030974 America-Humanae Vitae' and Silent Dissent: Two Views

EDITOR: As a community response to "Pope Paul's gentle invitation to dialogue" ("The Silence Since Humanae Vitae," 7/21/73, p. 30), I would like to add to the debate my interpretation of the contemporary trend as reflected in two current books. In the first, Mother's Day Is Over (Charterhouse), Shirley Radl contends that women have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to motherhood. Society, the media and advertisers perpetuate the myth that motherhood is fulfilling, easy and desirable. The author feels that society keeps a well-guarded secret: that few women are Suited for motherhood. Mrs. Radl makes clear that there is a great distinction between loving one's children and liking the job of mothering them. Of the 200 women interviewed for the book, only six were judged by the author to be ". . . truly outstanding parents fulfilled by their roles and possessing a talent for nurturing and guiding their children in something approaching in inspired manner." She quotes from Dr. Spock and the experience of the Russians with day care to suggest that women who are not yet mothers should opt for not having any children rather than relying on day care. Less fantasy and commercialization of motherhood would go a long way to remove some of the burden of gudt of those who feet that they do not measure LIP to the impossibly high standards set for motherhood.

Male Chauvinism! How It Works by Michael Korda (Random House) provides a good background for the previous book. Any bias as to the question of a man's being able to assess the problem honestly can be allayed by remembering that it took a white person to write Confessions of a While Racist. Mr. Korda possesses uncanny insight into the workings of male  Chauvinism. He says in chapter six, "The Domestic Chauvinist": "Most men do not see women as fellow human beings at all; they merely have a set of responses toward the idea of women in various roles, from which they can pick and choose the one that seems most appropriate in any given circumstance: domination, submission, sexual passion, patience, fatherly advice, fear, contempt, sentimental adulation." In describing the typical suburban set up, he says: "You cannot get in your car and journey out to make a living in the world of real threats, ambitions and problems, leaving behind your microcosm of peace and contentment to which you can return eight hours later. Yet that is precisely the fantasy we have sold ourselves as the 'natural' order of society. It is one our ancestors, male and female, would have found absurd and unrecognizable. That it has led women to revolt against the artificiality of their position is scarcely surprising; but it has also formed the bundle of resentments, fears and disappointments that we call male chauvinism, the feeling that women took advantage of us, that they got the better part of the bargain and now aren't even grateful for it, that we can never give enough to make them happy, that the price of our relationship with them is the sacrifice of our manhood."

That some or most or all women have no desire to spend a lifetime as caretakers of a "microcosm of peace and contentment" may be as revolutionary as the idea that a woman with a fulfilling career and a good relationship with her husband may not be willing to risk adding the stress of motherhood. Social change occurs when the time is ripe for an idea. As Fr. Richard McCormick states in his article, 68 percent of U. S. Catholic women between the ages of 18 and 39 use methods of contraception other than rhythm. The blossoming of the women's movement was possible only when the technology of birth control improved to the point at which independence was feasible.

In summary, then, I submit that the Catholic women of America have made their decisions about child-bearing amidst a bombardment of propaganda from advertisements of baby products, as well as the pronouncements of doomsayers of the Population explosion.  The abortion issue is another constantly raging hassle. They have simply as individuals taken on the burden of deciding personally when contraception preserves a
higher value. An informed conscience demands a long, hard look at all the factors involved in bringing a life into the world, and the ethic of stewardship implies --- a responsibility -_ for developing one' s talents rather than sublimating them for the convenience of others. This obvious deviation from a rigid interpretation of the encyclical
constitutes, I feel, reasonable dissent.

MARY TIMMONS
BLOOMINGTON MINN.

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EDITOR: The underlying reason for the substantial dissent from Humanae Vitae by married people is that they know, intuitively, that in a loving marriage abstinence front sexual love is unnatural and distorts sexual love. Although others sincerely believe abstinence is natural, because they believe it is the only form of birth control that does not involve artificial interference with the natural procreative force, this seems to me to be based upon an incomplete understanding of how the natural human procreative force really works.

Because of our capacity to anticipate the future, this force is actually the net effect of the interaction between two instinctive drives, the procreative sex drive and the desire to be able to care lovingly for the child. Any attempt to separate these two drives or any interference with a reasonably balanced relationship between them is the interference that is artificial and distorts population levels. To avoid this distortion, it is important to recognize interference by such things as the belief that children are proof of sexual prowess, which overemphasizes the sex drive and represses concern for future care: or the belief that numerous children are necessary as workers or for old-age Security, which emphasizes concern for self rather than the child: or a lack of hope for the future and the zero-population growth philosophy, which overemphasize the future and repress procreation. The small but gowing number of childless individuals who are requesting sterilization is indicative of the latter interference, working in combination with a distorted view of sex and sexuality.

Experience is proving that when couples are free to have only those children which they can lovingly care for, population, as demonstrated by present population trends, remains at a level which does not threaten survival of the human race, either by over- or under-population. Since the purpose of procreation is not merely to procreate new life but to procreate new life in order to insure the survival of the species, it would seem that maintaining a reasonable balance between these two drives does, ill fact, fulfill the natural purpose of procreation.

Admittedly, the number of abused and neglected children seems to deny the existence of in instinctive need to care for a child. Although we are motivated by instinctive needs, however, we are free from instinctive guidance on how to recognize and respond to them.

The significance of the silent dissent from Humane Vitae has been Misjudged partly because it has been confused with the cult of sexual freedom that has arisen because of the failure primarily at the professional level, to recognize the adverse psychological affects of non-martital sex. These result because the instinctive relationship between human sex and love cannot be fulfilled without the permanence and security that marriage provides. However, there is a growing awareness of these effects and ,growing realization that Cultural hang-ups are merely a superficial cause and that the true explanation is much more fundamentally related to our instinctive human nature. But, acknowledging that the relationship between marital sex and love is transmitted as all instinct ill Our genetic material means that we will also have to acknowledge that the conjugal act has two inherent forces, procreation and love.

As married people have learned, restricting marital sex to the time schedule of the "natural" method of birth control can and does upset this instinctive relationship and interferes with one of the inherent purposes of human sex. In the case of contraception, however, both purposes are fulfilled if the contraceptive is used to allow sexual nourishment of the marriage, when needed, while avoiding conception of a child that cannot be lovingly cared for.

The Church can be an effective bulwark against cultural interferences such as those previously mentioned. But it seems to me that the decision as to the method by which a flexible balance of the procreative forces is maintained for a particular marriage can best be made by the individual couple, prior to conception, on the basis of health, safety and the varying needs of their marriage for the nourishment of sexual love.

For the first time, we are on the verge of being free from the law of survival of the fittest, which balances population levels for the rest of nature, because our technology and insight are freeing us from nature's enforcers, i. e., disease, famine, drought, natural disasters and predators. We are even beginning to realize that our capacity for aggression makes man his own worst predator, and that war is an evil. As a result of our increasing freedom from this law, however, population is increasing at an accelerating rate, and our freedom is threatened because this denser population is increasing starvation, disease, and the tensions which lead to war.

At the same time, we are beginning to understand more fully what love is and to recognize how environment affects our uniquely human capability.

Thus, we not only have a greater need today to understand God's will regarding world population if we are to remain free from the law of survival of the fittest, but we are also more ready to understand and protect the natural instincts for loving that God has given us so that we can fulfill His law.

JEAN MOFFATT

WAUSAU, WISC.