understanding of conscience. Many have recognized the problem with church ministers commanding blind obedience and training people to simply listen and obey. Instead Richard Gula argues that the church’s contribution to a believer’s moral discernment is far richer than the “overly restrictive” understanding of a conscience formed by magisterial teachings. ⁸⁷ We need to expand our understanding of conscience from a judgment about a particular act to the formation of the moral agent in her complexity, or what Anne E. Patrick describes as the “formation of the creatively responsible moral agent.” ⁸⁸ Kathryn Lilla Cox invites readers to consider conscience within the call of discipleship and character formation, writing that conscience “directs our considerations more carefully to the interplay of grace and sin … conscience’s judgments require proper seeing, watchfulness, a willingness to revise, patience, and wisdom as a means for discussing human cooperation with grace in the nitty-gritty of finite existence as we grow as disciples.” ⁸⁹

Pope Francis, without changing authoritative church teachings, has nevertheless signaled in Amoris Laetitia a willingness to recognize the difficulties that many couples face in trying to live the call of the gospel in the midst of their everyday struggles. His is an approach that on the one hand challenges “certain forms of feminism” while also writing that he sees “in the women’s movement the working of the Spirit for a clearer recognition of the dignity and rights of women.” ⁹⁰ He encourages pastors to focus on “concrete realities,” ⁹¹ to privilege mercy and compassion instead of “rules that only lead people to feel judged and abandoned by the very Mother called to show them God’s mercy,” ⁹² to be “humble and realistic,” ⁹³ and to avoid simply “stressing doctrinal, bioethical and moral issues, without encouraging openness to grace.” ⁹⁴ He writes, “We also find it hard to make room for the consciences of the faithful, who very often respond as best they can to the Gospel amid their limitations, and are capable of carrying out their own discernment in complex situations. We have been called to form consciences, not to replace them.” ⁹⁵

For many women readers, this rings true. Perhaps the pope is signaling a new chapter in the church’s reception of Humanae Vitae in which the formation of consciences will receive greater attention. If so, this might be an indication that the magisterium is catching up to the lived wisdom of the people of God. As we consider how to move forward fifty years after Humanae Vitae, we must consistently reaffirm appreciation for women’s capacity to discern in conscience how the Spirit is calling them to act in particular circumstances and trust that the Spirit continues to breathe new life into the ecclesial community through our striving for holiness in our unique contexts.