Posted on 05/13/2008 6:52:13 AM PDT by marshmallow
Vatican, May. 12, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Humanae Vitae (doc), the landmark encyclical of Pope Paul VI "became a sign of contradiction" because it upheld the Church's traditional condemnation of contraception, Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) told a Roman audience on May 10.
The encyclical was a significant show of courage, the Holy Father told participants in a conference held by the Pontifical Lateran University to prepare for the 40th anniversary of the document's release. The passing years have helped to underline the importance and power of the encyclical.
"The truth expressed in Humanae Vitae does not change," Pope Benedict said. "Quite the contrary, in the light of new scientific discoveries, its teaching becomes more relevant and stimulates reflection on the intrinsic values it possesses."
In a consumerist culture that often denigrates the value of life, the Church is obliged to defend human life and human dignity, the Pope said. He warned that "the use of sexuality becomes a drug" when it is divorced from the context of marital love and the transmission of life. "As believers we could never allow the power of technology to invalidate the quality of love and the sacredness of life," the Pope said.
Pope Benedict argued that the case against contraception is based not on sectarian beliefs but on the natural law. "The transmission of life is inscribed in nature," he observed, "and its laws stand as an unwritten norm to which everyone must refer."
In his Saturday talk the Pope also commented on the forms of artificial reproduction that, like contraception, sever the intrinsic link between marital love and the transmission of life. "No mechanical technique can substitute the act of love that husband and wife exchange as a sign of the greater mystery, in which they are protagonists and co-participants of creation," he said.
Expect the usual silence at the parish level from Fr. Bob.
Bump.
Too bad he doesn't feel the same way about the Council of Trent.
Please explain what you mean by that.
Please provide a link to the document in which Pope Benedict XVI has taught contrary to the doctrine of the Council Of Trent.
I can't wait to read the explanation.
Sadly, the parishioners are so used to it that they’re part of the problem, too.
Our sole orthodox priest here gave a homily that touched on sexual matters, including contraception, and it made the entire congregation suddenly sit bolt upright, frozen in their pews. It was actually funny, since normally there’s a lot of rustling around, but that sure got their attention! What’s more, he was asking why people never mentioned these things in confession and he reminded them that these were sins.
Of course, since the pastor is a flake who never mentions sexual matters except to effuse about homosexuals, the phone rang like mad at the rectory as soon as people got home from Mass. They were calling the pastor to complain, and even the bishop heard about it. How DARE this priest say things like that to them?
Well, he kept on saying them; obviously, not every week, but when appropriate. The result? When the pastoral appointments came out, he was the only man in his class not to get a pastorate and in fact was sent as an assistant to a mostly-retirees parish at the far edge of the diocese.
The priests who are brave enough to confront these things are fighting not only against clerical apathy and complicity, but often against a nasty, hostile laity, too.
It opens more hearts when you couch it in the context of the Church's wider teaching on life: i.e., are we open to life? Do we appreciate God's gift of life? How does marriage fit into God's generous gift? What can we do to cooperate with Him?
A child is wealth, is a blessing - contraception is a poverty and a curse: there is a thematic way to approach this essential doctrine as life-affirming opportunity.
There is a lifetime of poison to be unlearned.
A child is wealth, is a blessing - contraception is a poverty and a curse: there is a thematic way to approach this essential doctrine as life-affirming opportunity.
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Agreed! It's a completely different perspective.
The letter was a fascinating read but to make a long story short, his thesis FWIW, is that all the AmChurch shenanigans, scandals and assorted other doctrinal and liturgical problems which have plagued the Catholic Church in the US over the last few decades can be traced back to one thing; the rebellion against Humanae Vitae.
I know many of the sex scandals predate Humanae Vitae but it's an interesting thought. In any event, I'm sure the rejection of this document has had repercussions far beyond what are currently appreciated.
Oh, he was very positive about it. People simply don’t want to hear anything about sex; they think of contraception not in terms of children, but in terms of sex, that is, something that enables them to have more sex with more people, and as far as they’re concerned, it’s none of the Church’s business.
Pretty amazing, when you consider that modern US society considers sex (early and often, anytime with anybody) to be about the most important thing going - and yet these same people think the Church, theoretically their moral guide, has no right to mention it!
