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To work for the proper implementation of canon law is to play an extraordinarily constructive role in continuing the redemptive mission of Christ. Pope John Paul II |
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Resolution 1152 x 864 |
Updated 3 jan 2013 |
Contraception and Divorce: Insights from American Annulment Cases |
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Edward Peters, "Contraception and divorce: Insights form American annulment cases", Couple to Couple League Family Foundations (Nov-Dec 1998) 28-29. |
Because canon law requires ecclesiastical judges to determine whether there is any reasonable prospect of reconciling estranged couples before hearing their annulment cases (1983 CIC 1676), petitions for declarations of matrimonial nullity are rarely accepted by diocesan tribunals unless the civil divorce of the parties is final. Thus, regardless of whether the annulment is later granted, the divorce itself, and the myriad of sufferings consequent to divorce, is certain. Now, even if one accepts, as I do, that the great majority of annulment cases in America are being decided correctly (albeit sometimes ineptly), there is little good news contained within the soaring annulment statistics which are in turn based partly on soaring divorce rates.
However,
even those who dispute the results reached in American annulment cases or the
analytical methods used to reach those results cannot dispute the facts
that are presented for adjudication in annulment cases. Facts are facts, and the
facts in post-divorce annulments cases—concerning things like family history,
the conduct of the parties before marriage, and the chronology of marriage
collapse—are reliably ascertained by tribunal judges before being interpreted
in light of canon law. But if the facts being presented in annulment cases
portend little good news for society, they might still contain some important
news, important, at least, to those who wish to take a more proactive stand
against the disintegration of marriage and family life.
Every tribunal judge knows the high
frequency of annulment cases with histories inclusive of such things as parental
divorce, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, pre-marital promiscuity,
abortion, and so on, and sociologists can demonstrate the huge increases in such
factors today over, say, the typical young adult attempting marriage in 1965. But while it is the
province of canon law to assess carefully the degree to which such factors might
constitute obstacles to marriage or might otherwise negatively impact one’s consent
to marriage in particular cases, surely it is a pastoral imperative to recognize
and respond to the prevalence of such deleterious factors among people
attempting marriage today, that is, people similar to those whose marriages we know
have ended in divorce, again, regardless of whether those failed marriages are
ever declared canonically null.
In this essay, I wish simply to highlight
another factor that tribunals commonly see among divorced persons, even if some
tribunal judges might not have yet noticed just how often they encounter it.
That factor is contraception. The antithesis which contraception poses to
marriage is so serious and so common
that responding to it vigorously should be among our highest pastoral
priorities. As a first step for such response, though, one needs to recognize the prevalence of
contraception among failed marriages.
According to various studies, the lowest
reasonable estimate of contraceptive use among Americans seems to be around 85%,
with Catholics being statistically indistinguishable from the population at
large. But among those divorced
persons, Catholic or otherwise, coming before a diocesan tribunal as part of an
annulment case, my estimate is that some form of contraception was used during
all or a significant part of the failed marriage (and commonly, well before the
wedding) in 99% of the cases. Granted, many of the annulment petitions I see,
because they turn on issues unrelated to matters potentially linked to contraception, might
be vague on the contraceptive aspect of the relationship, and so I infer its use
from other things in the case. But I am reasonably confident that a
contraception-specific inquiry into typical annulment cases would yield a result
at or very close to the figure asserted above.
One can and should, of course, question
whether the high correlation between contraception and divorce proposed above,
even if proven scientifically, is significant. After all, I imagine 99% of
divorced people have driver’s licenses, or eat meat twice a week, or were born
within three weeks of their due date, and so on, yet none of these factors would
seem to be related in any way to their eventual divorce, to say nothing of the
possible canonical nullity of their marriage. On the other hand, none of these
other factors has been the subject of a clear and constant Church warning about
the destructive nature of such activities to individual holiness and happiness
in marriage. Contraception, obviously, has been the subject of such warnings numerous times and now, it
seems, there might some numerical support for establishing a link between it and
marriage failure.
To be sure, moreover, there are a host of
other factors which, if present between a couple, could well contribute to their
eventual divorce and which, if proven, would be relevant in any subsequent
annulment case, factors such as pre-wedding suicide attempts, abortions, drug
abuse, and so on. But, these factors, however destructive they are in individual
cases, are much less common among the divorced than is contraception. In my
experience, no single factor as directly and as gravely injurious to marriage as
taught by Church occurs nearly as frequently in the histories of those who
eventually divorce as does contraception. This applies whether the case involves
non-Catholics, who could hardly be expected to know of the Church’s teaching
against contraception, or Catholics, toward whom there have been precious few
concerted efforts to promote and defend the Church’s teaching on this matter
for over 30 years. Ignorance, not ill-will, may be the deadly, but eminently
remediable, evil at work here.
