A reader writes:
I’ve heard a number of times (most notably from my pastor!) that Pope Paul VI convened a panel of ‘experts’ to help him in deciding whether contraception should be morally acceptable. These experts allegedly unanimously reported that contraceptions should be allowed among the faithful. Then Paul VI unilaterally rejected this opinion and published his encyclical "Humanae Vitae" prohibiting the use of contraception. I’ve also heard that then-Cardinal Karol Woltyla was instrumental in convincing Paul not to allow contraception.
This story seems awfully suspicious to me, and I figured that since it’s a nasty little rumor that’s out there, I’d appreciate it if you could clear this up on your blog.
The story as you report it is not true, but it is based on something that really did happen. There was a Papal Commission on Birth Control, and it’s mentioned in the text of Humanae Vitae. It was first set up by John XXIII in 1962 and then expanded by Paul VI, who explains:
The consciousness of the same responsibility induced Us to confirm and expand the commission set up by Our predecessor Pope John XXIII, of happy memory, in March, 1963. This commission included married couples as well as many experts in the various fields pertinent to these questions. Its task was to examine views and opinions concerning married life, and especially on the correct regulation of births; and it was also to provide the teaching authority of the Church with such evidence as would enable it to give an apt reply in this matter, which not only the faithful but also the rest of the world were waiting for [HV 5].
This was a really dumb thing.
Establishing "expert commissions" is what large entities do before they announce a policy change, and the creation and later expansion of this commission started generating expectations of a policy change on contraception just as the Pill was taking off in popular consciousness and the early phase of the swinging Sixties was underway (even though the Free Love movement hadn’t yet arrived).
The better way to do things is not to publicly announce commissions but to have somebody you trust privately conduct a consultation with experts so that there isn’t a big, out-of-control commission making headlines.
The existence of the commission also cramped Vatican II, because when Gaudiam et spes was written, nobody knew what the commission would report or what the pope would do in response. As a result, we get the following tepid statement on birth control:
[S]ons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law [GS 51].
And the even more ambiguifying statement in the footnotes:
Certain questions which need further and more careful investigation have been handed over, at the command of the Supreme Pontiff, to a commission for the study of population, family, and births, in order that, after it fulfills its function, the Supreme Pontiff may pass judgment. With the doctrine of the magisterium in this state, this holy synod does not intend to propose immediately concrete solutions [n. 14].
So then the commission turns in its final reports in 1966, after the Council, and guess what: They’re split! 30 of the commission members apparently were in favor of a more open position on contraception (or certain forms of contraception) while 5 were not. (So it warn’t unanimous.)
This became public in 1967 and got everybody expecting that the pope would accept the recommendation of the majority report. This was, incidentally, the year of the Summer of Love.
And then . . .
. . . a year goes by.
What happens in that year? Back to Humanae Vitae:
When the evidence of the experts had been received, as well as the opinions and advice of a considerable number of Our brethren in the episcopate—some of whom sent their views spontaneously, while others were requested by Us to do so—We were in a position to weigh with more precision all the aspects of this complex subject. Hence We are deeply grateful to all those concerned [HV 5].
Yeah, and while Paul VI was weighing all this, the delay allowed public expectations of an approval of the Pill ("After all, it just stops ovulation. It doesn’t introduce something foreign into the sex act, like a condom or a shield or a coil or anything," people were saying).
So Paul VI decides that
the conclusions arrived at by the commission could not be considered by Us as definitive and absolutely certain, dispensing Us from the duty of examining personally this serious question. This was all the more necessary because, within the commission itself, there was not complete agreement concerning the moral norms to be proposed, and especially because certain approaches and criteria for a solution to this question had emerged which were at variance with the moral doctrine on marriage constantly taught by the magisterium of the Church.
Consequently, now that We have sifted carefully the evidence sent to Us and intently studied the whole matter, as well as prayed constantly to God, We, by virtue of the mandate entrusted to Us by Christ, intend to give Our reply to this series of grave questions [HV 6]
Bang! Humanae Vitae comes out in 1968 and everybody’s shell shocked. After six years of having the expectation fostered that some form of contraception would get permitted, while the Church is still reeling from Vatican II, and while the sexual revolution is exploding around the world, Paul VI comes out with a big, loud, and long-overdue "No!"
So a buncha theologians including the infamous Charlie Curran get together and discuss and issue press statements.
