Leo XIII, Arcanum Divinae
Pius XI, Casti Connubii
Paul VI, Humanae Vitae
As the Family Goes, So Goes the World
John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio
John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae
Where Have All the Women Gone?
John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem
Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est
Francis, Amoris Laetitia
Introduction
It has been fifty years since the promulgation of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”), and the fact that we still count the years speaks volumes. Since its release in 1968, there has been no doubt that the truth Humanae Vitae (on the regulation of birth) affirms can be a tough sell. Still today, there are those who do not understand the document, who try to manipulate the content, and who refuse to see it for what it is: Church teaching that does not stand alone and must be placed in the context of “everything important and fruitful the Church has said on marriage and family during these last fifty years.”1
Despite the Church’s constant teaching that the use of contraception is intrinsically wrong, in today’s culture using contraception is seen as a good, as the morally and socially right and responsible thing to do. This misunderstanding persists even among many well-meaning Catholics. In fact, I remember a time several years ago when I was teaching high school girls about this very encyclical. They got it. Every girl in that room declared that she wanted to have the kind of marriage Pope Paul VI described: one in which both spouses offer each other faithful, free, total, and self-giving love. And to have such a marriage, these girls were willing to save sexual intimacy until they married.
What happened next, I could never have anticipated. Two of the mothers called to tell me that what I was teaching their daughters conflicted with what they were teaching at home! They were naturally upset, but what I found more disturbing was that no one had ever taught these Catholic mothers about the teachings found in Humanae Vitae or even encouraged them to read it. What I had shared with their daughters was completely foreign to them.
Today, far too many Catholics have never read or learned about Humanae Vitae. And among those who do know the document, far too many believe it is only about contraception. Yet reading it with an open mind reveals that it is about so much more. Opening your heart to the wisdom of Humanae Vitae is life-transforming. I have both experienced it and witnessed it. Although it is best known as the document regarding the Church’s teaching on contraception, it is really about much more — it is about letting go and trusting God. It’s about embracing all human life — and living it — as God intended. If we can give the most intimate part of ourselves, our sexuality, to God, then we can surely trust him with everything else. Moreover, if we do this month after month, it becomes a habit, and before long we have developed the habit of trusting God with the parts of our lives that really matter. What a gift!
Today, we are living in a time and in a culture that Pope Saint John Paul II coined a “culture of death,” and we have been living in it for a long time, more than a hundred years. Someone once told me that the culture of death means that someone has to die to solve a problem. To be sure, we just need to look around to see that there is death everywhere. Violence, war, capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, suicide, you name it. It is everywhere. At first glance, it may not be apparent that the culture of death and all that it entails is related to the use of contraception. However, the connection is present. Contraception introduced the idea that life is disposable, that we, in fact, have the power to reject it. Violence, war, capital punishment, etc., are all, at root, manifestations of rejecting life.
Sadly, we are all a product of this culture of death in one way or another. According to John Paul II, it is culture, not politics or economics, that drives history. His biographer George Weigel explains St. John Paul’s thought: “Culture was, is, and always will be the most dynamic force in history, allowing us to resist tyranny and inspiring us to build and sustain free societies. Moreover, [John Paul II] understood that at the center of culture is cult, or religion: what people believe, cherish, and worship; what people are willing to stake their lives, and their children’s lives, on.”2
It is not surprising, then, that John Paul II strongly believed that the Church is in the position to shape the culture by helping to change the way people think and act. In order to effect the kind of change that John Paul envisioned, however, we must be able to see what the Church sees, to think with the “mind of the Church.” This means, “When we look out upon the universe, we see the same universe that the Church sees.”3 We normally look at things in the moment, in relationship to ourselves. In contrast, the Church always sees things in totality, in relationship to the whole according to the plan of God.
The culture of death might be painfully apparent and pervasive, but we can have hope. Life is also pervasive, and it is much more powerful than death. This is the life-giving joy we find in Christ and his Church. In every day and age, the Church proposes the antidote to the culture of selfishness and destruction. In his book The Splendor of The Church, Henri de Lubac tells us: “The Church is in the world, and by the effect of her presence alone she communicates to it an unrest that cannot be soothed away. She is a perpetual witness to the Christ who came ‘to shake human life to its foundations.’”4 This is exactly why Humanae Vitae often makes people uncomfortable. The truth can set you free, but it can also make you squirm.
We live in a fallen world, and as such we need help seeing the universe as God sees it — this is where the teaching role of the Church comes in. For this reason, the Church issues teaching documents, such as Humanae Vitae. Given that this book is being written specifically to highlight the fiftieth anniversary