TOBET — Humanae Vitae

I need a male volunteer. (Great! Come on up). I want you to say this in the microphone regarding the debate going on about not making teens go to school or have homework anymore: "School is important. Homework is good for you." (Pause for response from the crowd of over 70 teens). Get 3 other volunteers who agree with (name of boy). (Have the 4 school/homework approving teens to back up against a wall. Then tell the teens that those 4 have the authority to ban schools and homework; they could free teens for life from such "dumb, old-fashioned concepts." I instruct all 66 teens to get out of their seats, making a semi-circle around the 4. The 4 repeat, "School is important. Homework is good for you," while the others yell, "Down with school. Down with homework!" Eventually, I whistle and say to the four, "How do you feel?" (Response). Then I ask the other side what their thoughts are about the 4 not changing this reality. (Response). I ask everyone, "Who is a sign of contradiction? Who is holding fast to what is right and good?" (Deal with funny jokes they make). Ok. I will let you know why we did this in a second, but let’s applaud those who were signs of contradiction and then return to your seat).

My talk today, which commemorates the fine encyclical Humanae Vitae on its 40^th anniversary which was yesterday, will cover the hidden evil of contraception. It is quite ironic that I would call the evil of contraception hidden, for after all, if people would look around, they would see vast, devastating consequences that have wreaked havoc since the Pill has become widely accepted. However, it seems that most people accept it as a benign, normal use, and they look at people like us who fight against it as someone with 2 heads and quite backwards. In fact, I was at a doctor’s office this past Tuesday, and when I said to the doctor that contraception is wrong and that I am giving a talk this Saturday to teens about this, she responded, "I understand your position, but we would have a heated debate." I wanted to say, "Humm. You understand my position? Then, you must have read Humanae Vitae and done research regarding Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body. In fact, you really do not understand my position, which is the position of the Catholic Church’s age-old teaching that applies to every human; if you understood, then you would change your mind." She and most people are simply ignorant…and have been brainwashed.

In the next 45 minutes, listen for 4 main points:

The background leading up to the promulgation of the Pope Paul VI’s encyclical.

The reaction against Humanae Vitae and the harmful consequences.

The truth of the encyclical which inspired Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body.

Finally, how can you as teens can continue to live out its freeing meaning.

As I was researching various sources in preparation for this talk, I found Dr. Janet Smith, an expert on Humanae Vitae, to be extremely helpful. In her tape, Contraception: The History of the Church’s teachings, she speaks about the people of the Church including theologians—up until 1966—were well aware of and obedient to the teachings regarding family and the wrong of contraception. What she notes is that the Church had an "energetic" unbroken teaching regarding contraception, as it emphasized respect for women, fertility, and the openness of life. Smith speaks about the Bishops criticizing Margaret Sanger, the Mother of Planned Parenthood and supporter of the Pill; the bishops went so far as to call the Catholic laity to fight legally against contraception and to vote for those who were against contraception. In fact, says Smith, some political positions rose and fell regarding the issue of contraception, the issue of the day, similar to many of you whose parents vote for pro-life candidates. Smith says that the laity admired and lived by the Church’s lovely defense of the family and marriage, and the laity had a "visceral surge of tribal loyalty" regarding such teachings. Even into the late 1950’s, over 2/3rds of Catholics followed the Church’s teachings; as a whole, Catholics accepted the teaching that contraception was intrinsically evil.

So, within the Church, people accepted the teachings, but it is also surprising that even those outside of the Church were against it. For instance, the media had editorial exchanges and radio shows that spoke against contraception. In Congress, many feminist women rightfully fought against contraception, saying that if it were approved, men would take advantage of women. Even an honest athiest (Malcolm Muggeridge who later converted to Catholicism) predicted that if contraception became the norm, sexually promiscuity would rise to unprecedented levels.

Pope Pius XII in his encyclical, Casti Canubii, written in 1930 in response to the Lambeth Conference, the first official approval of contraception by a Christian group (Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, the 3 main reformers all taught—based on Scripture—that contraception was gravely evil), continued the line of teaching from Jesus to Augustine to Thomas that contraception was evil; he even called it "vicious." Pope Pius predicted that if contraception were approved, it would lead, no doubt, to abortion and euthanasia with the family beginning to erode. He was right.

