The Catholic Women Priests Fighting for Reproductive Justice

— The church forbids women to become priests, but RCWP-USA believes that they are aptly situated to minister on abortion and offer a new, progressive stance.

A woman receives a cup of wine from Rev. Victoria Rue during mass.

By Molly Morrow

Victoria Rue’s first abortion happened in a hospital in California, after the state legalized abortion just before Roe v. Wade. She was out of college, struggling to find work as an actress, and not in a steady relationship. The man who had gotten her pregnant—another young actor from one of her classes—offered to pay for her abortion. He came with her to the hospital, and was there when she woke up.

Rue’s second abortion was very different. She was still young, still struggling to find work, still not wishing to have a child. It was 1973, just after the legalization of abortion nationwide, but Rue did not have the money to pay for a hospital visit. Instead, she underwent a menstrual extraction, a procedure used to induce abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. It took place inside a storefront, not a hospital, and was much more affordable.

Rue didn’t speak with anyone before undergoing the procedure: She felt too ashamed to tell family or friends, and she had no relationship with the man that had gotten her pregnant. “I remember sitting in my Volkswagen across the street from it in a parking lot, just sitting there looking at the storefront across the street, preparing myself to go in,” Rue said. “And just feeling so alone.”

Many years later, Rue’s life looks quite different: She became a playwright, an activist, and a professor. She is also a Roman Catholic woman priest, part of an organization of women who have ordained themselves in the face of the church’s opposition. Most recently, she has become an outspoken pro-choice voice within the Catholic Church.

The institutional Catholic Church forbids women to become priests, citing the Bible’s record that Jesus only chose male apostles, as well as the nearly 2,000 years of precedent. These women practice as Roman Catholics, but most have been excommunicated by choosing to be ordained.

Roman Catholic women priests come to be ordained in a variety of ways: Several of the earliest—the “Danube Seven”—were ordained by a male bishop on the Danube River in 2002, and since then, many more have been ordained by female bishops across the world. Despite opposition from the Vatican, there are nearly 200 women priests in the United States and others in South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

The Catholic Church believes abortion is murder, opposing all medical procedures where the purpose is to induce abortion. It has repeatedly affirmed this teaching, from the 1974 “Declaration on Procured Abortion” by Pope Paul VI to Pope John Paul II’s 1992 “Evangelium Vitae.” In response to a statement from 31 Catholic Democrats in the US House of Representatives, the church reaffirmed its opposition again in June. The congresspeople’s “Renewed Statement of Principles” was released on June 24—the one-year anniversary of the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which allowed many states across the U.S. to severely restrict or ban abortions—arguing for a pro-choice Catholic teaching of abortion based on care for the poor, the priority of informed conscience, and the principle of religious freedom. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) responded by saying that the House statement “grievously distort[s] the faith” and that abortion violates the right to life “with respect to preborn children and brings untold suffering to countless women.”

Jamie Manson, president of Catholics for Choice, attributes this belief to a strong interest in the vocation of women first as mothers within the Catholic Church, and suggests that the church’s teaching is one of the most conservative in the United States. “No other religious tradition has a teaching on abortion the way the Catholic Church does, nor the teaching on contraception,” said Manson. “It’s very radical, even for conservative traditions like Evangelicals and Mormons.”

The Catholic Church’s stance on abortion has varied over time, however: Although the USCCB states that the church has always “distinguished themselves from surrounding pagan cultures by rejecting abortion and infanticide,” only in 1965 was abortion officially considered homicide; before, it was merely a sexual sin. The Catholic ‘right to life’ argument took shape alongside second wave feminists’ calls for legal abortion in the 1970s, leading to their stance today.

Now, abortion is as much a part of the lives of Catholics as anyone else: A majority of Catholics think that abortion should be legal in the United States, and approximately 24 percent of those who obtain abortions identify as Catholic.

Roman Catholic women priests believe that they are aptly situated to minister on the issue and offer a new, progressive Catholic stance on abortion, precisely because of their commitment to the religious tenets of Catholicism.

On June 21, 2023, the American branch of the women priests’ formal organization, Roman Catholic Women Priests-USA (RCWP), gathered for a historic forum to discuss abortion and reproductive justice three days before the anniversary of the Dobbs decision. While the topic of abortion was always a foremost concern for a progressive Catholic organization of primarily women, the Dobbs decision marked a renewed interest in advocating for an issue so fraught within the mainstream Catholic Church.

