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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2025
The Catholic Church notably condemns all forms of artificial birth control and advocates natural family planning as the only morally licit means of spacing births. This teaching is presented as the quintessential pathway to the fullness of human sexuality, but many Catholics struggle with it, and the magisterium itself recognizes that this path is not an easy one to follow. This article uses recent developments in Catholic moral theology around the notion of structural sin to examine the structural constraints complicating ordinary Catholics’ pursuit of their tradition’s vision for marital sexuality, demonstrating that larger structural forces can considerably affect the perceived viability of Catholic teaching on contraception. As a result, the article highlights the importance of linking Catholic sexual ethics and social ethics to provide a more credible vision for a more compassionate approach to married life.
1 Cathleen Kaveny has gone so far as to suggest that the Catholic opposition to contraception has become “a cultic norm that marks and defines Catholic identity” in much the same way that the observance of kosher laws marks Orthodox Jewish identity. Kaveny, Cathleen, “Catholic Kosher: Is the Ban on Contraception Just an Identity Marker?,” Commonweal 139, no. 11 (June 1 , 2012): .Google Scholar
2 John Noonan’s assertion that the Anglicans’ pronouncement in 1930 was not so much a watershed as a belated acknowledgment of a newly common practice among Christians, at least those in western European nations, provides a plausible explanation for why Roman Catholicism quickly found itself isolated in its opposition to artificial forms of birth control. Noonan, John T. Jr., Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Charles E. Curran, “Humanae Vitae and the sensus fidelium,” National Catholic Reporter (June 19–July 12, 2018), 6–7. The contested reception of the teaching on contraception has led to explicit debates about the authority of the teaching in light of the sensus fidelium. See Thiel, John E., “Tradition and Reasoning: A Nonfoundationalist Perspective,” Theological Studies 56, no 4 (December 1995): CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Smith, Janet E., “The Sensus Fidelium and Humanae Vitae,” Angelicum 83, no. 2 (2006): Google Scholar. Notably, the definition of the sensus fidelium is itself a contested theological question, which transcends any simplistic elision of the sensus fidelium with the extent of a particular teaching’s popular reception, even as the International Theological Commission acknowledges that the laity have a regular role to play in “the development of the moral teaching of the Church.” International Theological Commission, Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church (2014), §73; see also Charles, E. Curran and Lisa, A. Fullam, eds., The Sensus Fidelium and Moral Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 2017).Google Scholar
4 John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio (November 22, 1981), §32, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio.html. For more on the personal, spiritual, and even social benefits of the Catholic vision for marital sexuality that its advocates identify, see Hanlon Rubio, Julie, “Beyond the Liberal/Conservative Divide on Contraception: The Wisdom of Practitioners of Natural Family Planning and Artifical Birth Control,” Horizons 32, no. 2 (2005): Google Scholar. This official position, of course, has not been without contestation, even at the official level, as the Pontifical Commission on Population, Family and Birth convened by Pope John XXIII to study the question of contraception famously recommended a change in Catholic teaching on this issue in its so-called Majority Report. For the report and details surrounding its development, see Blair Kaiser, Robert, The Encyclical That Never Was: The Story of the Commission on Population, Family and Birth, 1964–66 (London: Sheed and Ward, 1987).Google Scholar
5 Familiaris Consortio, §33; see also Paul VI, Humanae Vitae (July 25, 1968), §25, http://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html.
6 Notably, scholars have engaged in a lively debate about the veracity of the first of these two magisterial claims (i.e., that the teachings of Humanae Vitae have genuine benefits for all people of good will), particularly in light of women’s varied experiences with natural family planning and artificial forms of birth control. For details of the debate, see Reimer-Barry, Emily, “On Women’s Health and Women’s Power: A Feminist Appraisal of Humanae Vitae,” Theological Studies 79, no. 4 (December 2018): CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Rubio, “Beyond the Liberal/Conservative Divide on Contraception.” For the sake of this article, we prescind from this debate and focus on the internal coherence of the magisterial teaching on its own terms to show its inherent intersections with other elements of Catholic theology, especially insights at the heart of Catholic social teaching.
7 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) §51, in Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:1104. Also available at https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html.
