Humanae Vitae: Thirty-Five Years Later
"A prophet is not without honor except in his own country." Perhaps a worse fate lies with the prophet when he is without honor both in his country and elsewhere. So it has been with Pope Paul VI when exactly thirty-five years ago he issued his prophetical encyclical Humanae Vitae on birth control. At the time (1968) the sexual revolution was in full swing, the majority opinion of the so-called Birth Control Commission composed of eminent theologians and laity from all over the world had opted for the acceptance of artificial birth control in marriage and public opinion, both Catholic and non-Catholic was decidedly against the Pope. As with the good news of the gospel, the Pope's message was inopportune, countercultural, and out of sync with the times. It was condemned in both Catholic and non-Catholic circles. Even some national episcopal conferences around the world had difficulty accepting the teaching of the Pope. The Pope's teaching was both simple and, in the light of the times, revolutionary. Human sexuality, the Pope said, could be morally exercised only within the context of legitimate marriage between a man and a woman. This sexual dynamism of its very nature had both a unitive function to unite the couple in love and gift of each other to each other, and a procreative function, that is, an opening to life which could not be artificially separated from the unitive function by various forms of artificial birth control. As Vatican II held, the Pope placed the decision about the number of children for a particular couple in their conscience, which had to take into consideration such factors as economics, health, children already born and even overpopUlation. But the one thing the Pope clearly held was the moral character of both sexual dimensions which could not be artificially separated. Of course, the couple could abstain during fertile periods if there