The solutions and ministries these women priests are working for are not traditional political activism. Central to the forum—and to their approach—is what these priests call accompaniment, an individual-focused approach they hope to adopt in order to be nonjudgmental spiritual advisors to those considering abortion or who have already undergone the procedure. The term comes from liberation theology, a Catholic ideology created by Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, combining Catholic teaching with class politics. It is frequently invoked by progressive Catholics on matters of public health and social work for the poor. The term ‘accompaniment’ is also used by Latin American feminists to describe the process of being present with and supporting those seeking abortions.

No matter their personal beliefs on abortion—nor the beliefs of those they serve—these women priests’ stated goal is to offer impartiality and empathy, regardless of what the person considering abortion ultimately chooses.

Leading the charge is Rue, who has made it her goal to address the issue of abortion and determine how her organization might be a progressive force for change. Despite growing up religious and spending a year in a Catholic convent, Rue cites the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s as her church after she drifted from Catholicism. Rue’s activism eventually led her to protest outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City as a part of Dignity New York, an LGBTQ+ Catholic activist group formed in response to the 1986 Vatican “Halloween letter,” which deemed homosexuality an “objective disorder.”

At this protest, like many others staged by Dignity New York, a Catholic mass was celebrated. These services were far different from those hosted within the walls of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The words of the service diverged from tradition: Source material included Walt Whitman as much as it did the Christian bible. The sacrament of communion centered around the notion that the bread being broken represented everyone, not just Jesus.

Rue had been asked by members of the group to co-lead such a service with an out gay Catholic priest and agreed. “I began to understand myself to be a priest,” said Rue. “And that I had been ordained by the people in the very act of celebrating mass, as opposed to the laying on of hands.” Years later, after learning about Roman Catholic women priests, Rue was ordained a deacon on the Danube river in 2004, and ordained a priest in 2005 on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Rue worked as a professor at San Jose State University while also writing plays. In the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs decision leak, she began a project with fellow playwright Martha Boesing called “Voices from the Silenced: Pre-Roe Abortion Stories from Rossmoor.” For the play, Rue asked women in her senior living community who had had abortions to write their stories down for her, and she and Boesing shaped the roughly 30 responses into a play, told by seven women actors and a narrator who is a member of the pre-Roe underground abortion service provider the Jane Collective. The American Medical Women’s Association is showing the play to all of its coalitions including medical school students.

For Rue—and many members of RCWP—the commitment to being a woman priest is a simultaneous commitment to activism. In fact, one region within the RCWP organization is called the “Region for the Holy Margins,” a non-geographical group of women priests who have a particular interest in serving vulnerable communities. They see themselves as more than just female priests, but, rather, activists who seek systemic change within the Catholic tradition beyond just allowing women to be priests.

The Dobbs decision, for many of these women priests, was an inflection point in their activism, a moment in which the many causes they involved themselves in—women’s rights, racial justice, care for the poor, etc.—came to a head around a major political moment.

Despite enthusiasm from its members, the official RCWP organization has been disunited in its activist work, with a lack of consensus over their official stance on abortion and their ministers spread out across the country. The national organization meets only every few years, though the regions meet more regularly. “What RCWP has been unified in its online presence about is simply ordaining women. That’s it. That’s been the clearest ‘social justice’ piece that we’ve done,” said Rue. “We’re advocating for the presence of social justice in the forefront, as much as ordaining women.”

In the June forum, Rue presented a number of suggestions for how women priests might be able to support women considering abortion. They intend to educate and train themselves on reproductive justice teachings and use their national network to serve as clinic escorts, and to create a more formal process for women considering abortion to get in contact with and receive support from a woman priest.

This goal is personal for Rue, who wished she had had a woman priest to support her during her second abortion. Although no one she knew was there to support her, she recalled how the man performing her abortion called in his 12-year-old daughter, who held her hand during the procedure. “She really held my hand,” said Rue. “I’d never seen her before, but boy was I happy she was there.”