8 For a discussion of the interrelationship between structure and culture, see Daly, Daniel J., The Structures of Virtue and Vice (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021), 81–83.Google Scholar
9 As discussed in more detail in the following, the magisterial promotion of “responsible parenthood” found in Humanae Vitae and beyond primarily involves a careful and prayerful discernment of when and how many children a married couple is called to have, after accounting for a host of factors. In the magisterial vision, refraining from the use of prohibited forms of birth control is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the realization of responsible parenthood. Throughout this article, we refer to responsible parenthood in this technical sense, but wish to stress the more encompassing vision and not just the prohibition on artificial means of birth control.
10 Thus, in the discussions that led to the drafting of some of the Second Vatican Council’s documents, there is evidence of a resistance to the language of “social sin”—the broader category of negative social influences of which structural sin is now understood to be a specific manifestation—“lest the centrality of personal agency in formal sin be undermined.” Pfeil, Margaret, “Doctrinal Implications of Magisterial Use of the Language of Social Sin,” Louvain Studies 27, no. 2 (Summer 2002): , at 134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Pfeil, “Doctrinal Implications of Magisterial Use of the Language of Social Sin,” 136–38.
12 John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (December 2, 1984), §16, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-paenitentia.html; John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (December 30, 1987), §§36–40, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-rei-socialis.html.
13 John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §36.
14 Most efforts focused on the process by which sinful social structures were constructed and maintained. For various theological interpretations of the location of personal moral agency between these two poles, see Kenneth R. Himes, “Social Sin and the Role of the Individual,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 6 (1986): 183–218, esp. 185–87; McKenna, Joseph H., “The Possibility of Social Sin,” Irish Theological Quarterly 60, no. 2 (June 1994) CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Daly, Daniel J., “Structures of Virtue and Vice,” New Blackfriars 92, no. 1039 (May 2011): .CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 Daly, The Structures of Virtue and Vice, 33.
16 Finn is quite attentive to this concern, establishing a respect for freedom as one of the four theological criteria that must be preserved if theologians wish to employ insights from the social sciences. In addition to this non-deterministic view of influences on freedom, the other criteria yield an approach that is non-individualistic, non-collectivist, and non-empiricist in order to preserve the commitments of Catholic theological anthropology. Daniel K. Finn, “What Is a Sinful Social Structure?,” Theological Studies 77, no. 1 (March 2016): 136–64, at 142–44. These criteria are honored in the interpretation of the case studies following, where the critical realist account of the structures shaping these women’s experience are used to identify real though often invisible forces (non-empiricist) that make their choices in their marriages and families (non-individualistic) more complicated, even as those choices remain theirs to make (non-collectivist) as an expression of their real though constrained freedom (non-deterministic).
17 Finn, “What Is a Sinful Social Structure?,” 151.
18 Finn, “What Is a Sinful Social Structure?,” 151.
19 Finn, “What Is a Sinful Social Structure?,” 152–53.
20 Finn, “What Is a Sinful Social Structure?,” 151.
21 Finn, “What Is a Sinful Social Structure?,” 152.
22 Finn, “What Is a Sinful Social Structure?,” 151.
23 See, for example, Traina, Cristina L.H., “Papal Ideals, Marital Realities: One View from the Ground,” in Sexual Diversity and Catholicism: Toward the Development of Moral Theology, ed. Jung, Patricia B. and Coray, Joseph (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), Google Scholar; and Caffrey Bourg, Florence, “Multi-Dimensional Marriage Vocations and Responsible Parenthood,” in Leaving and Coming Home: New Wineskins for Catholic Sexual Ethics, ed. Cloutier, David (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010), .Google Scholar
24 Francis, Amoris Laetitia (March 19, 2016), §296, http://www.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en.pdf.
25 According to research on fertility-awareness based methods, such as NFP, upward of 20 percent of couples in other nations use fertility-based methods for family planning. Estimates for US rates vary from 1 to 4 percent. Pallone, Stephen R. and Bergus, George R., “Fertility Awareness-Based Methods: Another Option for Family Planning,” Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine 22, no. 2 (March–April 2009): CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Rubio, “Beyond the Liberal/Conservative Divide on Contraception,” 274n22; “Gutmacher Statistics on Catholic Women’s Contraceptive Use,” Gutmacher Institute, February 2012, https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2012/02/guttmacher-statistic-catholic-womens-contraceptive-use#:∼:text=Only%201%25%20of%20all%20women,sanctioned%20by%20the%20Catholic%20hierarchy.
