Humanae vitae at 40

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40 years of 'Humanae vitae':

40 years of 'Humanae vitae': 

A sign of contradiction 

Editorial 

by Giovanni Maria Vian 

Translated from L'osservatory Romano

the 7/25/08 issue of 

Forty years ago today, on July 25, 1968, Paul VI signed Humanae vitae, the encyclical which rejected artificial contraception, and expressed itself strongly against sexual hedonism and the politics of family planning generally imposed on poorer nations by the more powerful. 

As soon as it was published on July 29, the encyclical raised unprecedented opposition within the Catholc Church itself, to the point that the Pope decided not to use again the solemn form of the encyclical - most probably in order not to expose the Pontifical authority to pointless abuse. 

"Rarely has a text in the recent history of the Magisterium," wrote Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1995, "become such a sign of contradiction as this encyclical which Paul VI wrote after making a decision that he profoundly suffered through." 

To explain the controversial reaction and dissent provoked by the encyclical, many factors concurred, from the overall cultural climate of those years (it was the fateful summer of 1968) to the enormous economic interests affected by the encyclical. 

But Papa Montini never changed his stand on this crucial issue. A few weeks before his death, speaking to the College of Cardinals on June 23, 1978, he reiterated that "after reviewing the most serious conclusions from science," the decision he made in 1968 - consistent with Vatican-II which affirmed the principle of respect for natural law - was squarely for "a conscientious and ethically responsible parenthood". 

In his subsequent homily for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, which was explicitly presented as a balance sheet of his Pontificate, Papa Montini cited Populorum progressio and Humanae vitae as expressions of that defense of human life that he defined as an integral element of service to the truth of the faith. 

Described mockingly by its critics as 'the encyclical against the pill', this papal document - in clear continuity with the Magisterium of Pius XI and above all of Pius XII, which were subsequently cited in this respect in Vatican-II's pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes - as well as consistent with the important conciliar statements on the concept of matrimony - was nonetheless submerged in controversy. 

Today, in the face of the disquieting developments in genetic engineering, Humanae vitae appears lucid and prophetic in its statement that "if one does not wish to expose to man's arbitration the mission of generating life, then unbreachable limits must be recognized to the possibility of man's dominion over his own body and its functions - limits which are not licit for any man, as a private individual or as someone in authority, to breach." 

The storm that raged against Paul VI's encyclical obscured its teaching on matrimony, which it described not as "an effect of chance nor the evolutionary product of unconscious natural forces" but instituted by God. 

A sacrament for those who have been baptized, matrimony is, "above all", Humanae vitae affirms, "a love that is fully human, that is to say, sensitve and spiritual", as well as "a very special form of personal friendship in which the spouses share everything." 

The preparation of the text was preceded by the work of a Pontifical Commission for the Study of Populations, Family and Natality, which, as is known, concluded with a consensus - far from unopposed, which is not as well-known - in favor of contraception as licit within the context of 'responsible parenthood'. 

Paul VI, as he states in the encyclical, did not feel himself bound by this conclusion, and was criticized and assailed for that decision. 

But one must not forget the other consensi that emerged. On September 6, 1968, Jean Guitton defined the encyclical as 'ferme mais non fermee'(firm but not closed), in that "while it speaks of the narrow path", it also shows that "it is the open way towards the future", and the Jesuit Cardinal theologian Jean Danielou underscored that the encycloical "makes us feel the sacred character of human love" and expresses "a protest against technocracy". 

As an authentic sign of contradiction, not many recall Humanae vitae gladly. Certainly not for its demanding and countercurrent teaching. But even because it is not useful to play the recurrent game of pitting one Pope against another - perhaps useful for historians to underscore obvious differences - but which must be rejected when used exploitatively which is the case most often in the media. 

Indeed, among Pope Paul VI's strongest supporters in this matter were Cardinal Karol Wojtyla - the Archbishop of Cracow who had an important role in the enlarged commission of inquiry, and who later innovated much about the issue in his Pontifical Magisterium on the body and sexuality; and theologian Joseph Ratzinger, whom Paul VI would make a cardinal nine years later. 

