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Married couples respect design of nature
By Christopher P. Klofft
In paragraph 25 of Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” he makes an invitation to married couples to make the teaching of the document visible to the whole world. He writes: “the Lord has entrusted to [Christian couples] the task of making visible to men and women the holiness and joy of the law which united inseparably thei
r love for one another and the cooperation they give to God’s love, God who is the Author of human life.” This is the only reference in these two paragraphs of text that speaks explicitly to their role as parents. The rest of the section talks about the witness of their married love to the world as a sign of Christ’s love.
There is a way in which couples can especially witness Christ’s love in the world, cooperate with the creative love of God, and most especially enact “responsible parenthood,” the specific duty of the married couple articulated in paragraph 10 of the document. It also happens to be one of the best-kept secrets of the Catholic Church, though it shouldn’t be: the practice of Natural Family Planning. NFP is the scientifically based practice by which a married couple can respect the design of nature, honor the mystery of manhood and womanhood invested in us by our Creator, and prayerfully determine the family size which will contribute to the building up of the Church and the salvation of all the family’s members.
There are a host of misconceptions about NFP: that it’s the same as the mid-20th century “rhythm method,” that it deprives the marital relationship of spontaneity, that it’s hard to learn, that it fosters resentment between spouses, or that it just doesn’t work. In truth, none of these accusations are accurate. NFP is a practice that is easy to learn, increases marital communication and intimacy, and has an effectiveness at avoiding pregnancy equivalent to hormonal contraception – but without the cost, dangerous side effects, damage to the woman’s fertility, or ease by which a man can ignore the equilibrium of a woman’s body (cf. HV 17).
“Humanae Vitae” was intended to glorify the opportunity afforded by married love, even as it spoke of it as a sacred duty. Married love according to the divine design increases happiness and improves the health of society. But so many have rejected this opportunity in favor of convenience or mistaken notions of biology.
Whether you are newly married or have been married for 20 years, consider the possibilities of a richer, happier, more intimate marriage through the daily practice of Natural Family Planning. Welcome it as a school of virtue to help you and your spouse to grow in response to the universal call to holiness of “Lumen Gentium” chapter 5. Consider it as full participation in a love that is truly human, total, faithful, and fruitful (HV 9). And most of all, imagine the growth of the Kingdom of God made possible here on earth by a community of married couples vigorously living out the fullness of their vocation. This was the hope of Paul VI in July 1968.
– Christopher P. Klofft is associate professor of theology at Assumption College where he teaches Scripture, moral theology, and the theology of human sexuality. He is the author of “Living the Love Story: Catholic Morality in the Modern World.” He and his wife Bridget are the parents of two sons and are members of Immaculate Conception Parish in Worcester.
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The contraception Deception
By Allison LeDoux
Dr. Walt Larimore is a nationally recognized family physician. Some years ago he had an experience that changed his life. A colleague showed him a patient information brochure which said that the birth control pills he had routinely been prescribing for
years had a post-fertilization effect causing the “unrecognized loss of pre-born children.” Dr. Larimore thought this couldn’t possibly be true – these hormonal contraceptives are commonly known to suppress ovulation and no one sees this as a particularly big deal. However, his curiosity was piqued and his personal integrity made him realize he needed to pursue this further, so he set out to disprove the claim that contraceptives can cause early abortions.
After extensive consultation, he collaborated with another well-respected physician researcher, Dr. Joseph Stanford, and together they did a thorough review of all the medical literature on hormonal contraception. They published their study, “Postfertilization Effects of Oral Contraceptives and Their Relationship to Informed Consent” in the Archives of Family Medicine, a journal of the American Medical Association. What Dr. Larimore had discovered came as a shock, and led him to scientific knowledge that changed his life and his practice of medicine.
The studies on hormonal contraception demonstrate that these drugs have multiple mechanisms of action; they are specifically designed to work in a variety of ways. These include the effect of sometimes inhibiting ovulation (depending on where the woman is in her cycle), as well as the post-fertilization effects which include the slowing of embryo transport, alteration of the endometrium preventing the implantation of the baby in the womb, and, failure to maintain pregnancy when implantation does occur, because the chemically altered endometrium cannot nourish the developing baby. The authors concluded in a subsequent study that the post-fertilization effects are probably more common than is recognized by most physicians or patients.
What did Dr. Larimore do with this newfound knowledge? After much deliberation and prayer, he concluded that the scientific evidence of the post-fertilization effects was strong enough that he could no longer in conscience prescribe contraception for his patients, especially since morally viable alternatives (scientifically based modern methods of natural family planning) were available. Despite the anticipated backlash, and in the interest of true informed consent, Dr. Larimore explained to his patients this change in his practice and why. What he found, blessedly, was that women were grateful and his practice continued to thrive.