26 In the original article, “GS” is offered as the only pseudonym for the woman whose experiences are shared in the blog post. To avoid any confusion with the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), all references to the conciliar text in this present article—which are exclusively in the notes—will be spelled out in full so that the original pseudonym can be preserved.
27 Scharen, Christian and Marie Vigen, Aana, “The Ethnographic Turn in Theology and Ethics,” in Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics, ed. Scharen, Christian and Vigen, Aana Marie (New York: Continuum, 2011), 28–46, at 28Google Scholar, quoting Geertz, Cliffort, The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1973)Google Scholar.
28 See, for example, Reimer-Barry, Emily, Catholic Theology of Marriage in the Era of HIV and AIDS: Marriage for Life (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015)Google Scholar; David Whitmore, Todd, “Crossing the Road: The Case for Ethnographic Fieldwork in Christian Ethics,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 27, no. 2 (fall/winter 2007): Google Scholar; Cuddeback-Gedeon, Lorraine, The Work of Inclusion: An Ethnography of Grace,Sin, and Intellectual Disability (New York: T&T Clark, 2023).Google Scholar
29 Emily Reimer-Barry, “The Listening Church: How Ethnography Can Transform Catholic Ethics,” in Scharen and Vigen, Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics, 97–117, at 99.
30 For Francis’s vision for moral theology, see Francis, Amoris Laetitia, §311; see also, Kelly, Conor M., “The Role of the Moral Theologian in the Church: A Proposal in Light of Amoris Laetitia,” Theological Studies 77, no. 4 (December 2016): .CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31 For additional accounts relaying similar struggles, see Jennifer Fulwiler, “Never Say Never, and Other Thoughts on Having More Kids,” personal blog, May 7, 2013, https://jenniferfulwiler.com/2013/05/never-say-never-and-other-thoughts-on-having-more-kids/; and the full series on NFP at Women in Theology, starting with Katie Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: Tell Us Your Stories,” Women in Theology, February 19, 2012, https://womenintheology.org/2012/02/19/women-speak-about-natural-family-planning-tell-us-your-stories/. Rubio’s discussion of Catholics who advocate for the practice of NFP and those who defend the use of artificial contraception both underscores the notion that two stories cannot exhaustively cover the breadth of a diverse tradition and corroborates the assertion that Kendra’s and GS’s struggles are hardly unique. See again Rubio, “Beyond the Liberal/Conservative Divide on Contraception.” With resepct to quantitative data, one challenge is the dearth of recent studies on NFP usage. Though well-designed studies occurred the 1980s, interest in this topic seems to have dropped off shortly thereafter.
32 For this Catholic description of the common good, see John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §38 (emphasis added).
33 Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §10.
34 Kendra Tierney, “Why I Don’t Do NFP,” Catholic All Year, May 9, 2013, https://catholicallyear.com/blog/why-i-dont-do-nfp/.
35 Tierney, “Why I Don’t Do NFP.”
36 Tierney, “Why I Don’t Do NFP.”
37 Tierney, “Why I Don’t Do NFP.”
38 Tierney, “Why I Don’t Do NFP.”
39 Tierney, “Why I Don’t Do NFP.”
40 Tierney, “Why I Don’t Do NFP.”
41 Kendra’s experience is representative insofar as earlier studies on NFP users noted that negative attitudes toward NFP were strongly correlated with couples’ decisions to abandon the practice, although in many of those cases, discontinuance typically meant starting a new form of (artificial) birth control. Daly, Kerry J. and Herold, Edward S., “Natural Family Planning: A Comparison on Continuers and Discontinuers,” Population and Environment 6, no. 4 (winter 1983): .CrossRefGoogle Scholar
42 Tierney, “Why I Don’t Do NFP.”
43 Although the challenges of charting through irregular cycles is not an uncommon experience, one study reported that it “is not an important factor in NFP use” or discontinuance. Daly and Herlod, “Natural Family Planning,” 239.
44 Kendra Tierney, “About,” Catholic All Year, 2020, https://catholicallyear.com/about.
45 Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §10.
46 Kendra Tierney, “A Vocation to Motherhood,” Catholic All Year, February 18, 2013, https://catholicallyear.com/blog/a-vocation-to-motherhood/.
47 Kendra Tierney, “Parenting with Authority,” Catholic All Year, March 5, 2013, https://catholicallyear.com/blog/parenting-with-authority/.
