Catholics say church should chill on condom use

The Maltese Catholic archdiocese has been given a new snapshot of a flock that is not as dogmatic as the church may wish it to be, confirming that many Maltese are indeed ‘à la carte’ Catholics.

Subjects like marital breakdown, gay unions, contraception and other issues on sexual and moral probity reveal that Maltese families are less at home with the Church of fire and brimstone, and instead want a more tolerant outlook on gay people, children born out of wedlock, and birth control.

Despite being issued late in the day in Malta after Pope Francis’s decision in 2013 to canvass the world’s archdioceses, the Church think-tank Discern (Institute for Research on the Signs of the Times) got over 7,000 responses.

It conceded that the Vatican questionnaire suffered “serious handicaps”, in part because it was couched in a theological language that was inaccessible to believers uninitiated in theology and philosophy.

But the new ‘signs’ perhaps show just how much Malta’s Catholic families have changed.

The majority of a preliminary sample of 1,590 respondents (72.5%) claimed they are not very familiar with the “teaching on the family in the Bible and by the Church”.

But while 69.7% said they accept and try to follow the Church’s teaching on family life, 44.3% reported finding it difficult to do so.

The challenges are many, but the main gripes are familiar to believers: family planning, namely the Church’s ban on contraception (15.8%); the pressures of contemporary culture (7.9%); and on the lower scale, out-dated teachings (3.1%) and “contradictory” solutions on marital sexual problems (2.5%).

An interesting insight is what Catholics say what they think non-Catholics contest in their religion – in itself a critical self-reflection: again, 12% say it’s birth control, 10.6% and another 7.2% mentioned ‘divorce’ and ‘marriage indissolubility’, and 6.2% say it’s the Church’s teaching on sexuality.

Altogether, 51.3% said the Church’s teaching “on sexuality in general, its position on abortion/euthanasia, divorce, birth control, heterosexual marriages and the refusal to give Holy Communion to cohabiting couples/civilly married/divorced and remarried” are contested by non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics.

However, non-Catholics and lapsed Catholics are then seen to accept the Church’s teaching on family unity and faithful love (18.3%).

35.3% said they found the “concept of natural law” – a common element in Catholic moral thought – to be incomprehensible, making it “a useless concept in any form of general catechesis”.

However, 62.5% accepted that the union of men and women to set up a family was “based on natural law”. One-fourth of respondents refrained from answering this question.

Cohabitation, annulment and civil unions

When asked how cohabitating couples feel about their situation vis-à-vis the Church, 28.7% said that these people feel that “while God understands them, the Church does not”.

9.2% think that cohabiting couples feel excluded, but 12.5% of said cohabiting couples were misunderstood by the Church but not excluded; 15% however said they “feel that they love and God still loves them.”

Respondents also believed that divorced and remarried people wish to receive Holy Communion: 31.9% think that “quite a few” have this desire, while 18.7% think that “many” have this desire, and 14.5% think that “a few” share this sentiment. Besides this, 13.5% think that “many”, and 24.8% think that “quite a few”, and 17.2% are of the opinion that “a few” divorced and remarried have concluded that there is nothing wrong to keep receiving Holy Communion.

The study indicated that 75% think that if the Ecclesiastical Tribunal hastened the process of marital annulments, it would help persons whose first marriage has failed.

More than a quarter of respondents (26.6%) said the Church has either a negative attitude or directly opposed civil unions, while 8.2% said the Church objected “to a law equating civil unions with marriage and the adoption of children by gay couples”.

Some argue that since the Church did not raise any public objection to the present Maltese law which gives the right to singles – without distinction with regard their sexual orientation – hence she should not find any objection to gay couples to have the same right.

Birth control

43.7% of respondents said that they know what the encyclical Humanae Vitae – a seminal treatise for Catholics on questions of sexual reproduction – while 44.5% admitted that they do not know.

“The ethical problems related to family size are strongly felt…. As a result, 81.1% of the population thinks that Church should study deeper the issue of responsible birth control. Those who said that the Church should not do this amounted to 5.5% and 6.9% replied that they do not know; while the percentage of those who refrained from answering this question amounted to 6.6%.”

This result is confirmed by the fact that 21.1% say that in Malta and Gozo the Church’s teaching about responsible birth control is not accepted by the faithful in our country; while 56.2% do not think that the faithful are accepting this teaching. The percentage of those who say that the Church’s teaching is accepted in the Maltese islands amounts only to 7.9%. Again the percentage of those who ignored this question was as low as 5.2%.

On a personal level, 49% said that they accept and live according to the Church’s teaching about responsible birth control, but find it difficult to follow, and 25.3% do not agree with the Church on this issue.

But while 40% could not specify natural methods of contraception, 31.3% said that the Church promotes the safe period. “Given the Church’s teaching as regards procreation, 21.0% said that this problem is keeping the faithful away from the Sacrament of Reconciliation, while 32.1% said that people go to confession but they do not confess anything related to procreation, because in conscience they think that there’s no need to confess it.”

More than three-fourths (77.9%) were aware of the differences between the Church’s teaching and civic education on condoms.

Society becoming more ‘liquid’

There is also a nostalgic reaction from the people of Discern to the data. For example, it laments “the days when the Maltese family could meet for meals and afterwards to pray the rosary.” Instead it claims that all rest and leisure is taking place in individualised spaces, and similarly so has religion been relegated to a private rather familial space.

“For centuries religion was a veritable sacred canopy covering all aspect in Malta: it was the main, if not the only, philosophy of life. When religious tenets started to be challenged, doubted or ignored, the foundations of Maltese society started shifting,” Discern says.

Discern concedes however that church parishes focus their teaching on the family “mainly on monogamy, fidelity, indissolubility, contraception, abortion and extra- and pre-marital sex.”

“Although the sacramentality of marriage was frequently mentioned, grace was hardly ever mentioned. This makes one doubt what the Maltese understand by the sacrament of marriage,” Discern said, before suggesting that all the Maltese understand of marriage is spousal equality and having children.

It also accepted that birth-control was a big issue for Catholics, but it blamed “a postmodern philosophy according that ‘anything goes’, individualism coupled with relativism” as ingredients in the waning interest in the faith. Materialism, consumption, and negative influence from the media, also got a mention.

“The Church language came under attack as being non-communicative… this difficult philosophical and theological language was epitomised by the question which referred to natural law.”

On civil unions, Discern said it was clear that there was a divide between the official teachings on sexual morality and people’s sexual life, above all when it comes to pre-marital sex, cohabitation, and birth-control.  “While natural method of birth limitation is known to be acceptable by the Church by at least 31%, contraception remains a bone of contention.”