EWTN Classics: The Prayer of Lady Macbeth: How the Contraceptive Mentality Has Neutered Religious Life

Some messages are classics. Rev. Paul V. Mankowski, S.J., Professor of Biblical Studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, published this article in the Spring 1993 issue of "Faith & Reason". It is now in the EWTN Library and it still resonates with profound truth.

[...]

Suppose for a moment that a Catholic comes to believe that the
teaching Church is wrong in condemning contraception but right
about everything else.  How does he judge the Church wrong in the
one case?  As we have seen, by reference to some standard that is
more reliable than the Church.  But how does he judge the Church
to be right in the other million-and-one instances?  Obviously,
only in virtue of the same standard by which he found her
defective.  It is absurd, not to say insane, to claim that one
obeys, or is faithful to, the Church in those areas in which he
happens to agree with her  because "happens to agree" is the
operative phrase.  If my pocket calculator has proved unreliable
in one calculation,  I might still maintain that it  "gives true
answers" for other calculations, but not all others:  only, in
fact, those which I have some reason to believe to be true.  And
my basis for judging the instrument accurate in these other
computations cannot be the calculator itself  but rather some
norm (a mathematical table, my own longhand reckonings) that I
take to be fundamentally sound.  Consequently, it is absurd to say
that I can depend on my calculator where it gives me true
answers, since my use of the word "depend" expresses nothing more
than a simple convergence between the calculator's answer and the
true one.2  And it is important to stress that once I have found a
more reliable instrument, the less reliable one is superfluous -
worthless, in fact.  I can only hold on to it for sentimental
reasons.  By the same token, once my paramount theory of ethics or
my personal religious intuition has proved more reliable than the
Church, my continued association with the Church can never be more
profound than a aestheticism.  I can
only pretend to let myself be taught by the Church the way I
"depend" on my faulty calculator:  my loyalty will be an act of
sentimental affection, not an act of discipleship.

[...]

This is well worth the read!