Such themes—physical presence, emotional support, and the ability to listen without judgment—came up again and again in the forum. The conversation also included a suggestion to ritualize abortion in order to help women better cope with the experience, as well as an emphasis on following up with the women afterward and continuing to support them. Many of the women priests gathered at the forum also hope to organize around an intersectional approach to abortion rights activism.

Much of the moral justification for women priests’ understanding of abortion and other social justice issues hinges on the Catholic concept of the “primacy of conscience,” the notion that each individual knows their circumstances best and can make moral decisions based on their own situations. During a second RCWP forum in July on reproductive justice, Jamie Manson and the women priest participants pointed to the choice Mary had in the Christian bible to say “yes” or “no” to her pregnancy, grounding her decision in autonomy. This understanding of conscience, they believe, is central to reproductive justice.

In the future, RCWP plans to continue speaking to experts in the field of reproductive justice and to consider the advocacy they hope to do as an organization. One of these plans for the future is to participate in a program spearheaded by Catholics for Choice, the revival of the Clergy Consultation Service, a cross-denominational group of American religious leaders that helped pregnant people obtain abortions before Roe made abortion legal nationwide.

“Faith communities have always been essential to political change” Manson said. “And I think the secular pro-choice movement has made a terrible mistake marginalizing those voices.”

For Rue—and the rest of RCWP—that political work looks very different from secular reproductive justice political activism. A key point Rue stressed over and over was that, in her view, women priests need not agree with abortion on a personal level, but instead merely provide a nonjudgmental, spiritual presence for pregnant individuals, whose beliefs on abortion also may vary greatly.

From the roots of her priesthood in LGBTQ+ activism to today, Rue believes that religious ministry and her activist work are not disparate at all, but intimately connected and mutually reinforcing. “I think the core of the many hats that I have worn and do wear is the body, particularly women’s bodies,” said Rue. “How could one be involved in anything that is anti-body, anti-women? All these issues come to bear, I think, on the beauty, and the grace, and the suffering, and the pain of the human body.”

Complete Article HERE!

Human Rights, Sexual Rights and World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day brings into focus the micro-strategies needed to combat a macro problem.

The theme for World AIDS Day 2011 is ‘Leading with Science, Uniting for Action’. Coincidently, later this month, December 10th to be precise, we will commemorate Human Rights Day. This is the 63rd anniversary of the adoption, by the United Nations General Assembly, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

The promotion and protection of human rights has been a major preoccupation for the United Nations since 1945, when the Organization’s founding nations resolved that the horrors of The Second World War should never be allowed to recur.

Respect for human rights and human dignity “is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”, the General Assembly declared three years later in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the foundation of international human rights law, the first universal statement on the basic principles of inalienable human rights, and a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.

In a world wracked by poverty, disease and war; where we threaten our very existence with climate altering pollution, nuclear proliferation and extreme population growth; is there room to talk about human rights that include sexual rights?

I emphatically say yes! In fact, I assert that sexual inequality and oppression is at the heart of many of the world’s problems. I contend that trying to address human rights without including the essential component of sexual rights is ultimately doomed to failure.

An absence of sexual rights leads to domestic and societal violence; human trafficking; suicide; a rise in Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) including HIV/AIDS; unplanned pregnancies, abortion, and sexual dysfunction.

You know how we are always being encouraged to Think Globally and Act Locally? Well, on this World AIDS Day while we busy ourselves with local concerns, I think we’d do well to focus some of our attention on what intricately binds us to the rest of the human community.

I offer three examples of what I’m talking about. I invite you to consider how a myopic HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention effort, when divorced from the overarching issues of human, economic, social and sexual rights often make our efforts ineffectual and, in some cases, even counterproductive.

***

A couple of years ago the research community was all aflutter about ‘conclusive’ evidence linking HIV transmission and uncircumcised males. While I’m certainly not ready to take this data on face value, let’s just say, for the sake of discussion, that the link is conclusive. A massive campaign of circumcision was proposed as the best means of HIV prevention. The medical community would descend on epicenters of the disease, scalpels in hand, ready to eliminate the offending foreskins from every male in sight, young or old.