What happened? If for over the 1,960 years that Christianity existed all believed and lived the truth about marital love, why the 180 degree turn-around? Even in 1965, all moral theology textbooks defended the Church’s teachings; there was no moral debate within the Church surrounding the issue.

1966 became the watershed year, the turning point.

In 1966, a book called Catholicism by a Jesuit named Richard McCormick was published; it was the first official dissent by a theologian. The year before, he was against contraception. He changed.

Previous to that, Pope John XXIII called a commission to advise the Church as to how to present the consistent teachings of the Church regarding the family and marital love. Although the members of the Church and society as a whole had been against contraception, with the sexual revolution beginning, he knew that the Church needed cogent arguments to remind people of the truth of love and sexuality. This 66-member commission was unprecedented in having mostly laity on the commission from all walks of life: demographers, historians, family life movement people, etc.

Upon Pope John XXIII’s death, Pope Paul VI inherited this commission and quickly found out that it had become a "runaway commission." Instead of exploring cogent ways to present the truth, the commission, on their own, changed the problem to IF contraception should be allowed, IF the Church should change her age-old teachings, IF the Church should "get up with the times".

Therefore, Paul VI added 15 more members, all bishops who were the only ones with the right to vote. The final vote: 9 bishops voted to change the Church’s teaching, 3 to keep the Church’s teaching, and 3 abstaining. If those other 66 could have voted, overwhelmingly the vote would’ve gone to change the teachings. One bishop named Karol Wojtyla—later JP II—couldn’t attend the conference because the Communists wouldn’t permit him, was one of the three voting to uphold the constant teaching of the Church. Pope Paul VI agreed with him and the other two. Those 4 were signs of contradiction. Thus, Pope Paul VI began to write Humanae Vitae, a sign of contradiction, as Pope Benedict recently called it.

Now you know why we acted that pro-school/homework/anti-school homework at the beginning of my talk. It was hard enough for these 4 "bishops" to go against 66 other people. Imagine 4 against 4 billion or so. Signs of contradiction, indeed. Remember that my analogy said that the 4 had the authority to eradicate school and homework, but here is where my analogy breaks down. It is not like our bishops must submit to democratic vote where the majority gets their way. Rather, they must submit to God and the way He made things, so, in reality, they had no choice. The Church always has to follow Truth no matter how unpopular that truth might be.

Let me continue the story. The commission was disbanded, and those on the commission, not knowing Pope Paul’s decision, awaited a response from the Vatican….The Pope was too slow for them, so in the Spring of 1967, someone in the commission leaked the documents, meant only for the Pope to see, to the Tablet and the National Catholic Reporter, liberal "Catholic" periodicals. People, then, expected the Pope to go with the majority in a democratic way.

Instead, he promulgated Humanae Vitae on July 25,1968, and it hit like a bomb going off. Here is where I go into the second point of my talk: the aftermath of HV.

Many dissenting theologians including Fr. Charles Curran who taught moral theology at Catholic University in DC called press conferences within 24 hours, saying that Catholics were free to disregard this teaching to go by their conscience. Theologians, priests, many laity met on Capitol Hill in protest, which, of course, was eaten up by the media. They got 88 signatures of leading theologians and later 100’s more. Bishops wrote statements supporting HV, but some quite wobbly and most inadequate. So many people were upset and critical of the Pope’s stand. While reflecting on the 40th anniversary of HV, Pope Benedict says that taking such a stand in the midst of such backlash and dissent "…constitutes a significant show of courage in reiterating the continuity of the Church’s doctrine and tradition."

