U.S. Catholics’ Stand-Off Holds on Birth Control : Sexual behavior: The 1968 ban led to the laity adopting its own ethic, but the church view of sex remains oppressive.

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, Pope Paul VI issued “Humanae Vitae,” which set forth the Catholic Church’s teaching “On the Regulation of Birth” (its English-language title). It became at once the best known and least accepted encyclical in the history of the church.

In some Catholic churches Sunday, there will be sermons reiterating the encyclical; in most--in the United States, at least--the anniversary will pass unnoticed.

Silence prevails as the utmost expression of dissent that priests and bishops can safely risk. Under the current papacy of John Paul II, fidelity to the birth-control ban is a loyalty test, and public dissent by theologians and clerics invites reproach and punishment. The resulting hush has led one bishop, Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, Mich., to describe the church hierarchy as a “dysfunctional family that is unable to talk openly about a problem that everyone knows is there.”

As long ago as 1970--just two years after “Humanae Vitae”--a church-sanctioned survey of priests found that more than 80% did not insist on the ban in the confessional. Untener has said that a private poll would find most bishops opposed to it. And even though the Pope spares no occasion to remind Catholics that contraception is a sin, the typical American in the pew chooses to follow her own conscience.

As problematic as the prohibition of contraception is, it is the core message of “Humanae Vitae”--its teachings about the nature of sexuality--that is most damaging. On the one hand, it exalts sex as sacred; on the other hand, it implies that sex is an animal impulse that must be suppressed. It glorifies abstinence: Refraining from sex, “Humanae Vitae” says, “demands continual effort, yet, thanks to its beneficent influence, husband and wife fully develop their personalities, being enriched with spiritual values. Such discipline bestows upon family life fruits of serenity and peace, and facilitates the solution of other problems. . . . “

The way the Vatican talks about sex resembles the way a perpetual dieter talks about food: It should be meted out in small doses in a way that is as punishing as it is sustaining.

This perspective distorts the nature of relationships as most people experience them. In “Humanae Vitae,” sex is described only in the context of marriage, a union that must be “faithful and exclusive until death” and whose central purpose is procreation. “Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the begetting and educating of children.” To the Vatican, there is no “licit” sexual activity outside of a sacramental marriage--not for the divorced and remarried, not for adults in a long-term, committed relationship and certainly not for homosexuals.

The root problem is that the church tests all sexuality in the crucible of procreation. As one cleric has said, because “each and every use of contraception” negates the possibility, no matter how remote, of conception, it is intrinsically “evil.” If the church’s views about sexuality were not harnessed to the hobby horse of procreation, the ban on birth control would crumble on its own.

Many Catholics, far ahead of the institution, have crafted a workable and honorable sexual ethic on their own, using the perspective the church uses in every other issue that comes before it: the standard of justice. Were the church to construct an ethic of sexuality and reproduction based on what is just, sermons today would stress the principles of respect and equality, the contributions to the good of one’s partner, the welfare of one’s children, and the value of determining their number and spacing.

In insisting on the primacy of procreation in sexual behavior, the church loses its ability to address sensibly an array of societal problems, including AIDS, teen-age pregnancy, population pressures. According to “Humanae Vitae,” “each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life.” That standard, procreation, compels the church to prohibit the use of condoms even for the purpose of stemming the spread of the AIDS virus. Recently a priest who speaks regularly for the church’s orthodox bloc was asked, “Would you really rather have a teen-ager die of AIDS than to use a condom?” The priest protested that the question represented a “false dichotomy.” But then he answered it: “There are worse things than dying of AIDS, namely, dying in a state of mortal sin.”

The church’s resistance to the development of a realistic and positive approach toward human sexuality has created enormous problems for the institution. Its long and inexcusable delay in dealing with sexual abuse by priests is, in part, a tragic outcome of this recalcitrance. Another is its blindness to the fact that one of the best ways to reduce the incidence of abortion is through the use of contraceptives.

Catholics--and others--listen when the church speaks out on social justice issues: poverty, crime, war. Nobody listens when the church talks about sex. Who could blame a priest for choosing another topic besides “Humanae Vitae” for this Sunday’s homily?