The four prophesies of Pope Paul VI

The four prophesies of Pope Paul VI

By Dr. Mark J. Rollo
One in an occasional series on ‘Humane Vitae’
  
 “Humanae Vitae,” the encyclical authored by Pope Paul VI, is now 50 years old. The world was expecting the Catholic Church to ease her traditional prohibition of contraception just as the Anglican Church had done in 1930, marking the first crack in Christianity’s united opposition to contraception. However, the world was mistaken. The Church’s role has never been to accommodate cultural change. Rather, she has always been a sign of contradiction as is Christ himself.
    In the case of “Humanae Vitae,” contradiction is an understatement. This document landed on the world like an atomic bomb and instantly became one of the most reviled and opposed encyclicals in the history of the Church. Dissent was everywhere. Certainly it existed in secular circles but opposition was strong in Catholic communities as well. Today, most Catholics oppose or ignore “Humane Vitae” if they even know about the encyclical at all.
    Pope Paul VI made four prophesies in “Humanae Vitae.” Regarding the first prophesy he wrote, “How easy it will be for (many) to justify behavior (contraception) leading to marital infidelity or to a gradual weakening in the discipline of morals.” There is no question that the last 50 years have seen an increase in divorce rates, out of wedlock births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion. The availability of contraception has led young people to believe that they can have sex “responsibly.”  The terms “safe sex” and “protected sex” have become the mantras of today’s “hook-up” culture.
    The Pope’s second prediction was the loss of respect for women. It is ironic that so called reproductive rights have been hailed as a boon for women when the reality is a rise in exploitation, abandonment and impoverishment of women. As stated in “Humanae Vitae,” “It is to be feared that husbands who become accustomed to contraceptive practices will lose respect for their wives. They may come to disregard their wives’ psychological and physical equilibrium and use their wives as instruments for serving their own desires.”
    Abuse of power by government was the third prediction of Pope Paul VI. “Who will prevent public authorities from favoring what they believe to be the most effective contraceptive methods and from mandating that everyone must use them whenever they consider it necessary?”
    The Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate of Obamacare is a great example of governmental abuse of power with respect to contraception which attempted to coerce even the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for contraception. Forcing everyone to pay for contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs, in violation of the First Amendment, is only the latest example of abuse of governmental power. Not only does it violate the First Amendment, it tries to make something evil appear good. It treats fertility as a disease that must be prevented.
    Contraception, penned the Pope in his fourth prediction, would lead not only to governmental abuse of power but to personal abuse of power. He reflected, “If we do not want the mission of procreating human life to be conceded to the arbitrary decisions of men, we need to recognize that there are some limits to the power of Man over his own body and over the natural operations of the body which ought not to be transgressed.”
    Sex without babies has led to the babies without sex industry of in vitro fertilization where babies are treated as products rather than life flowing from love. The sterile sex of contraception has led to the attempt to normalize another form of sterile sex: homosexuality. Societal sanctioning of so called same-sex marriages is justified by many as a civil right but marriage is about bonding and babies. Only the bodies of male and female are built for bonding, the natural result of which is the conception of human beings who have the right to be loved and nurtured by the father and mother who co-created them.
    The quest for unlimited dominion over one’s body, ushered in by contraception, has also helped give rise to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.
    Fifty years ago, the Holy Father challenged men of science to “strive to establish a satisfactorily clear basis for the moral regulation of offspring.” Many have taken up this challenge and effective modern methods of natural family planning have been developed which help couples avoid pregnancy for righteous reasons and also provide the basis for moral methods to treat infertility. Thus it has been made clear that, as stated by Pope Paul VI, “No contradiction exists between the divine laws for transmitting life and those for fostering true conjugal love.”
    Pope Paul VI enlisted a panel of advisers regarding contraception and the vast majority favored dropping opposition to contraception. Though he may have been informed by human advisers, he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. “Humanae Vitae” reaffirmed Catholic teaching.
    As the colonnade in front of St. Peter’s Basilica simulates the embrace of Jesus, Holy Mother Church, via “Humane Vitae,” seeks to hold us in her loving arms and guide us on the path of love and life.

– Dr. Rollo is a family physician
    and a member of St. Anthony Parish in Fitchburg.





'Humanae Vitae' counters sexual revolution

By Bishop Robert J. McManus
One in an occasional series on ‘Humanae Vitae’

    July 25, 2018 will mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of “Humanae Vitae,” Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical on the proper use of the gift of sexuality in marriage. The encyclical’s first words are these: “The most serious duty of transmitting human life, for which married persons are free and responsible collaborators of God the Creator, has always been a source of great joy to them.”
The Holy Father’s words underline the essential aspect of human sexuality, namely that, through their sexuality, husband and wife share in the very divine activity of bringing new life into the world. It is only the human persons, male or female and created in the image and likeness of God, who enjoy such a singular privilege.
In the Church’s 2,000 years of moral reflection on the sacrament of marriage and the human and ecclesial reality of conjugal love, the teaching authority of the Church has shown remarkable continuity in its teaching. Rejecting the recommendation of a commission that Pope John XXIII had established to study the question of the moral justification of using the birth control pill in marriage, Paul VI sought to explain the proper use of marital sexuality, yet doing so within the contemporary context of the Church and the modern world.
In language that was amplified and further explained by both St. John Paul II and Pope Francis, Paul VI described the marriage act as involving “the reciprocal gift of self,” intended to establish “the communion of their beings” in order to “collaborate with God and the generation and education of new lives.” The Holy Father went on to describe married love as fully human, total, faithful, exclusive, fruitful and a source of profound and lasting love.
Unfortunately, the publication of “Humanae Vitae” was met not only with dissent but with hostility. The reasons for such widespread rejection of the teaching are complex, yet it is a historical fact that 1968 was a year of a cultural revolt against many institutions, including the Church. The so-called “sexual revolution” was well underway throughout Western culture. Moreover, an understanding of a love that is faithful, exclusive and fruitful, lived within a monogamous relationship between a man and a woman that often demands self-sacrifice, was dismissed as archaic and unrealistic.
In Catholic moral theology, the morality of an act is not determined solely by the consequences of the act itself. However, from a retrospective viewpoint of 50 years, a number of moralists, both Catholic and non-Catholic, have observed that the consequences of deliberately separating the unitive (love-affirming) and procreative (life-creating) meanings of the marital act have been highly problematic. One might arguably contend that Pope Paul VI’s reaffirmation of the Church’s traditional teaching on the moral integrity of the marital act was prophetic.
In chapter four of his apostolic exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia,” Pope Francis presents, in almost lyrical language, a profoundly beautiful meditation on St. Paul’s “Hymn to Love” in his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:47). I would suggest that all engaged couples preparing for the celebration of the sacrament of marriage in our parishes should be provided with the text of this papal meditation for their own study and prayer.
In that same papal document, Pope Francis strongly reaffirms the wisdom of the moral teaching of “Humanae Vitae” in these words, “… the teaching of the Encyclical ‘Humanae Vitae’… ought to be taken up anew in order to counter a mentality that is often hostile to life… Decisions involving responsible parenthood presuppose the formation of conscience which is the ‘most secret core and sanctuary of the person’ (S.S., 16).” (Amoris Laetitia, #222)
At a time in our American culture when the gift of human sexuality is woefully misunderstood and is distorted in such dramatic ways that have led to the degradation of women and the weakening of family life, we should follow the pastoral advice of Pope Francis. Simply stated, we as a Church should revisit the teaching of the saintly Pope Paul VI who suffered greatly as a result of proposing the true meaning of marriage and the proper use of human sexuality within the marriage bond, a bond that is always strengthened by mutual love and respect.