THEN WHAT DOES THAT SAY?

"If 90% of Catholics Contracept, Then What Does That Say?" published on CourageousPriest.com, is another story in a long line of  stories enshrining Pope Paul VI as a prophet, if not a saint, for penning Humanae Vitae, the 50th anniversary of which will be "celebrated" this July 25. 

One wonders what there is to celebrate. HV has nearly destroyed the Church, NOT because of the pope's ultimate point (i.e. NO to contraception), but because of what he and his predecessor said and did BEFORE Paul go to his point. 

Following is my reply to the above named article:

In answer to the question "what does that say?" I would submit that there was something fundamentally flawed with Humane Vitae. And here it is:

1. (And the first one is not the fault of Paul6.) If the church's teaching on contraception could never change then John23 should have never instituted a commission to study the question.

2. After Paul6 became pope he had an opportunity to disban the commission in the name of there is no reason to study a question when we already know the answer. Instead, he expanded the commission from the original 6 members to 72 members, and when he did so, he said this:

"We say frankly that so far we do not have sufficient reason to consider the norms given by Pope Pius XII on this matter [of contraception] as out of date and therefore as not binding. They must be considered as valid, at least until We feel obliged in conscience to change them." - Paul VI Acta apostolicae sedis (AAS) 56 (1964) 588-59, 1964 address to the special papal commission on the use of contraceptives.

As can be clearly seen, Paul6 gave every indication that the teaching was NOT unchangeable, and that the teaching could be changed when “WE feel obliged in conscience to change them.” (Note, he uses the papal WE.)

3. Paul6 sabotaged HV right from the start when he implies in par. 6, that all that is needed to change the teaching is a unanimous vote:

"...the conclusions arrived at by the commission could not be considered by Us as definitive and absolutely certain...because, within the commission itself, there was not complete agreement concerning the moral norms to be proposed."

This is why 90% of Catholic contracept. They were told by their pastors that the teaching was going to change anyway. Further, Paul6 speaks of the church's unchangeable teaching, something already determined to be instrinsically evil, as only "moral norms to be proposed." 

And as a father of 11 children I have been mocked and ridiculed by my own pastors for not using contraception.

Let's stop blaming the people in the pews.

WHY I OPPOSE THE CANONIZATION OF PAUL VI...

Sainthood is based on the personal holiness of the candidate and not on a list of accomplishments. So on the basis of personal holiness, Paul VI may most certainly qualify. 

However, in their rather hobbling attempt to counter the sexual revolution 40 years after the fact, the neo-conservatives in the Catholic Church have already lionized (if not canonized) Paul VI, solely for his penning Humanae Vitae, which they like to enthrone as prophetic.

Humanae Vitae, as most know, is the 1968 encyclical in which Paul VI reaffirmed the Church's traditional ban on contraception. The encyclical, almost immediately, effected the exact opposite of its intent, and it is believed today that almost all Catholics use or have used contraception.

There has been much blame to go around: the culture, the time (1960's), the advent of the sexual revolution, the population explosion (myth), post Vatican II confusion, progressive clergy, and Catholics themselves. However, there are three reasons why Humanae Vitae backfired that can be laid at the feet of Paul VI himself.

1. The expansion of the birth control commission. Paul VI's predecessor, John XXIII, had established a six person commission to study questions related to population and birth control, particularly in light of the recent advent of "the pill". John XXIII had removed the question of birth control from the Council (Vatican II) and had reserved it to himself. Pope John had originally envisaged a very short Council. "Over by Christmas" he had said after opening the Council in October of 1962.

So originally the study was meant to be small, short, and essentially under the radar. However, the Council mushroomed into something John had not planned; and rather than the three short months John had thought it to be, it labored on for three long years during which John died.

And then Paul VI made what we now know to be a fatal move: he expanded the commission from 6 to 72 members.

The surprising expansion of the commission juxtaposed with the ever more revolutionary tone of the Council immediately led many to believe that a change in the church's ban on contraception was about to be lifted, and teachers and pastors around the world began anticipating that change in their lectures, sermons, counseling, and especially in the confessional.

