Humanae vitae - 30 years: pre-history of Humanae vitae.

After the brief look at some Canadian reactions at the 25th anniversary in the previous article, Dr. Dooley now recalls the events of the years 1963-1968, the prehistory of the encyclical. This is mostly for the benefit of those 50 years or younger who This is mostly for the benefit of those 50 years or younger who were only in their teens when this debate took place.

Editor

Writing on "The Christian View of Sex" in the New Oxford Review for January 1998, Janet E. Smith, an authority on Humanae vitae, gave a concise summary of the effects of the sexual revolution:

"To observe that we live in a society that is suffering greatly from sexual confusion or, if you will, sexual misconduct, is not a novel insight. There is little need to provide a full set of statistics to demonstrate the consequences of the sexual revolution, for who is not familiar with the epidemic in teenage pregnancies, venereal disease, divorce, and AIDS? Our society has undergone a rapid transformation in terms of sexual behavior, and few would argue that it is for the better. What stimulated the transformation was of course the discovery of the birth control pill. In his book Contraception, John T. Noonan, an American legal scholar and judge, has shown that the teaching of the Church on this subject has been remarkably consistent:

`Since the first clear mention of contraception by a Christian theologian, when a harsh third-century moralist accused a pope of encouraging it, the articulated judgment has been the same....No Catholic theologian has ever taught, `contraception is a good act.' The teaching on contraception is clear and apparently fixed forever."'

Ironically, when he wrote these words in 1965, Noonan himself was hoping for a change, though in time he came to accept the validity of the traditional prohibition.

The first break in the consistent Christian opposition to contraception occurred when the Anglican Church, at the Lambeth Conference of 1930, permitted use of contraception by married couples for grave reasons. Shortly after this, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical on marriage, Casti connubii, reiterating Catholic opposition to contraception. The encyclical put more emphasis on the conjugal love between spouses than had been common in the past, but it condemned contraception in no uncertain terms:

"But no reason, however grave, may be put forward by which anything intrinsically against nature may become conformable to nature and morally good. Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious."

Dr. Rock and "the Pill"

Did the coming of "the Pill" change the whole nature of the discussion of contraception? Dr. John Rock, a Boston Catholic who had been instrumental in the development of the progesterone pill, was certain that it provided a way around the Church's ban on artificial contraception. As part of his campaign to win ecclesiastical approval for his pill, he wrote a book entitled The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor's Proposals to End the Battle over Birth Control (1963).

However, in her book Humanae vitae: A Generation Later, Janet Smith cites a Jesuit theologian, Father John J. Lynch, as not convinced by the arguments in favour of the pill; nor did he think his colleagues were impressed by them. He wrote in 1962, "Since theological discussion of the anovulant drugs began some four or more years ago, moralists have never been less than unanimous in their assertions that natural law cannot countenance the use of these progestational steroids for the purpose of contraception as that term is properly understood in the light of papal teaching." He described Rock's The Time Has Come as "illustrating the sort of specious reasoning, unreasoning emotionalism, halftruths, and fallacies to which the faithful are being exposed on this elemental question of the oral contraceptives."

Father Lynch was too optimistic by far. Not only were the faithful going to be exposed to many more half-truths and fallacies, but a great deal of the misleading was going to be performed by the very theologians in whom he expressed such confidence.

The papal commission

A commission to consider problems of the family, population, and birth rate was established by Pope John XXIII in 1963 during the Second Vatican Council, and continued under the papacy of Paul VI. It came to consist of cardinals, bishops, population experts and the like, physicians, and married couples. It was supposed to be advisory, rather than definitive or authoritative. As Janet Smith shows, its composition and complexion changed over the period of its existence; from being strongly opposed to birth control it became strongly in favour of it. Its proceedings were supposed to be confidential; but after its reports were written in 1966, they were leaked to the Tablet in England and the National Catholic Reporter in the U.S. and published in the spring of 1967. The Tablet published the documents on three successive weeks, as the Majority Report, the Conservative Case, and the Argument for Reform.

In an article "Learning from history: Humance vitae revisited," in the Catholic New Times for June 25, 1995, Ted Schmidt, a Toronto teacher and dissenting gadfly, recaptures the spirit of conflict which resulted. On July 29, 1968, he writes, Msgr. Ferdinando Lambruschini, a member of the papal commission, introduced the long-awaited encyclical Humanae vitae to the Catholic world. "This singular event," Schmidt writes, "turned out to be a turning point in modern church history." He is not exaggerating. Writing as one who continues to dissent from the encyclical's teaching, he says: "So shocking was the papal decision in its blatant refusal to understand, accept, and appropriate the lived experience of its married members that church authority has never fully recovered."

