For Any Friend Who Might Need This:

On the 40th Anniversary of Humanae Vitae
Most Rev. Thomas G. Wenski

(Most Rev. Thomas Wenski, Bishop of the Diocese of Orlando, is Chairman of the USCCB Committee on International Justice andPeace. This originally appeared in The Florida Catholic.)

This past July 25th marked the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s controversial
and still little heeded encyclical, Humanae vitae (On the Regulation of Birth). Many
both within and without the Church – heady from the many changes initiated by the
Second Vatican Council – fully expected that the Church would change her clear and
constant teachings on human sexuality and procreation. Proponents of change then
argued that the development of the contraceptive pill made such change in teaching not
only possible but imperative. However, Pope Paul VI (advised closely by the then
Cardinal Wojtyla) realized that while much in the Church was rightly changeable (for
example, liturgical rites and languages had changed often in the Church’s two thousand
year history) no one – even the Pope – could change the received teachings of the
Church in matters of faith and morals.
In Humanae vitae, giving an ecclesiastical example of a profile in courage, Paul
VI reaffirmed the immorality of recourse to artificial means of birth regulation. While
Pope Paul VI and the Catholic Church practically stood alone in reaffirmation that the
procreative and unitive ends of the conjugal act could not morally be arbitrarily
separated, it is important to remember that up until the early 20th century this was also
the constant teaching of all other Christian ecclesial bodies – Orthodox, Anglican and
Protestant.
Of course, the Church is not against sexual pleasure as some of her opponents
allege; but, more importantly, we are for the happiness of the human person. The
fostering of that happiness requires understanding the gift of our sexuality as God has
intended it. Sex, in God’s plan, is more than just a “recreational activity”. As Catholic
feminist and philosopher, Janet Smith says: “…sex is for babies and bonding. If
people are not ready for babies and bonding, they ought not to be engaging in acts of
sexual intercourse.” And what are nuptials but the public expression of a couple’s
readiness to do just that?
A careful rereading of Humanae vitae – especially in the light of the “sexual
revolution” unleashed in society over the past 40 years –can help us appreciate how
prescient the Pope was in his warnings of the dire consequences that a “contraceptive
mentality” would have on society. The numbers of unwanted pregnancies and
abortions did not decrease with the widespread acceptance of contraception – they
increased. And the “pill” far from freeing women from male domination made them
more likely to be victims of sexual exploitation by men. The break up of families and
the epidemic of divorce in our culture, the increasingly high incidence of women
bearing children out of wedlock, the flight from adult responsibility and the extended
“adolescence” of men, all point to – in hindsight –the rightness of Paul VI’s and the
Church’s teaching on human sexuality.
(Continued on p. 2)
2
The Church condemns artificial contraception not just because of its bad consequences. She condemns
artificial contraception because it is intrinsically evil (and because it is evil it has bad consequences).
Contraception is evil because it violates the very purpose and nature of the sexual act – and in doing so violates
the dignity of the human person.
Pope John Paul II reaffirmed Humane vitae throughout his pontificate. His “Theology of the Body” has
sought to represent the perennial teachings of Church on human sexuality in an idiom more accessible to our
contemporaries. The sexual act, he teaches, implies self-giving, a self giving denied in the very act of
contraception. One’s “body language” should mean as much as one’s words do. Happiness and human
flourishing cannot be built on insincere language or lies. Contraception – like pre-marital or extra-marital sex -
is a lie because it denies the unconditional “yes” of one to another implied in the very act of love making.


To see this and other articles on this topic go to the following website:

http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/nfp/forum_summer-fall08.pdf