Free Republic

The campaign that is underway to demolish “Humanae Vitae” - the 1968 encyclical of Paul VI that said no to artificial contraceptives - has in recent days met with an unexpected obstacle in a book that reconstructs the genesis of that text, thanks to access, for the first time, to the secret documents concerning it, personally authorized by Pope Francis: > Gilfredo Marengo, "La nascita di un'enciclica. 'Humanae vitae' alla luce degli archivi vaticani", Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Città del Vaticano, 2018.The obstacle is all the more serious in that the proponents of a “paradigm shift,” meaning a liberalization of contraceptives...

Four theologians specialising in marriage and family life are studying Vatican archival material with a view of telling the whole story of how and why Blessed Paul VI wrote his encyclical Humanae Vitae on married love. Mgr Gilfredo Marengo, leader of the group and a professor of theological anthropology at Rome’s Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, spoke to Vatican Radio about the study on July 25, the 49th anniversary of the encyclical’s publication. Some bloggers, writing in the spring about the study group, described it as an initiative of Pope Francis to change the...