9th
Sunday after Pentecost 22.7.18 Humanae Vitae
July
25th marks a significant anniversary in the life of the Church. It
is 50 years since Pope Paul VI published the document Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life).
1968
was one of those years in a decade of turbulence and unrest, when a lot of
things happened and attitudes changed.
It
was thought that the Catholic Church might change her teaching on birth
control. The teaching had always been that any kind of artificial birth control
was against God's will. Perhaps, it was reasoned by some, with problems caused
by overpopulation, and by unhappy marriages, and the solutions offered by the
advances of science, in particular the invention of the contraceptive pill -
the Church would change this teaching.
It
did not happen. Paul VI reiterated what the Church had always believed - that 'the direct interruption of the generative
process and, above all, direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to
be absolutely excluded as lawful means of controlling the birth of children...
'Equally to be
condemned, as the Magisterium of the Church has affirmed on various occasions,
is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent
or temporary’. (n14)
Paul
VI explained that although there are sometimes very good reasons why a couple
might not want to have another child just at this time, it is never allowable
to do evil that good may come of it(n14)
And
artificial interference with the sexual act is 'doing evil' because it is
depriving the act of its lifegiving power, what is in fact its main point. It
is interfering with something the Creator Himself has put in place. It is an
unnatural act, against nature. The marriage act '... brings into operation laws written into the actual nature of man and of
woman for the generation of new life.'
The
unitive and procreative purposes of the marriage act must be kept together or
else we have just changed one of God's most important creations. Love and Life
must be kept together. It is written into our nature. We are not our own; we
are ministers not masters (n13).
The
general point that the Pope is making throughout is that obedience to God in
small matters, in family matters, will enable things to work better on the
national and international scale. As Jesus said: the man who can be trusted in
small things can be trusted in great..
The
readings of today’s Mass (9th Sunday after Pentecost) speak of
divine punishment.
The
punishment for contraception was rightly predicted by Paul VI.
a) more likelihood of conjugal infidelity
b) a general
lowering of morality
c) greater
opportunity for people (especially the young) to elude the moral law
d) Loss of respect for women, in that a woman
might become an instrument of enjoyment rather than a respected and beloved
companion
e) the providing
of a dangerous weapon to unscrupulous governments, opening the way to
compulsory sterilisation and unwarranted intrusion into the privacy of marriage.
He
also rightly noted that if families could not be relied on to see these things
properly what was to stop governments from making use of contraceptives and
sterilisations and even enforced abortions?
All this is happening.
Instead,
if we obey God and His laws and the way He has established nature, then the
solutions will emerge.
His
grace is available to everyone who asks. We are never tested beyond our
strength (today’s epistle, 1 Co 10,13).
We
can ignore a document, and we can even ignore God, but not forever. Truth will
find its way out of the cupboard and the consequences of this large-scale
breaking of God's laws are now upon us... as the Pope predicted
We
must do our part in restoring the values enshrined in Humanae Vitae. Married people, those about to be married,
but all of us, because we are one. There is a lot of truth here still under the
bushel. We must do what we can to live by it, and make it plain to others.
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