The Timely Wisdom of Humanae Vitae

By Cardinal Justin Rigali

July 25, 2006 marks the 38th anniversary of the publication of the landmark encyclical of Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”). At the height of the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s, Pope Paul VI observed with fatherly concern the signs of the times. Sexual intimacy, that sacred act of love which is both unitive (“the two of them become one body” [Gen 2:24] ) and procreative (“Be fertile and multiply” [Gen 1: 28] ), had become “casual” and “recreational.” In order to remind society of the beauty and sublimity of sexual love, and its proper place in the covenental relationship of marriage, the late Pontiff issued this encyclical which proved both timely and timeless in its wisdom.

In the 1960s, the trends in sexual morals, as well as in the question of the regulation of fertility, moved Pope John XXIII to call for a commission to study the issue of birth control. For several years, this commission, which consisted of men and women, theologians, physicians, and other experts examined the state of conjugal life and the issue of contraception. The majority of commission members embraced a view of the human person which minimize the full meaning of the body in the expression of marital love. They recommend that, under certain conditions, the use of artificial contraception be permitted within Christian marriage.

Pope Paul VI, after his thorough and prayerful review of the findings of the commission, explained that: “The conclusions at which the commission arrived could not, nevertheless, be considered by us as definitive, nor dispense us from a personal examination of this serious question; and this also because, within the commission itself, no full concordance of judgments concerning the moral norms to be proposed had been reached, and above all because certain criteria of solutions had emerged which departed from the moral teaching on marriage proposed with constant firmness by the teaching authority of the Church” (Humanae Vitae, 6). The response of Pope Paul VI to the question of birth control was Humanae Vitae, issued on July 25, 1968, a concise explanation of the consistent teaching of the Church. The encyclical would prove to be highly prophetic.

Pastoral Vision to Responsible Parenthood

The encyclical succinctly called the attention of the human family from the casual view of sexual intimacy to the dignity of conjugal love. “Conjugal love reveals its true nature and nobility when it is considered in its supreme origin, God, who is love, ‘the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named’” (no. 8). Placing marriage within its proper perspective, the Pontiff wrote: “Marriage … is the wise institution of the Creator to realize in mankind His design of love. By means of the reciprocal personal gift of self, proper and exclusive to them, husband and wife tend towards the communion of their beings in view of mutual personal perfection, to collaborate with God in the generation and education of new lives” (no. 8).

The encyclical expresses what the Church has consistently taught about marriage. The permanence of marriage — lasting until death — as well as its requirement of exclusivity, or fidelity, are assumed by the bride and groom as they make their commitment to each other. At the same time, the couple states that their exclusive love will be open to the gift of new life and that they are prepared to accept the role of Christian parents lovingly and responsibly.

At the time when Pope Paul VI authored Humanae Vitae, much was being stated about a population explosion and a fear that the earth’s resources would be inadequate to provide for the earth’s population. From a pastoral vision, Pope Paul VI acknowledged the necessity of responsible parenthood. The root of responsible parenthood is the knowledge that husband and wife are cooperators with God and under the obligation of natural law toward God, themselves, their family and society. “The conjugal act,” wrote Pope Paul VI, “while most closely uniting husband and wife, capacitates them for the generation of new lives, according to laws inscribed in the very being of man and woman. By safeguarding both these essential aspects, the unitive and the procreative, the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the sense of true mutual love and its ordination toward man’s most high calling to parenthood” (no. 12).

The Church’s pastoral concern for the situation of parents was clearly expressed in the encyclical. Parenthood, which is such a high vocation, must not be taken lightly or assumed irresponsibly. There are times in which parents, who are open to the gift of life, deem it best to postpone the conception of a child until their circumstances are more suitable to increase the family. While condemning artificial means of contraception, direct sterilization, and abortion, Pope Paul VI called for a greater study of natural methods of regulating birth, based on the physical signs and monthly cycle of the woman.

Medical science has identified the morally acceptable methods employed by Natural Family Planning as safe and effective in regulating fertility. Further, as Pope Paul VI called for lay people to become involved in giving witness to and teaching from a faith perspective responsible parenthood (cf. no. 26), so Natural Family Planning is taught to couples by couples who have practiced and benefitted from it. I am personally grateful to the many couples who have embraced the message of Humanae Vitae by practicing Natural Family Planning. In particular, I thank those couples who teach Natural Family Planning.

The fruits of the contraceptive mentality

With intense clarity, Pope Paul VI foresaw the devastating effects of the widespread use of artificial contraception. The Pontiff, acknowledging human weakness, envisioned increased conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality, a disregard for the physical and psychological well-being of the woman, as well as the reduction of the woman to a mere object for selfish pleasure (cf. no. 17). Pope Paul VI also recognized that contraception could become a “dangerous weapon … placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies” (no. 17).

The prophetic vision of Pope Paul VI has become the grim reality of our present day. As society disregarded the warning of Pope Paul VI, so a culture with a contraceptive mentality ensued. As a result, divorce has rampantly increased; sexual promiscuity and pregnancy, especially among teenagers, have increased; sexually transmitted diseases have become more problematic; and pornography has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Especially disturbing is the reality that, in China, contraception and abortion are imposed upon families as the government regulates the number of births and the size of the family. All of these troubling realities are related to the contraceptive mentality foreseen by Pope Paul VI.

In contrast, Humanae Vitae is an open invitation to Christian couples and all people of good will to deepen their understanding of the profound mystery and meaning of marital love. Mirroring the inner life of the Holy Trinity, married couples are a visible and living reflection of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, a community of equal Persons who live in an unbreakable bond of life-giving love. In the love between husband and wife, in the awesome act of giving of self in conjugal love, husband and wife cooperate with God in the act of creation as they produce the gift of a new life. In understanding the sacredness of conjugal love, married couples will help to reverse the casual view of sexual intimacy expounded by a misled and hedonistic contemporary culture.

Humanae Vitae, even after 38 years, is a timely and timeless call to married persons to live in a special way the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. Faithful to Christ, to the Church and to each other, husbands and wives live deeply their sacramental union which is directed toward their mutual salvation. In faith, married couples place themselves at the service of God and of His Will. In hope, married couples trust in Divine Providence, knowing that God who has called them to the vocation of Christian parenthood will provide the wisdom, the grace and the resources needed to be responsible parents. In love for God and each other, husbands and wives follow in the path of Jesus, whose sacrificial love for the Church has shown us what we are capable of doing and who we are capable of becoming. “For the love of Christ impels us, once we have come to the conviction that one died for all; therefore all have died. He indeed died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. Consequently, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. … So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor 5: 14-17).

July 20, 2006