But wait, there’s a problem. Most HIV/AIDS epicenters are in underdeveloped countries. In these places, access to enough clean water to attend to even the most basic personal hygiene, like daily cleaning under one’s foreskin, remains an enormous chronic crisis. Without first addressing the problem of unfettered access to clean water and adequate sanitation, which according to The United Nations is a basic human right, further disease prevention efforts are doomed.

I mean, what are the chances that surgical intervention would succeed—one that would involve significant and sophisticated aftercare; especially if there’s not even enough clean water for bathing?

These well-meaning medical personnel suggest imposing a strategy that not only works against nature—our foreskins do have a purpose after all: a healthy prepuce is a natural deterrent to infection. But this intervention would also violate long-held cultural and societal norms—circumcision is abhorrent to many of these same cultures. Wouldn’t this proposed prevention effort to stem the tide actually make matters worse?

***

Other epicenters of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic are associated with indentured sex work. Until the economic and educational opportunities for women throughout the world improve—which is a basic human right according to The United Nations—women will remain chattel. Families in economically depressed areas of the world will continue to be pressured to sell their daughters (and sons) simply to subsist.

Closing brothels and stigmatizing prostitutes as a means of disease prevention overlooks the more pressing human rights concerns at play here. Sex is a commodity because there is a voracious market. Men from developed nations descend on the populations of less developed nations to satisfy sexual proclivities with partners they are prohibited from enjoying in their own country. Young women (and boys) in developing countries are viewed as exploitable and disposable, because they don’t have the same civil protections afforded their peers in the developed world. And runaway population growth in countries that deprive their women and girls access to education and contraception inevitably creates a never-ending supply of hapless replacements.

Addressing the endemic gender inequality in many societies is key. Equal access to education and economic resources must come before, or at least hand in hand with any serious sexually transmitted infection prevention effort.

***

Finally, people in the developed world enjoy a certain level of affluence and economic stability which allows them to indulge in sex recreationally. Thanks to effective birth control methods we can ignore the procreative aspects of sex and replace it with a means of expressing a myriad of other human needs. Not least among these are status, self-esteem and self-expression.

If we’re trying to prove something to ourselves, or others, by the way we conduct our sexual lives, simple prohibitions against certain sex practices won’t work. If I’m convinced that unprotected sex with multiple partners and sharing bodily fluids is edgy, cool fun, without serious consequence, as it’s portrayed in the media (porn); I will be more likely to express myself the same way. This is especially true for young people who are already feeling invincible.

Case in point: there has been a startling uptick in seroconversions among young people, particularly gay men, which indicates that disease prevention efforts, even in the world’s most affluent societies, are simply not up to the task. It’s not that there is a scarcity of resources, quite the contrary. It is more likely that these efforts are not connected to a fundamental understanding of the role sexuality plays in the gay community (and increasingly among non-gay people). I believe that sexual expression and sexual pleasure are the overarching issues here. These too are fundamental human rights.

Bareback (condomless) porn went from being a pariah genre on the periphery of the gay porn industry just a few years ago, to the hottest, most prolific and biggest moneymaking genre today. It’s no accident or coincidence that this surprising reversal coincided with this the increase of HIV/AIDS infections in certain populations. I hear from people all the time, from those inside as well as outside the porn industry, who tell me that it’s their prerogative to engage in unprotected sex. “I have the right to express myself that way,” I am often told. “If one has the bad luck to seroconvert, it’s just that, bad luck. After all, HIV is now a manageable chronic condition, not unlike diabetes,” or so the reasoning goes. So I should just get over it and mind my own business.

No amount of safer sex proselytizing is going to overcome this kind of resistance. I propose we need to look at why and how we express ourselves sexually. As we unravel this complex jumble of motivations and behaviors, effective prevention strategies will manifest themselves clearly. We must develop a sex-positive message; one that celebrates sexuality, builds self-esteem and counteracts the prevailing media messages of sex with no consequences.

***

World AIDS Day brings into focus the micro-strategies needed to combat a macro problem. But it also shows that we cannot fight this, or any disease, in a vacuum. It’s imperative that we see how global health and wellbeing is completely dependent on basic human rights, including sexual rights that include gender and reproductive rights, the elimination of sexual exploitation and the freedom of sexual expression.

