(That's not a serious suggestion, by the way.)
What seems to be a myth has provoked a fair bit of discussion and food for thought.
Pope Francis has revived the old story that Pope Paul VI gave permission for nuns to use contraception to prevent any rape-induced pregnancies. And, with what must be some rather deft acrobatics, he managed to conclude that therefore it would be all right for married couples to avoid conceiving babies with Zika-virus induced defects!
(Fr Z has provided some history regarding the myth
here.)
Pondering my question above has helped me to understand why nuns (and any other women) shouldn't take contraceptive "medication" for contraceptive purposes. (
Here is an old post of mine explaining why I don't think contraception counts as medicine.)
Contraception won't protect anyone from rape itself. (Indeed, mightn't the knowledge that someone is on the Pill increase the risk?) Contraception just attempts to eliminate the danger of conceiving a baby. So the intention is contraceptive. No double-effect there. It is not like taking the Pill for some therapeutic reason, knowing that there is an undesired contraceptive effect too.
Now, I can see that a consecrated virgin has a good reason for wishing to avoid pregnancy. She is not a married woman who must be open to life. But, the end doesn't justify the means, and as Pope Paul VI wrote in
Humanae Vitae:
Though it is true that
sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid
a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good, it is never
lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of
it...
Since medicine is meant to help you work better, whereas contraception seeks to stop something which does work from working, it would seem to be against nature.
And sterilisation has the same effect, achieved by surgical means. Mutilation, basically. And, again the double-effect won't justify it, because there is no health reason to warrant it.
So, I maintain that giving nuns contraceptive drugs, or sterilising them, is not justifiable.
What about some barrier method? Well, I'm not so certain on the morality or immorality of that. Since Fr Heribert Jone writes, "
A woman sins gravely by expelling the seminal fluid or preventing its entry into the uterus. It is not sinful to do so if she has been the victim of rape or deception provided she does so before conception, since in this instance the semen is equivalent to an unjust aggressor," (Moral Theology, para 759), maybe a barrier would be permissible. Impracticable, though?
(This is leaving aside the matter of Pope Francis using an apocryphal (and mythical) story dealing with rape, to justify consenting spouses using contraception to avoid defective offspring!)
Bear in mind: these are the musings of an amateur.
