July 25, 1968 - forty-five years later...

   July 20th is the 44th anniversary of Neil Armstrong stepping out of the lunar module and onto the surface of the moon. It took an amazing sequence of events and the work of many intelligent and brave persons to make this first step a reality that we can look back on today.  On July 25, 1968, Pope Paul VI signed the encyclical, Humane Vitae (On Human Life: the Regulation of Birth), making this weekend its 45th anniversary.

   Humane Vitae is the famous “anti-pill” encyclical, which caused a storm of protest in its day, and remains one of the least-well-understood papal teaching documents to our own time. In light of this anniversary, again I turn our attention to the Church’s teachings on Human Life and the Dignity of Marriage for your consideration.

   In Humane Vitae (#8-13), the Church teaches that the conjugal relationship of husband and wife participates in the Creator’s design by perfecting [the creation] of each of the spouses and allowing spouses to participate in God’s ongoing acts of creation through in the rearing of new life. Married love between husband and wife is intended by God to be exclusive, open to life, and complete (or as I often call it, the "three F's": faithful, fruitful, final). Responsible parenthood is rooted in the virtues of prudence (using right means to accomplish the highest good) and generosity (liberality in sharing of one’s goods). These conditions are reflected in Natural Law and place an intrinsic connection between the marital act and procreation. Thus, any act to frustrate, modify, or simulate the intimate relationship between husband and wife improperly (sinfully) claims an absolute dominion over the human body and the act of creating life itself, offending the Creator’s plan.

   Contraception is little different than the first foolish act of pride in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve told God that they would determine their own morality, based on their own disordered desires. Regrettably, that first sin injured not only humanity’s relationship with God, but also man and woman’s relationship with each other. In the new world order after the fall, men and women began living in shame and, in an effort not to be exploited by the other, they fashioned clothes, guarding themselves from the lustful glances of each other. In a way, this shame also continues when couples resort to contraception. The totally selfless and mutual act of the marital relationship intended by the Creator is perverted into something less in contraception:  “I love you except for your fertility.” “I want you, but not your children.”  “We are one, until it suits me.” In these statements, one can see how the relationship between man and woman quickly degenerates into nothing more than a means to satisfy my wishes, my fantasies, my desires, my neediness, and my loneliness.

   This is completely contrary to God’s holy plan for marriage and marital relations.  These teachings are some of the most challenging that the Church has to offer, and in many ways the Church has not done well in understanding the challenges of married persons or in teaching the beauty of their vocation over the last 40 years. I think this is beginning to change, but society has changed, too— in many way for the worse, with respect to sexual license, lowered standards, marital infidelity, indifference to perversion, and focus on self. Our encounters with Church teaching are corrupted by these ‘contraceptive’ attitudes. What the Church must do in order to be truthful to God’s Word and relevant to today’s Catholics is to offer “a better way” to live— a way that leads to life and truth and faithfulness—a way that promotes strong marriages, families, and children. This can only be done one step at a time– one marriage, one family, one Church at a time.