Humanae Vitae: Lasting Truth
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Faith on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 12:37 PM
This week marks a big anniversary for the encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), which was promulgated July 25, 1968. Humanae Vitae is the Catholic Church’s historical refusal to cave on the issue of contraception. It affirms the beauty and dignity of marital love and shows how the nature of marriage precludes the licit use of artificial contraceptives. If you haven’t perused it lately, you can read it here.
The encyclical also makes predictions about the effects of widespread contraceptive use. An excellent article by Mary Eberstadt entitled “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae,” in the latest issue of First Things magazine (available online here), discusses those predictions and the myriad ways in which they’ve been fulfilled in the last four decades. I’ve read Humanae Vitae and noticed the basic ways in which its predictions have come true, but Eberstadt does an in-depth coverage that is both eye-opening and chilling. It’s a long piece, but worth making time to read.
I was struck by a point Eberstadt makes near the end of the article, while discussing the fact that before the twentieth century all Christianity agreed on the topic of contraception:
Seen in the light of actual Christian tradition, the question is not after all why the Catholic Church refused to collapse on the point. It is rather why just about everyone else in the Judeo-Christian tradition did. Whatever the answer, the Catholic Church took, and continues to take, the public fall for causing a collapse - when actually it was the only one not collapsing.
In a world where the contraceptive mentality is so entrenched in the common consciousness that rejection of contraception is seen as something strange and radical - rather than what it is, the acceptance and affirmation of the natural law - the Catholic Church is one of the lone beacons shining through the murk. She continues to teach the truth about what marital love should be, continues to refuse to allow anything, however popular, to profane that love. In many places, and most notably in that document from 1968, she says: this was true, this is true, this will always be true.
Happy birthday, Humanae Vitae!
Print Blog
Email a FriendPost a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Faith And Family Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
