Take the largest group of Catholics in the world, add an existing dissatisfaction with the Church’s message on contraception and abortion, and finish it off with the rapid spread of the Zika virus, and you’ve got yourself the current Brazilian health crisis.
First arriving in Brazil in May 2015, the Zika virus causes microcephaly in some infants and can be contracted through sex. Women infected with the Zika virus may want to avoid having children because of the high risk of birth abnormalities. As Zika continues to spread throughout Latin America, hitting Brazil the hardest, pressure builds on the Catholic Church to relax its position on contraception. The Church, led by the Argentinian Pope Francis, has already loosened its views on divorce and homosexuality but maintains a hard line on contraception. The National Council of Bishops of Brazil made it clear that the Church’s position remains unmoved even in the face of the Zika crisis.
The Brazilian Church’s leadership has maintained that the only ways to delay pregnancy in accordance with Catholic teaching is through natural family planning or chastity. It is important to note that not only is natural family planning wholly incompatible with the reality that more than 50 percent of pregnancies in Brazil are unintended, but even when natural family planning is executed correctly, it has a 28 percent failure rate according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The ineffective nature of family planning and the unlikelihood of complete chastity make the Church’s position seem increasingly out of touch with most Brazilians’ lifestyles.
While Zika does add urgency to the issue of contraception, most Brazilians already disagree with the Church’s stance on the subject. A Univision poll from 2014, before the Zika outbreak, found that 93 percent of Brazilians supported contraceptive usage and 74 percent supported abortion in some cases.
But as the Church argues that its unequivocal pro-life values are not up for debate, Brazilians continue to move further and further away from both that position and from the Church as a whole.
A 2013 Pew Research poll found that the number of people who identify as Roman Catholic in Brazil decreased from 92 percent in 1970 to 65 percent in 2010. Despite still having the largest population of Catholics in the world at 123 million, that number is shrinking.
Whether the Church’s refusal to provide some contraceptive leeway during the Zika crisis pushes even more Brazilians away from the Church will take time to tell. However, for now, the crisis is highlighting the disconnect and discontent between the Brazilian Catholics and the Church’s teachings.
Zika will not be the last test for the Church when it comes to contraception. But it might be the defining issue for the Church and its relationship with its Latin American flock over the coming years.