Humanae Vitae – A Prophecy Fulfilled

By Fr Clovis

JULY 25, 2018 commemorates the Golden Jubilee of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical letter Humanae Vitae, which is not only the most controversial of all modern encyclicals but also the most prophetic ever penned by a Pope.

Up until 1930, all Christian denominations held contraception to be intrinsically immoral. The Anglican Church was the first dissenter from this universal belief when its 1930 Lambeth Conference permitted married couples the use of contraception for grave reasons. Although Pope Pius XI, with his 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii, was quick to defend the perennial teaching on marriage, over the next thirty years all branches of Protestantism, would, following the Anglican lead, repudiate this teaching.

The advent of the contraceptive pill, the first hormonal and non barrier contraceptive, coupled with concerns for the rapid population growth, the changed social status of women and the stupendous scientific and technological advances of the 1960s, raised new questions about the Church’s teaching

A 72 member advisory Pontifical Commission, consisting of theologians, sociologists, medical experts and married lay people from a dozen different countries was established to address these new questions. Then in 1968, running counter to the Commission’s majority judgment and sailing against the tide of world opinion as determined by political, financial and ideological interests, Pope Paul VI courageously issued Humanae Vitae, the encyclical on the “Regulation of Birth”, which held fast to Christianity’s perennial and constant teaching. There was, however, a new spirit abroad and, not surprisingly, Paul VI felt the full force of the world’s wrath.

Four Prophecies
The grand satanic stratagem from Eden to the present time is to deceive by offering, first and foremost, some sane, attractive, wholesome, counterfeit alternative to the Divine will and commandments. Contraception, it is claimed, creates a level playing field between the sexes and, the pill, in particular, liberates women from nature’s fertility cycle and endows them with decision making power and a sexual independence stripped of the fear of pregnancy. In Humanae Vitae §17, however, Pope Paul VI having foreseen, in terms both general and specific, of the negative “consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control”, warned of the potentially deleterious effect on individuals and on society of this apparently sane, attractive, wholesome, alternative. Artificial birth control, he specifically predicted, would lead to a general lowering of morality, to men losing respect for women, to government intervention in “the most personal and most private sector of conjugal intimacy” and to a denial that there are any “absolute limits to … a human being’s dominion over his or her body and its functions”. Humanae Vitae arrived on the full flood of the sexual revolution, a revolution whose ascendancy was established with the liberalization of divorce, the pharmaceutical approval of the contraceptive pill and the legalization of abortion on demand. In challenging the spirit of the age, Humanae Vitae, became, undoubtedly, the most controversial papal document of modern times.

Prophecies fulfilled
That the developed world has seen, over the last half century, a catastrophic and widespread decline in morality, especially in sexual morality, is indisputable. The moral decline is more readily verified by the increase in the cohabitation, in divorces, in out-of-wedlock pregnancies, abortions and sexually transmitted diseases than from the fall in the number of marriages contracted. The criminal activities of paedophile priests, parliamentarians, teachers, judges, relatives or entertainers are also indicative of the extent of the moral collapse, which shows no signs of abating with the recent revelations of the immoral, abusive and criminal activities towards women of influential public persons occupying positions of trust in Hollywood and in high government circles. Rampant pornographic addiction, widespread homosexuality and child prostitution cannot be excluded from the mix, thus fulfilling the Pope’s first prophecy.

Pope Paul’s warning that contraception would result in men losing respect for women has also been fulfilled. Contraception, which reduces the threat of pregnancy, is seen as a sane, attractive, wholesome alternative to the self-discipline required by the natural law. It also crowns men’s inherent desire for endless sex with a promise of continual joy as men now regard neutered women as being always sexually available. Additionally, contraception traded the balance, which required men to take, at least, equal responsibility for an unplanned pregnancy, for a power imbalance where women now have the full responsibility for avoiding pregnancy. This also brings further disadvantages to women who in their search for a husband are often coerced into sleeping with him first. Contraception, in practice, by neutering women, has reduced sex to a mere matter of consent, thereby making marriage, courtship and romance dispensable.

Paul VI’s third warning has been realised with tragic accuracy in both the developed and developing countries. With respect to the former, for instance, in a supposed attempt to reduce the teenage pregnancy rate, government policies encouraged teenagers of all ages to use contraceptives and required secondary schools to teach their students about ‘responsible’ sexual relationships, while Health Authorities operate special teenage-friendly birth control clinics. The result is that younger and younger girls are drawn into the sexual vortex as they are pressured into sex or even raped by more experienced older boys. Whilst government control is subtle in the developed world, it is brutal elsewhere, such as the forced abortion programmes of China and India where only one child and two children per woman respectively is permitted. In both those countries, unborn girls have been the primary victims. In the developing countries of Africa and Asia, by tying loans and international aid grants to population control policies, pressure is brought on governments to enforce family planning programmes on their populations. Not infrequently, and despite the growing evidence that many parts of the world face not overpopulation, but under-population, women are sterilised, or fitted with contraceptive devices or drugs, without their knowledge or consent.

The last prophecy has been fulfilled with a vengeance. The desire for unlimited dominion over one’s own body extends beyond contraception. With the sophism “my body, my choice”, failed contraception leads logically to abortion. At the other extreme, the production of “test-tube babies” and the practice of surrogacy are indications of a mindset that refuses to accept the body’s limitations. Presented as a sane, attractive, wholesome alternative to infertility, egg and sperm banks have reduced human procreation and, indeed children, to a marketable commodity. Equally, euthanasia and the use of organs transplanted from those who are “nearly” dead are not only sane, attractive, wholesome alternatives to palliative care but also clear signs that all reverence for the “human organism and its natural functions” has been lost. Even more tragic, are those individuals who, convinced that they have absolute autonomy over their bodies, alter their physiological make-up, thereby creating a subclass called transgender persons. By endorsing the mutilation of healthy bodies, this subclass not only facilitates the destruction of masculinity and of femininity but also, opens up a Pandora’s box of confusion, generating transsexual, transracial, transspecies, transabled and transomnia subgroups. Thus, with subjective feelings trumping objective reality, Paul VI’s prophecy is tragically fulfilled when individuals, unable to accept themselves and their bodies with its inherent potentials and limitations, mutilate their body in an effort to align it to their perceived feelings, desires and even timetables.

Fully aware of how unpalatable the modern world would find Humanae Vitae, the Pope, with remarkable foresight, warned of the consequences of rejecting its teaching and, within fifty years, his warnings have proved tragically accurate. The fulfillment of the prophecies are bringing young people globally to the realization that true happiness consists in keeping God’s law as made known in nature and revelation and that God expects us to accept and to live it in faith, knowing that any perceived difficulties are surmountable with the help of His grace. May it also be so in our land.