This episode in Church history is important to review in light of the recent synod wherein similarly weighty sexual issues were discussed. Ultimately, as Paul VI was to show us in Humanae Vitae, the Church's fundamental moral teaching cannot be changed even by a pope.

However, the very perception that it could be changed proved to be all that was needed for most people to believe that it was. 

The same is true for the current synod. Like Paul VI, Francis wants to study the issues and encourage discussion. But publicly encouraging the discussion also publicly encourages the idea that fundamental moral teaching can be changed. And while it cannot be changed, actual practice can.

And so it did and so it will. Like Paul VI discovered after writing Humanae Vitae, Francis will discover that the horse has already left the barn through the door that HE left open. 

With the expansion of the commission, the actual business of Vatican II took a back seat to an ever more breathless anticipation of an announcement from the pope declaring the ban on contraception lifted. 

2. 1964 address to the papal commission on birth control. In the midst of this, Paul VI made his second seriously bad move. And it is quite interesting that most of his champions have no clue that he actually said this:

"We say frankly that so far we do not have sufficient reason to consider the norms given by Pope Pius XII on this matter [of contraception] as out of date and therefore as not binding. They must be considered as valid, at least until We feel obliged in conscience to change them." - Paul VI Acta apostolicae sedis (AAS) 56 (1964) 588-59, 1964 address to the special papal commission on the use of contraceptives.

This was huge. There it was: the word "until" - "until We feel obliged in conscience to change them."

Paul VI had just stated that the Church's "norms" on contraception could be changed if "We (meaning the Magisterium) feel obliged to change them." Even using the word "norms" gives the impression that the ban on contraception was just a disciplinary norm and not an unchangeable doctrine. 

The average person didn't hear this. But the people paying attention, most of whom were aching to hear this in the first place, went nuts. More importantly - or tragically - Paul VI was speaking to the members of the commission and the pope's words (particularly his magisterial use of the first person plural "WE") gave them blanket permission to vote for a change: and vote for a change they did, voting 65 to 7 in favor of lifting the ban on contraception.

This left Paul VI in a thick stew of his own making. His expansion of the commission and his own words to the commission had produced exactly what the world was waiting for. However, what "the world was waiting for" was also exactly what the pope knew he could not give. So why did he suggest that he could give it?

Again, this is important to review in light of Francis and the recent synod.

Both popes may have simply wanted to appear that they were sympathetic, anticipating that in the end they could rely on the hardliners to speak up and the decision not to permit the change could be laid at their feet and not their (the popes) own, which would allow them (Paul and Francis) to still be loved and seen as at least sympathetic. 

That's a great strategy for a politician but not for a pope, and in Paul VI's case, it monstrously backfired. He now had to say NO and not only NO but NO in the face of an overwhelming decision by a commission he had expanded and encouraged.

3.  The argument from "complete agreement". And now here is where Paul VI really goes off the rails. And it is amazing that so many of those ready to canonize him on the basis of Humanae Vitae being "prophetic", MISS THIS. The pope appears to still believe he can blame someone else and he opens the encyclical actually doing just that (emphases added):

In paragraph 6, the pope writes:

"...the conclusions arrived at by the commission could not be considered by Us as definitive and absolutely certain...because, within the commission itself, there was not complete agreement concerning the moral norms to be proposed."

The full quote is filled in with papal-type qualifiers, but the essence of this statement is this:

The conclusion of the commission cannot be considered definitive because the commission's decision was not unanimous ("complete agreement"). 

This is staggering. First of all the commission's decision (65 -7), especially given the moral weight of the topic, could effectively be considered to indeed be unanimous; and second, the pope essentially says that Church moral teaching is up to a vote, it just needs to be "unanimous."

It doesn't matter what Paul VI says next, and he has been proved to be right about everything else he wrote.

What matters is what he said first. 

And since he said it was up to a vote, some, if not most Catholics, were led to believe that Humanae Vitae was not authoritative, that it was just a papal opinion, and, in fact, the teaching will change someday, we just need more votes. 

