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Highlights and Summary of Humanae Vitae......

In the mid-1960s, much of the world was enamored with what they felt was an exciting, new, convenient way to manage a woman’s fertility so she was available to have sex at any time without worrying about pregnancy.  Many Catholics and clergy also felt strongly that contraception was a needed and popular advancement for the world and an empowering movement for woman.

Pope Paul VI, witnessing this movement in culture, viewed it as interrupting God’s plan for bringing life into the world and shifting the power of creating life to humans only, married or not, and companies.  He felt sex would become much less meaningful and the consideration for life in every sexual act would be diminished.  Many married Catholics practicing organic sex successfully to plan their families, felt that using chemicals was destructive to the most powerful part of a woman’s body and would have many side effects and consequences.

Pope Paul VI enlisted thoughtful council including Physicians, laypeople, couples, and clergy to enlighten him and possibly change his mind.  Though not all in agreement, the group, lead by pro-contraceptive clergy, presented their point of view for the Catholic church to endorse artificial contraception.  Pope Paul VI prayed about the issue for many months to seek God’s counsel in this difficult situation.  The world was waiting for the Catholic church for an answer.

Pope Paul VI’s unexpected “NO” to artificial contraception was thoughtfully clarified in a ten-page document written to Catholics of the world, July 15, 1968.  The encyclical caused much dissent within the ranks of the Catholic church.

Pope Paul VI wrote, “God is the author of life. His purpose was to effect in man his loving design.  As a consequence, husband-and-wife, through that mutual gift of themselves, which is specific and exclusive to them alone, develop that union of two persons in which they perfect one another, cooperating with God in the generation and rearing of new lives.”  Married couples together, not women alone through artificial means, were to consider and thoughtfully discern fertility cycles and life. 

“To use the divine gift of the marriage act while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and his holy will. But to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with a more particular reason he has no such dominion over his sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source.”

Pope Paul VI was so concerned about a shift in culture to disobey the natural laws of God, that he predicted four prophecies if humans started interfering in God's plan for life: 

• Infidelity and Moral Decline. Who can argue that? The availability of contraception along with other cultural factors has led to the belief that couples can engage in premarital sex responsibility. The divorce rate along with abortion, out of wedlock pregnancies and STD’s has risen steadily with widespread contraception use. Porn is a multi-billion dollar industry and known as a silent marriage killer.

• Loss of respect for women. Hello? the #metoo movement? It’s pervasive in every industry and most parts of the world. Pope Paul VI argued that man will lose respect for woman and no longer care for her physical and psychological equilibrium and will come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.

• Abuse of power.  The widespread acceptance of contraception would place a dangerous weapon in the hands of public authorities who may be emboldened to have no moral concerns when implementing programs.  In third world countries, many people undergo sterilization unaware of what they are doing.  The forced abortion program in China shows this stark extreme. There is serious evidence, few are willing to recognize, that many parts of the world face not overpopulation, but underpopulation.

• Unlimited Dominion, the final warning was that contraception would lead man to think that he had unlimited dominion over his own body.  Sterilization is now the most widely used form of contraception in the US: individuals are so convinced of their right to control their own bodies that they do not hesitate to alter their own physical makeup with chemicals and surgeries which treat fertility as an inconvenience or condition, rather than the best gift from God.

Pope Paul VI acknowledges that spouses might have difficulty in acquiring the self-discipline necessary to practice the methods of family-planning that require periodic abstinence for several days per month when they are most fertile. However, he taught that self-discipline was possible especially with the help of sacramental grace.  He remarked,  “The discipline which is proper to the purity of married couples far from harming conjugal love, rather confers on it a higher human value. It demands continual effort yet, thanks to its beneficent influence, husband and wife fully develop their personalities, being enriched with spiritual values. Such discipline bestows upon family life fruits of serenity and peace; and facilitates the solution to other problems; it favors attention for one's partner, helps both parties to drive out selfishness, the enemy of true love, and deepens their sense of responsibility.” 

Fifty years of neglecting Humanae Vitae have produced enough unpleasant consequences to now help us recognize how foolish it is to squander this wisdom.