In the five decades since the invention of the birth control pill and the onset of the sexual revolution, we have seen its destructive and heartbreaking effects. Pope Paul VI was clearly right when he predicted in 1968 that the widespread use of contraception would cause an increase in infidelity, an objectification of women, coercion by governments, and a degrading view of the human person. When the Holy Father affirmed so eloquently, the constant teaching of the Church against contraception, and upheld the beauty and dignity of marriage so lovingly in “Humanae Vitae,” only to have it met with widespread controversy, vilification, and dissent, one can only imagine the suffering he must have endured. Fifty years later, medicine, social science, and the wounded hearts of countless women and men have provided overwhelming evidence for the vindication of “Humanae Vitae.” Pope Paul VI lived the remaining 10 years of his life without ever writing another encyclical. He entered eternal life on August 6, 1978, the Feast of the Transfiguration, the same date on which 15 years later, in 1993, Pope John Paul II would issue his great work, “Veritatis Splendor” (The Splendor of Truth) which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary. Divine coincidence perhaps? Certainly both these incredibly rich documents provide us with a transformative guide for human flourishing. And that is something our world desperately needs.
In October 2018, in this 50th anniversary year of “Humanae Vitae,” Pope Paul VI will be canonized a saint. It is quite fitting that the two miracles leading to his beatification and canonization both involved the healing of an unborn child - another affirmation that life and love go hand in hand, just as Pope Paul taught us so well.
The contraceptive mentality in our culture has caused many to be deceived. We are called to more. Let us strive to sincerely seek truth. We may not always get the answer we think we want, but if our hearts are open, we will discover the freedom of The Gift. That was what Walt Larimore did. He sought truth and it changed his life. If we are open to the way of Christ, who is the Truth, we will surely find him and be set free. Reading “Humanae Vitae” is a great way to begin.
- Allison LeDoux is director of the diocesan Office of Marriage and Family and Respect Life Office.
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The four prophesies of Pope Paul VIBy Dr. Mark J. Rollo
“Humanae Vitae,” the encyclical authored by Pope Paul VI, is now 50 years old. The world was expecting the Catholic Church to ease her traditional prohibition of contraception just as the Anglican Church had done in 1930, marking the first crack in Christianity’s united opposition to contraception. However, the world was mistaken.
The Church’s role has never been to accommodate cultural change. Rather, she has always been a sign of contradiction as is Christ himself.
In the case of “Humanae Vitae,” contradiction is an understatement. This document landed on the world like an atomic bomb and instantly became one of the most reviled and opposed encyclicals in the history of the Church. Dissent was everywhere. Certainly it existed in secular circles but opposition was strong in Catholic communities as well. Today, most Catholics oppose or ignore “Humane Vitae” if they even know about the encyclical at all.
Pope Paul VI made four prophesies in “Humanae Vitae.” Regarding the first prophesy he wrote, “How easy it will be for (many) to justify behavior (contraception) leading to marital infidelity or to a gradual weakening in the discipline of morals.” There is no question that the last 50 years have seen an increase in divorce rates, out of wedlock births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion. The availability of contraception has led young people to believe that they can have sex “responsibly.” The terms “safe sex” and “protected sex” have become the mantras of today’s “hook-up” culture.
The Pope’s second prediction was the loss of respect for women. It is ironic that so called reproductive rights have been hailed as a boon for women when the reality is a rise in exploitation, abandonment and impoverishment of women. As stated in “Humanae Vitae,” “It is to be feared that husbands who become accustomed to contraceptive practices will lose respect for their wives. They may come to disregard their wives’ psychological and physical equilibrium and use their wives as instruments for serving their own desires.”
Abuse of power by government was the third prediction of Pope Paul VI. “Who will prevent public authorities from favoring what they believe to be the most effective contraceptive methods and from mandating that everyone must use them whenever they consider it necessary?”
The Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate of Obamacare is a great example of governmental abuse of power with respect to contraception which attempted to coerce even the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for contraception. Forcing everyone to pay for contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs, in violation of the First Amendment, is only the latest example of abuse of governmental power. Not only does it violate the First Amendment, it tries to make something evil appear good. It treats fertility as a disease that must be prevented.
Contraception, penned the Pope in his fourth prediction, would lead not only to governmental abuse of power but to personal abuse of power. He reflected, “If we do not want the mission of procreating human life to be conceded to the arbitrary decisions of men, we need to recognize that there are some limits to the power of Man over his own body and over the natural operations of the body which ought not to be transgressed.”