Indeed, a sign of contradiction and courage. Dr. Janet Smith tells the story during such tumultuous times (up until about 10 years ago) if she, whom everyone knew was faithful to teaching the truth of Humanae Vitae, arrived at a place, particularly a seminary, it was like she had to have armed guards to protect her from dissenting professors who wanted to keep her out. She could not eat lunch openly at the places she went to, and on one occasion, she even had to take a freight elevator so as to avoid the wrath of the faculty. Many times, after her talk where the faculty would not even look at her while she spoke to the seminarians, the faculty would leave, but the students would stay, finally getting a chance to speak with her, not having to worry that professors would despise them for talking to her.

We were in a bad state. Seminarians in Rome were taught by dissenting professors who did not have them read any of HV but subjected them to Fr. Charles Curran’s Moral Theology book. One priest who was in the seminary at that time 10 years later decided to be intellectually honest by reading HV; he was struck by the beauty and coherence of the teaching so as to recognize his brainwashing and trying to undo the brainwashing he had done to his flock.

I, too, must admit to being for contraception at one point in my life. Actually, it was when I was taught on this very campus by a dissenter who was flown in from the Houston seminary where he taught in 1993. I was brainwashed. I believed him when he said that the Church’s teaching about contraception was backwards, that celibate priests had no clue about married life, that the teaching was not infallible. I thank God to this day that in the Catholic school I used to teach, I never taught heresy, though I remember thinking how stupid the teaching was. Fortunately, UD cleaned up its act my last 2 years, and Dr. Mark Lowery unfolded for me the reasons that contraception is wrong. It is a fabulous teaching.

Let us then get to my 3rd point: why is Humanae Vitae right?

Before I get into details about HV’s teachings, let me give you a couple of stories to let you know the beauty of God’s plan of true marital love. When I was one of the campus ministers at St. Mary’s at Texas A&M, I remember on at least two different occasions married woman coming into my office, sharing with me how, once they found out about the Church’s teaching about the evil of contraception, they stopped contracepting and the difference it made in their marriage. I especially remember Christi who said, since we have about 2 weeks of abstinence, it is like a honeymoon every month when we come together again…and the other times, my husband has learned to express his love for me in tender, different ways—cuddling, flowers, reading together, star-gazing, etc.

Oftentimes when I and other members of TOBET give talks to adults, married couples come forward and say, "This is such a captivating teaching. Why have we never heard about it? How do we stop contracepting?

What, then, is the main thrust of Humanae Vitae? How did God design marital love? Pope Paul VI spoke of 2 aspects of marital intercourse: the love-making (union) and baby-making (procreation). To quote HV: "This particular doctrine, often expounded by the Magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiated may not break, between the unitive and procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act" (P. 12).

Pope Paul VI knew that the Church could not change God’s truth, but he also knew that in light of modernity and the backlash from dissenters that the Church had to give a cogent, beautiful argument about marital intercourse having to include the procreative and unitive aspects, so he called for an "adequate anthropology." The then, Karol Wojtyla—a faithful servant to the Church and to Pope Paul VI—took his pope seriously and began to write the Theology of the Body as a way of showing that HV was right.

In a nutshell—since we are short on time—I would like to highlight how John Paul and now Pope Benedict took Pope Paul’s emphasis on the procreative and unitive aspects of intercourse and underlined those, bolstering their arguments. Let us look at two things that occur if one of those aspects is violated: love is defiled and the person’s dignity is defiled.

Pope Benedict put it this way when he recently spoke about how living out the truth of HV protects against such use (the opposite of love) when he recently said, "If the practice of sexuality becomes a drug that seeks to enslave the partner to one’s own desires and interests, without respecting the times of the beloved, then what must be defended is no longer just the concept of love but, primarily, the dignity of the person." This is why teaching against contraception is a pro-life issue. It is about pro-life—yes, so that a married couple is open to life during intercourse—but first, that the dignity of the life of the spouse must first be respected.