HUMANAE VITAE AND WHY THE WORLD REJECTED IT

"We say frankly that so far we do not have sufficient reason to consider the norms given by Pope Pius XII on this matter [of contraception] as out of date and therefore as not binding. They must be considered as valid, at least until We feel obliged in conscience to change them." 

- Paul VI Acta apostolicae sedis (AAS) 56 (1964) 588-59,
1964 address to the special papal commission on the use of contraceptives 

Humanae Vitae

ENCYCLICAL LETTER HUMANAE VITAE OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF PAUL VI TO HIS VENERABLE BROTHERS THE PATRIARCHS, ARCHBISHOPS, BISHOPS AND OTHER LOCAL ORDINARIES IN PEACE AND COMMUNION WITH THE APOSTOLIC SEE, TO THE CLERGY AND FAITHFUL OF THE WHOLE CATHOLIC WORLD, AND TO ALL MEN OF GOOD WILL, ON THE REGULATION OF BIRTH   The complete document with my personal highlights.

Debris Field

The following was written on 10/22/2000 and appeared in the Pacific Voice. It was not well received.

The current advent of RU486 on our shores and the upcoming March For Life caused me to think of an article I wrote last year entitled The Evil Beyond Abortion. The evil I wrote about was the practice of contraception. The point of the article was my view that all our efforts against abortion are meaningless without equal efforts against the use of birth control. I posited that abortion is just a more radical form of birth control and is really “the child” (bloody pun intended) of the contraceptive mentality.

In the recent movie U-571 a submarine captain, pursued by a depth charge-dropping enemy ship, shoots a load of garbage out of a torpedo tube in order to create a debris field. He hopes the debris will trick the enemy captain into thinking that he has already hit his mark. The ship’s captain takes the bait and goes to investigate. Meanwhile the sub capitalizes on the distraction and maneuvers to fire its last remaining torpedo at the ship. The tactic works and the sub wins.

I can’t help but think that the Devil is quite pleased with all of our pro-life marches and protests. That’s right, “pleased”. In our fight against abortion the Evil One seems to have succeeded in allowing the debris field of dead and dissected babies to distract us while he maneuvers for a more pervasive and effective evil. For if the Devil’s end is to deny God souls, future citizens of heaven, then contraception is obviously a much more effective means.

So, in my imaginings. the Devil allows us our small, feel-good victories, and he smiles at our marches, sidewalk protests, and our weekly Pro-Life Prayer at Sunday Mass because he knows that many if not most of the pro-life legions and people in the pews are using some form of birth control. How do I know? What’s my evidence? It’s called “family size”. Have Catholics suddenly become naturally infertile in the last 20 years? I don’t think so.

It’s not often that we hear the subject addressed so for those who don’t know the exact teaching on the issue here is a section from Humane Vitae which I believe encapsulates the whole document:

“... the Church, calling men back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by their constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act (quilibet matrimonii usus) must remain open to the transmission of life.[12]

In conformity with these landmarks in the human and Christian vision of marriage, we must once again declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun, and, above all, directly willed and procured abortion, even if for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as licit means of regulating birth.[14]

Equally to be excluded, as the teaching authority of the Church has frequently declared, is direct sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary, whether of the man or of the woman.[15]

Similarly excluded is every action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible.[16]

I don’t believe Humanae Vitae is up for debate. Near as I can tell it was a binding pronouncement. As the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano pointed out in an editorial in 1968 soon after the release of Paul VI’s Humane Vitae: “When the Pope, with his authority derived from Christ, has made a pronouncement on a definite question over which theologians are divided, it is irrelevant to consider the numbers of eventual supporters, or the force of their arguments.”

