Popes do not choose encyclical topics randomly or by chance. Rather, encyclicals are written as an encouragement, as an explanation, and many times as a warning in response to the signs of the times. More importantly, these documents are part of the Church’s participation in humanity’s ongoing dialogue. Over the course of this book, we will take a deeper look not only at Humanae Vitae,5 but at seven other teaching documents — not all encyclicals — on the themes of life and love, two that precede Humanae Vitae and five that follow it.
In doing so, we will survey 140 years of official Catholic teaching pertaining to authentic love, life, marriage, and family. In a sense, this book is a “slice of life” regarding these important subjects seen over the span of more than a century. By drawing from these documents, we will see exactly how the Church, an “‘expert in humanity,’ places herself at the service of every individual and of the whole world.”6
To begin, we will look at the encyclical Arcanum (on Christian marriage), written by Pope Leo XIII in 1880, during the Industrial Revolution. Although many good things came from the Industrial Revolution, it also produced significant changes in society, particularly concerning the family. The change from an agrarian to an industrial society led to the rise of urban areas where people (both men and women) left the home to “go to work.” This was a significant cultural shift, which had an effect on marriages as never before.
During this time, the first legal steps to loosening divorce laws were made. When Pope Leo XIII wrote Arcanum early in his pontificate, he was seriously worried about the state of marriage in the nineteenth century. Leo used this document to reaffirm the meaning of sacramental marriage in a world that was rapidly changing, a world that seemed to disregard the grave impact these changes were having upon the family, the basic cell of society.
From there we will look at the 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii (“Of Chaste Marriage”), written by Pope Pius XI. World War I, the “war to end all wars,” was more than a decade previous, but the world was now in the throes of the Great Depression. Margaret Sanger’s American Birth Control League was gaining popularity, and the birth control mentality was seeping into marriages because the severely weakened economy made people feel desperate. In Casti Connubii, Pius XI defended marriage as a divine institution, placing a special emphasis on birth control, which he claimed was the principal threat against the sanctity of marriage in modern times.
Humanae Vitae was promulgated right at the height of the sexual revolution. The birth control pill, released in 1960, inflamed and made possible this revolution of “free love” — a revolution that continues unabated in the present day. Prior to 1930, all Christian churches taught that contraception was intrinsically evil. However, by the 1960s, the only church officially and visibly teaching against contraception was the Catholic Church. Many Catholics were hoping that the Church would follow the other Christian denominations and change her teachings on this controversial subject.
In response to this climate of confusion, and after years of prayer, consultation, commissions, and study, Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae on July 25, 1968. To the surprise of many, the document affirmed the Church’s consistent teaching against contraception — a teaching dating back to the early Church. It turned out to be a prophetic document, listing social ills that were sure to occur (many of which have since occurred) with the normalization of contraception.
Next, we will explore Familiaris Consortio (on the role of the Christian family in the modern world), written by Pope John Paul II in 1981. It addresses all of the elements of the family that have come under fire in the current culture, reminding us of the true, the good, and the beautiful of the profound gift of family. By the early 1980s, many of Pope Paul VI’s predictions had come true. The divorce rate had hit an all-time high, with nearly 50 percent of first marriages ending in divorce.7 In this document, John Paul II zeroed in on the relationship between husband and wife, especially as it pertains to their openness to children and the responsibilities of parenthood. He stressed that the Church has a profound interest in everything that pertains to the family, reminding us, “The future of humanity passes by way of the family.”8
In 1988, John Paul II released his beautiful meditation Mulieris Dignitatem (on the dignity and vocation of women) in response to the ever-increasing, ever-dangerous, secular feminist movement. This feminist ideology promoted the belief that there is no difference between men and women, that we are not only equal, but equivalent in all respects. Today the culture has taken it one step further, believing that a person can be a man or a woman or fifty other things, or even nothing at all.
Mulieris Dignitatem brings us back to the truth about men and women, indeed equal in dignity, but not the same. In this meditation, in an effort to see what God intended for the human race, John Paul II looked back to the beginning, to the creation of man and woman in the Book of Genesis. He spoke to the gift of womanhood, encouraging all women to follow in the footsteps of our Blessed Mother. The meditation ends with a plea to the women of the world, challenging them to use their “feminine genius” to create a culture of life.
Nearly ten years later, in 1995, John Paul II continued his great teaching pontificate with Evangelium Vitae (“The Gospel of Life”). Here, for the first time in his pontificate, John Paul introduced the concepts of “a culture of life” and “a culture of death.” He addressed the countless ways in which human life is threatened in the present day and reiterated the Church’s view on its inestimable value, warning against the dangers of violating the sanctity of life.
The primary focus of this groundbreaking encyclical was on the human right to life, taking a hard look at hot-button issues, including abortion, birth control, and euthanasia. The late pope also explored other concepts relevant to embryology, such as in vitro fertilization, sterilization, embryonic-stem-cell research, and fetal experimentation. He also addressed the death penalty.
On Christmas Day 2005, Pope Benedict XVI published the first encyclical of his pontificate, Deus Caritas Est (“God Is Love”). Convinced that the world had lost the true meaning of love, Pope Benedict used this encyclical to reaffirm what love means to us as human beings, especially in a culture that seeks to redefine it as anything that fulfills the individual. First, he compared the great gift of eros (romantic love) with the love that God reveals in Jesus Christ, showing how the human desire for eros is confirmed, elevated, and transformed in the love of God. Next, he offered a meditation on how love is to be “organized” in society, concluding that ideological motivations for reordering society are different from the motivation provided by Jesus Christ. If “charitable activity is to maintain all of its splendor and not become just another form of social assistance,”9 it must be centered on Christ and performed for God’s glory alone.
The last document is Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”), written by Pope Francis in 2016. When asked in the summer of 2017 if the Church was going to take up the theme of birth control once again, Pope Francis (who has shown strong support of both Pope Paul VI and his encyclical) responded, “All of this depends on how ‘Humanae Vitae’ is interpreted.”10 He added, “The question is not that of changing the doctrine but of going deeper and making pastoral (ministry) take into account the situations and that which it is possible for people to do.”11 Francis wants the Church to reach out with mercy to those who have found the Church’s teachings difficult or who have reaped the negative consequences of the vast cultural changes affecting so many lives.
In the following chapters we will take a close look at these eight Church documents that pertain to human life — its dignity, its mystery, and its complexity. In addition to Humanae Vitae, I have chosen to focus on the other seven documents for two reasons. First, they provide both historical and theological context for the central precepts of Humanae Vitae. And, quite simply, they articulate the Church’s teachings that are most significant for the survival