Sex without babies has led to the babies without sex industry of in vitro fertilization where babies are treated as products rather than life flowing from love. The sterile sex of contraception has led to the attempt to normalize another form of sterile sex: homosexuality. Societal sanctioning of so called same-sex marriages is justified by many as a civil right but marriage is about bonding and babies. Only the bodies of male and female are built for bonding, the natural result of which is the conception of human beings who have the right to be loved and nurtured by the father and mother who co-created them.
The quest for unlimited dominion over one’s body, ushered in by contraception, has also helped give rise to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Fifty years ago, the Holy Father challenged men of science to “strive to establish a satisfactorily clear basis for the moral regulation of offspring.” Many have taken up this challenge and effective modern methods of natural family planning have been developed which help couples avoid pregnancy for righteous reasons and also provide the basis for moral methods to treat infertility. Thus it has been made clear that, as stated by Pope Paul VI, “No contradiction exists between the divine laws for transmitting life and those for fostering true conjugal love.”
Pope Paul VI enlisted a panel of advisers regarding contraception and the vast majority favored dropping opposition to contraception. Though he may have been informed by human advisers, he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. “Humanae Vitae” reaffirmed Catholic teaching.
As the colonnade in front of St. Peter’s Basilica simulates the embrace of Jesus, Holy Mother Church, via “Humane Vitae,” seeks to hold us in her loving arms and guide us on the path of love and life.
– Dr. Rollo is a family physician
and a member of St. Anthony Parish in Fitchburg.
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‘Humanae Vitae’ counters sexual revolution
By Bishop Robert J. McManus
July 25, 2018 will mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of “Humanae Vitae,” Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical on the proper use of the gift of sexuality in marriage. The encyclical’s first words are these: “The most serious duty of transmitting human life, for which married persons are free and responsible collaborators of God the Creator, has
always been a source of great joy to them.”
The Holy Father’s words underline the essential aspect of human sexuality, namely that, through their sexuality, husband and wife share in the very divine activity of bringing new life into the world. It is only the human persons, male or female and created in the image and likeness of God, who enjoy such a singular privilege.
In the Church’s 2,000 years of moral reflection on the sacrament of marriage and the human and ecclesial reality of conjugal love, the teaching authority of the Church has shown remarkable continuity in its teaching. Rejecting the recommendation of a commission that Pope John XXIII had established to study the question of the moral justification of using the birth control pill in marriage, Paul VI sought to explain the proper use of marital sexuality, yet doing so within the contemporary context of the Church and the modern world.
In language that was amplified and further explained by both St. John Paul II and Pope Francis, Paul VI described the marriage act as involving “the reciprocal gift of self,” intended to establish “the communion of their beings” in order to “collaborate with God and the generation and education of new lives.” The Holy Father went on to describe married love as fully human, total, faithful, exclusive, fruitful and a source of profound and lasting love.
Unfortunately, the publication of “Humanae Vitae” was met not only with dissent but with hostility. The reasons for such widespread rejection of the teaching are complex, yet it is a historical fact that 1968 was a year of a cultural revolt against many institutions, including the Church. The so-called “sexual revolution” was well underway throughout Western culture. Moreover, an understanding of a love that is faithful, exclusive and fruitful, lived within a monogamous relationship between a man and a woman that often demands self-sacrifice, was dismissed as archaic and unrealistic.
In Catholic moral theology, the morality of an act is not determined solely by the consequences of the act itself. However, from a retrospective viewpoint of 50 years, a number of moralists, both Catholic and non-Catholic, have observed that the consequences of deliberately separating the unitive (love-affirming) and procreative (life-creating) meanings of the marital act have been highly problematic. One might arguably contend that Pope Paul VI’s reaffirmation of the Church’s traditional teaching on the moral integrity of the marital act was prophetic.
In chapter four of his apostolic exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia,” Pope Francis presents, in almost lyrical language, a profoundly beautiful meditation on St. Paul’s “Hymn to Love” in his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:47). I would suggest that all engaged couples preparing for the celebration of the sacrament of marriage in our parishes should be provided with the text of this papal meditation for their own study and prayer.
In that same papal document, Pope Francis strongly reaffirms the wisdom of the moral teaching of “Humanae Vitae” in these words, “… the teaching of the Encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae’… ought to be taken up anew in order to counter a mentality that is often hostile to life… Decisions involving responsible parenthood presuppose the formation of conscience which is the ‘most secret core and sanctuary of the person’ (S.S., 16).” (Amoris Laetitia, #222)
At a time in our American culture when the gift of human sexuality is woefully misunderstood and is distorted in such dramatic ways that have led to the degradation of women and the weakening of family life, we should follow the pastoral advice of Pope Francis. Simply stated, we as a Church should revisit the teaching of the saintly Pope Paul VI who suffered greatly as a result of proposing the true meaning of marriage and the proper use of human sexuality within the marriage bond, a bond that is always strengthened by mutual love and respect.
