In Evangelium Vitae (1995), Pope Saint John Paul II places contraception alongside of abortion, calling both of them “fruits of the same tree.” (13) The allusion to a tree takes us back to the Book of Genesis. There is an exchange there between the woman Eve and the serpent. The serpent asks the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” (Genesis 3:1) Eve answers, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.” (Genesis 3:2-3)

The forbidden fruit of Genesis is enough to tell us that we are dealing with sin. The Bible teaches us plainly that sin opposes God. That stricture ought to be sufficient for us to avoid what alienates us from God, but we don’t just live in our heads. Our desires overwhelm us at times, and we succumb to temptation. We give in to concupiscence.

From the earliest times (The Didache, c. 90 AD), contraception has been regarded as sinful. Until 1930 and the Lambeth Conference, the Christian witness against contraception had been universal. Later in the twentieth century, along came the Sexual Revolution and the Pill. To borrow a term from Peter Berger (d. 2017), an influential sociologist, the sacred canopy had just been cracked. At first, there was pushback against the Sexual Revolution and the Pill. It came with the encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968), and the dominant reaction to it at the time was severe criticism. How could the Church be so retrograde? Why does the Church always get in the way of progress?

There is a point, still in that early part of the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, where the Holy Father posits an even deeper relation between contraception and abortion. And it would be that “the pro-abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church’s teaching on contraception is rejected.” (13) Not only are contraception and abortion fruits of the same tree as cited above, but one evil follows on the heels of the other. JPII knew this not through survey research the way some sociologists would, but as a philosopher whose own ground-breaking theology of the body helped to point a new way forward for the Church’s teaching on sexuality.

In late 1983, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin delivered a lecture at Fordham University introducing what would become known as the “consistent ethic of life.” It had only been six months since the American Bishops approved and published their pastoral letter The Challenge of Peace. What the Cardinal sought to do in his address was show how the sanctity of life was at stake in more than just one issue, that one issue being abortion.

In the address, Bernardin argued that a direct attack on life in the womb is similar to a direct attack on civilian population centers with a nuclear missile. In both instances, there is the intentional loss of human life. Both are obviously always wrong. There were also passing references in the address to hunger, homelessness, undocumented immigrants, and even to human rights in U.S. foreign policy in Central America. There are, he said, multiple issues having “an inner relationship” to each other. With that “inner relationship,” the pro-life position must be seen as much bigger than abortion, say the proponents of the consistent ethic of life approach.

Contraception however was never mentioned – even with its very clear “inner relationship” to abortion. (It’s not mentioned in the DDF Declaration “Infinite Dignity,” just released Monday either.) Last year, an attempt was made to rehabilitate the consistent ethic of life by Cardinal Blaise Cupich, like Bernardin a Chicago archbishop. Cupich, once again at Fordham University, tried to make the case to expand the “life issues” – this time to include “climate change.” In an apparent attempt to show the interrelatedness of issues, Cardinal Cupich claimed that there are “climate change refugees.” In the end though, as with Bernardin, there was no acknowledgment of the moral harm in contraception with Cupich’s lecture.

What are we to make of a consistent ethic of life which is silent on contraception? A few things come to mind.

• First, it would seem an embarrassment for most Catholics that the Church has the “wrong position” on contraception. After all, we don’t want to disappoint our new friends who think we have finally “seen the light” by dropping our opposition to contraception, and realizing at long last that other issues make a claim on us at least as much as abortion does.
• Second, it is hard to fend off the very real perception that politicking is more important than moral analysis when the consistent ethic of life is employed. It is better to lock arms in support of a party platform than it is to present an articulate and compelling defense for the sources of life.
• Third, there must be encouragement for an effective grassroots movement in favor of a cultural recoil from smothering the sources of life, and an advancement of the personal acceptance of the ministerial use of the sources of life as indicated by Pope Saint Paul VI in Humanae Vitae. (13) Just as I am not the master of my own fate, I must surrender unto God’s design found in nature itself to attain a true self-mastery.

The consistent ethic of life lacks consistency until we admit that the threats to human life start not with social problems outside of ourselves, but in acts of the will that betray an excessive self-love. Sin here is not in the absence of love, but in disordered affection. To live well is to love well. Contraception is never loving well.

Consistency regarding threats to human life behooves us not to overlook the very act of transmitting life itself. There we might find a “first fault, our own first fault” which sadly chips away at what the Lord has endowed with beauty and integrity from the beginning.