Humanae Vitae and the Scriptures

 

To hear some people talk, one would get the impression that the prohibition against artificial contraception came out of the blue. However, even a brief review of history reveals a strong and consistent ban on all such activities from the earliest days of the Church in a direct line, right into the twentieth century, with statements to the same effect by Pope Paul VI’s three immediate predecessors, as well as Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes. As a matter of fact, at least as early as 1966, Pope Paul VI himself gave clear signals that the traditional teaching would be reaffirmed. It is likewise worth noting that all the Protestant Reformers held to this teaching, as did all their spiritual descendants, up to the beginning of the twentieth century.

 

Pope St John Paul II reiterated that case for the teaching of Humane Vitae with patience and regularity. Two statements, however, are particularly noteworthy because of their forcefulness. In 1983, the Holy Father declared: “Contraception is to be judged so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God.” (L’Osservatore Romano, October 10, 1983, p.7)

 

In 1987, Pope John Paul II asserted that “the Church’s teaching on contraception does not belong to the category of matter open to free discussion among theologians, Teaching the contrary amounts to leading the moral consciences of spouses into error.” (L’Osservatore Romano, July 6, 1987, p.12) If the polls are correct in observing that more than 80% of Catholic women of child bearing age in the United States ignore this teaching, why not change it, or at least why bother to appear to “beat a dead horse?” Because the truth of the Gospel and the truth about the human person are at stake.

 

Covenant

 

Very often even people of goodwill find the logic of Humanae Vitae difficult to understand. While they know the pronouncements of the Magisterium in this regard, they may feel the teaching has no grounding in Scripture.

 

I have always wondered why no one seems to ground the core of Humanae Vitae’s teaching in the written Word of God. For me, one passage (which provides a basic theme for the whole of the Bible) is most instructive about the plan of God and the response He expects from those who would wish to be numbered among His Chosen People. I refer specifically to Gn 17:10-13:“This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you that you must keep: every male among you shall be circumcised. Circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and that shall be the mark of the covenant between you and me. Throughout the ages every male among you when he is eight days old, shall be circumcised, including household slaves and those acquired with money from any foreigner who is part of your blood. Yes, both the house born slaves and those acquired with money must be circumcised. Thus my covenant shall be in your flesh as an everlasting pact.”

 

As Almighty God began to form a people uniquely His own, He established a covenant (that is, a pact, a contract) with Abraham as the father of that chosen nation. The Lord promised that Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as “the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore” (Gn 22:17) and that from a man who was “as good as dead.” (Heb 11:12) All this showed that the Lord was God both in love and in power; He was truly Yahweh (I Am Who Am), who thus revealed himself to Moses as the very source of life. (cf.Ex 3:14)

 

And so it was that when God was asked by Abraham to demonstrate His love, God spoke in terms of life; ever since, love and life have been inextricably linked to each other, for they are two sides of the same coin.

 

Man and wife

 

In ancient times covenants were the normal means of doing business, and such agreements always had external signs. The Lord God said the sign for Abraham and every son of the covenant thereafter was to be that of circumcision. How strange! Why not a sign that would be visible to all at every moment? Why a sign seen only by the man and his wife? For a reason so simple that is most profound: the act of sexual intercourse would thenceforth speak not only the language of love but equally the language of life, which is to say, that sexual intimacy would speak God’s language.

 

Therefore, every time a Hebrew man engaged in intercourse, he would be reminded that this particular act had been invested with a new meaning by God himself, a point literally branded into one’s flesh and as enduring as God’s will, God’ s love, God’s gift of life.

 

Whoever came up with the saying “Two’s company, three’s a crowd,” knew nothing of the God of the covenant; His love is totally unrestricted and completely open. God says, “the more the merrier!” He says that in His own Godhead in that community of Persons who love Each Other eternally and expansively in the Trinity; hence, not just one Person, nor two, but three. Thus does the Blessed Trinity serve as a model for human love and relationship, in which love between persons necessarily overflows into new life.