That old chestnut again

The church and the bedroom on screen
ON February 3, the Sunday evening Everyman programme will be devoted to that old chestnut, Catholics and Sex. The title is a little misleading. Although the film touches on the wider issues of in vitro fertilisation, priestly celibacy, the role of women, authority and dissent, it might more accurately have been called, Catholics and the Pill.
No doubt many will switch with a groan to whatever obscure young mime artist is being celebrated on the South Bank Show, fed up by the media's persistent preoccupation with the private lives of Catholics. Why do writers and film makers regard the Catholic church as a sect unremarkable for the opinions or way of life of its members, distinguished solely by its adherence to certain curious restrietions and special procedures relating to love making and the generation of children?
Nevertheless, Catholics and Sex is well worth watching. It's a clearly made and well plotted film, a serious and extended discussion of the issue. It begins, usefully, with a brief historical summary of the events leading up to the publication of Pope Paul VI's encyclical letter Humanae Vitae in July 1968, which confirmed the teaching of his two predecessors that the use of artificial means of contraception was morally evil.
There's a "pop down to the archive and bring me up that shoebox labelled Catholic Church 1969-1979" look about some of this material: grainy footage of Vatican Council fathers, old snaps of huge families and smug looking prelates, Norman St John Stevas with sideburns being tart about Humanae Vitae on late night television, vox pop interviews with puzzled mums ("you have to move with the times, don't you?"), shots of overcrowded Jove/as.
But it's good to be reminded — I was only 14 at the time, so much of the story was new to me — that the teaching of Humanae Vitae actually has a history, that it is not a self evident truth of natural law the church has never doubted or wavered over.
Bitter pill
PROMPTED, no doubt, by the advent of the pill, a simple, effective contraceptive device that could be obtained and used without fuss or embarrassment, in the early 1960s the traditional teaching was being widely challenged from both without and within the church. Leading figures at early sessions of the second Vatican Council spoke in favour of a more open minded approach to the issue.
In 1964 Paul VI set up a commission of experts — theologians, canon lawyers, historians, sociologists, even three Catholic couples — to report to him on all aspects of the question. Was it possible or desirable that he should revoke ("develop" I suppose is the word he would have had to use) the lapidary pronouncements of Pius X1 and Pius XII?
In Catholics and Sex one of the members of that commission, Patty Crowley, describes how the feelings of her colleagues changed over a long series of meetings, from an initial position of reluctance to tamper with the traditional teaching prohibiting each and every use of any kind of contraceptive device to a recognition by all but four members of the 60-strong commission that the deeper understanding of the nature of married love which had been one of the outstanding fruits of the renewal of the church's life fostered by the Vatican Council opened the way to change.
No-one could be sure what Paul would do. He had confessed to a journalist, pointing to the mass of papers on the matter piled high on his desk, "it is easier to study than to decide".
In the end, of course, he rejected the advice of the majority of his commission; there was to be no change. Perhaps he had no real choice. What's striking, though, is not the entirely predictable fact that many people were so hurt and disappointed, but how many well-informed people in good standing with the church, including, by some accounts, Cardinal Heenan of Westminster, were surprised by Humanae Vitae.
Talking heads
IN the remainder of the programme, a series of talking heads puts the case for and against the church's official teaching, discussing its implications for the third world, and how far its widespread rejection has eroded the church's authority amongst previously unquestionably loyal Catholics. This difficult ground is covered with admirable clarity and with a reasonable stab at "balance"—though you're left in little doubt where the programme maker's sympathies lie. The smooth American theologians, the former priests, the transparently sincere and decent young religious, the bright and attractive French couple: the critics arc relaxed and at home in front of the cameras.
The official line is put over by a stuffy, headmasterly voice reading out the relevant passages from Catholic Truth Society pamphlets; it's left to the bishop of Arundel and Brighton to gently hint that the church's teaching can only be understood as part of a wider vision of the meaning and purpose of human life and love.
The film has its lighter moments. A chirpy East Coast father describes how with the help of a perforated condom, an early morning car ride and a clever local gynaecologist he and his wife succeeded in overcoming their infertility problem while staying on the right side of the church's teaching. Mum, dad and daughter are shown at home watching the ensuing birth on video to great amusement.
Pelvic zone
AFTER I'd seen Catholics and Sex on the video machine in her office, the film's producer, Pat Holland, took me out to dinner. I doubted she'd found it easy to generate enthusiasm for her project amongst the church's official spokesmen, and guessed she was rather wearied from inconclusive meetings with camera-shy theologians.
She admitted it hadn't been the easiest film she'd ever made. Rather to her own surprise, though, she'd found herself deeply impressed by many of the priests and nuns she had met while filming. "I kept thinking, even when I found it impossible to agree with some of the things they were saying, with such people in it, the church must have a good future."
The most frequently voiced complaint in Catholics and Sex is that the church is obsessed with sex; it has made the mistake, as one of the American theologians interviewed put it, of "overinvestment in the pelvic zone".
In my own experience of
the sermons and private counsel of priests, I can hardly recall a mention of sex or the regulation of births. The rules of omerta seem to surround the subject. Perhaps the obsession with sex lies, not with the church, but with those who report on it. A priest working at an AIDS hospice in London told me the story of a major conference on AIDS he had attended in Dublin last year. As well as workers with patients and their families and friends from Britain and Ireland, there were many missionaries and overseas voluntary workers who brought heart-breaking reports of the most terrible devastation wrought by the spread of the HIV virus in Africa.
It was an extraordinary meeting, culminating in a press conference at which the speakers passionately reiterated the urgency of the crisis and the need for everyone in the church to work to relieve the suffering. The next day the newspapers reported that at a conference in Dublin a Roman Catholic nun had approved the use of condoms as a means of controlling the spread of the HIV virus.