When Pope Paul VI published his encyclical Humanae Vitae, the world was stunned. Many expected a green light for artificial contraception. Instead the Pope reaffirmed a truth about love and life that had guided Christianity for centuries – and in doing so, set himself against the spirit of the age. Why was he trying to take the Church back into the Middle Ages with his archaic teaching on human sexuality?
You might say that the drama began in 1930 with the Anglican Communion at the Lambeth Conference. Up until this time, all Christians throughout the world were united in condemning artificial contraception. For the longest time, perhaps this was unquestioned. But the Industrial Revolution had changed social demographics tremendously. Instead of an agrarian economy, where a numerous family was seen as an economic boon, all of a sudden a large family posed a whole series of complications as families migrated towards the larger cities.
Anglican pastors noted an increase in marital dissatisfaction and attributed this to the inability of couples to engage in marital intimacy without “risking” becoming pregnant and having another mouth to feed. Opening the door to artificial contraception was for them a way to improve marriage, theoretically.
New Perspectives
Within 30 years, the panorama of teaching on sexuality within the Christian world changed dramatically. Everyone changed their doctrine on artificial contraception, except the “dinosaur” of the Roman Catholic Church. Pressure was mounting in the 1960’s for the Pope to revisit doctrine and allow the Church to move into the 20th century. The Church had already shown signs of openness with the Pastoral Council: Vatican II.
Pope Paul VI called together a commission to study the question. Could it be licit to permit artificial contraception for married couples who were “generally open to life?” The members of the commission scoured Sacred Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, and moral thought within the Catholic tradition to see if things could be interpreted in a new light with the technological advances of the 19th and 20th centuries.
A majority of the commission came up with a report for the Holy Father that proposed changing Christian doctrine. Unfortunately, this report was leaked to the press and pressure mounted for Pope Paul VI to declare himself in favor of artificial contraception. The commission had not recommended this unanimously, however. One of the members of the commission, a Polish theologian and bishop, penned a minority opinion.
Minority Report
Karol Wojtyla had been reflecting on these concepts for decades. His book, Love and Responsibility, laid out the framework for a deeper understanding of the human person and human sexuality on philosophical and theological grounds. He would go on to write much of what Pope Paul VI published as his encyclical Humanae Vitae.
The world was waiting with bated breath. When the encyclical came out, theologians reacted in horror and began to write about how it was not necessary to obey the Pope in this matter. There is a story that Charles Curran, at Catholic University, received the encyclical by fax and proceeded immediately to write a response. This event would be considered as the birth of a parallel magisterium, with theologians openly dissenting from Church doctrine proceeding from Rome.
The document would prove to be prophetic. This letter focusing on responsible parenthood would explain that marital intimacy was ordered towards the unity of the spouses and procreation. They play a unique role in the creation of new human beings, with God infusing an immortal soul each time a new person comes into existence. But the world would remember this merely as the encyclical that prohibited artificial contraception and moved the Church back into the Middle Ages.
Looking Back
Nearly 60 years later, we can trace many of the distortions in sexual ethics we see today to the rise of artificial contraception. The Pope’s words ring true. However, our society is so hyper focused on sexuality, that it is often difficult to recognize the beauty of perennial Catholic teaching on what it means to be human and how this plays out in human sexuality. Human beings are not beasts and our rationality plays a role also in the expression of love that is possible through our bodies and made holy by the sacrament of matrimony, while disordered outside of the divinely elevated institution of marriage.
The bishop Karol Wojtyla went on to become Pope John Paul II and his catecheses on the subject are known as the Theology of the Body. These teachings explore the richness of the human existence and can be a great help in understanding where the Church is coming from when speaking out on issues of morality and humanity regarding sexuality. Christendom College is currently offering a free online course to explore this beautiful teaching.
While the world spoke of the sexual revolution of 1969, the Church had a larger shift which was a shift to the truth revealed by God to every human heart. The Church’s teaching on human love is not a restriction, but a revelation – a reminder that our bodies speak a divine language in rediscovering the language, we rediscover not only what it means to love, but what it means to be human.
Subscribe to the newsletter to never miss an article.
Check out my Substack.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In