Humanae vitae

Affirmation of traditional teaching In this encyclical Paul VI reaffirmed the Catholic Church's view of marriage and marital relations and a continued condemnation of "artificial" birth control. Referencing two Papal committees and numerous independent experts examining new developments in artificial birth control, Paul VI built on the teachings of his predecessors, especially Pius XI, Pius XII and John XXIII, all of whom had insisted on the divine obligations of the marital partners in light of their partnership with God the creator. Doctrinal basis Paul VI himself, even as commission members issued their personal views over the years, always reaffirmed the teachings of the Church, repeating them more than once in the first years of his Pontificate. To Pope Paul VI, marital relations were much more than a union of two people. In his view, they constitute a union of the loving couple with a loving God, in which the two persons generate the matter for the body, while God creates the unique soul of a person. For this reason, Paul VI teaches in the first sentence of , that the "transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator." This is divine partnership, so Paul VI does not allow for arbitrary human decisions, which may limit divine providence. According to Paul VI, marital relations are a source of great joy, but also of difficulties and hardships. According to Paul VI, married love takes its origin from God, who is love, and from this basic dignity, he defines his position: The encyclical opens with an assertion of the competency of the magisterium of the Catholic Church to decide questions of morality. It then goes on to observe that circumstances often dictate that married couples should limit the number of children, and that the sexual act between husband and wife is still worthy even if it can be foreseen not to result in procreation. Nevertheless, it is held that the sexual act must retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. Every action specifically intended to prevent procreation is forbidden, except in medically necessary circumstances. Therapeutic means necessary to cure diseases are exempted, even if a foreseeable impediment to procreation should result, but only if infertility is not directly intended. This is held to directly contradict the moral order which was established by God. Abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, is absolutely forbidden, as is sterilization, even if temporary. Therapeutic means which induce infertility are allowed (e.g., hysterectomy), if they are not specifically intended to cause infertility (e.g., the uterus is cancerous, so the preservation of life is intended). If there are well grounded reasons (arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances), natural family planning methods (abstaining from intercourse during certain parts of the menstrual cycle) are allowed, since they take advantage of a faculty provided by nature. Appeal to natural law and conclusion Public authorities should oppose laws which undermine natural law; scientists should further study effective methods of natural birth control; doctors should further familiarize themselves with this teaching, in order to be able to give advice to their patients, and priests must spell out clearly and completely the Church's teaching on marriage. The encyclical acknowledges that "perhaps not everyone will easily accept this particular teaching", but that "it comes as no surprise to the church that she, no less than her Divine founder is destined to be a sign of contradiction." This is to be the priority for his fellow bishops and priests and lay people. Paul VI predicted that future progress in social cultural and economic spheres would make marital and family life more joyful, provided God's design for the world was faithfully followed. ==History==

Origins There had been a long-standing general Christian prohibition on contraception and abortion, with such Church Fathers as Clement of Alexandria and Saint Augustine condemning the practices. It was not until the 1930 Lambeth Conference that the Anglican Communion allowed for contraception in limited circumstances. Mainline Protestant denominations have since removed prohibitions against artificial contraception. In a partial reaction, Pope Pius XI wrote the encyclical (Of Chaste Wedlock) in 1930, reaffirming the Catholic Church's belief in various traditional Christian teachings on marriage and sexuality, including the prohibition of artificial birth control even within marriage. is against contraception and regarding natural family planning allowed married couples to use their nuptial rights "in the proper manner" when because of either time or defects, new life could not be brought forth. It met once in 1963 and twice in 1964. As Vatican Council II was concluding, Pope Paul VI enlarged it to fifty-eight members, including married couples, laywomen, theologians and bishops. The last document issued by the council () contained a section titled "Fostering the Nobility of Marriage" (1965, nos. 47–52), which discussed marriage from the personalist point of view. The "duty of responsible parenthood" was affirmed, but the determination of licit and illicit forms of regulating birth was reserved to Pope Paul VI. In the spring of 1966, following the close of the council, the commission held its fifth and final meeting, having been enlarged again to include sixteen bishops