Human rights that include sexual rights encompass the goals of World AIDS Day—increasing awareness, fighting prejudice and improving education. But applying these principles must cover the full spectrum of human sexuality, gender equality, reproductive health and, dare we say it, pleasure. To repeat the General Assembly declaration; Respect for human rights and human dignity “is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

Seismic Shift

Part 4 of a 5-Part Series — Understanding Catholic Moral Theology

Something earthshaking happened the weekend before Thanksgiving last year. It was so dramatic it was felt right round the globe, don’t cha know.

Pope Benedict made a most extraordinary comment in an interview with the German journalist, Peter Seewald, in July 2010. He said that condom use could be justified in some cases to help stop the spread of AIDS. This startling statement came to light as part of a promotional push for Seewald’s latest book on Cardinal Ratzinger, (now Benedict XVI): Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times.

In order to see just how astonishing this is one need only look back to the spring of the previous year. In March, 2009, during his trip to Cameroon, the pope not only reaffirmed Church teaching on the unacceptability of condom use under any circumstance, including the effort to diminish the spread of AIDS. He went on to say that he thought condom use might actually make HIV infection worse. This reiteration of the Vatican’s hard line, especially on African soil, coupled with his casual dismissal of established scientific evidence, drew immediate criticism from around the world. It was yet another public relations nightmare this pontiff didn’t need, or apparently want.

But now Benedict says condoms are not “a real or moral solution” to the AIDS epidemic, adding, “that can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.” But he also says that “there may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility.”

To the avid Vatican watcher this is nothing short of revolutionary. I tell you the Catholic world has shifted on its axis, Benedict’s tortured logic aside.

The week that followed the initial revelation of the pope’s condom statement was a maelstrom. The Vatican curia, bishops from around the world as well as Catholic activists all tried to spin his words. Church conservatives insisted the pontiff had been misquoted or misunderstood. — “The pope’s statement on condoms was extremely limited: he did not approve their use or suggest that the Roman Catholic Church was beginning to back away from its prohibition of birth control” said Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, one of Benedict’s former student and editor in chief of the very conservative Ignatius Press. The liberal wing of the Church was hopeful. — “It’s a marvelous victory for common sense,” said Jon O’Brien, the head of the Catholic group — Catholics for Choice.

Then, only a couple of days after the original news broke, more startling information came to light. At a news conference in Rome, papal spokesman, the Fr. Frederico Lombardi, said Benedict knew his comments would provoke intense debate, and that the pope meant for his remarks to apply not just to male prostitutes, but also “if you’re a man, a woman, or a transsexual.”

The pope seemed to be clarifying and expanding his comments, instead of walking them back.  At this point, my head began to reel. Had he undergone some kind of metanoya? Did he develop a sense of compassion for male (female and transsexual) prostitutes and their johns? Was he finally having second thoughts about all us sexual reprobates and the damnation that awaits us for our unnatural acts? It was utterly astonishing! And who knew the word transsexual was even in the pope’s vocabulary?

Astonishing, because in October 2010 Belgian Archbishop, André-Joseph Léonard, asserted aloud what most hardliners say in private. He said the worldwide AIDS epidemic is a matter of “immanent justice”, i.e. God’s retribution for sodommite depravity.

By week’s end all hell had broken loose. Many prominent conservative Catholics were publicly rejecting the Vatican’s own explanation of what the pope said. They declared that they would only accept a more formal papal pronouncement, like an encyclical. Liberal Catholics, on the other hand, were taking the pontiff at his word. For them the pope had spoken; exceptions to the Vatican’s previously uncompromising ban on the use of artificial contraception CAN be made in the worldwide effort to combat AIDS.

But what is the average pew Catholic supposed to make of all of this?

The pope is appealing to the principle of double effect, a standard of Catholic moral theology since Thomas Aquinas. This doctrine claims that sometimes it is permissible to bring about, a harmful side effect (contraception) in an effort to promote some greater good (the fight against the spread of AIDS). In other words, accepting the lesser of two evils.

No matter how you look at it, this seemingly innocuous papal statement has created a fissure in the bedrock of Catholic moral theology. It is a total game-changer and nothing will ever be quite the same.

Part 1 of this series HERE!
Part 2 of this series HERE!
Part 3 of this series HERE!

