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Other moralists have joined Canon Janssens in publicly discussing this "personalist" approach to marriage. In the Dutch journal Tijdschrift voor Theo-logie, Dominican Father Willem van der Marck contends that pills do not constitute a temporary sterilization, as Pius had claimed, but merely postpone ovulation; the ova remain in the ovaries ready for future fertilization. And Auxiliary Bishop Josef Reuss of Mainz, in a German theological quarterly, argued that some couples might have "grave reason" to interfere with the biological process of sex—not in the actual performance of intercourse, but in "anticipation" of a future sexual act.
Theory & Practice. This new European approach to birth control has here and there gone from theory to practice. In some parishes, couples who use the pill receive the sacraments with assurances from confessors that they are acting rightly. And in the predominantly Roman Catholic town of Oss in The Netherlands, the country's largest pharmaceutical firm manufactures an oral steroid pill similar to the U.S.-made Enovid. About 90% of the company's 2,000 employees are Catholics, and sales of the pill in the Catholic south of Holland reportedly rose 40% last year.
Moreover, virtually all theologians admit that women can use hormones to regulate the menstrual cycle. Some also grant that the pills could be used by nuns in danger of rape (as in the Congo), by unmarried women who need to postpone menstruation until after a sporting event, by nursing mothers to reinforce the natural sterility that most women possess during lactation.
Thus the doors may be opening to further refinement and discussion by scholars, and perhaps even to some future modification of Pius XII's condemnation. The moralists believe that there is an exact parallel between the church's stand on birth control now and the attitude of the medieval church toward usury—which was condemned as a violation of the natural law until economists showed that taking interest on money was not exploitation but a productive good. And even in conservative Rome, there are men who will listen to further argument: Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, secretary of the Holy Office, recently counseled Pope Paul to stay out of the question and let the theologians pursue their insights.