as an executive committee. The commission was only consultative but it submitted a report approved by a majority of 64 members to Paul VI. It proposed the approval of artificial contraception without distinction of the various means. A minority of four members opposed this report and issued a parallel report to the Pope. Arguments in the minority report, against change in the church's teaching, were that a loosening of contraception restrictions would mean the Catholic Church would "have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930" (when was promulgated), and that "it should likewise have to be admitted that for a half a century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error." After two more years of study and consultation, the pope issued , which removed any doubt that the Church views hormonal anti-ovulants as contraceptive. He explained why he did not accept the opinion of the majority report of the commission (1968, #6). Arguments were raised in the decades that followed that his decision has never passed the condition of "reception" to become church doctrine. Drafting of the encyclical In his role as Theologian of the Pontifical Household, Mario Luigi Ciappi advised Pope Paul VI during the drafting of . Ciappi, a doctoral graduate of the , the future Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, , served as professor of dogmatic theology there and was Dean of the 's Faculty of Theology from 1935 to 1955. According to George Weigel, Paul VI named Archbishop Karol Wojtyła (later Pope John Paul II) to the commission, but Polish government authorities would not permit him to travel to Rome. Wojtyła had earlier defended the church's position from a philosophical standpoint in his 1960 book Love and Responsibility. Wojtyła's position was strongly considered and it was reflected in the final draft of the encyclical, although much of his language and arguments were not incorporated. Weigel attributes much of the poor reception of the encyclical to the omission of many of Wojtyła's arguments. In 2017, anticipating the 50th anniversary of the encyclical, four theologians led by Mgr. Gilfredo Marengo, a professor of theological anthropology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, launched a research project he called "a work of historical-critical investigation without any aim other than reconstructing as well as possible the whole process of composing the encyclical". Using the resources of the Vatican Secret Archives and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, they hope to detail the writing process and the interaction between the commission, publicity surrounding the commission's work, and Paul's own authorship. ==Highlights==

Faithfulness to God's design Lawful therapeutic means Recourse to infertile periods Concern of the Church Developing countries ==Reception==

Galileo affair comparison Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens, a moderator of the ecumenical council, questioned, "whether moral theology took sufficient account of scientific progress, which can help determine, what is according to nature. I beg you my brothers let us avoid another Galileo affair. One is enough for the Church." In an interview in on 15 May 1969, he criticized the Pope's decision again as frustrating the collegiality defined by the council, calling it a non-collegial or even an anti-collegial act. He was supported by Vatican II theologians such as Karl Rahner, Hans Küng, several Episcopal conferences, e.g. the Episcopal Conference of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, as well as several bishops, including Christopher Butler, who called it one of the most important contributions to contemporary discussion in the Church. Open dissent The publication of the encyclical marks the first time in the twentieth century that open dissent from the laity about teachings of the Church was voiced widely and publicly. The teaching has been criticized by development organizations and others who claim that it limits the methods available to fight worldwide population growth and struggle against HIV/AIDS. Within two days of the encyclical's release, a group of dissident theologians, led by Rev. Charles Curran, then Catholic University of America, issued a statement stating, "spouses may responsibly decide according to their conscience that artificial contraception in some circumstances is permissible and indeed necessary to preserve and foster the value and sacredness of marriage." Canadian bishops Two months later, the controversial Winnipeg Statement issued by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops stated that those who cannot accept the teaching should not be considered shut off from the Catholic Church, and that individuals can in good conscience use contraception as long as they have first made an honest attempt to accept the difficult directives of the encyclical. Dutch Catechism The Dutch Catechism of 1966, based on the Dutch bishops' interpretation of the just completed Vatican Council, and the first post-Council comprehensive Catholic catechism, noted the lack of mention of artificial contraception in the council. "As everyone can ascertain nowadays, there are several methods of regulating births. The Second Vatican Council did not speak of any of these concrete methods[...] This is a different standpoint than that taken under Pius XI some thirty years ago which was also maintained by his