But of course, they take their cue from Teddy Kennedy and his ilk (we all remember Teddy’s drunken romp one Good Friday that ended with rape charges against another Kennedy family member), and the Church has really done nothing to call these high-profile people to account or to offer any genuine opposition to this almost deranged, sex-saturated culture that has growing in the US since the late 1960s.
Just curious, what Parish do you attend?
I think they can be, because Humanae Vitae was, in some ways, the Church's defiance of a Freudianized society, and its rejection by the clergy indicated that they had also accepted Freud's view and were rejecting the view of the Church. While Freud himself may not have intended his ideas to be interpreted solely to mean that anything that interfered with genital sex was a bad thing and that life was essentially a quest for sex, that's how they were seen in popular thought. And that increasingly became the underlying assumption in popular thought, in education and educational policies, and, unfortunately, in Church policies.
One of the reasons the clergy sex problems were handled so badly is that the bishops, if they even cared, sent these men off to psychiatrists or psychotherapists and relied entirely on what came out of those sessions. Since the problem with most of the clergy was homosexuality, this clearly was a mistake, since the "therapists" no longer even viewed it as a disorder. After all, it was simply another means of achieving life's most important goal, more sex with more people.
But I think there was a more profound rejection. Freudianism is founded (and talk about occultism!) on the supposed uncovering of deep, internal "urges" that are so fundamental they can't be resisted and no effort, in fact, should be made to resist them. This is essentially the rejection of the entire structure of civilized life, which relies on people repressing their urges (such as the urge to murder somebody who cut you off on the highway, the urge to take some nice thing that somebody else unfortunately owns, and of course, all sorts of sexual fantasies that were harmless when they were just fantasies). But that was what the 60s and 70s were all about: let it all hang out! We don't need no education...etc.
Saul Bellow, by no means a Catholic, wrote about a particularly dysfunctional group of people (inner city dwellers) that they were "all insides with no outsides." That is, they were just a boiling mass of desires and urges with no form and hence no way of directing their lives.
The Church, on the other hand, subscribed to the theory that life had a purpose, specifically, a purpose that went way beyond the urge of the moment, and that the laws (that is, the "form" imposed by the Church) gave direction to one's life so that it would be possible to achieve this goal.
Humanae Vitae was a statement of this. Its rejection by the clergy and intellectuals was a rejection of the entire Christian view of life, in a sense, because contraception had somehow ended up as sort of the flashpoint and a symbolic moment. The modernists hidden in the Church longed for the declaration that contraception was groovy, because this really would have meant something far greater, namely, that the Church had accepted the standards of the world, which was the true modernist dream.
The destruction of the old liturgy (which was nothing if not an expression of form, the complete channeling of human activities towards this one goal) was a part of this. All things that implied any purpose, form or structure were destroyed, and instead, the liturgy became a place for spontaneity, "authenticity," and the fulfilment of emotional urges.
All of this is reflected in everything that happened with Humanae Vitae.
Thank you for this excellent and thoughtful post.
As an aside, my pastor—a priest who is 46 years old and a canon lawyer, didn’t flinch for a nano-second re: Humanae Vitae. He used a whole page of our bulletin to praise HV, to clearly explain the need for it to be honored and assented to, and how to enrich and strengthen marriage life by keeping to the teachings of the Church regarding marriage and protecting the sanctity of marriage.
I told him he was a courageous man.
I didn’t hear any complaints, though I’m not young and maybe don’t move in the right circles to hear complaints.
What I do know is that every week the proceeds of contributions is printed in the bulletin (he likes to have an “open book” policy about how the parish finances run). There has even been an increase in contributions since he has been assigned to our parish 18 months ago.
Like preaching about the message of the letter of Phileomon to a congregation of slave-owners.
You are lucky.You all want someone to feed them. You all are willing to pay for good food.
Absolutely. I see it clearly now. But I'm stricken to say that I was so immersed in the modern world that it took until my forties for the grace of God to make it clear to me. Before then it was gray and muddy and now it is as sharp as crystal.
Young people need this affirmation from the pulpits and from the joyful active encouragement from friends and family toward fruitful Catholic parenthood.
There are still some good ones out there. And I think more and more of the young priests are going to be faithful to the teachings of the Church. For one thing, they can see the wreckage left by 40 years of unfaithfulness!
Yes, one of the problems with the modern clergy is that they want more than anything else to be liked and considered “with it,” and in fact they think their primary function is to be the parish warm-and-fuzzy figure. They should take a peek back into history...
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