The public reaction to Humanae Vitae is so negative that Paul VI goes into shock and becomes didactically paralyzed. After having issued seven encyclicals in his first five years in office, Humanae Vitae is the end of the line for his encyclical writing days. After it comes out in 1968 he writes no more encyclicals for the next and final ten years of his reign. After HV, he’s done.
It was a shattering experience for him. Having had the chutzpah to tell the world "No!" on contraception, he then lost his nerve to tell it anything ever again in the form of an encyclical, the principal form of papal teaching document. (Though, to be sure, he did issue other documents, including ones of a doctrinal nature.)
Meanwhile, the fallout of the raised and then dashed expectations around this issue and the networking that occurred among opponents of Humanae Vitae result in the first seriously organized dissident movement in the wake of the Council, and so we have a mess on our hands that we’re still cleaning up to this day.
Now, the Papal Commission on Birth Control and the way Humanae Vitae was delayed were the sole cause of the current mess. The Sixties and the invention of new contraception methods have a lot to do with it as well. But the actions of John XXIII and Paul VI in handling the matter were contributing causes.
It’s only now that folks are getting the sense that the cafeteria really is closed on this issue.
Now . . . it sounds as if the story as you put it had quite a bit of anti-Humanae Vitae spin layered on it. For example, about Paul VI acting "unilaterally" in regard to the Commission. Well, duh! It was always up to the pope to accept or reject the advice of the Commission. That’s advisory commissions do: Give advice. When an individual has created such a commission and then gets its advice, it’s up to him to either accept or reject that advice, and since that decision is made by an individual, it is in that sense "unilateral."
But the term "unilateral" is meant as prejudicial language to make Paul VI appear isolated and therefore wrong. In regard to this, two points may be made:
First, he wasn’t isolated. Many, many, many people–including, for example, the bishops he consulted–supported the Church’s historic teaching and were immensely relieved when HV came out. That’s not the decisive consideration, though, because the Church is not a democracy and you can’t establish doctrine by doing a poll. So . . .
Second, this is a matter of faith. God has either guides the Church and its Magisterium or he doesn’t. If he does–this being the fundamental supposition of Catholic doctrinal epistemology–then you have to trust that he guided them on this matter. God promised to guide the Church and the Successor of Peter in a way he didn’t promise to guide papal commissions. If you’ve got to go with one or the other (and in this case you do) then you go with the former and chalk the commission’s results up to erroneous thinking in an unsettled age of social and moral upheaval.
Finally, regarding Karol Wojtyla’s involvement in this, I’ve heard rumors of his involvement as well, and I think it likely that he did have some involvement, though what specifically that was is too difficult for me to tell at present. I think it is probably too much to say that Wojtyla was instrumental in "convincing" Paul VI to reject the Commission’s majority’s advice.
Does Humanae Vitae (or any Catholic moral teaching in general) condemn infallibly one or both of these:
1) using the (non-abortifacient) Pill only in order to avoid health problems
2) using a condom only in order to avoid transmitting STDs
To give a tease to someone else’s more authoritative answer.
1) There was a document released in the last couple years that okayed the pill for various medical reasons. I haven’t read it specifically, only AP summarizations.
2) Several bishops have been quoted both ways. Those who are argue more permissively say that you are already engaged in sin (most likely sex outside marriage) and so you aren’t exposing yourself to a graver consequence. I understand that there is some debate when a couple is married and only one has AIDS.
Phil, the Pill always can act as an abortifacient. On the other hand, if someone really had to take the Pill for life-preserving reasons, any abortifacient action would be a side-effect. I’m no doctor to judge when such use would be licit.
I assume you’re speaking of married couples here. Single chaste women can definitely use the Pill for other reasons. Though I’d recommend against going on it too quickly, from my own reading. I did have a doctor offer it to me because I was suffering horribly once a month from menstrual cramps, but after reading about all the negative results from taking the Pill, I preferred to tough it out and look at some natural ways of easing the pain. This worked out for me, but I hasten to add that it may not for other women, and the Pill might be what they medically need.
Humanae Vitae is, I think, a clear example of how the teaching of the Pope is protected by the Holy Ghost. Dr. Germain Grisez has written that Paul VI was probably personally inclined to allow hormonal contraception.
There is absolutely no good medical reason to use the pill. The risks by a huge mile outweigh any benefits. Don’t let doctors fool you into thinking the the pill can help any medical condition.
You cannot find a condom on the market that does not contain non-oxynol 9 in it–it is a spermicide that is really a toxic chemical that causes birth defects–condoms aren’t terribly reliable even though “health professionals” tout them as being great for “safe sex”(anathema).