successor[...] we can sense here a clear development in the Church, a development, which is also going on outside the Church." Soviet Union In the Soviet Union, Literaturnaya Gazeta, a publication of Soviet intellectuals, included an editorial and statement by Russian physicians against the encyclical. Ecumenical reactions Ecumenical reactions were mixed. Liberal and Moderate Lutherans and the World Council of Churches were disappointed. Eugene Carson Blake criticised the concepts of nature and natural law, which, in his view, still dominated Catholic theology, as outdated. This concern dominated several articles in Catholic and non-Catholic journals at the time. Patriarch Athenagoras I stated his full agreement with Pope Paul VI: "He could not have spoken in any other way." Latin America In Latin America, much support developed for the Pope and his encyclical. As World Bank President Robert McNamara declared at the 1968 Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group that countries permitting birth control practices will get preferential access to resources, doctors in La Paz, Bolivia, called it insulting that money should be exchanged for the conscience of a Catholic nation. In Colombia, Cardinal Aníbal Muñoz Duque declared, "if American conditionality undermines Papal teachings, we prefer not to receive one cent". The Senate of Bolivia passed a resolution, stating that can be discussed in its implications on individual consciences, but is of greatest significance because it defends the rights of developing nations to determine their own population policies. However, against eighteen insubordinate priests, professors of theology at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and the ensuing conspiracy of silence practiced by the Chilean Episcopate, which had to be censured by the Nuncio in Santiago at the behest of Cardinal Gabriel-Marie Garrone, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, triggering eventually a media conflict with , Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira expressed his affliction with the lamentations of Jeremiah: "O ye all that pass through the way…" (Lamentations 1:12, King James Bible). Cardinal Martini In the book "Nighttime conversations in Jerusalem. On the risk of faith.", well-known liberal Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini accused Paul VI of deliberately concealing the truth, leaving it to theologians and pastors to fix things by adapting precepts to practice: "I knew Paul VI well. With the encyclical, he wanted to express consideration for human life. He explained his intention to some of his friends by using a comparison: although one must not lie, sometimes it is not possible to do otherwise; it may be necessary to conceal the truth, or it may be unavoidable to tell a lie. It is up to the moralists to explain where sin begins, especially in the cases in which there is a higher duty than the transmission of life." === Karol Wojtyła === The future Pope John Paul II (at the time Archbishop of Krakow Karol Wojtyła) asked Paul VI to apply Papal infallibility in docendo (in teaching) to the encyclical, equating it with the authority of a dogma. Paul VI and John XXIII did not. Wojtyła himself declared the encyclical part of the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. Response of Pope Paul VI Pope Paul VI was troubled by the encyclical's reception in the West. Acknowledging the controversy, Paul VI in a letter to the Congress of German Catholics (30 August 1968), stated: "May the lively debate aroused by our encyclical lead to a better knowledge of God's will." In March 1969, he had a meeting with one of the main critics of , Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens. Paul heard him out and said merely, "Yes, pray for me; because of my weaknesses, the Church is badly governed." To jog the memory of his critics, he also put in their minds the experience of no less a figure than Peter: "[n]ow I understand St Peter: he came to Rome twice, the second time to be crucified", – herewith directing their attention to his rejoicing in glorifying the Lord. Increasingly convinced, that "the smoke of Satan entered the temple of God from some fissure", Paul VI reaffirmed, on 23 June 1978, weeks before his death, in an address to the College of Cardinals, his : "following the confirmations of serious science", and which sought to affirm the principle of respect for the laws of nature and of "a conscious and ethically responsible paternity". Padre Pio In his last letter to Pope Paul VI, Christian mystic and canonized saint Padre Pio called "clear and decisive words". ==Legacy==

