This is, quite simply, not true. I lived both ways. I cannot imagine anything so difficult as contraception. It’s a day-to-day lie within marriage. Horrible. Inconceivable. That anyone could promote it boggles my mind. Compare that to the truly light burden of abundant family, where there is always someone nearby to remind you of why you got married in the first place.

I would say that some married couples are more than inconvenienced. When the dishwasher breaks, that’s an inconvenience. When a married couple can’t have sexual relations because they can’t physically, psychologically or financially afford another child, that’s more than an inconvenience. That’s harmful to their marriage.

I know about natural family planning, but for many people, it’s not effective enough. They’re not comfortable with a 97% success rate in avoiding conception. If they don’t use NFP and want to abide by the Church’s teaching, they have no option but abstinence.

Pope Paul VI’s commission on contraception concluded that it was acceptable for married couples. I know that the Pope overruled them, but I don’t see this teaching coming from Christ. I don’t know the exact chapter and verse, but Christ said His yoke was easy and His burden light. Not so the Church’s teaching on contraception for married couples.

So teaching bears no quarter for a middle ground on matters of faith and morals. Incidentally, part of that teaching as it pertains to Jewish people can be taken verbatim from the Second Vatican Council: “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues-such is the witness of the Apostle…. the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.” (Nostra Aetate No. 4, http://tinyurl.com/k4dj). Unfortunately, it is impossible to know that this is the teaching of the Church unless the Church actually teaches it, and it is impossible for the Church to bind her members to this teaching unless she truly enjoys a God-given authority to teach and preach on all matters of faith and morals. Absent this authority, anyone could dissent from this teaching; with this binding authority, we can at least point out that anyone who dissents is wrong.

Action is another matter entirely: the Church teaches that proper action is virtuous but understands that improper action is inevitable. Improper action can always be amended in the confessional. And the amendment of improper action in the confessional cannot be understood as reliable unless the Church’s teaching is reliable in this matter. In other words, unless the Church is authoritative on matters of faith and morals, it is impossible to know without doubt that forgiveness of sin is a reality. We might rail against the need for confession; we might look to the Bible as the source of our understanding of God’s mercy; we might do a lot of quite understandable things. But we’ll never be able to know without doubt that forgiveness is real unless sin is real first (for without sin, why bother?). And we’ll never be able to understand that forgiveness is real unless we can rely on whatever authority makes this claim. Better people than I have demonstrated that the Church is the reliable authority for this claim. I simply trust in this claim.

Improper teaching, on the other hand, presents a literal falsehood: it claims that the Church cannot teach what is her proper area of competence, namely faith and morals. Moreover, improper teaching must of necessity have recourse to another authority that is not the Church. So if the Church lacks authority to teach on faith and morals, then which authority properly makes this claim so that we can all follow it instead? There cannot be a non-authoritative teaching, or rather there cannot be a trustworthy teaching that is non-authoritative. For if it is non-authoritative, why cannot anyone change it as whim might dictate? And if anyone is so foolish as to rely on what they call an authoritative teaching (that is not really authoritative), what is to stop anyone from doing anything they like to quash that teaching? In the past, lots of “anyones” have resorted to prison, murder, war, forced starvation, torture and the like to stop the authoritative teaching of the Church from being spread. Absent miraculous intervention, the Church has generally been powerless to stop this sort of behavior (with some exception). But because she is authoritative, she also has had the power to condemn it when it occurs.

Put another way, the invitation to come home can only be genuine (as opposed to a false and therefore easily rescinded) if the Church has the authority that she claims for herself. She constantly invites people home because this is part of her teaching, and if she cannot teach, then she cannot do anything. That is the real reason why public opposition to Church teaching is so problematic: it undermines the mission of the Church in a way that mere action cannot.

Thus, in morality, there is a middle ground (lest we would still put Jews to the rack for denial of Christ.

The comments here represent the tragedy of the Conservative Catholics. They are the new Pharisees because they are the vocal and rabid (and capricious) arbiters of what it means to be Catholic (and in doing so, stop being Christian).

The invitation to come home to Catholics, then, becomes a false one. We will not be greeted like the prodigal son by a loving father. We will be greeted by the other son, chastised and found wanting.

Clement faced very difficult circumstances. The English representatives initially could not talk to him because he was held prisoner after the armies of Charles V sacked Rome. The Newadvent.org article cited above has a good overview of most of this history, and any decent biography of St. Peter Neri will include some details of Charles V’s campaigns against Florence and Rome (Peter Neri was born in Florence and left shortly after it was sacked; he entered Rome for the first time while it was still in disarray from the siege).

The larger point is that Henry and his supporters had real reasons for pressing their case. That is why Thomas More was so isolated. The English thought him a traitor, if only because they feared the civil wars that might occur if succession were ever in doubt. But Thomas held firm, not against divorce but in affirming the authority of the Pope to judge the details of this important matter of faith and morals. In the historical context, this affirmation also implied affirming the authority of the Magisterium, whose representative the Pope has always been (even before the very limited Papal infallibility decree of Vatican I) in practical dealings when the Magisterium as a whole could not meet to decide on a particular issue.

More was therefore isolated in his own country because he held firm to the teachings of the Church on faith and morals, including the necessity of submission to Church (and not secular) authority on such matters. He didn’t quibble over the naming convention of doctrine vs. dogma. He only knew that the Church is either competent to decide matters of faith and morals or it isn’t. And he knew that if the Church were not competent on this point, then it was a complete fraud. That is the real scandal of the Church: it is either the proper arbiter of faith and of morals in all cases, or else it is a charlatan in all of its claims. One cannot pick and choose. There is no middle ground to be sought. In this, the Church is no different from her Founder, who was either a madman claiming divine affinity – or else he was (and is) the Son of God. That is the ultimate question here: “Who do you say that I am?” Madman or divine Son? Charlatan or spouse of Christ? In both cases, rejection of one alternative necessarily implies acceptance of the other.

There is no middle ground.

Fr E. – You are my hero! The courage you showed in defending the Church was truly inspiring!