The only reason to ever use a condom is for retreiving a sperm count if there are fertilization issues between a couple. But you need to poke holes in it, so there is no barrier to the sex act and you need to order special ones that do not contain non-oxynol 9. Check with the couple to couple league on this. The couple to couple league is very humanae vitae savvy.
I think that Jimmy was influenced in this response by “What Went Wrong With Vatican II” by Ralph McInerny.
McInerny’s premise is that the crisis today in the American Church started with HV and the American theologian’s reaction to it.
It actually started long before that, as the author of Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae could attest.
Weren’t there accusations raised that members of the Commission had been “bought” by NARAL/Planned Parenthood? I seem to remember something about two members of the Commission recieving payment- one in the form of a “lecture series” pre-paid by NARAL/Planned Parenthood, the other recieving an outright cash payment. I don’t remember seeing any hard evidence on the matter, though- mostly, it was hearsay. Has anyone heard different?
Bang! Humanae Vitae comes out in 1968 and everybody’s shell shocked. After six years of having the expectation fostered that some form of contraception would get permitted, while the Church is still reeling from Vatican II, and while the sexual revolution is exploding around the world, Paul VI comes out with a big, loud, and long-overdue “No!”
Soli Deo Gloria!
Re: Brian Day and Lauda Jerusalem Dominum (dcs)
Consumer-culture in America was in full swing long before Vatican II and HV. “Planned” parenthood was intrinsic to achieving the new American Dream, although prior to the sixties discussed quietly among women and medical professionals. The Pill was a response to that perceived need. It is curious that the “counterculture” of the sixties merely got absorbed into the consumer culture and really only succeeded in putting the sex-without-consequences ethos openly into the mainstream. The Catholic understanding of life, love and procreation was long gone from the culture and from most lay-Catholic thinking when HV came out.
The battle of the past 37 years is more than just a moral re-adjustment for many Catholics, but practically speaking it puts the desire of any of us to follow our Faith, against the entire economic engine of the consumer culture as well as the tax system and of course, the steady propaganda drum-beat of the main cultural organs; music, news, entertainment, etc.
Hard work.
As my mother oft-notes to me, most women knew which priest to go to for confession if they were contracepting before the Pill. (My parents didn’t, but it seems many people they knew were, at least from time to time; again, before the Pill.) Long lines for those priests. But they also encouraged the women to receive Communion.
So HV also needs to be seen against that praxis. To some extent, it brightened a line that had been blurred before the Commission was undertaken.
Also, note that it was preponderantly women in the confessional lines for this….
I recently was speaking with an 80-yr old friend who told me how shocked she was in the 1950s when she encountered a priest who told her sternly that her & her husband’s periodic contracepting was a mortal sin; that was uncommon, in her experience. And she ignored him, given how uncommon it was.
It would seem that, for many women, contracepting periodically (as opposed to continuously) was treated by many confessors as more like a venial sin that should be confessed with some regularity: sorta a “serious venial” sin category. One wonders if HV shifted the praxis (not the teaching) to “serious aka mortal” or, more commonly, “not serious”.
Benedict XVI, in his interview with Raymond Arroyo (as Cardinal Ratzinger), described the New Spring-time of the Church as not necessarily an increase in conversions and numbers. He seemed to indicate a vision of a more faithful “faithful”, if you will. I wonder sometimes how the newest generation sees our sex-saturated culture. We have seen some signs, albeit not in large numbers, of young people exhibiting a gag reflex over the entire culture, and pursuing purity with vigour.
I think that was one of the great achievements of JPII, in that he was able to leap-frog right over the boomers, and X-ers and speak directly to the youngest. Perhaps they won’t see that a large family is necessarily a vow of poverty, or if they do, will me more willing to pay the price, having watched the American dream become more of a stress nightmare.
Do we dare hope that one day the majority of Catholics will re-align with Vatican II and HV, procreate above the national average and eventually dominate the culture and thereby effect a radical change?
Do we dare hope that one day the majority of Catholics will re-align with Vatican II and HV, procreate above the national average and eventually dominate the culture and thereby effect a radical change?
Why should they, when Vatican II (the dreadful Gaudium et Spes) and Humanae Vitae give them permission to limit the size of their families to the national average?
DCS, I don’t think that is at all a fair characterization of Humanae Vitae. It states that couples need to have a “serious reason” to have recourse to natural family planning. I don’t think the fact that most Catholics ignore (and likely don’t even fully understand) Church teachings on this matter can be blamed on Humanae Vitae.