Schmidt's opposition

In his article Schmidt is reviewing a book entitled The Turning Point by Robert McClory, a journalist with the National Catholic Reporter. Schmidt considers the book important for two reasons. First, many Catholics of his generation are unaware of the firestorm that surrounded the encyclical. Second, "the major lessons of that time seem not to have been learned. Rome seems bent on what moral theologians are calling `a creeping infallibilism."' He takes John Paul II's major encyclical of 1993, Veritatis splendor, as an example: "Whatever its virtues, nothing is gained by resurrecting artificial contraception as the bete noir of Catholic married life and practice."

In his opinion, Father Bernard Haring, a very controversial moral theologian who has contradicted both Paul VI and John Paul II on this issue, is "that giant moralist of this century." Schmidt quotes his judgment on Humanae vitae: "Almost all real splendor is lost when it becomes evident that the whole document is directed toward one goal--to endorse total assent and submission to all utterances of the pope, and above all on one crucial point: that the use of any artificial means for regulating birth is intrinsically evil and sinful, without exception." Schmidt also cites the judgment of a "wise" Dutch bishop, Willem Beckers, who said in 1963 that "the Church does not have answers" on these complicated issues. "Leave it to the married couple," he said. "It is a matter for their own consciences."

Finally, when Cardinal Julius Doepfner of Munich presented the report to Paul VI on June 28, 1968, it advocated, by an overwhelming majority, a change in thinking. Cardinal Doepfner had said in 1966:

"Casti connubii is not infallible. There would be no harm in saying for once the Church had been worng. Having learned from married couples, especially women, the Church must change so that we do not impose on others sacrifices we know in our hearts are not necessary."

[Editor: At the end of his life, Cardinal Doepfner realized the gravity of his mistake, and admitted it on German TV. On July 19, 1976, five days before his sudden death, he wrote to a friend, "the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the pope was right after all"]

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that people like Ted Schmidt and Robert McClory expected the Church to change its position on contraception - though Schmidt's virtual contempt for John Paul II is not the mark of a faithful Catholic. The arguments upholding the traditional view are subtle and not easy to grasp; I have heard a Catholic woman, a friend of Janet Smith and like her a completely orthodox Catholic, say that she did not understand the reasoning behind Humanae vitae and simply accepted it as a matter of obedience. Why did Paul VI not do what was expected of him and approve of a change in the Church's attitude to contraception?

The arguments for change

One part of these arguments is an attack on Casti connubi, based on the view that it represented a hasty response to the declaration in favour of contraception at the Lambeth Conference; that its only reference to Scripture, Genesis, chapter 38 concerning the sin of Onan, offers dubious support for it; that no other biblical text condemning contraceptive intervention can be found; and that the arguments from reason and the natural law are vague and imprecise. In fact, the Majority Report say flatly: "Today no one holds that the solemn declaration of the encyclical Casti connubii constitutes a true doctrinal definition."

Many of the arguments put forward by the majority emphasize change - changes in the position of women; the diminution of infant mortality; advances in biological, psychological, and sexual knowledge; but especially a new understanding of man's responsibility for using the gifts of nature to bring his life to greater perfection. In the past, the report says (without providing evidence), fears that any human intervention tended to destroy the gifts of nature held back human progress; many interventions in medicine were prohibited for this reason, "and only little by little, with the progress of medicine and science, have the possibilities of intervention for the good of the person and sometimes even for the good of the community been acknowledged." Man can use nature for his own benefit according to the dictates of right reason.

A new understanding

Conceding that the "procreative end" is the essential good of marriage, the reformers point out nevertheless that a new understanding of the nature of marital relations has come to be accepted. For centuries it was all but unanimously taught that marital intercourse was illicit unless accompanied by the intention to procreate - "and yet no theologians hold to this teaching today, nor is it the official position." The Second Vatican Council affirmed the great importance of the expression of conjugal love through intercourse, and also the virtuous exercise of responsibility in determining the number of children.

