'Standing erect in the midst of moral ruin'?

If you are wondering about the title of this post, it is a phrase taken from Pius XI's 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii, criticising the decision of the 1930 Lambeth Conference to recognise as licit the use of artificial contraception by married couples:

the Catholic Church [sic], to whom God has entrusted the defence of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain.

The wording of the encyclical came to mind when reading a recent piece on The North American Anglican which identified the pronouncement of the 1930 Lambeth Conference as abandoning orthodoxy and embracing "radicalism".  (The article's wider focus was a good and interesting case for the Oxford Movement's continuity with the 18th century High Church tradition, to which I hope to return in a later post). With this decision by the conference, "the game was over" and radicalism prevailed.  To undo this process, "to renew a common agenda against radicalism and a common commitment to Anglican distinctives", it seems there needs to be a rejection of the 1930 decision:

an exploration of the Prayer Book’s marriage rite, or a study of what Jeremy Taylor means when he talks about “matrimonial chastity” in Holy Living and Holy Dying, or what the dissenters of Lambeth 1930 like Gore, T.S. Eliot, and C.S. Lewis might have to teach us today.

In this post I want to focus on the reference to Jeremy Taylor.  Taylor's teaching on "matrimonial chastity" does indeed condemn "Onan [who] did separate his act from its proper end, and so ordered his embraces that his wife should not conceive".  However, we need to note Taylor's wider definition of "proper end":

there is an appetite to be satisfied, which cannot be done without pleasing that desire; yet, since that desire and satisfaction was intended by nature for other ends, they should never be separate from those ends, but always be joined with all or one of these ends, with a desire of children, or to avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the cares and sadnesses of household affairs, or to endear each other.

The definition of the "ends" here provided by Taylor certainly provides space for the consideration of artificial contraception.  

Taylor also outlines some general rules regarding matrimonial love, but does very cautiously with an emphasis on individual discernment:

It is a duty of matrimonial chastity, to be restrained and temperate in the use of their lawful pleasures: concerning which, although no universal rule can antecedently be given to all persons, any more than to all bodies one proportion of meat and drink; yet married persons are to estimate the degree of their licence according to the following proportions ... Concerning which a man is to make judgment by proportion to other actions, and the severities of his religion, and the sentences of sober and wise persons - Holy Living II.II 'Of Chastity'.

In other words, within Taylor's teaching on "matrimonial chastity" there are principles and emphasises which would seem to allow for a development of teaching and pastoral practice not unlike the statement of the 1930 Lambeth Conference.

Another aspect of Taylor's teaching that demands consideration is - perhaps surprisingly - his view on usury.  There had been, of course, a consistent condemnation by the Church of usury.  By contrast, Taylor, recognises the importance of the practice to a commercial society:

it is necessary that in all communities of Men there be borrowing and lending; but if it cannot be without usury, the Commonwealth might promise not to punish it; though of it self it were uncharitable and consequently unlawful. For it is either lawful; or else it is unlawful for being against Justice or against Charity. If it be against Justice, the Commonwealth, by permitting it, makes it just ... So that if a Commonwealth permits an usurarious exchange or contract, it is not unjust, because the laws are the particular measures of justice and contracts, and therefore may well promise impunity where she makes innocence (as to the matter of justice.) But if usury be Unlawful because it is uncharitable: then when it becomes necessary it is also charitable comparatively; and as to charity no man by the laws of God is to be compelled (because it is not charity if it be compelled; for God accepts not an unwilling giver, and it is not

charity but an act of obedience and political duty when by laws men are constrain'd to make levies for the poor;) so much less can they be compelled to measures and degrees of charity; and if to lend upon usury be better then not to lend at all, it is in some sense a charity to do so - Of the Rule of Conscience II.II.7.

Similarly, Taylor reconciles usury with the teaching of the eighth Commandment, condemning as sinful misuse of usury:

That exact usury of necessitous persons, or of any beyond the permissions of equity, as determined by the laws - Holy Dying IV.VIII.

Is this Taylor - in the words of Casti Connubii - "openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition"?  A strong case can certainly be made that this is indeed what is happening.  Taylor's teaching on usury can be understood as having application to the matter of artificial contraception.  If the laws of the commonwealth make it just and if its use is not contrary to charity, what makes artificial contraception different to usury?

Finally, consideration has to be given to Taylor's warning against ecclesiastical "tyranny over consciences":

I intend to defend good people from the tyranny and arbitrary power of those great companies of ministers, who in so many hundred places would have a judicature supreme in spirituals - The Great Exemplar III.XV, Discourse XIX.

This also led Taylor to strongly warn against clergy searching the intimate lives of parishioners:

And here first I consider, that many times things seem profitable to us, and may minister to good ends, but God judges them useless and dangerous - The Second Part of a Dissuasive from Popery, Book I, Section XI.

This caution and reserve paralleled Taylor's emphasis on episcopacy as a bulwark against the clericalist pretensions of both pope and presbytery: "Episcopacy is ... the greatest preservative of the people's liberty from Ecclesiastick Tyranny".  Such concerns and warnings should have an important place in our consideration of the statement of the 1930 Lambeth Conference. A teaching which declared artificial contraception sinful would have to articulate how it would cohere with the caution and reserve underpinning a classical Anglican understanding of ecclesiastical authority and pastoral relationships (mindful that pre-1930 Anglican teaching on artificial contraception relied upon both legal sanctions and cultural disapproval).

Taylor's teaching on "matrimonial chastity", on usury, and on ecclesiastical authority do not suggest that a straightforward condemnation of artificial contraception is the only outcome of consideration of his ethical teaching and reasoning.  Lambeth 1930, therefore, need not be considered a rupture with previous Anglican tradition as a form of moral reasoning and an understanding of ecclesiastical authority.  

If Lambeth 1930 is not the rupture suggested, this raises wider questions about the proposal contained in the article for "a new agenda against radicalism".  Leaving aside whether "a new agenda against radicalism" is how we would want to describe a theological movement for Anglican renewal, do we really think that it is remotely feasible to suggest that the starting base for such a movement should be overturning Anglican acceptance of artificial contraception? Or that this offers a means of "consolidating orthodoxy in the protective raiment Anglican distinctives"?  What is more, are we really to believe that married couples using artificial contraception - faithful communicants, nurturing their children in the Faith - undermine Anglican theological coherence more than the profoundly destabilising consequences of "the Tractarian interpretation of the Thirty-Nine Articles"?

"The world stands in need of the contributions of classical Anglicanism." Indeed it does.  So we should not leave our tradition to collect dust on the shelf because we are worried that anything less than Humanae Vitae will inspire a longing for liberalism.