48 Seb Murray, “Business Schools Fight to Lure the Best Students,” Business Because, August 17, 2014, https://www.businessbecause.com/news/other-masters/2736/business-schools-fight-to-lure-the-best-students.
49 Outside the unique context of one of the nation’s wealthiest private universities, subsidized housing through the US government is available for only approximately one-third of the households who qualify. Additionally, as we discuss following, the subsidized housing that is available is often inadequate for structural reasons. National Low Income Housing Coalition, “The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Rental Homes,” March 2023, https://nlihc.org/gap.
50 Tierney, “Why I Don’t Do NFP.”
51 Blaffer Hrdy, Sarah, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understandings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 65–109.Google Scholar
52 For more on how Western parenting norms depart from what researchers understand to be evolutionary parenting norms, see Michaeleen, Doucleff, Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us about the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans (New York: Avid Reader Press, 2021), 24–25.Google Scholar
53 For one account of the relative costs of childcare, see Heymann, Jody, The Widening Gap: Why America’s Working Families Are in Jeopardy and What Can Be Done about It (New York: Basic Books, 2000), .Google Scholar
54 Tierney, “Why I Don’t Do NFP.”
55 Kendra Tierney, “Women’s Work: Do I Ever Feel Guilty about Not ‘Using’ My College Education?,” Catholic All Year, January 14, 2016, https://catholicallyear.com/blog/womens-work/.
56 Tierney, “Why I Don’t Do NFP.”
57 For one discussion of the structural impact of wealth and class, see Beth Johnson, Heather, The American Dream and the Power of Wealth: Choosing Schools and Inheriting Inequality in the Land of Opportunity, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2015), Google Scholar; for the effects on moral agency, see Ward, Kate, Wealth, Virtue, and Moral Luck: Christian Ethics in an Age of Inequality (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
58 Bertotti, Andrea M. and Christensen, Sinead M., “Comparing Current, Former, and Never Users of Natural Family Planning: An Analysis of Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Attitudinal Variables,” Linacre Quarterly 79, no. 4 (2012): .CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
59 Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: Tell Us Your Story.”
60 Katie Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: GS’s Story,” Women in Theology, February 25, 2012, https://womenintheology.org/2012/02/25/women-speak-about-natural-family-planning-gss-story/.
61 Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: GS’s Story.”
62 Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: GS’s Story.”
63 Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: GS’s Story.”
64 Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: GS’s Story.”
65 Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: GS’s Story.”
66 Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: GS’s Story.”
67 Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: GS’s Story.”
68 Significantly, there are important theological resources that could have been helpful for GS and her husband as they navigated this challenging journey with NFP. Some theologians have pointed to constraints like the ones GS experienced as sufficient evidence of the inadequacy of the magisterial teaching on birth control. Others, without explicitly rejecting this teaching, stress that these challenges diminish one’s responsibility to adhere to the teaching in practice, without introducing any form of sin into the equation. See, for example, Traina, “Papal Ideals, Marital Realities,” 275–80, 282–84; Selling, Joseph, “Contraception and Sin,” in Moral Theology for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Celebration of Kevin Kelly, ed. Hoose, Bernard, Clague, Julie, and Mannion, Gerard (New York: T&T Clark, 2008), Google Scholar; and the discussion of gradualism in relation to the reception of Humanae Vitae in Keenan, James, A History of Catholic Moral Theology in the Twentieth Century: From Confessing Sins to Liberating Consciences (New York: Continuum International Publishing, 2010), Google Scholar. For context on this application of gradualism, see Jason King, “Which Gradualism? Whose Relationships?,” Horizons 43, no. 1 (June 2016): 86–105.
69 “Rite of Marriage,” §4, see also §25, in The Rites of the Catholic Church, 2 vols. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990), 1:720, 1:726. The English translation of the “Rite of Marriage” has since been updated. For the relevant sections in the new translation, see United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Order of Celebrating Matrimony (Totowa, NJ: Catholic Book Publishing, 2016), §§3 and 60.
70 Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: GS’s Story.” This is a common feature of couples’ decisions around NFP, as one study noted that NFP use is more common among “those who are delaying rather than preventing a pregnancy and who would not be upset with an unplanned pregrancy.” Daly and Herold, “Natural Family Planning,” 239.
71 Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §10.
