A reader writes:

Have been reading about the mandated contraception health care articles at NCR and something came to mind.

I know a sin is a sin, but it seems when it comes to contraception, a lot of people who aren’t Catholic think “this doesn’t apply to me…it’s a Catholic thing.” The analogy comes to mind of a non-Jew eating pork, or someone who is not Muslim not fasting during Ramadan. How do we speak to the world about the “evils” of contraception when most people (Christians and non-Catholics) see it only as a hang-up for Catholics…i.e., “it’s not a sin for me to use ABC because I’m not Catholic…the rules don’t apply to me; it’s ok in my church, etc.”

I think you are right that the average person (including the average Catholic) perceives the Church’s teaching on abortion as a sort of irrational taboo just for Catholics. Much the same obtained, by the way, in the early 70s when it came to abortion. Most Evangelicals don’t realize that at the time Roe was decided, Catholics were pretty much alone in opposing abortion. It was not until Francis Schaeffer (peace to his ashes) awakened the Evangelical conscience in the late 70s that Protestants began to realize that abortion violated natural law and was not just a Catholic thing.

Much the same still holds with natural law arguments about contraception. Evangelicals get that killing innocent human life is bad. But the notion that nature, made by God, is to be cooperated with and not thwarted is beyond our technological civilization, which routinely abandons the sacramental view of nature (including human nature) and tends to reduce it to merely raw material. For my full take on this, go here.

For a really good discussion of natural law, I recommend What We Can’t Not Know by J. Budziszewski