"Winnipeg Statement" - what to make of dissident bishops?

At no point in the statement did they say they disagree with Humanae Vitae.

Note section I, Solidarity with the Pope.

Remember in the other thread, the question of whether Bishops might challenge a Pope. I don't believe they are actually challenging the Pope, but stating that they understand how a person acting in good conscience might disagree with what Humanae Vitae says. And with this understanding priests should keep in mind during the sacrament of reconciliation that a person who would confess to say using artificial birth control needs to be treated with respect and helped to have a deeper understanding of the Church's position on the matter.

I get a different take on the letter than what is being put forth.

I will propose a scenario here.

Married couple within the Church. Husband has a HS education, with a minimum wage job. Wife just happens to be very fertile, and has irregular cycles which are hard to time. They have say half a dozen kids already, and have tried unsuccessfully NFP and abstinence. They are getting all the assistance they can from the fed/state gov. but still are not able to properly feed their children, pay the rent and provide basic needs for the family.

They have sought help from their parish to help make ends meet, and other charities as well, and have exhausted those resources.

Due to their situation, teachers at school have become concerned for the welfare of their children, and have called social services. Social services have looked into the matter and found no overt abuse, but some neglect simply due to the inability for the father to make a living wage for his family. They are on the brink of having their current children taken away from them by the "system".

They fully understand that artificial birth control is against Church teaching, but can not risk having additional children or they will loose the children they already have. What are they to do. Pray to God that they not get pregnant again and hope that their prayers are answered. Risk loosing their children by following the Church teaching, or sin and use artificial birth control so they don't loose the children they are already responsible for and confess their sins to their priest.

If they have exhausted all resources already, and the Church is not able or willing to step up and help them live within the teachings of the Church, how can one not expect them to do a serious examination of their situation and seek a solution which doesn't jeopardize the lives of their existing children and marriage?

The Church's answer is simple, but the reality of a situation like this is far from simple.

Is this really any different than any other sinner who regularly confesses to the same sin? They are all fully aware of their faults and circumstances, yet end up repeatedly committing the same act.

With the increasingly forceful movement advocating personal conscience over obedience to Church teaching, there is little hope that people will be motivated to reject contraception into the future.  A return to 'thinking with the Church' is what is needed in this issue. 

The hallmark of a faithful Catholic, indeed, is "thinking with the Church" --- sentire cum ecclesia.  It is difficult to understand how "primacy of individual conscience" can place one's individual judgment on a matter of morality at odds with something about which the Church has been unambiguously clear and has never taught otherwise.  If one could go back and point to a time and place in the Church, to a bishop or even a Pope who taught otherwise, they might have some ammunition.  But no one, Catholic or non-Catholic, can go back to the history and tradition of the Church, and find a defense for the use of artificial birth control.  It's just not there.  The most one might be able to do, is to go back to the Song of Solomon and ask whether this paean to conjugal love should be sullied by fear of an improvident pregnancy, when we now have the means to make that not happen.  I'm not saying that would be correct, just that someone could raise the issue (and I have never heard of that issue being raised).  It is true, though, that, aside from a handful of crude methods, it really did not exist until the 20th century, which leads to the core question of Humanae vitae --- "we now have it, so can we use it?".

And in answer to the objection that "traditionalists say that the Church is wrong to attempt to suppress the Tridentine missal of St Pius V, and some teachings of Vatican II are either questionable or outright false", you most certainly do have those who are troubled by such a break with the past.  Questions of "active participation", simplification of rites, use of the vernacular, and so on, are not matters of eternal truth, things that can never change, things that have always been taught and practiced in precisely that fashion (or should have been), otherwise one must deny that the Holy Spirit was with the Church from medieval times to the 1960s, and that she was allowing deficient and even harmful worship for centuries.  And there are certain aspects of Vatican II that do, indeed, require quite a bit of "spin", to reconcile with what was taught before --- ecumenism, religious liberty, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, and so on.  Cardinal Ratzinger referred to that "spin" as "hermeneutic of continuity".  Quite frankly, that's difficult sometimes.  When Paul VI taught in Humanae vitae, he wasn't proposing any change, there was no question of "now, this may sound different from what was taught before, but trust me, it's really the same" --- though he did bend over backwards to stretch the Church's moral teaching on contraception almost to its breaking point --- rather, he maintained something that had always been true (and always will be true), regardless of who might have a problem with it.  And nobody who sought to adhere to the Church's traditional teaching "had a problem with it", no, it was the ones who sought change, the ones who wanted to be told that ABC was morally acceptable, basically those who said, as above, "we now have it, so can we use it?".  And, God bless him, Pope Francis hasn't attempted even to touch this teaching.  