Let me demonstrate. (The following should only be acted out for those teens mature enough, but I have found it incredibly convincing in demonstrating to teens the absurdity of contraception. I have a plastic baggie or plastic wrap hidden. Then, I pretend to be at a movie with my boyfriend. I speak out loud—but as if it is my thoughts as a girl on a date—saying, "Oh, I wonder! Is he going to grab my hand!!?? I feel his sleeve touching my arm! Does he like me??" Then, I pretend that he is about to hold my hand, and I, excited, say to him, "HeeHee, just a second." I take the wrap out of my purse and put it on my hand, happily holding his hand. Then, once the movie is over and he is walking me to the door of my house, I think, gleefully, "Is he going to kiss me??!!" Sure enough, he is about to kiss me, but I say, "Oh, just a second, let me get my ‘protection,’" and I put the plastic on my cheek/lips, putting a barrier up. Teens, of course, laugh. I say, "Why are you laughing?" We all know why they are laughing. It is because it is totally ABSURD to place such "protection" such a "barrier" between two people when they are expressing affection for each other. Why, then, does society think that using condoms during the most intimate act of love is not absurd? (The answer is people "practice sexuality as a drug", to reiterate Pope Benedict’s words and will do anything to get it).

Think about how the person and love is violated. Watch these similar examples regarding loving relationships. (Here I ask for several volunteers, have them come forward and divide them according to scenarious; then, I whisper to each group what they will act out and give them about 30 seconds to plan. I give 3 scenarios. 1. Have a girl volunteer act like she is a mom to this baby doll I bring. She says, "I love you so much, darling," but then takes out the hidden Saran Wrap, places it around her baby and holds her. 2. Have a boy pretend like he is the father of a 10 year old girl (2 mature volunteers), and he says to her, "Honey, I love you so much. Take this medicine I got from the doctor." She responds, "But, Daddy, I am not sick at all! I am perfectly healthy." Dad responds, "I don’t care that nothing is wrong with your body. You must take this pill to make your body messed up rather than functioning properly." 3. Have 2 friends come forward. One of them says to the other, "We are best friends. All I have is yours," pointing to an MP3 player, an I-pod, and a cell phone." So the second friends says, "Thanks," and reaches for the I-pod, but the first friends says, "Oh, well, you can’t have that." "But I thought…")

A little applause for each one. Now, tell me how the person’s dignity is violated in each scenario? Yes, the first, a baby deserves true union, true touch. It goes against her and love itself because there is a barrier. I recently saw my best friend from high school…with her husband and 7 kids. What if I went up to hug her and said, "Wait." And got out the Saran Wrap. Or what if I said to her, "I don’t need to stop by. We can communicate just as well by texting." (Comment on their lack of incarnational relationships—do they rely too much on texting/im-ing/emailing? That’s another talk!). We don’t need "protection" from people we love. What if at Holy Communion we had to receive Christ in a baggie?! No, there should be no barriers with loved ones, especially with a married couple.

What about the second scenario of the father giving medicine to his daughter even though she was not sick. How does that violate her dignity? Indeed. To deliberately make a body sick violates her humanity because we are to be made whole and healthy through medicine, not sick. Think about it this way. Imagine someone with normal sight being given glasses which make him see less and less, even making him blind. The dignity of the human person demands that we help, not hurt the person. Then why are women so violated? The Pill says, "Your femininity is a disease. Your fertility is a disease. Your body is diseased." Do you know how the Pill works? It works through a lie. The foreign hormones put into the body makes the woman’s body think it is pregnant and so she no longer ovulates because the body thinks that she has been blessed with a baby! What a lie. The total opposite has occurred. Contra-ception means against conception; it works its work based on a lie. It is an anti-sacrament. I do not know why feminist are not still against it. In fact, you probably don’t know that the first tests of contraception were done on men. But they said, "Wait a second. Let’s make the women mess up their bodies; we don’t want to be the guinea pigs." The very first guinea pig women that doctors tried their experiment on were poor, 3rd world women in Puerto Rico. Several died.

What about the third scenario? Remember the friend who says, "You can have everything" but then withholds something? How does that violate the person and friendship? Right. The person was lied to…and the dignity of the person requires others to be honest. Plus friendship was damaged not only because of the lie but because of withholding something important. The same goes with contraception. For a married couple to say, "I give you my heart, my mind, my imagination, my money, my I-pod, my time…but not my fertility" violates love and the person who deserves a FULL gift of self from his/her spouse. Incidentally, this is why NFP (Natural Family Planning), a time of abstinence from intercourse between a husband and wife, is fine. At certain times of the month, the woman simply does not have her fertility to give, and so she is not holding anything back.

