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A Positive Approach to Taboo
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
Extract
An article by Fr Kevin T. Kelly recently published in The Clergy Review under the title ‘A Positive Approach to Humanae Vitae’ is an attempt at making a dispassionate evaluation of the teaching of that Encyclical on birth regulation. The attempt is successful, in that the article correctly weighs up the teaching of the Encyclical against the other statements of the Magisterium which immediately preceded or followed that Encyclical.
The untasty dish served by Pope Paul in 1968 is at last being made palatable; the trouble is that, in the process, the ingredients adduced from more savoury sources are changing the nature of the dish. Contraception, admittedly, remains evil. It is no longer, however, intrinsically evil; that is to say, it is no longer a type of action whose evilness cannot be exorcised by circumstances and that admits of no case in which its performance could be squared with God’s Will and man’s good. Contraception is now evil ‘in the premoral sense’. Like killing, which remains evil even when the total action of which it is a part makes it legitimate to take another man’s life, so is contraception: the total action can be a moral good and so legitimate the inclusion of contraception, without for that reason denying its premoral evil character.
The pastoral guidance given by Fr Kelly is in keeping with his assessment of the morality of contraception: ‘If a couple accept Humanae Vitae in the sense suggested in this article, then if they are using some form of contraception they ought to admit that what they are doing is not fully in accord with the objective demands of God’s Will for them’.
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- Copyright © 1973 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
page 100 note 1 Kevin T. Kelly: A Positive Approach to Humane Vitae. The Clergy Review. 1972, pp. 108‐120, 174‐186, 262‐275, 330‐348.
page 100 note 2 Because of the analogy suggested between killing and contraception, it is worth noting that Fr Kelly, while basing his argumentation on the distinction made by Fr J. Fuchs between ‘moral evil’ and ‘evil in the premoral sense’, disagrees with Fr Fuch's conclusion that ‘killing in self‐defence can be morally good’. On p. 333, he writes: ‘I do not see how killing could be described as either good or neutral. … I would only be prepared to say that this action of self‐defence could be moral good, despite the regrettable fact that this evil of killing another man is involved in it.’
page 100 note 3 The extent to which Fr Kelly's theological appraisal of contraception departs from that of the Encyclical can best be seen in the implications of his reasoning. In the perspective of the Encyclical, no man could ever knowingly and willingly have recourse to contraception without, by that very fact, committing a sin; that sin, needless to say, can be forgiven and the sinner is exhorted to seek God's mercy. In the perspective outlined by Fr Kelly, a man could knowingly and willingly have recourse to contraception without committing a sin, in those cases in which the premoral (physical ?) evil of contraception is outweighed by the moral good of the total action of which contraception is but a part. Cf. p. 342.
page 101 note 1 Steiner, Franz: Taboo, pp. 20, 21, 147 (Cohen and West Ltd, London, 1956)Google Scholar.
page 101 note 2 In this context, ‘divinity’ stands for all suprahuman powers which are thought to control man and his world. I avoid the so far inconclusive discussions as to whether taboo is always associated with the sacred and is automatic in the infliction of sanctions.
page 102 note 1 One or two examples taken from Buhaya (North‐West Tanzania) could shed light on these characters of taboo. Adultery is forbidden by customary law, in Buhaya. That interdiction does not, however, constitute a taboo: The reason why adultery should be prohibited can be pointed out (namely: the safeguard of order in marriage); the sanction attached to transgressions is in keeping with the nature of the offence (that sanction is dismissal, in a case in which it is the wife who commits adultery); whether the sanction should be applied depends on the will of the injured partner and his lineage. The prohibition otnsenene to women is, on the other hand, clearly a taboo: why should tradition endorsed by divinity absolutely forbid those locusts to women, while men can freely eat them, is not apparent, and that prohibition can easily be construed by outside observers into a case of unjust discrimination between the two sexes; should women transgress that rule, calamities are sure to fall on them and on the village, unless action is taken to restore order by means of appropriate ritual. It should become clear, further on in this paper, how this particular taboo—as other taboos—helps to identify transgressions in a definite area of human conduct and how it localizes danger to the structure of society and warns against it.
page 103 note 1 Douglas, Mary: Purity and Danger. Gf. The Abominations of Leviticus, pp. 54‐73 of Pelican Edition, Penguin Books, 1970 (1966).Google Scholar
page 103 note 2 Ibid., pp. 69‐70.
page 104 note 1 ‘Holiness is unity, integrity, perfection of the individual and of the kind.’ Ibid., p. 68.
page 104 note 2 Ibid., p. 72.
page 104 note 3 This suggestion is in part based on a remark of Mary Douglas about the Leviticus rules of sexual morality: ‘Morality does not conflict with holiness, but holiness is more a matter of separating that which should be separated than of protecting the rights of husbands and brothers’ (Ibid., p. 67). Morality is, of course, a matter of separating what is right from what is wrong in human conduct, and in this sense it merges widi holiness. Of interest here is also Monica Wilson's remark that Nyakyusa taboos ‘were comparable to rules of hygiene’(Religion and the Transformation of Society, p. 81. Cambridge University Press, 1971).
page 104 note 4 In Nyakyusa society, for instance, it is fertility which is the most inclusive value, hence ‘a thicket of taboos surrounding child‐birth and sexual life’ (Monica Wilson, p. 79).
page 105 note 1 The taboo which, in Buhaya, forbids nsenene to women is another example of this kind of taboo: the distinction between men and women is recalled at meals, different foods being allocated to each sex (cf. Note 1 on p. 102).
page 106 note 1 L. Janssens: Morale conjugate et progestogenes. Eph. Theol. Lov. 1963, IV, pp. 787‐826.
page 106 note 2 M. Zalba: De regulatione prolis generandae et de usu compositorum progestationa‐lium. Periodica, 1964, Fasc. II., pp. 186‐259.