Can the church change its mind?
The pope's views on contraception blur the line between social and moral teaching
I was recently in a conversation when a Catholic woman expressed the hope that the Catholic church would one day have female priests. "Yes, and then they'll say we've always had them," quipped another. She was referring to the fact that, although there have been many changes in the church's teachings over the centuries, it is rare to find any acknowledgment of this in official documents.
The recently published interviews with Pope Benedict have led to speculation about a change in the church's teaching on contraception. Although the interviews reflect his personal opinions and carry no official weight, the pope's cautious acknowledgment that the use of condoms may be justified to protect a sexual partner from HIV suggests some relaxation in the interpretation of the rules. This raises the question as to when, if ever, the church can change its teachings and, if it can, what happens to its claims to truth?
It may be helpful to distinguish between teachings, which are continuously developed in response to changing historical and cultural situations, and the constancy of the church's core beliefs. The Catholic tradition has always taught that both reason and revelation have a role to play in the discernment of truth. Revelation refers to scripture and doctrines such as the Trinity and the Incarnation which are matters of faith. However, reason has an important role to play in enabling us to understand the world and our place within it, and this allows room for plurality and flexibility in applying general principles to particular contexts and in adapting to changes in scientific knowledge.
The modern papacy has blurred the distinction between revealed doctrine and teachings that are open to informed debate, particularly in the areas of sexuality and gender. While Catholic social teaching maintains this distinction by responding to the changing economic and political contexts of modern life, Catholic moral teaching has become more absolutist and authoritarian.
But, at heart, Catholicism holds that there can be no fundamental contradiction between faith and reason, nor between the values and practices that are best for us as individuals and those that are best for society as a whole and for the natural world. Human life belongs within the wider context of God's creation, and we must recognise the interdependencies between ourselves, others and nature, if we are to live well. This means human sexuality can never be viewed as just a private matter, for it is deeply woven into our personal and communal relationships. Even as we seek truth amid the plurality of life and the distorting effects of sin on our judgments and desires, the church teaches that certain principles are non-negotiable, and these relate to the intrinsic dignity of the human made in the image of God. That is why Pope Benedict insists that the focus should not be on condoms but on the "humanisation" of sexuality.
Some of us would argue that this quest for humanisation might be enriched rather than diminished by a change in the church's teachings on issues such as homosexuality and contraception, but this has to be interpreted against a wider horizon of the meaning of life. If we are to find a truthful consistency in the Catholic tradition, we will find it not in its changing social and moral norms, and not in its far from perfect history, but in its most enduring beliefs about God, the human and creation. From these beliefs stems the complex and sometimes confusing task of asking how we should live in terms of love, desire and embodiment.
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