I
can, in any event, support my assertion of a significant contraception-divorce
link from yet another angle. After a decade of working on annulment cases, I
have studied some 1,500 marriage and divorce histories, probably more. Yet, I
can only recall only one, maybe two,
cases where Natural Family Planning, as opposed to some form of artificial contraception,
was seriously tried by the parties prior to their divorce, and at most one or
two other cases where it was even considered. This kind of figure, of which I am
very confident, should be read in light of numerous studies published by the
Couple to Couple League and others which demonstrate that regular
practitioners of NFP have remarkably, some might say astoundingly, low divorce
rates. If a correlation between contraceptive use and eventual divorce is not
beginning to emerge here, I don’t know where it would.
Of course, proponents of NFP cannot claim that avoiding contraception, by itself, prevents divorce, nor can I conclude that using contraception, standing alone, results in divorce--let alone in the canonical nullity of the failed marriage. But neither can I prove that every child who plays in discarded refrigerators is trapped or killed, or that every child who avoids old refrigerators grows up healthy and happy. That does not excuse us from doing all in our power to keep people away from such practices.
Personally, I do not think the decision
to use contraception causes the
decision to divorce. Rather, I think the choice to contracept is the fruit of
the same mentality that so often eventually prompts the decision to divorce,
especially when contraceptive use predates the wedding. The fundamental
self-centeredness (whether morally imputable to the individual or not) of
contraception, the grave ignorance about the ends of natural, to say nothing of
Christian, marriage which it betrays, the specific attitudes toward children
which it evidences, all of these factors are consistent with a predisposition
for divorce. Moreover, each of these factors in turn raises real questions about
the quality of consent to marriage which was purportedly exchanged between the
couple who later divorced, which is what I believe makes contraception relevant
to, though not dispositive of, annulment cases.
But
if contraception and divorce are stems from the same root, as it were,
contraception (or the willingness to contracept) necessarily appears before the
divorce, and very often it is manifest before the wedding. That simple fact
could provide a basis for proactive intervention on the part of pastoral
advisors or personal counselors. The presence of contraception or contraceptive
intent could serve as warning that a given marriage is in trouble, perhaps even
before the couple themselves are aware of it, and it could certainly provide a
basis for putting the brakes on the plans of yet another couple to enter
marriage with obvious contraceptive plans, regardless of whether such intentions
would be sufficient, standing alone, to declare the canonical nullity the
marriage. In brief, if my assertions regarding the link between contraception
and divorce are verified—and such research, given the controversial nature of
the topic, would have to be reliably
conducted before being accepted—would it not be a grave pastoral disservice to
avoid discussing the destructive nature of contraception in a deliberate way
with those already in or preparing for marriage and, even better, with those not
yet committed to a wedding?
By
way of conclusion, permit this personal aside: although I was mercifully spared
the “rejection of religion” phase which so many of my peers suffered in the
1970s, I certainly passed through a period of indifference toward the Faith and
enjoyed the kind of mild contempt toward its “relevance” that omniscient adolescence bestows on most
things older than itself. In college, however, I was exposed to students and
professors who treated the Catholic Church as a serious institution meant to
make a real difference in people’s lives. Step by step, I felt myself being
compelled to recognize the wisdom of Catholicism, until I confronted the issue
of contraception. I knew little about it then and had no vested interest in the
debate either way; but surely, I felt, the Church was out-manned and out-gunned
on this one. After real study and real prayer, and most of all, after
God’s graces, the Humanae vitae
light bulb finally came on for me. I can still recall laying the text down and
saying aloud to myself “My God, if the Church is right about contraception, it
could be right about anything.” Since that day I have been repeatedly struck
by depth of truth that supports the Church’s teaching against contraception
and the importance of that teaching for healthy marriage and society. Certainly
nothing in tribunal work has ever caused me to doubt this point.
So, the Church, and a few other voices, are right about the bane of contraception. They are right about the beauty and soundness of Natural Family Planning. The “negative confirmation” of the Church’s teaching against contraception which I think can be verified by the experience of diocesan tribunals with divorced persons might not qualify as the silver lining to the annulment cloud, but it might provide some much needed rainfall on an earth parched for the truth below. Divorce rates among practitioners of NFP are demonstrably tiny. The frequency of contraceptive use among those divorcing is markedly elevated. One is not guilty of a post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy in concluding that serious NFP instruction should be required in every marriage preparation program. One is simply playing the odds.
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