While browsing through a college bookstore, I recently came across Catholic University of America (CUA) Professor Leslie Woodcock Tentler's "Catholics and Contraception: An American History" (Cornell University Press, 2004) - one of fourteen books from Notre Dame's Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. In 335 pages covering 125 years, Tentler offers little evidence of appreciating modern methods of Natural Family Planning or Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body. She envisions NFP as repackaged "rhythm" and those who embrace it as likely to be unable to explain its theological rationale, as well as likely to abandon it with experience. Be that said, she does offer some thought-provoking history.

A "cafeteria" mindset is often noted to exist among misguided Catholics. Some have gotten the notion that the Church offers teaching on the sanctity of human life and marriage for "conservatives," while she alternately offers teaching on social concerns for "liberals." Authentic, seamless connections between teachings on the sanctity of human life, marriage and family, and social issues get lost. While no history of "Catholic Social Teaching" would be complete without an extensive discussion of Msgr. John A. Ryan, Ph.D, Msgr. Ryan kept Church teachings on human life, marriage and family, and social issues very much intact.

As director of the social justice department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (now the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) and as a CUA professor, Ryan was the face of Catholic Social Teaching in the first part of the 20th century in the United States. Long before Humanae Vitae discussed the anti-family agendas of those promoting contraceptives, Ryan took on Planned Parenthood founder and eugenics pioneer Margaret Sanger. He recognized that promotion of contraceptives served as an accomplice to selfishness among some wealthy and powerful of this country, who would accept workers' sweat but not their families. To borrow a phrase from Father Cox of 1930s radio fame, Msgr. Ryan fought for wealth control AGAINST birth control. Ryan argued for just family wages, which would allow a worker to properly support his family. While Tentler makes Ryan's passionate fight against contraceptives crystal clear, others seem to whitewash that part of his legacy.

For various reasons, Ryan's forthrightness about contraceptives was often the exception. Tentler tells us that the earliest part of the 20th century was not characterized by regular preaching about contraception from any pulpits. Among non-Catholic clergy, adherents were even quietly gathering to contraceptive promoters. Yet, no Protestant denomination formally supported contraception until the Anglicans in 1930. Tentler sees Pope Pius XI's encyclical of that year as a counterattack to the Anglican position and a call to arms for more proactive promotion of Church teaching. While Tentler might have us believe "Casti Connubii" to be a simplistic prohibition against contraception, it is a profound and beautiful treatise on marriage. Proclaiming marriage's dignity and sanctity, Pius XI shows deep affection and paternal concern that people not be led astray. Preventing such, he calls the "sacred trust" of priests and bishops.

While the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s saw a growing promotion and acceptance of authentic teaching on marriage and marital relations, hints of dissent became ever more present - starting in the late 1950s. Instead of embracing their "sacred trust," more and more priests and bishops seemed to be signaling - often through thundering silence - that a change in teaching was on the horizon. For a number of years, CUA even kept Father Charles Curran - who openly advocated such change - aboard its faculty. It was into a festering chasm of chaos and confusion that Pope Paul VI presented "Humane Vitae." Rather than a Holy spirit inspired and prophetic document, Tentler intimates this encyclical to be the product of minority voices who successfully coerced Paul VI. Yet, she provides an insightful quote about its reception: "'A peculiar, implicit gentleman's agreement has developed between clergy and hierarchy in which the hierarchy commits itself not to try to seriously enforce compliance with Humanae Vitae so long as the clergy is not too open and public in its opposition to the encyclical,' Andrew Greeley asserted in 1972" (p. 263). While no promoter of Humanae Vitae, Tentler acknowledges that this silent treatment has had a devastating impact: "The result was a church where sexual ethics were seldom discussed, despite rapid change in the cultural values.... Divorce rates rose, even among regular churchgoers, as did the practice of premarital cohabitation. Birth and marriage rates declined....Many Catholics...were newly tolerant of abortion" (pp. 276, 277).

The post Humane Vitae silence has continued for a generation and a half. Some Catholics nearing menopause may have never even encountered the clergy's "sacred trust." If we truly love our clergy, don't those of us who embrace the Theology of the Body and NFP bear responsibility to remind them that Pius XI's words were never abrogated? "If any confessor or pastor of souls, which may God forbid, lead the faithful entrusted to him into these errors or should at least confirm them by approval or by guilty silence, let him be mindful of the fact that he must render a strict account to God, the Supreme Judge, for the betrayal of his sacred trust"