Humanae Vitae 45 years on: a personal story -- CathNews NZ Pacific

Humanae Vitae 45 years on: a personal story

Tuesday, August 6th, 2013

For the faithful it (birth control) is a sad and agonizing issue, for there is a cleavage between the official teaching of the Church and the contrary practice in most families. — Former Patriarch Maximos IV Saigh of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church quoted in What Happened at Vatican II, by John W. O’Malley.

Recalling that Thursday was the 45th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae makes me cringe. In fact, I am pained whenever the 1968 papal decree comes up for discussion. I feel like a person who has witnessed a tragic event and made an intense effort to turn over a key piece of evidence — the “smoking gun” — that would make the truth known only to see lawyers either misplace the evidence or fail to use it effectively. I contend the evidence I am talking about would have been climactic — making it virtually impossible for Pope Paul to ignore changing the church’s current birth control policy, or conversely, if used today, make it relatively easy for Pope Francis to correct the church’s second “Galileo affair.”

For readers not around 45 years ago when Pope Paul promulgated the decree that renewed the Catholic church’s ban on all artificial forms of birth control, it may be helpful to offer a brief review of that history. Pope Pius XI first imposed the ban in 1930, six months after the Anglican Lambeth Conference allowed its church’s married couples to decide the issue by themselves. In October 1964, several Catholic bishops raised the issue of birth control during a discussion of marriage and the family at the Second Vatican Council. Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens of Malines-Brussels pleaded with his brother bishops to study the issue and “avoid another Galileo affair. One [failure of the church to keep abreast of scientific advances] is enough.” Continue reading

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