Which goes to show the vital continuity of the Christian proposition evene= on the question of birth control, which as early as June 23, 1964, Paul VI had defined as 'an extremely serious issue' because "it touches the sentiments and interests nearest to the experience of being man and woman".

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Familiaris Consortio #13:Jesus Christ, Bridegroom of the Church, and the Sacrament of Matrimony

13. The communion between God and His people finds its definitive fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom who loves and gives Himself as the Savior of humanity, uniting it to Himself as His body.

He reveals the original truth of marriage, the truth of the "beginning,"(27) and, freeing man from his hardness of heart, He makes man capable of realizing this truth in its entirety.

This revelation reaches its definitive fullness in the gift of love which the Word of God makes to humanity in assuming a human nature, and in the sacrifice which Jesus Christ makes of Himself on the Cross for His bride, the Church. In this sacrifice there is entirely revealed that plan which God has imprinted on the humanity of man and woman since their creation(23); the marriage of baptized persons thus becomes a real symbol of that new and eternal covenant sanctioned in the blood of Christ. The Spirit which the Lord pours forth gives a new heart, and renders man and woman capable of loving one another as Christ has loved us. Conjugal love reaches that fullness to which it is interiorly ordained, conjugal charity, which is the proper and specific way in which the spouses participate in and are called to live the very charity of Christ who gave Himself on the Cross.

In a deservedly famous page, Tertullian has well expressed the greatness of this conjugal life in Christ and its beauty: "How can I ever express the happiness of the marriage that is joined together by the Church strengthened by an offering, sealed by a blessing, announced by angels and ratified by the Father? ...How wonderful the bond between two believers with a single hope, a single desire, a single observance, a single service! They are both brethren and both fellow-servants; there is no separation between them in spirit or flesh; in fact they are truly two in one flesh and where the flesh is one, one is the spirit."(24)

Receiving and meditating faithfully on the word of God, the Church has solemnly taught and continues to teach that the marriage of the baptized is one of the seven sacraments of the New Covenant.(30)

Indeed, by means of baptism, man and woman are definitively placed within the new and eternal covenant, in the spousal covenant of Christ with the Church. And it is because of this indestructible insertion that the intimate community of conjugal life and love, founded by the Creator,(31) is elevated and assumed into the spousal charity of Christ, sustained and enriched by His redeeming power.

By virtue of the sacramentality of their marriage, spouses are bound to one another in the most profoundly indissoluble manner. Their belonging to each other is the real representation, by means of the sacramental sign, of the very relationship of Christ with the Church.

Spouses are therefore the permanent reminder to the Church of what happened on the Cross; they are for one another and for the children witnesses to the salvation in which the sacrament makes them sharers. Of this salvation event marriage, like every sacrament, is a memorial, actuation and prophecy: "As a memorial, the sacrament gives them the grace and duty of commemorating the great works of God and of bearing witness to them before their children. As actuation, it gives them the grace and duty of putting into practice in the present, towards each other and their children, the demands of a love which forgives and redeems. As prophecy, it gives them the grace and duty of living and bearing witness to the hope of the future encounter with Christ."(32)

Like each of the seven sacraments, so also marriage is a real symbol of the event of salvation, but in its own way. "The spouses participate in it as spouses, together, as a couple, so that the first and immediate effect of marriage (res et sacramentum) is not supernatural grace itself, but the Christian conjugal bond, a typically Christian communion of two persons because it represents the mystery of Christ's incarnation and the mystery of His covenant. The content of participation in Christ's life is also specific: conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter- appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will. It aims at a deeply personal unity, the unity that, beyond union in one flesh, leads to forming one heart and soul; it demands indissolubility and faithfulness in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility (cf Humanae vitae, 9). In a word it is a question of the normal characteristics of all natural conjugal love, but with a new significance which not only purifies and strengthens them, but raises them to the extent of making them the expression of specifically Christian values."(33)