Dear Catholic Exchange:
I was recently talking to a friend of mine about the issue of contraception. She is currently taking a Catholic Traditions class at a Catholic college and has been told that the church has an official dogma which states that unless the people of the Church can follow a teaching in their hearts, that teaching cannot be considered Church law — even if it is an infallible teaching — because “church” means “people.” (She thought the dogma was called libertum fidelis, but she wasn't sure.) Therefore, she claims that we should alter the Church's teaching on reproduction so everyone can easily follow it and that there are methods of birth control other than NFP that fall within the biblical teaching. She also said that the pope has commisioned a curia to help the Church's teaching on this topic evolve. What dogma is she talking about and is there a curia aiming to alter the teaching of the Church? Does she have her information right?
Teresa
Dear Teresa,
Peace of Christ!
It is scandalous that your friend is receiving such misinformation at a Catholic college.
There is no such “official dogma.”
Underlying what your friend is saying is a desire to bypass the Church's teaching on contraception, which truly is a sign of contradiction in today's culture. God bless you for wanting to communicate the truth to her in a spirit of friendship and compassion.
All that God has revealed through Christ is part of what we call the “deposit of faith.” The Church preserves and proclaims this teaching from generation to generation, infallibly guided in this vitally important work by the Holy Spirit. We accept this body of revealed teaching on faith and morals as objectively true. Through time Church teaching can and does go through a certain “development” process by which we collectively come to a greater clarity and understanding. However, Church teaching does not change in the sense of being overturned. That would mean that the Church was officially teaching error before the change, which cannot be the case.
In addition, because Church teaching is objectively true, its truth doesn't depend on your friend's happening to agree with it. Faith is much more than mere agreement. We accept Church teaching on God's own authority, and we believe all that He teaches us through His Church. St. Anselm once said “I believe that I may understand.” And so while we accept Church teaching on faith we should strive to come to a fuller, internal understanding. Yet we do not suspend our acceptance of individual Church teachings until we can fully understand them.
Pope Paul VI did establish a commission in the 1960s to explore the issue of contraception. However, the majority of the commission recommended to the pope that the Church's teaching on the subject be changed. Thankfully, Pope Paul VI did not accept the so-called “majority report” but instead, in his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, he stood firm in affirming for our time the Church's perennial teaching concerning contraception, and he prophetically predicted some of the modern-day evils that would befall us (and 36 years later have befallen us) if the contraceptive mentality gained the ascendancy. He noted that the teaching is rooted in the natural law as well as the deposit of faith, and that the Church is powerless to change God's moral law.
For more information, see our Faith Fact on the subject of contraception.
I also recommend the book version of Faith Facts, which contains tracts on many of the hot-button issues in the Church today. It is available at www.emmausroad.org.
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