The "lines to the confessional" are not nearly as long as the communion lines.  Yes, I know, we're supposed to suspend disbelief, and say "maybe all of those people go to confession on Saturdays when you're not there, or they go to the twice-annually communal penance services, or they make appointments and go during the week".  If I ever started that orthodox Catholic polling firm that I've discussed here before under the category of "Walter Mitty dreams of winning the big lottery", I'd want to see a distribution of several hundred (or more) Catholics who are regular communicants, and how that correlates with how often they go to confession, and when they last went.  

Contraception (and by this I mean artificial birth control or ABC) is a pretty hard sin to commit in any fashion other than with sufficient reflection and full consent of the will.  Aside from "spur of the moment" methods such as coitus interruptus and, pardon me, various other means of gratification, to commit the sin of contraception requires, at the very least, a visit to a doctor's office and/or a visit to the pharmacy.  People don't do this at 10 pm in a fit of paroxysms of passion.  No, it is a fully deliberate, coldly calculated act, that takes time to contemplate, plan, and seek enablement.  It's not something you can do by accident.  It requires planning, deliberation, and organizing one's style of life, to accommodate the preferred method of ABC.

Actually, I have to think sterilization, after "our family is complete", would be more of a temptation, in that, strictly speaking, the sin is only committed once, and unless the male or female "tubes" grow back together, it is permanent.  Reversal is difficult and might or might not be mandatory once the sterilized person has repented.  I have heard of priests prescribing abstinence during what would otherwise be the fertile period as a means of repentance and penance, though I have to think that would vary with the circumstances of the couple and the factors that drove them to do this in the first place.  For some, the sorrow of knowing they could never again have children, knowing that, remote as one hopes the possibility would be, if their child or children died, they would have to stay childless, might be quite enough.  I myself, having sinfully used NFP in a selfish fashion without excuse, know the sorrow of looking at my one son and having to say to myself "he's all I've got, and due to my age and financial circumstances (not to mention the possibility that I will never be free to remarry validly), he's all I'll ever have, and if something would happen to him, I'd be childless".

Not to say "we once said this was intrinsically evil and immoral, but now we say that it is not intrinsically evil and is not immoral", no.

"Development of doctrine" might apply to, for instance, the relative liberalization of the circumstances under which NFP (not ABC) may be used without sin --- the Church once said "grave" or "serious", but now she merely says "well-founded", "proportionate", and so on.  This might be more the recognition that, in the world today, it is not as easy to have larger numbers of children as it was in times past (for one thing, infant mortality was far higher than today), with the Church saying, in effect, "just how 'grave' or 'serious' does the reason have to be?".  Or it could be the way Paul VI was basically forced to file it down to the finest point possible, "ABC is immoral and here is precisely why", with natural law and the intrinsic ordering of the marital act perhaps not having been hitherto as closely considered. 

I have also proposed situations such as a victimized spouse being forced to provide sex-on-demand to a brute of a spouse who unjustly invokes the "marriage debt" and might harm her if she does not acquiesce, basically, marital rape, as well as the question of using barrier methods not with the goal of avoiding pregnancy, but rather, solely to prevent transmission of disease, with the prevention of pregnancy being an unwanted and unwelcomed side effect.  Were the Church ever to declare something such as this, that would seem to be a further "development of doctrine".  To answer the objection in advance, no, one could not say "we will use ABC to prevent pregnancy, because pregnancy would be very difficult for us, but we do not seek to prevent pregnancy, that is just an unwanted and unwelcomed side effect", IOW, "we don't want to do this, but we have to".  That doesn't work.   While it might be less morally depraved than saying "we are doing this because we want to, we don't 'have to', we just don't want a child", it is still using an immoral means to an end, willing and seeking the very effect of ABC. 

And in the case of the spouse who is basically being raped, that is no longer a "marital act" properly understood, and sadly, in some settings, a woman cannot refuse her husband.  Not all societies and cultures have "sister care" shelters, where an abused wife can take her children and be protected from harm, not to mention ways to correct the husband and make him quit basically raping his wife.  And what happens when she has to go back to the family home and resume living with the husband who has been abusing her?  There are no easy answers.

To say it is less than a full throated defence is somewhat of an understatement. It does not take all that waffle to say Human Vitae is the teaching of the Catholic Church and we, the Catholic bishops of Canada, fully support the pope's encyclical and urge all Catholics to remain obedient to the Church's teaching.