Dear Reader. If there is anyone being here now,
The letter below was written by a member of Ferlinghetti’s Insurgent Artists for KPFA who has requested that it be posted here and requested that you please forward it to the Pope and/or to any Catholic heavyweights you may know (of), and/or more promising, women’s rights activists. Recent political turmoil over the issue of abortion may be conducive to getting the Church to change its stance on birth control. Contraception is not now available in thousands of Catholic hospitals and charities which serve many poor people worldwide.. If the Pope is serious about addressing poverty, he need only say the Words. Results: fewer poor, fewer abortions, less destruction of the environment. Well aware this is a long, long shot, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
To: His Holiness, Pope Francis
Apostolic Palace 00120 Vatican City
Most Holy Father:
I am very grateful for many of the remarks you have made regarding the need for a more inclusive church – a “home for all” that will focus on serving the poor and oppressed. I have always believed that concern to be at the core of Jesus’s message and was especially encouraged when I read your following remarks regarding our climate emergency:
A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.
It is this shared belief that we must all take personal responsibility for our destructive actions and work to ensure the future habitability and sustainability of our planet which leads me to make a suggestion I hope you will consider.
Church’s history of the theological and moral issues involved in organ transplantation and contraception is in some respects similar. At one time, the view of organ transplantation as mutilation eventually gave way to the doctrine that donation is the key moral consideration involved. I believe that the following words of St. Thomas Aquinas could well pertain to this distinction as well as one that obtains in the practice of contraception:
I answer that, A sin, in human acts, is that which is against the order of reason. Now the order of reason consists in its ordering everything to its end in a fitting manner. Wherefore it is no sin if one, by the dictate of reason makes use of certain things in a fitting manner and order for the end to which they are adapted, provided this end be something truly good. Now just as the preservation of the bodily nature of one individual is a true good, so, too, is the preservation of the nature of the human species a very great good. And just as the use of food is directed to the preservation of life in the individual, so is the use of venereal acts directed to the preservation of the whole human race. Hence Augustine says (De Bono Conjug xvi): “What food is to a man’s well being, such is sexual intercourse to the welfare of the whole human race”. Wherefore just as the use of food can be without sin, if it be taken in due manner and order, as required for the welfare of the body, so also the use of venereal acts can be without sin, provided they be performed in due manner and order, in keeping with the end of human procreation. ( Summa Theologica, Volume 4 (Part III, First Section) {Emphasis mine}
By emphasizing the importance of the character of the intended end of an act and acknowledging the relation between procreation and the preservation of the human species, Aquinas leaves open the possibility of an interpretation in which the true good of the individual is conditioned by the “very great good” of the preservation of the species. When this obligation to the species is coupled with the concomitant obligation for Catholics to act as stewards of God’s creation, contraception becomes a practice that serves to preserve our species. I believe this is the same concern found in Pope John Paul II’s message for World Peace Day, 1990:
Theology, philosophy and science all speak of a harmonious universe, of a “cosmos” endowed with its own integrity, its own internal, dynamic balance. This order must be respected. The human race is called to explore this order, to examine it with due care and to make use of it while safeguarding its integrity….Today, the dramatic threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness—both individual and collective—are contrary to the order of creation, an order which is characterized by mutual interdependence.
Were the church to change its position on contraception in the manner here suggested, the effect would be enormously beneficial to the health of our species and the others around us. Am I mistaken in believing that this is possibly one of the structural causes of the inequality of which you have spoken?
I sincerely hope I have in no way offended you or shown any disrespect to you in saying all we have said. I truly believe you are doing Jesus’s work, and for that I am very grateful.
Hope B. Evergreen
San Francisco, California