But, and of course this is just further imaginings on my part, where I think the Devil has his most fun is with Catholics who actually think that they can avoid the Humane Vitae radar because they use Church-approved NFP. Yes, Natural Family Planning is approved, but ask how many couples who use it actually know that: “...observing the non-fertile periods alone can be lawful only under a moral aspect, and that to avoid children always and deliberately without an extremely serious reason would be "a sin against the very meaning of marriage." (Pius XII-"Address to the Italian Catholic Union of Midwives" to warn against the selfish use of natural family planning, Oct 29, 1951)

It all comes back to this thorny question of obedience. If legitimate magisterial authority has proclaimed a teaching, can we disobey? Can we re-interpret based on our personal circumstances? I don’t think so. But again, I’m open to correction by those more in the know than I am. I only ask that the same level of documentation that I am providing validate their corrections.

Humane Vitae's 40th Anniversary - A Tough Reflection

You would be hard pressed to find a more ardent advocate of Humane Vitae than myself. Not only am I extremely vocal about this issue, I have 11 children to prove that I walk the talk. I could also list a dozen reasons as to why our medical, physical, financial, emotional, psychological, and even geographic situation all could have sufficed for a serious reason to limit the number of our children.

Add to this the counsel from (some) clergy, friends, relatives, and doctors to do exactly that (stop having children) and we find ourselves truly alone in our desire to persevere. But we perhaps find ourselves most alone witihin the pro-life community itself. Let me explain.

There is a plethora of literature, audio & video programs, and support groups of all kinds that gush over the wisdom of Humane Vitae and the beauties of Natural Family Planning, etc. But there are two major points that I've never heard addressed, even when I've directed these questions directly to the sources of said "gushing".

The first question has to do with the much lauded example of Paul VI, standing up to the commission that studied the birth control question, going against the majority opinion, and releasing Humane Vitae anyway. While Paul VI is heralded as a hero by the pro-life community for his action, the question I have asked and never had answered is:

 WHY DID PAUL VI ALLOW THE STUDY IN THE FIRST PLACE IF THE TEACHING COULD NEVER BE CHANGED.

It was the very fact that the Vatican authorized a commission to look into the birth control question that sent ripples throughout the Catholic world that there could be a possibility that artificial contraception would be allowed. Given the times (1960's), such a thought fell right in line with the current climate and expectation of change.

The bottom line is that the creation of the commission created the expectation of change. And for a Catholic populace that was both still very attuned to Church Authority (i.e. "whatever Father says...") and at the same time on the verge of a cultural implosion (at least in the West), it is natural to see how the Catholic world could have gotten quite exercised about this. (After all, it was the Pope himself who was looking into it!)

It is the Church, and specifically John XXIII (who initially created the commission), and Paul VI (who expanded it) that must take the blame for the crisis of Faith that has plagued the Church since July 10, 1968 (the date Humane Vitae was released).

While hindsight is 20/20, and it was certainly never the intention of the Popes (John XXIII, who created the commission, and Paul VI, who expanded it) to create the havoc and crisis of faith that has plagued the Church since July 10, 1968, the damage was done, is still with us, and in my opinion, the blunder was huge.

Even Paul VI's rational for overriding the commission's majority findings ("the findings were not unanimous") created even more room for doubt and havoc since saying that the findings were not unanimous gives the impression that,, had they been unanimous the Pope would have changed the teaching. This leaves us thinking that all we need is another commission and a unanimous decision, that the teaching itself is subject to a vote!

Want to know what the numbers were? Of the 72 members on the commission, the dissenters (opposed to the liberalization of birth control) included 4 theologian priests, 1 cardinal and 2 bishops. From the impression Paul VI gave, we were only 7 votes away from the change that the world had been breathlessly led to hope for.

I only bring this up because despite the major efforts and resources devoted to the promotion of Humane Vitae and NFP and all the associated issues, I believe we are making little headway. And why is that?

2 reasons:

1. Already mentioned.

The creation of the commission was a papal error. That has to be admitted. As long as we're apologizing for the Inquisition, the Crusades, and whatever else, we might as well apologize for this. The Church needs to let people know that this (the creation of the commission) was a mistake, that it falsley raised hopes, and that we are sorry for doing so.

(My feeling is that Paul VI was aware of his mistake and was sorry for it as he would never again release another encyclical.)

