Maria Steen
The View
July 25th is the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Humane Vitae – meaning “Of Human Life” – the papal encyclical known for its teaching on the regulation of birth. What many fail to appreciate is that it is about so much more than that.
For all the controversy it generated at the time of its publication and indeed in the years since, Humanae Vitae is really a restatement, in a modern context, of God’s law in relation to marriage. Though the document is half a century old, it is still remarkably fresh. It explains the unchanging and unchangeable moral laws regarding human sexuality. These are laws that the Church has no authority to change, because she cannot “declare lawful what is in fact unlawful, since that …. is always opposed to the true good of man.” In contrast to the world, the Church teaches that ignoring the moral law has consequences. In fact, Pope Paul VI was so accurate in predicting these consequences that Humanae Vitae can, without exaggeration, be described as prophetic.
Its author foresaw that the consequences of artificial contraception would be marital infidelity, that women would be treated with less “reverence”, as he put it, and instead treated as mere instruments for the satisfaction of men’s desires. He also predicted a general lowering of moral standards.
Humanae Vitae was published as the sexual revolution was at its height. Artificial contraception was seen as the key to sexual liberation – separating sex from having babies. Fifty years later, that “revolution” has been a failed experiment – though very few will admit it. There are those who still extol the benefits of complete sexual freedom – though in truth, I have yet to hear described what exactly are the benefits to society.
As effective as contraception has been in separating sex from procreation, it has also been effective in separating sex from marriage, from any kind of relationship, or indeed from any meaningful expression of love between two people. Although the sexual revolution is almost always presented as being liberating for women, it is women who have been the biggest losers.
The modern world has become sexually incontinent. Our lives are saturated with pornography, which seems to drive many of the interactions between people today. Sexting and sexual bullying has become normalized amongst teenagers. Many of us listened, aghast, as the recent Belfast rape trial described in lurid detail the interactions between well-brought-up young men and women and how young men discussed them afterwards. This is what liberation looks like.
Pope Paul VI also predicted the danger of giving public authorities power to intervene in this area, which is properly the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife. China’s one-child policy, introduced in 1979 (now relaxed to allow for two children), was implemented, among other means, by forced abortions.
So there we have it: sexual incontinence, infidelity, rising numbers of divorces, addiction to pornography, abusive relationships, complaints of a rape culture, rising numbers of abortions (56 million every year worldwide), rising numbers of sexually transmitted infections and infertility and finally in some places a “sexodus” – walking away from sex altogether. A story entitled “Cat Person” published in The New Yorker last year became a phenomenon for recounting, in all its depressing banality, the fruits of today’s hook-up culture. Yet sexual “liberation” is still held up as the ultimate good.
The sexual appetite is powerful. So, too, is the appetite for food, yet it is accepted wisdom that, for our own good, it must be restrained. Why not the sexual appetite also? Yet it is hard to think of a more unfashionable virtue than chastity. Faced with the evidence of the dangers of the sexual appetite unrestrained, why do so many Catholics ignore a teaching that is central to the Christian view of marriage and the good of the human person? The Church’s teaching on contraception, as set out in Humanae Vitae, is probably the most ridiculed, ignored and misunderstood. Ask yourself: when did you last hear a priest preach about it? How can the faithful know and understand the Church’s teaching if it is not communicated to them?
Pope Paul VI, who is to be canonised in October this year, gave a beautiful exhortation to priests that it is among their most important duties, to spell out clearly and completely the Church’s teaching on marriage, while reminding them that husbands and wives, when distressed at the difficulties they might encounter, “must find stamped in the heart and voice of their priest the likeness of the voice and the love of our Redeemer”.
Humanae Vitae recognises that sex goes to the very heart of the human experience and is deserving of special recognition, not only because of the awesome miracle of new life that is brought forth as a result of it, but also because of the unitive effect it has on a couple. What is central to the Church’s teaching is the “true good of man”. Are we mature enough to reflect on and evaluate the effects of the last 50 years of sexual “liberation”? Has it made the lives of individual men and women happier, better, more fulfilled? Can we in all honesty say that the effects have been for the true good of human beings?
The Church, with her 2,000 years of accumulated wisdom, sees that true human liberation is achieved in a different way from that which the world promotes.
Perhaps it is time for a re-reading of Humanae Vitae.