Let me summaries some of these arguments before getting to the most essential argument and then finishing up with more applications to how you can live out HV. I have tried to show you 3 ways that the person and love are violated through contraception, and these reasons apply to anyone, not just Catholics. 1. Putting a barrier to "protect" one against one’s beloved is absurd and a lie regarding what true love is about. If a mother should not do that, then why are married people doing it? 2. Giving a pill to a person whose health is just fine is damaging the body, the person, and love. It is based on a lie. It is especially denigrating to women. 3. A true communion of persons demands the total gift of self between a husband and wife; contraception is a lie, for it says we can withhold something during a act which is supposed to unite us with all we are and have.

Notice I have focused on each of those being a lie. The Father of Lies is the devil. He relishes the fact that we are fed lies in our society. Contraception ultimately is wrong because is violates the way couples are to be icons, be images of God.

When Pope John Paul in his Theology of the Body cites Humanae Vitae, with Paul VI’s line about the unitive and procreative aspect never being separated, John Paul said this "…as a central passage, an important part of the whole document and the key to all the components of the entire text" (TOB). He speaks of it being related to marriage as a sacramental sign.

Pope John Paul points to the fact that a couple being united and open to life underscores the fact that marriage is a sacramental sign because the truth about the dignity of personhood and of love is to be revealed in marriage. Another way of putting that is that, according to the Theology of the Body (remember, written in obedience to Pope Paul who wanted a deeper explanation), marriage is the best natural sign of who God is in His very being. "Who is God?" becomes the basis for HV’s teaching, then. God is three distinct, unique Persons who never use each other. Further, because of the Father’s love for the Son, the Son’s acceptance and return of such love, the uncreated Holy Spirit exists, the uncreated fruit of their love which forms a union, a communion of persons. When, 40 years ago yesterday, Pope Paul VI promulgated that document with its central passage of the marital embrace needing to be open to life-giving and love-giving, he based it on the fact that we are made in God’s image and likeness; the Blessed Trinity is a communion of life-giving and love-giving persons who always respect each other, never using each other. Remember what Pope Benedict said? The dignity of the person and true love are violated through contraception. So, if the marital act is a contraceptive one, instead of being a sacramental sign, it becomes an "anti-sacrament." Instead of reflecting the Triune God and making the Divine Life and Love (known as Grace) bear on the earth, contraceptive marital intercourse does the opposite. It shows the opposite of God. It brings evil, not grace on earth.

Now remember, most people who contracept do not know this harsh reality. They have been brainwashed; they have been "distracted by superficial messages." We are not about condemning here but about freeing. We want people to be free. Therefore, we try to give them the truth which will "set them free."

In addition to being a sacramental sign of the life and love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, marriage is also a sacramental sign of Christ’s love for His Bride, the Church. The way, then, Jesus our Groom, loves and gives life to us, His Bride, the Church is the way a groom should love and give life to his bride. And the way the wife of Christ, the Church, receives and returns His life and love to Jesus her Husband is the way a wife should receive and return her husband’s life and love to her husband.

My fourth point: what can YOU do now to live out Humanae Vitae in its freeing truth? Don’t believe the lie; believe the truths of God as expounded in Humanae Vitae. Pope Benedict, again reflecting recently on HV, says that to understand and live the mystery and meaning of life entails sacrifice. He goes on in giving hope that young people "may learn the true meaning of love and prepare for it with appropriate sexual education, not allowing themselves to be distracted by superficial messages that prevent them from appreciating the essence of truth at stake." The "superficial messages" are the lies.

But here you are! You are at the Pro-Life Boot Camp, reflecting on the value of life and being taught the "appropriate sexual education" so that society does not distract you with such superficial lies. Let me give you the deep message of Christ entrusted to the Church, kept safe by the living Magisterium, so well demonstrated in the sign of contradiction as seen in Humanae Vitae