Review

Reviewed Work(s): Turning Point: The Inside Story of the Papal Birth Control
Commission, and How Humanae Vitae Changed the Life of Patty Crowley and the Future
of the Church by Robert McClory
Review by: Thomas K. Burch
Source: Population and Development Review, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Dec., 1995), pp. 882-885
Published by: Population Council
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2137780
Accessed: 01-04-2019 12:46 UTC

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 882 BOOK REVIEWS

there no colonial period in the twentieth century and no World War II giving rise
to the ideals and internationalism of the United Nations and its charter? Western
values and traditions are an important part of this, but so also are the values and
traditions-including democratic traditions-of many non-Western countries. And
are Western values so consistently committed to democracy and human rights, as
this presentation seeks to claim? Many readers, Western and non-Western alike, are
likely to be left wondering about what new tyrannies such perspectives could bring.

Deputy Executive Director, Programmes, UNICEF, RICHARD JOLLY

and Visiting Fellow, Woodrow Wilson School,
Princeton University

Notes

The opinions in this review are those of the 1 See Tables 4.5 and 4.6, African Social and
author alone, not necessarily shared by Economic Trends, 1994 Annual Report of the Glo-
UNICEF. bal CoalitionforAfrica (Washington, D.C., 1995).

ROBERT MCCLORY
Turning Point: The Inside Story of the Papal Birth Control Commission, and Ho
Hunanae Vitae Changed the Life of Patty Crowley and the Future of the Churc
New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1995. xiv + 202 p. $19.95.

The Pontifical Commission for the Study of Population, Family and Births (which
met between 1963 and 1966) is not well known. Its existence, membership, and
operations were always secret de jure, and in the early meetings secret in fact. In
the end, its work was rejected by the Vatican, with no further acknowledgment,
public or private. As Patty Crowley, a leading lay member, complains: "We never
even got a letter of thanks from the Vatican."
The full story of the Commission may never be known. Most of the principals
are dead. Hardly any survive who know the full story (especially the high-level
maneuverings in Rome that led to the Pope's uncompromising reaffirmation of
the old teaching on contraception). The best-informed, Carlo Colombo, personal
theologian to Pope Paul VI (not to be confused with his brother, demographer
Bernardo Colombo, also a Commission member) left no public statement before
his recent death. The voluminous files on the Commission's work (as well as those
of the Pope, Cardinal Ottaviani, and others) presumably lie somewhere in the
Vatican's archives, but there is no "freedom of information act" in the Church.
The documentary record may remain buried for a long time, if not forever.
Patty Crowley-with her late husband, Pat, a long-time leader of the Chris-
tian Family Movement in the United States and one of the three married couples
appointed as such (rather than as theological or scientific experts)-felt that the
story of the Commission should be told again while at least a few of the partici-

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 BOOK REvIEws 883

pants were still alive. She interested journalist Robert McClory in the project, under-
taken with support from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
In addition to Patty Crowley, McClory interviewed another of the member
couples, Laurent and Colette Potvin from Montreal, John Marshall (English phy-
sician and "rhythm" expert), the Philippine demographer Mercedes Concepcion, and
myself. It is not clear whether he sought the cooperation of the few other surviving
members. He has studied what documents are extant and available, along with pub-
lished materials, notably Robert B. Kaiser's 1985 book The Politics of Sex and Religion
(Kaiser was Newsweek correspondent in Rome during the Second Vatican Council).
The result is a highly readable account not only of the Commission itself, but
of the whole brief but crucial period in the development of Roman Catholic teach-
ing on sex, marriage, the family, contraception, and population. It covers related
events at the Second Vatican Council, the publication of the encyclical Humanae
Vitae (1968), and the aftermath of "that horrible document" (my description, ac-
curately quoted). The account strikes me as remarkably faithful to the events, as
well as to the "feel" of the Commission as I remember it, in both its human and
intellectual dimensions.
The story of the Commission is replete with ironies. Early on, we viewed it as
an expression of great openness on the part of the Vatican: here they were asking
scientists (including social scientists), doctors (including psychiatrists), and lay per-
sons-not just priests and theologians-what we thought of Church teaching on
contraception. From a perspective of over 30 years, one can see more clearly that
the shunting of the contraception issue from Vatican Council II to the Commis-
sion (established earlier for quite different purposes) was an act of autocratic pa-
pal power, exercised in secret-denying the assembled hundreds of cardinals and
bishops of the Second Vatican Council free discussion and decision on the matter.
As McClory rightly suggests, had the Council been given free rein, the Catholic
Church might well have given practical acceptance to modern contraceptives in
the mid- 1960s. Openness of a sort, but also business as usual.
The events surrounding the third meeting of the Commission, in June 1964,
have always struck me as odd. We were summoned to an emergency meeting
("you are urgently requested to do the impossible to attend"). The Vatican felt it
necessary to make some public statement, especially on the "pill," and our advice
was sought. The group voted virtually unanimously that when used simply as a
contraceptive, the pill was not morally acceptable. Paul VI could have said: "I have
thought long and hard about this matter, and sought the advice of an interna-
tional group of theologians and scientific experts working on the issues for nearly
two years, and I must conclude that the use of the 'pill' is not in accord with Catholic
morality, etc." Instead, he said, in effect: You must accept the past teaching for
now, until and unless I see fit to change it. His statement implied the possibility of
substantial change, the very thing ultra-conservative theologians and churchmen
have fought so hard to deny, then and since. With this statement, the cat was
further out of the bag. McClory paints a picture of Paul VI as personally divided
and perplexed by the issue, probably an accurate picture.
With the publication of Humanae Vitae many of us associated with the Com-
mission felt that it had been an abject failure and a waste of time. Nearly 30 years
later, I find myself taking a more positive view. In fact, the Commission did ex-

