Many religious ideas have little practical effect on people. In the early days of the church there were great controversies about the nature of Jesus. After all he died in a gruesome manner. If he wasn’t successful when he was around what was he? Some of those arguments are still going on. In the end, those kind of controversies don’t’ usually change how people act. Unitarians do not have a fundamentally different morality than Trinitarians. Some ideas have a practical effect but that effect is only a minor one. Fasting during lent is a good example, it only affects those who follow the rules and it doesn’t go to hard on those to follow them. In the old days of no meat on Friday, one practical effect was that restaurants would offer fish dishes on Friday. Other religions have similar ideas. The black clothing the Chasidic men wear doesn’t do anything other than label the men as Chasidic Jews.
Other Catholic ideas do have practical effects. The Catholic church’s stand on birth control a good example. For practicing Catholics it almost guarantees larger families. It is obvious from looking at the facts at hand that even otherwise good Catholics do not follow the church on contraception. Catholic families are much smaller today than 50 years ago. That would not be possible without artificial methods of contraception. Despite that lack of obedience in this context from most Catholics, the church still publicly opposes birth control and talks and acts as if this rule is followed by Catholics. It wouldn’t matter if it only affected Catholics, but it does affect others. The Catholic church in the US has been active in suing the Obama administration’s health care law citing freedom of religion as allowing them not to pay for birth control or anything to do with abortion. If the law had been written as a single payer law some of these suits would not be possible, but the law wasn’t written that way. The Catholic church in the US once was heavily connected to issues of social justice. The church publicly says that it is committed to universal healthcare (at least it says it is http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/other/229313-vatican-catholic-church-committed-to-universal-healthcare-coverage-%C2%A0). In opposing the current health care law, the Catholic church has become, perhaps unwittingly, a part of the Republican conservative opposition. I might call this an aberration but I don’t think it is any more. Catholics are very active in the Republican party. There are 5 or 6 Catholic justices on the Supreme Court (depending on whether on counts Thomas or not), only one was appointed by a Democrat. That would have been unconceivable 60 years ago.
One might ask what does that have to do with the pope? Pope Francis is conservative, he has publicly opposed contraception, abortion, women priests, etc. In his past speeches he is stressing orthodoxy particularly in areas of sex and procreation. The efforts of the Catholic church as a whole against modern methods of contraception are harmful. At a base level, over population is harmful, and church policy encourages overpopulation. More than that, the idea that contraception is evil is old fashioned paternalism since it is women who usually pay the price for sexual sins. They are the ones who get pregnant. (I am ignoring sexually transmitted diseases for simplicity’s sake.) In the old days when so many children never made it to adulthood, overpopulation was not a major societal issue. Sanitation, antibiotics, vaccinations and a large supply of food have allowed most babies to survive to adulthood, so overpopulation is a real issue. Even if we can feed those people the amount of damage to the rest of the animal and plant world is immense. This is an odd policy for someone who took the name Francis.