72 Grimes, “Women Speak about Natural Family Planning: GS’s Story.” Safety violations in government-subsidized housing are regularly identified by the government’s own inspectors at an alarming rate. Jeff Donn and Holbrook Mohr, “Health and Safety Conditions Worsen in US-Subsidized Housing,” Associated Press, April 9, 2019, https://apnews.com/article/health-north-america-us-news-business-ms-state-wire-f21ef3620f6543e0916fcb731edb276c. We proceed with the assumption that GS refers to legitimate safety concerns and note a number of reasons that, sadly, this would not be surprising in light of the current state of subsidized housing in the United States.
73 Nietzel, Jen, “Addressing Trauma in Early Childhood Classrooms: Strategies and Practices for Success,” Young Exceptional Children 23, no. 3 (September 2002), .Google Scholar
74 Nietzel, “Addressing Trauma in Early Childhood Classrooms.”
75 Rothstein, Richard, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liverlight Publishing, 2017), Google Scholar, see also 17–37 more broadly.
76 For the implicit assumptions about the moral worthiness of recipients built into different forms of government assistance in the United States, see Massaro, Thomas J., United States Welfare Policy: A Catholic Response (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007), .Google Scholar
77 Moretti, Enrico, The New Geography of Jobs (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), .Google Scholar
78 John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio §51.
79 A 2012 report on economic mobility in the United States noted that “Americans raised at the bottom and top of the family income ladder are likely to remain there as adults, a phenomenon known as ‘stickiness at the ends.’” Pew Charitable Trusts, Pursuing the American Dream: Economic Mobility across Generations (Washington, DC: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2012), 2, https://www.pewtrusts.org/∼/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2012/pursuingamericandreampdf.pdf.
80 The US Department of Agriculture estimated that the cost to raise a child born in 2015 through age seventeen in a “middle-income” family was $233,610, excluding the cost of college education. Mark Lino, “The Cost of Raising a Child,” USDA, February 18, 2020, https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/01/13/cost-raising-child.
81 These are, of course, not the only lessons one can take from Kendra’s and GS’s accounts. Their experiences, for instance, can be read as datapoints for ongoing theological discussions about the extent to which NFP supports the unitive dimensions of marital sexuality—and the extent to which artificial forms of contraception disrupt it. Other theologians have taken up these questions, so we do not focus on them here. Instead, we emphasize the structural implications of these personal stories because there has, to date, been insufficient attention to the structural analysis that connects Catholic sexual ethics and social ethics in an explicit and detailed fashion. For the theological debates around the effects of both NFP and artificial forms of contraception on the unitive ends of marriage, see McCormick, Richard, How Brave a New World: Dilemmas in Bioethics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1981), Google Scholar; Sutton, Agneta, “Couples Practicing Contraception: A Call for Dialogue,” Marriage, Families, and Spirituality 20, no. 2 (2014): Google Scholar.
82 Paul VI, Humanae Vitae, §8.
83 On the importance of the preferential option for the poor (and some of its links to solidarity) in Catholic social thought, see Massaro, Thomas J., Living Justice: Catholic Social Teaching in Action, 2nd classroom ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), Google Scholar.
84 Francis, Amoris Laetitia, §3.
85 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891), §34, http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html; Gaudium et Spes, §26.
86 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, §34; John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (April 11, 1963), §64, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem.html. See also Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, §17.
87 US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1987), §165. In 2021, the government-backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac estimated that the US housing supply was 3.8 million homes short of the levels required to meet current demand. Nicole Friedman, “U.S. Housing Market is Nearly 4 Million Homes Short of Buyer Demand,” Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-housing-market-is-nearly-4-million-homes-short-of-buyer-demand-11618484400. Meanwhile, the National Low Income Housing Coalition estimated that the shortage was even more severe for lower-income families looking to rent affordable homes: the country needs an additional 6.8 million affordable rentals to meet the demand of “extremely low-income renters, whose household incomes are at or below the poverty guideline.” “The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Rental Homes,” National Low Income Housing Coalition, March 2021, https://reports.nlihc.org/gap.