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 884 BOOK REVIEWS

actly what we were told it was supposed to do-to undertake an open and search-
ing reexamination of the official Catholic condemnation of contraception, with no
a priori assumptions or restrictions. The success of the Commission on this score
was due in no small part to its Secretary, Henri de Riedmatten, a Swiss Dominican
monk, Vatican Representative to international social and economic organizations,
a brilliant linguist, and a warm and fun-loving human being. His instructions had
been to have the Commission examine the issues with complete honesty and open-
ness, not trying to second-guess "le haut autorite," and he never let the group
deviate from this mission. Given the pressures that must have come his way as the
group edged ever closer to a strong reform position, it is a testimony to his diplo-
matic and administrative skill and to his consummate integrity that the Commis-
sion did not cave in to the counterattacks of the conservative faction that eventu-
ally won out in the Vatican. In a very real sense, de Riedmatten was the Commission.
McClory's book does not adequately depict the man or his crucial role, but that is
the common fate of selfless civil servants, sacred or secular.
What the Commission showed was that when a large and broadly representa-
tive group of loyal Catholics were brought together to examine the issue of con-
traception from all possible angles and without preconceptions, the majority sooner
or later came to favor a reversal of the Church's stern and uncompromising posi-
tion. What McClory's book shows is that this emerging "consensus of the faithful"
was overturned by Paul VI, at the insistence of a group of arch-conservative theo-
logians with a strong power base within the Vatican (see Chapter 14, "The undo-
ing of the Commission"). One cannot read inner motives, of course, but I shall
never cease to marvel at the intellectual vanity of John Ford, American Jesuit
theologian from Catholic University, and his apparent fear and rage at the thought
that his past teachings might become outmoded.
In her foreword to the book, Sidney Callahan, Catholic philosopher and lay
theologian, asks, "Is the Church to be run like a monarchy, or like a community of
believers who constitute the people of God?" The events chronicled in McClory's
book suggest an answer. If it looks like a monarchy, speaks like a monarchy, and
acts like a monarchy....
The events of the mid-1960s represented a turning point for many individual
Catholics, clergy and laypersons alike. They represented a potential turning point
for the official Church, but it chose not to make the turn. Instead, then and since,
Rome and the hierarchy (systematically selected by John Paul II for their "political
correctness" on contraception) have reaffirmed and deepened the definition of the
Church as the religion of opposition to contraception (except periodic continence),
to contraceptive sterilization, to abortion for whatever reason, to divorce (but not
Church annulments, which have risen in parallel with divorce rates), to a married
clergy, to the ordination of women to the priesthood, and, when all is said and
done, to ordinary sexual behavior seen as a basic human need. Whether this will
change eventually is hard to say.
The stance of Roman Catholic official representatives to the Cairo World Popu-
lation Conference (1994) shows no evidence of change. The substance and spirit
of the Church's position there were of a piece with Humanae Vitae, which in turn
was of a piece with Castii Connubii, Pius XI's 1930 encyclical condemning contra-
ception. McClory and Crowley, as committed Catholics, express hope for future

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 BOOK REVIEWS 885

change. As a sociologist and now an outside observer of the Church, I am less

sanguine. The Vatican has dug a very deep hole for itself. Barring another charis-
matic pope like John XXIII, I would expect change to be slow. It will come only
when the official Church realizes that just as the meaning of money is not what it
was in the thirteenth century, so with low mortality and a world population ap-
proaching 6 billion, the meaning of human reproduction is not what it was then,
or even as late as the nineteenth century. Effective fertility control is necessary in
the modern world. To ban all but one means to this end (periodic continence, a
means of limited practical effectiveness) is as inappropriate as the banning of all
interest charges (formerly condemned as "usury") in a contemporary economy.
But the well-known quote from Max Planck applies also to Roman Catholic
moral teaching: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its oppo-
nents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually
die." Perhaps the next generation of Vatican officials will see things more clearly
and simply.

Population Studies Centre THOMAS K. BURCH

University of Western Ontario

BETSY HARTMANN
Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control (Revised
Edition)
Boston: South End Press, 1995. xxii + 388 p. $40.00; $16.00 (pbk.).

As is suggested by its title, Betsy Hartmann's Reproductive Rights and Wrongs (the
first edition of which was reviewed in PDR's September 1987 issue) portrays third
world population-control programs in a none too flattering light. These programs,
Hartmann argues, are dangerous to women's health and human rights; they pro-
mote the use of unhealthy contraceptives and often do so coercively. The "popu-
lation establishment," Hartmann argues, has generally got it wrong. Instead of blam-
ing poverty, failed development, famine, environmental degradation, and other
social ills on social inequality and greed, it has constructed an ideology in which
rapid population growth is the primary culprit. The coercive control of women's
fertility is thus justified by this ideology, as is the use of contraceptive methods
deemed effective even if unsafe for some users. In a somewhat contradictory stance,
Hartmann further implies that, despite their coercive nature, population programs
are ultimately doomed to failure because they do nothing to alleviate the underly-
ing problems of which high fertility is, she claims, merely a symptom: poverty and
inequality. Thus, in her analysis, the attempt to force poor women to reduce their
fertility in order to enjoy a better life is one of the twentieth century's biggest
swindles. The empowerment of women and "bottom-up" development programs
are, she argues, the only strategies that will lower fertility and improve women's
(and men's) lives.

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