Cool Pope still cold on birth control

Katie McDonough, Salon - Now here’s the thing about cool pope...Given how central the issues of poverty and economic justice are to his papacy, his hard line on birth control is a hard one to understand. The United Nations considers access to contraception a universal human right, and has released a number of reports detailing the economic and social benefits of access to contraception, both in the United States and globally.

And for those who think it’s pointless to want the church to embrace birth control as if it’s one of those things about Catholicism that can’t change, may I direct your attention to a 1963 papal commission on marriage that opened a debate in the church over birth control. That commission concluded — wait for it – that the church should lift its prohibition on birth control. This was in 1965.

From a report on the commission from the reproductive rights group Catholics for Choice:

    In the end, the commission voted overwhelmingly to recommend that the church rescind its ban on artificial contraception, saying that it was not “intrinsically evil” nor the popes’ previous teachings on it infallible. But to the Vatican, it was impossible that the teaching on birth control could change because this would acknowledge that the hierarchy had been wrong on an issue it had elevated over the years to a central tenet of its teachings. [...]

As the report from Catholics for Choice noted, “30 of the 35 commission’s lay members, 15 of the 19 theologians and 9 of 12 bishops [voted] that the teaching be changed.” Despite this, the minority opinion prevailed and the church’s position remained the same. Not because of the findings of the commission, but because the church was concerned it would look bad if it reversed course.