Eduardo Rodriguez Calsado
(Catholic News Agency) July 25 marks the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on married love and procreation, Humanae Vitae (On Human Life) which reaffirmed the Church’s teaching on the regulation of births. It was the ember which led to four decades of doubt and dissent among many Catholics, especially in industrialized countries. Through the passage of time, many esteemed theologians admit that the Pope Paul VI was speaking prophetically about current culture.
WARNINGS
In presenting his encyclical, Paul VI warned against four main tribulations that would arise if church teaching on the regulation of births were disregarded. First, he cautioned that the widespread use of contraception would lead to “conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality.”
Second, he warned that man would lose respect for women and “no longer care for her physical and psychological equilibrium,” to the point that he would consider her “as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.”
Third, Paul VI warned that widespread use of contraception would place a “dangerous weapon in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies.”
Finally, the Holy Father warned that contraception would mislead human beings into thinking they had unlimited dominion over their own bodies, relentlessly turning the human person into the object of his or her own intrusive power.
MYTH HIGHLIGHTED
“The pope painted a wider vision of the problem. We think everything is ours, but the reality is that we belong to God,” he said. “‘Humanae Vitae’ means, ‘Of human life.’ Human life came from God, belongs to God, and goes back to God.”
St Paul writes, “You are not your own. You have been bought, and at a price.” (1 Cor 6: 19-20). Sex and having children are aspects of a whole cluster of realities that make up our lives and activities, according to Fr [Frank] Pavone [director of Priests for Life].
“We suffer from the illusion that all of these activities belong to us,” he said.
SIGN OF CONTRADICTION
According to Pope Benedict XVI, the document quickly became a sign of contradiction. Initially drafted to treat a difficult situation, it constituted a significant show of courage in reasserting the continuity of the church’s doctrine and tradition.
“Forty years after its publication this teaching not only expresses its unchanged truth but also reveals the farsightedness with which the problem is treated,” he said in a public address, May 10. “In fact, conjugal love is described within a global process that does not stop at the division between soul and body and is not subjected to mere sentiment. Often transient and precarious, but rather takes charge of the person’s unity and the total sharing of the spouses who, in their reciprocal acceptance, offer themselves in a promise of faithful and exclusive love that flows from a genuine choice of freedom.”
Because life is a precious gift, every time we are witness to its beginnings is a reaffirmation of the power and creative action of God who trusts man and thus calls him to build the future with the strength of hope, he said.
“How can such love remain closed to the gift of life?” Pope Benedict XVI questioned, while acknowledging that the teaching is not easy. “What was true yesterday remains true even today. The truth expressed in Humanae Vitae doesn’t change; on the contrary, in the light of new scientific discoveries it is ever more up to date.”
Regardless of the society, Fr Nathan Reesman says, Humanae Vitae is the same today as the day it was written.
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