88 For example, zoning and permitting are major policy hurdles that can make the difference between a crisis in affordable housing and a successful housing system for all. Reid, Carolina K., Galante, Carol, and Weinstein-Carnes, Ashley F., “Addressing California’s Housing Shortage: Lessons from Massachusetts Chapter 40B,” Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Develompent Law 25, no. 2 (2017): .Google Scholar
89 Cloutier, David, “Wanting ‘the Best’ for ‘Our’ Kids: Parenting and Privilege,” in Catholic Perspectives on Sex, Love, and Families, ed. King, Jason and Rubio, Julie Hanlon (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2020), .Google Scholar
90 “Public housing’s original purpose was to give shelter not to those who were too poor to afford it but to those who could afford decent housing but couldn’t find it because none was available.” Rothstein, The Color of Law, 18.
91 Rothstein, The Color of Law, 37.
92 Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (November 24, 2013), §§197–201, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html.
93 Putnam, Robert, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).Google Scholar
94 Mescher, Marcus, The Ethics of Encounter: Christian Neighbor Love As a Practice of Solidarity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2020), .Google Scholar
95 Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (June 29, 2009), §36, http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html, emphasis in original. This approach has parallels in the vision for an “open” rather than “closed” household in Matzko McCarthy, David, Sex and Love in the Family: A Theology of the Household (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004), Google Scholar.
96 For the support of this policy in Magisterial texts, see the discussion of “family allowances” in John Paul II, Laborem Exercens (September 14, 1981), §19, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens.htmlGoogle Scholar; and the promotion of “social policies which have the family as their principle [sic] object,” in John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (May 1, 1991), §49, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html.
97 The promotion of a family living wage has been explicit in the papal tradition of Catholic social teaching, beginning with the first social encyclical. Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, §§43–47.
98 John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, §10.
99 John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, §19.
100 Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, §11.
101 John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, §19.
102 Simcha Fisher, “Natural Family Planning Can Be Hard and Expensive to Use. Can New Tech Help?,” America, January 24, 2020, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/01/24/natural-family-planning-can-be-hard-and-expensive-use-can-new-tech-help. Marquette Method, whose efficacy is 98.4 percent with perfect use, costs about $45/month, estimated by Vitae Fertility. https://www.vitaefertility.com/cost-to-practice-marquette-method-nfp/.
103 “Fertility Awareness Methods,” Bedsider, https://www.bedsider.org/birth-control/fertility_awareness. Current federal guidelines require insurance policies to cover only “instruction in fertility awareness-based methods” (emphasis added), which can leave individuals to cover the costs of the materials required by certain methods. Notably, prior to 2016, fertility awareness-based methods were not considered part of the required coverage at all. “Facts about Affordable Care Act Implementation Part 54,” Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, July 28, 2022, https://www.cms.gov/files/document/faqs-part-54.pdf.
104 To this reform, one could also add the US Catholic bishops’ long-standing promotion of universal access to health care as a means of addressing the imbalance in health insurance. See US Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Health Care,” https://www.usccb.org/committees/domestic-justice-and-human-development/health-care#tab–background-information.
105 Robust sociological data on the usage rates of various NFP methods is not yet available. However, the variety of NFP methods available speaks to the need for options when deciding which fertile signs are the most effectively tracked for each woman.
106 Francis, Fratelli Tutti (October 3, 2020), §67, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html.
107 These conversations should open the door to catechesis on the “law of gradualness” that has been an explicit part of magisterial teaching on contraception since Familiaris Consortio, and ideally would incorporate Catholic teachings on conscience and discernment into the discussion. See John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio §34; King, “Which Gradualism? Whose Relationships?,” esp. 87–98; Parkinson, Joseph, “Humanae Vitae II: Conscience, Contraception and Holy Communion,” Australasian Catholic Record 90, no. 3 (July 2013): 297–310Google Scholar; Salzman, Todd A. and Lawler, Michael G., “Amoris Laetitia: Towards a Methodological and Anthropological Integration of Catholic Social and Sexual Ethics,” Theological Studies 79, no. 3 (September 2018): CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Consistent with the links between Catholic sexual ethics and Catholic social teaching advocated in this article, however, these conversations cannot remain at that level alone and must also call attention to Catholics’ collective responsibility to challenge the unjust social structures involved.
108 A comprehensive survey sponsored by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 98.6 percent of self-identifying Catholic women used some form of birth control at some time, but only 22 percent reported “a periodic abstinence method” like NFP. Kimberly Daniels, William D. Mosher, Jo Jones, “Contraceptive Methods Women Have Ever Used: United States, 1982–2010,” National Health Statistics Reports 62 (February 2013): 1–15, at 8.