Polls have shown that many self-identified Catholics use artificial means of contraception, and that very few use natural family planning. However, John L. Allen Jr. wrote in 2008: "Three decades of bishops' appointments by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both unambiguously committed to , mean that senior leaders in Catholicism these days are far less inclined than they were in 1968 to distance themselves from the ban on birth control, or to soft-pedal it. Some Catholic bishops have brought out documents of their own defending ." Developments in fertility awareness since the 1960s have also given rise to natural family planning organizations such as the Billings Ovulation Method, Couple to Couple League and the Creighton Model FertilityCare System, which actively provide formal instruction on the use and reliability of natural methods of birth control. Pope John Paul I John Paul the First's views on have been debated. Journalist John L. Allen Jr. claims that "it's virtually certain that John Paul I would not have reversed Paul VI's teaching, particularly since he was no doctrinal radical. Moreover, as Patriarch in Venice some had seen a hardening of his stance on social issues as the years went by." According to Allen, "it is reasonable to assume that John Paul I would not have insisted upon the negative judgment in as aggressively and publicly as John Paul II did, and probably would not have treated it as a quasi-infallible teaching. It would have remained a more 'open' question". Other sources take a different view and note that during his time as Patriarch of Venice that "Luciani was intransigent with his upholding of the teaching of the Church and severe with those, through intellectual pride and disobedience paid no attention to the Church's prohibition of contraception", though while not condoning the sin, he was tolerant of those who sincerely tried and failed to live up to the Church's teaching. Raymond and Lauretta's book The Smiling Pope, The Life & Teaching of John Paul I states that "if some people think that his compassion and gentleness in this respect implies he was against one can only infer it was wishful thinking on their part and an attempt to find an ally in favor of artificial contraception." Pope John Paul II After he became pope in 1978, John Paul II continued on the Catholic Theology of the Body of his predecessors with a series of lectures, entitled Theology of the Body, in which he talked about an "original unity between man and women", purity of heart (on the Sermon on the Mount), marriage and celibacy and reflections on , focusing largely on responsible parenthood and marital chastity. In 1981, the Pope's Apostolic exhortation, , restated the Church's opposition to artificial birth control stated previously in . John Paul II readdressed some of the same issues in his 1993 encyclical . He reaffirmed much of , and specifically described the practice of artificial contraception as an act not permitted by Catholic teaching in any circumstances. The same encyclical also clarifies the use of conscience in arriving at moral decisions, including in the use of contraception. However, John Paul also said, "It is not right then to regard the moral conscience of the individual and the magisterium of the Church as two contenders, as two realities in conflict. The authority which the magisterium enjoys by the will of Christ exists so that the moral conscience can attain the truth with security and remain in it." John Paul quoted as a compassionate encyclical, "Christ has come not to judge the world but to save it, and while he was uncompromisingly stern towards sin, he was patient and rich in mercy towards sinners". Pope John Paul's 1995 encyclical ('The Gospel of Life') affirmed the Church's position on contraception and multiple topics related to the culture of life. Pope Benedict XVI On 12 May 2008, Benedict XVI accepted an invitation to talk to participants in the International Congress organized by the Pontifical Lateran University on the 40th anniversary of . He put the encyclical in the broader view of love in a global context, a topic he called "so controversial, yet so crucial for humanity's future." became "a sign of contradiction but also of continuity of the Church's doctrine and tradition... What was true yesterday is true also today." The Church continues to reflect "in an ever new and deeper way on the fundamental principles that concern marriage and procreation." The key message of is love. Benedict states, that the fullness of a person is achieved by a unity of soul and body, but neither spirit nor body alone can love, only the two together. If this unity is broken, if only the body is satisfied, love becomes a commodity. Pope Francis On 16 January 2015, Pope Francis said to a meeting with families in Manila, insisting on the need to protect the family: "The family is[...] threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life. I think of Blessed Paul VI. At a time when the problem of population growth was being raised, he had the courage to defend openness to life in families. He knew the difficulties that are there in every family, and so in his Encyclical he was very merciful towards particular cases, and he asked confessors to be very merciful and understanding in dealing with particular cases. But he also had a broader vision: he looked at the peoples of the earth and he saw this threat of the destruction of the family through the privation of children [original Spanish: ]. Paul VI was courageous; he was a good pastor and he warned his flock of the wolves who were coming." A year before, on 1 May 2014, Pope Francis, in an interview given to Italian newspaper , expressed his opinion and praise for : "Everything depends on how is interpreted. Paul VI himself, in the end, urged confessors to be very merciful and pay attention to concrete situations. But his genius was prophetic, he had the courage to take a stand against the majority, to defend moral discipline, to exercise a cultural restraint, to oppose present and future neo-Malthusianism. The question is not of changing doctrine, but of digging deep and making sure that pastoral care takes into account situations and what it is possible for persons to do." ==References==