Sins Of The Flesh

Part 2 of a 5-Part Series — Understanding Catholic Moral Theology

I was absolutely mesmerized by the recent papal visit to Spain for World Youth Day. I confess it was a morbid curiosity in the spectacle, but who among us doesn’t have a guilty pleasure or two? My clergy days are way behind me, but the pomp and ceremony are still very familiar and even a little beguiling.

Benedict XVI, the kindly grandfather figure, kisses babies, waves to the crowd from what looks like a clown car. Yet there was a palpable tension in the air that was not missed by the devout and the skeptic alike. The pope came to Spain to mark his territory and that is always an anxious time for those whose territory he invades.

The innocuous visit soon turned ominous when the elderly pontiff began to scold against the dual evils of relativism and secularism. You’d think having so much to apologize for in terms of the worldwide priest sex abuse scandal he’d take a more humble approach to our common human foibles. But there was no hint of that.

His litany of our cultural sins is as familiar as his papal vestments. Abortion; homosexuality, particularly those who advocate same-sex marriage; sexual permissiveness among the young; and the spiritual vacuum at the heart of a modern society bent on instant gratification. The common thread being an abhorrence of sexual pleasure.

Catholic doctrine specifically states that the sacred act of procreation is the only legitimate reason for sexual expression and that, or course, can only occur within the confines of a marriage between one man and one woman. If a married couple is interested in having intercourse, then they’d better be willing to accept the real potential for creating another life each and every time.

On New Year’s Eve 1930, the Roman Catholic Church officially banned all “artificial” means of birth control. Condoms, diaphragms and cervical caps are artificial, in as much as they block the natural journey of sperm during intercourse. Douches, suppositories and spermicides kill or impeded sperm, so they too are banned. Tampering with the “male seed” is tantamount to murder. A common admonition at the time was “so many conceptions prevented, so many homicides.” To interfere with God’s will is a mortal sin and even grounds for excommunication.

Catholics are left with abstinence or the rhythm method (the practice of abstaining from sex during a woman’s period of ovulation) as the only means of family planning. But, the rhythm method is wildly unreliable. The roulette of it all places its heaviest strain on the women, but the marital relationship is also stressed.

In 1966 the Church revisited the doctrine. A papal commission set up to review the dogma voted 30-5 to relax the concerns on birth control. But in 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical, Humanae Vitae which overrode the bishops and reiterated the anti-birth-control stance. He said this was necessary for several reasons. Chief among them was — if sex were not about creating children in a loving family unit, then sex would solely be about pleasure with no responsibility. Men would simply use women as pleasure objects and would lose respect for them.

Some argued that Pope Paul’s decision to issue the letter was more about exerting papal authority then it was about birth control. They claimed he wanted to reserve to himself the authority to decide the issue rather then let the bishops of Vatican II decide. But I see it differently; the pope had virtually no choice. If he buckled on the bedrock issue of the procreative nature of sex he would have undercut the totality of Catholic sexual morality. There’d no longer be a cogent argument for outlawing masturbation, homosexuality, premarital sex, extramarital sex and divorce as disordered and intrinsically evil.

Obviously, the practical application of this encyclical goes way beyond the marital bed. It prohibits condoms in the fight against AIDS; young people are set adrift in a void of sex education; teenage pregnancies soar; gay and lesbian people are vilified; and married people as well as theologians are left questioning the relevancy of a doctrine that causes so much harm.

But, in this matter at least, that faithful have spoken. The Center of Disease Control and Prevention’s 2002 National Survey of Family Growth revealed that 97% of American Catholic women over age 18 have used a form of contraception, which is the same percentage as the general population. A 2005 nationwide poll of 2,242 U.S. adults by Harris Interactive showed that 90% of Catholics supported the use of birth control. Use of modern contraceptive methods is also high in many predominantly Catholic countries: 67% of married women of child-bearing age in Spain, 69% in France, 60% in Mexico, and 70% in Brazil.

These statistics underscore what we’ve all known for a long time. There is massive “disobedience” on the part of Catholic faithful. But they’re not being obstinate just to be contrary. These are women and men of conscience, who have weighed the Vatican arguments and found them wanting. Most Catholics know their religious affiliation is more than a slavish adherence to dogma; they know that it actually means finding the divine in the crucible of their own life.

Part 1 of this series HERE!