Tag: Brides of Christ

This post was originally published on July 2nd, 2012…like many of Carol’s other posts, it is eerily poignant for today.

Watching the last episode of the Australian series Brides of Christ in which Catherine leaves the sisterhood of the convent because of her disagreement with Humanae Vitae brought me right back to the Yale Roman Catholic chapel and the folk mass I attended regularly.  In 1968 just after the publication of Humanae Vitae, priest and co-graduate student Bob Imbelli preached a sermon on the doctrine of conscience, arguing that though it was incumbent on Catholics to think carefully about the papal encyclical on birth control, it was also the responsibility of every Catholic to follow her or his conscience on the matter.  In the episode, Sister Catherine encourages a Roman Catholic mother of six who has already self-induced more than one abortion to take the pill, but the woman decides she cannot go against the church’s teachings.  Catherine allows an editorial against Humanae Vitae to be published in the school newspaper even though she knows it will probably lead to the expulsion of one of her favorite students.

Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Of Human Life*”

Watching the last episode of the Australian series Brides of Christ in which Catherine leaves the sisterhood of the convent because of her disagreement with Humanae Vitae brought me right back to the Yale Roman Catholic chapel and the folk mass I attended regularly.  In 1968 just after the publication of Humanae Vitae, priest and co-graduate student Bob Imbelli preached a sermon on the doctrine of conscience, arguing that though it was incumbent on Catholics to think carefully about the papal encyclical on birth control, it was also the responsibility of every Catholic to follow her or his conscience on the matter.  In the episode, Sister Catherine encourages a Roman Catholic mother of six who has already self-induced more than one abortion to take the pill, but the woman decides she cannot go against the church’s teachings.  Catherine allows an editorial against Humanae Vitae to be published in the school newspaper even though she knows it will probably lead to the expulsion of one of her favorite students.

I had forgotten that Pope Paul VI issued the prohibition on birth control against the clear majorities of the Roman Catholic commissions instructed to study the matter.  In the episode, Sister Catherine, told by her bishop that she can no longer express her own opinions on birth control, tries to explain to her students that Roman Catholics cannot use birth control because it is against “natural law.”  This provokes one of the students to ask if people are not supposed to use birth control because animals don’t use it.  This question sparked an “ah-ha” moment for me.  Hmm, I thought, while “man” has invented birth control, “women” cannot use it because we are meant to remain “like the animals.” This debate really is about the question of whether women are human! Continue reading “Of Human Life* By Carol P. Christ”