I think it can be blamed on: original sin and our resultant tendency towards selfishness and doing what is easy rather than what is right; a sex-saturated, pleasure-obsessed culture that has deliberately severed the connection between marriage, sex and babies; and a clergy that has largely been too afraid to speak the truth on this matter.
As far as Les’s hope– yes, I do hope. My husband and I try to be as generous as possible in the baby department not only because we love kids and want to do God’s will, but also to try and serve as a kind of public witness to the joy and satisfaction that large families can create.
Even in the middle of a chicken pox epidemic, which I expect to break out here very shortly. 🙂
Actually, Humanae Vitae says that couples need “serious” reasons to postpone pregnancy (even indefinitely!) (§10) but then later says that they only need “well-grounded” reasons (§16). The official Latin here has “iustæ” (“just”), which any theologian could tell you is a lower standard than “serious.”
Gaudium et Spes contains a number of references to “population growth” and the “population problem” and even implies (§87) that governments have the right to restrict the number of children a family might have. Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum Progressio also implies this (§37), along with generally painting a bleak picture of population growth throughout the world.
It is only when one views the larger corpus of Catholic teaching on the subject that one can see the beauty of being generous and trusting in Providence (IMHO).
From the practical standpoint, there is a recognition in all the pertinent documents of economic realities. How ironic that in some parts of the world, having more babies will almost certainly put you over the edge into starvation, while in North America where we should objectively be able afford children by the dozens, we have an economy and tax system that would very nearly drive us to that same point of starvation. Yet at the same time there are reports of the latest health risk, childhood obesity. Go figure.
In #87 Gaudium Et Spes the very next paragraph clarifies unequivocally what it means by “within the limits of their proper competency” (governments) when it says “For in keeping with man’s inalienable right to marry and generate children, a decision concerning the number of children they will have depends on the right judgment of the parents and it cannot in any way be left to the judgment of public authority.”
In #37 Populorum Progressio PaulVI uses almsot identical language, “It is certain that public authorities can intervene, within the limit of their competence, by favoring the availability of appropriate information and by adopting suitable measures, provided that these be in conformity with the moral law and that they respect the rightful freedom of married couples.” and reiterates what the moral freedom of a couple means further down in the paragraph.
So, DCS, I would have to disagree with your characterization as well.
How ironic that in some parts of the world, having more babies will almost certainly put you over the edge into starvation
I think it’s more ironic that the population controllers are pushing population control in areas where infant mortality is high and so, therefore, is the replacement birth rate. Starvation has very little do to with population — it has to do with war and government intervention. That is the economic reality.
I noted that GS and PP “imply” that governments have this right, not that they actually state that governments have this right. I do not think that the documents are heretodox, but I think that they have — perhaps accidentally — built a rhetorical case for population control.
Steve Mosher who is from the Population Research Institute was on “The Journey Home” on EWTN this week. It was fascinating. He reiterated what dcs said about starving people. The world has a huge surplus of food, but people starve due to governmental mismanagement. If you didn’t see it try to catch a rerun.
I agree 100% on the root causes of starvation, ie. corrupt governments.
The documents do contain ambiguity, but more in what is unstated rather than what is stated. I think those that have seized on the ambiguities to make their case have stretched the case far beyond the point of any credulity. But as we know, many Catholics don’t read encyclicals, much less Vatican II.
I mentioned to a friend in our parish where we’ve been about 2 yrs that I had read the Vatican II docs. He said I was the only one he knew that had, and he’s been in the parish all his life.
People like that depend on the interpretation they are given and as we have seen, there have been sadly those Bishops and Priests who have readily acquiecsed to the birth control agenda.
JPII spent most of his pontificate trying to recover lost ground. We may not see the extent of the fruits of that work for some years.
The documents do contain ambiguity, but more in what is unstated rather than what is stated.
I can’t really disagree with that.
I mentioned to a friend in our parish where we’ve been about 2 yrs that I had read the Vatican II docs. He said I was the only one he knew that had, and he’s been in the parish all his life.
I certainly haven’t read all of them. I find them almost insufferably boring. I don’t blame people for not reading them. Aside from the fact that they have a low signal-to-noise ratio, one should also consider whether it is incumbent on the laity to read conciliar documents and Papal encyclicals. Maybe in this day and age it is, but if so then it is definitely the exception.
A Times article from 1968 regarding the Humanae Vitae.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,841458,00.html