The Church also needs to aplogize for the Pope's second mistake of giving the impression that a unanimous decision might have led to a different encyclical. This is even more damaging as many continue to live in hope that eventually a change might come if another commission might come up with a unanimous decision.

And why not? The "people" have seen disobedience (communion in the hand, altar girls, eucharistic ministers, etc.) rewarded over and over by an indult from the Vatican.

(Note: "NFP'ers" referred to in the following does not mean those who employ NFP according to the strictures of Church teaching. With this term I am primarily referring to those who promote NFP in the Catholic media with a type of positiveness that seems to avoid any discussion of the cross and even leans towards positioning NFP as a norm for marital relations. The ensuing will give the context to this term which I do not intend to use in a demeaning way, but perhaps skeptical.)

2 "NFP 'ers" need to get off their high horse and talk about the Cross.

Ultimately NFP is allowed because it is still open to life. Notwithstanding that perhaps many, if not most, NFP advoates use it as a form of "Catholic birth control" (spacing or limiting births without serious reason as required by the Church), the reality is that, for most couples, another child represents an unimaginable burden at every level of life. I know.

The bottom line is that the use of NFP may, regardless of the best kept charts, lead to another baby. Because the majority of NFP-ers (in the Catholic media) are busy gushing over its glories and congratulating themselves for their "openness to life", we hear little about the actual cross that comes with the child..

While some may wonder how I could dare equate a child with a cross, I would say that it is ignorant and uncharitalbe not to. It is only in understanding and taking up the cross that the cross (the child in this case) can begin to be a source of grace. For with every cross comes sufficient grace.

But because all we hear about is the warm fuzzy stuff about being open to life, parents who actually are open to life, and who continue to bring new life into the world despite staggering hardship, are left to wonder "What am I doing wrong?" "How come this doesn't feel good?" "What am I going to tell my doctor now that I'm pregnant again and I still owe him for the last one?"

No, that's the stuff we don't get to hear about...and THAT'S WHY WE ARE NOT GETTING ANYWHERE.

The NFP-ers have made the same mistake as the liberal liturgists. They have taken what is essentially an indult, a permission, and a permission only granted for the gravest of reasons, and made it the norm. In fact, that is why non-Catholics snuff off NFP as simply Catholic birth control. They are closer to the truth than we are ourselves.

What Catholicism uniquely understands is the Cross. In the end, that is all we have to hold onto anyway. It is terribly uncharitable to pretend that this isn't so.

An account of the history of the commission as found on Wikipedia

With the appearance of the first oral contraceptives in 1960, some voices in the Church argued for a reconsideration of the Church positions. In 1963 Pope John XXIII established a commission of six European non-theologians to study questions of birth control and population.[3][4] After John's death in 1963, Pope Paul VI added theologians to the commission and over three years expanded it to 72 members from five continents (including 16 theologians, 13 physicians and 5 women, with an executive committee of 9 bishops and 7 cardinals).[3][4] The commission produced a report in 1966, proposing that artificial birth control was not intrinsically evil and that Catholic couples should be allowed to decide for themselves about the methods to be employed.[3][4][5][6]

One commission member, American Jesuit theologian John Ford (with the assistance of American theologian Germain Grisez) drafted a minority report working paper that was signed by Ford and 3 other theologian priests on the commission, stating that the Church should not and could not change its long-standing teaching.[3][4][5][6] Even though intended for the Pope only, the commission's report and two working papers (the minority report and the majority's rebuttal to it) were leaked to the press in 1967, raising public expectations of liberalization.[5][7] However, Paul VI explicitly rejected his commission's recommendations in the text of Humanae Vitae, noting the 72 member commission had not been unanimous (4 theologian priests had dissented, and 1 cardinal and 2 bishops had voted that contraception was intrinsically evil--significantly Cardinal Ottaviani, the commission's president and Bishop Colombo, the papal theologian).[3][4][6] Humanae Vitae did, however, explicitly allow the modern forms of natural family planning that were then being developed.