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Birth of an encyclical: Priest documents preparation of ‘Humanae Vitae’By Cindy Wooden | Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Documents in the Vatican Secret Archives and the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prove it was a “myth” that Blessed Paul VI largely set out on his own in writing “Humanae Vitae,” the 1968 encyclical on married love and the regulation of births.
In anticipation of the encyclical’s 50th anniversary, Pope Francis gave special access to the archives to Msgr. Gilfredo Marengo, a professor at Rome’s Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences.
The results of his research were published in Italian in early July in the book, “The Birth of an Encyclical: ‘Humanae Vitae’ in the Light of the Vatican Archives.”
In a note to reporters, Msgr. Marengo said his research revealed four little-known facts: Pope Paul approved an encyclical, “De Nascendae Prolis” (“On a Child’s Birth”), in early May 1968, but was convinced by translators in the Vatican Secretariat of State that it still needed work; a new draft was corrected by hand by Pope Paul; on several occasions the future St. John Paul II sent suggestions, including an extensive treatment of the theme, but there is no evidence that they were used heavily in the final document; and Pope Paul asked the 199 bishops at the 1967 world Synod of Bishops to send him reflections on the theme of the regulation of births.
Msgr. Marengo said the request to the synod members was a surprise. It is not included in any report about the synod itself.
“The news about the desire of the pope to consult all the members of the synodal assembly is very important,” he said, “because one of the accusations repeated most often after the publication of ‘Humanae Vitae’ was that the pope decided to act alone, in a manner that was not collegial.”
The pope received only 25 responses in the period between Oct. 9, 1967, and May 31, 1968, Msgr. Marengo said. And, perhaps more surprising, of those, only seven bishops asked Pope Paul to repeat the Catholic Church’s teaching against the use of contraceptives.
The other responses – including a joint U.S. response from Cardinal Lawrence Shehan of Baltimore, Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia, Archbishop John Dearden of Detroit and Bishop John Wright of Pittsburgh – exhibited an openness to the use of artificial birth control in some circumstances, however “none of them would say that using the pill is a good thing,” Msgr. Marengo told CNS.
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen of Rochester, New York, and Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, Poland – the future Pope John Paul II – were among the seven bishops urging a reaffirmation of church teaching that using contraceptives was wrong.
“The pope never thought of proceeding alone, putting the collegial profile of the Petrine ministry in parentheses,” Msgr. Marengo wrote.
But consultation is not the same thing as taking a vote. And bishops were not the only ones asked for their input. Long before the synod, and before Pope Paul was elected to lead the church, St. John XXIII had appointed a small committee to study the issue of the regulation of birth. Pope Paul expanded the commission, which included several married couples. The commission’s work ended in 1966 with the leaking of a report by the majority of members asserting artificial contraception was not intrinsically evil; minority reports, insisting contraception was morally wrong, were leaked in response.
After reading the commission reports and the bishops’ input, Msgr. Marengo wrote, Pope Paul “found himself in a situation that was not easy. His judgment had matured, and he felt obliged in conscience to express it in virtue of his apostolic ministry, knowing well that going in that direction would place him at a predictable and painful distance from sectors of the church community that were not marginal.”
In fact, less than a week after the encyclical was published, Pope Paul held a general audience and spoke about just how weighty the decision was. “Never before have we felt so heavily, as in this situation, the burden of our office,” he said July 31, 1968. “We studied, read and discussed as much as we could; and we also prayed very much about it.”
For Msgr. Marengo, the process of drafting “Humanae Vitae” cannot be understood without recognizing the changes in the church unleased by the Second Vatican Council, including on the theme of marriage and parenthood.
“Since the council in ‘Gaudium et Spes’ recognized ‘responsible parenthood’ as a value – changing in a fundamental way the vision of marriage – the idea of many was that it required a change in the church’s sexual morality as well,” he told CNS.
“The difficulty for Pope Paul VI was in how to explain that the use of contraceptives was not licit, but to do so in the light of an affirmation of responsible parenthood,” he said.
The encyclical’s emphasis on the “inseparable connection” between the “unitive and the procreative” qualities of married love, he said, marked a significant change in church teaching from before Vatican II; previously, the church taught that the primary purpose of marriage was for procreation.
Blessed Paul’s personal work in rewriting the encyclical’s “pastoral directives” also reflects the teaching of Vatican II, he said. Previously, “the magisterial task was to explain, and the pastoral task was to tell people to accept.”
But, he said, “Pope Paul broke this schema, saying, ‘I will explain the teaching and if you try to understand it, you will see that it is true and is what is best for you.’”