Pope Paul VI, wrote a landmark encyclical, which was promulgated on July 25,1968. It was entitled:
Humanae Vitae. It was perhaps the greatest, and clearest (not to mention timely) encyclical written in my lifetime. Unfortunately, it went mostly unread, and almost totally unheeded, thanks in large part to a failure on the part of clerics to fully support it. There was a joke making the rounds at the time about an old Italian woman listening as the Pope discussed his encyclical from his balcony at the Vatican. The woman supposedly spoke rather loudly: "He no playa da game; he no maka da rules." She never obviously considered that the rules were not coming from him, and neither, apparently, did any of the clerics who disagreed with him.
Breaking from the usual format of providing one or two relevant quotes, herewith is a short summary of the
Prophecies of Humanae Vitae, originally published by
Fr. Paul Marx, OSB, on the Blog of
The Population Research Institute.
"On July 25, 1968, Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae re-affirmed the Catholic teaching on life, love and human sexuality. In that document, he listed the consequences of life lived outside Catholic teaching.
"He predicted that:
1. Contraception would lead to conjugal infidelity.
2. Contraceptive practice would lead to a “general lowering of morality.”
3. Contraception would lead men to cease respecting woman in their totality and would cause them to treat women as “mere instruments of selfish enjoyment” rather than as cherished partners.
4. And finally, widespread acceptance of contraception by couples would lead to a massive imposition of contraception by unscrupulous governments.
"In other words, Pope Paul VI predicted that contraception would evolve from “a lifestyle choice” into a weapon of mass destruction. How dreadfully his prophecy has been vindicated by population control and coercive sterilization programs, fertility reduction quotas and the promotion of abortion literally everywhere in the world.
"Contraception’s destruction of the integrity of the marital act—as unitive and procreative—has dire consequences for society and for our souls. Contraception, in other words, is a rejection of God’s view of reality. It is a wedge driven into the most intimate sphere of communion known to man outside of the Holy Sacrament of the Mass. It is a degrading poison that withers life and love both in marriage and in society.
"By breaking the natural and divinely ordained connection between sex and procreation, women and men—but especially men—would focus on the hedonistic possibilities of sex. People would cease seeing sex as something that was intrinsically linked to new life and to the sacrament of marriage.
"Does anyone doubt that this is where we find ourselves today?"
I read recently (wish I could remember where) that we have entered an age of
hedonistic narcissism. Can't argue with that.
The Bellarmine Forum is running a Campaign for Humanae Vitae on their Blog site, and you can sign the petition on the website.
You can also listen to a Podcast by Dr. Christopher Manion of the Bellarmine Forum discussing the failure on the part of many clerics (including Cardinal Timothy Dolan) to address Humanae Vitae since its promulgation, by clicking Here.
