Humanae Vitae - On the Regulation of Birth - Part III

Humanae Vitae points out the beauty of married love. It emphasizes that
the marriage act is “fully human … of the senses and of the spirit at the
same time.” The encyclical emphasizes four characteristics of the marriage
act. “This love is total … husband and wife generously share everything,
without undue reservations of selfish calculations.” “This love is faithful
and exclusive until death.” This love is fertile, “for it is not exhausted
by the communion between husband and wife, but is destined to continue,
raising up new lives.” As we saw last week, use of the marriage act in the
infertile time is still a legitimate use and is consistent with the order
that God created. To the contrary, using artificial birth control is
blocking the natural function in its natural time and therefore is blocking
God out of the relationship.

To continue in the encyclical, paragraph #17 is entitled Grave Consequences
of Methods of Artificial Birth Control. Remember that the encyclical was
published in 1968. It lists the following serious consequences with the use
of artificial birth control:

“How wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal
infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is
needed in order to know human weakness, … especially the young, who are so
vulnerable on this point – have need of encouragement to be faithful to the
moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its
observance.”

“Man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may
finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical
and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a
mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and
beloved companion.”

“Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon would thus be placed in
the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies.”
The concern was that any government could then apply birth control as a
solution to problems in any community. “Who will stop rulers from favoring,
from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it
necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be more
efficacious?” It could then “reach a point of placing at the mercy of the
intervention of public authorities the most personal and most reserved
sector of conjugal intimacy.”

I think we have seen every one of these predictions come true. Infidelity
and divorce are shown to have risen dramatically since the 1960’s. It is
interesting that the comment is often made that the Church needs to stay out
of the bedroom. The Church, in fact, was trying to protect the intimacy of
the marital act. Instead, just as the Church predicted, many governments of
the world now mandate contraception in some form. We know for instance that
China mandates forced abortions and sterilizations for women who have more
than one child. The United Nations requires and supplies contraception as a
condition for foreign aid to developing countries

Pope Paul VI knew this encyclical would not be received well. “The Church
is not surprised to be made, like her divine Founder, a ‘sign of
contradiction,’ yet she does not because of this cease to proclaim with
humble firmness the entire moral law.” The rest of the encyclical is a very
compassionate encouragement and plea to not only abide by the divine law but
also to witness to it. The “Christian vocation, which began at baptism, is
further specified and reinforced by the sacrament of matrimony. By it
husband and wife are strengthened and as it were consecrated for the
faithful accomplishment of their proper duties, … To them the Lord entrusts
the task of making visible to men the holiness and sweetness of the law
which unites the mutual love of husband and wife with their cooperation with
the love of God the author of human life.”

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