Running through this report, then, is the view that the Church has come to a new understanding of human sexuality, and that there is no reason it cannot come to a new understanding of responsible contraception as well. Every act of intercourse does not have to be open to new life; the partners must decide whether or not it is reasonable for them to have more children, considering their financial situation, their housing arrangements, their educational needs, and so on. So the report says that the decision to have a child "must be a personal human act (deliberate, responsible for its effects, etc.). With the progress of knowledge, man can exercise this dominion and ought to exercise it with responsibility."

In other words, it is the totality of sexual acts that has to be considered; each act of intercourse does not have to be open to new life, but it would be very wrong for a couple to decide to have no children at all. Marriage unites a man and a woman; it has a unitive dimension. It also has a procreative dimension. Married couples themselves must determine, in view of their personal and social situations, how to achieve the procreative purpose of marriage, and how to bring about a balance between conjugal love and the creation of new life. If fertility is excluded deliberately and without sufficient reason, then the intervention is immoral. Thus the majority argued.

One concession

But the majority made one important concession. Conjugal acts which by intention are infertile are intended to be expressions of love, but "that love...reaches its culmination in fertility responsibly accepted. For that reason other acts of union in a certain sense are incomplete and they receive their full moral quality with ordination towards the fertile act." In other words, the majority divides acts of married love into two categories. The first and superior class consists of acts in which procreation is possible, the second and inferior consists of acts rendered infertile through contraception.

The minority's response

The minority had two main arguments. The first was that we have no right to separate what God has brought together: the Church has always held that the deliberate prevention of conceiving children is gravely wrong. Second, they could argue that the separation of the unitive and procreative aspects of marital acts, which the majority blithely considered to have only favourable consequences such as an increase in the love of the couple involved, could lead to justification for sexual acts which have traditionally been forbidden.

Some people consider that oral or anal sex, extramarital sex, homosexual acts, and masturbation are pleasurable. The Church has condemned such acts mainly because they are a violation of the procreative purpose which sexual acts are supposed to have; if this is left out of consideration, why should the Church object to people enjoying themselves in these hitherto forbidden ways?

The majority would argue that such acts are not permissible because they do not enhance conjugal love, as contraception may do in certain circumstances. Intervention must be related to the good of marriage, and for example masturbation, a totally selfcentred act, does not contribute to that good at all.

But such explanations do not establish why all sexual acts have to enhance conjugal love, or why - if the procreative aspect can be dropped - the unitive aspect cannot be dropped too. The minority held that God is the author of life and that, by respecting the nature of the generative organs, which are directed towards life, man is respecting the life that God creates. They argue that this has been the constant teaching of the Church, and it would lose its moral authority if it changed.

"The Church cannot substantially err in teaching doctrine which is

most serious in its import for faith and morals, throughout all centuries or even one century, if it has been constantly and forcefully proposed as necessarily to be followed in order to obtain eternal salvation. The Church could not have erred through so many centuries, even through one century, by imposing under serious obligation very grave burdens in the name of Jesus Christ, if Jesus Christ did not actually impose these burdens."

Prophetic

Janet Smith points out that the predictions of the minority report that changing the Church's moral evaluation of contraception would lead to changes in other sexual behaviour seem to have been prophetic. Father Charles Curran, the most notorious American opponent of Humanae vitae, said some ten years after it appeared:

"Catholic theologians frequently deny the existing teaching of the hierarchical magisterium on such issues as contraception, sterilization, artificial insemination, masturbation, the generic gravity of sexual sins. Newer approaches have recently been taken to the question of homosexuality....All these questions in the areas of medical and sexual morality are being questioned today because some theologians believe that the absolute prohibitions define the forbidden action in terms of the physical structure of the act seen in itself apart from the context, the existing relationships, or the consequences."

Here Curran is arguing for judging moral actions in terms of their utility or consequences, not their intrinsic rightness or wrongness. One of the main arguments in favour of the minority report of the papal commission on birth control, therefore, is that those who threw it over were likely to oppose other parts of Catholic moral teaching, and, in fact, the objective moral standards which the Church has always used.

In her book Janet Smith summarizes an article by Father Norbert Rigali, S.J., arguing that the Church could not have accepted the arguments of the majority report, which he considers full of platitudes and simplistic thought. The thrust of his article is that the advocates of change had not found satisfactory or convincing reasons for it. In fact it would have been a "moral disaster" for the Church to have endorsed the theology of the majority report.

Janet Smith obviously agrees with this position. For further discussion, see her little book of 425 pages.