The vast majority of Catholics worldwide responded to Humanae Vitae with an unparalleled refusal to submit.
Polls registered an instant noncompliance with the encyclical. At a previously scheduled Catholic festival of devout young Germans at Essen, a resolution that those attending could not obey the Encyclical passed through a crowd of four thousand with only ninety opposing votes. A simultaneous poll among German Catholics at large found that 68 % of them thought the Pope was wrong on artificial contraception. Similar findings rolled in from around the world.
Bishops found themselves in an untenable position.
The Encyclical itself had ordered them to explain and enforce the Pope's decision, along with all Priests: "Be the first to give, in the exercise of your ministry, the example of loyal internal and external obedience to the teaching authority of the Church ... it is of the utmost importance, for peace of consciences and for the unity of the Christian people, that in the field of morals as well as in that of dogma, all should attend to the magisterium of the Church, and all should speak the same language."
Yet, for the first time in the Church’s memory, Bishops' statements, while showing respect for the Pope himself, told believers they could act apart from it if they felt bound by conscience to do so.
Perhaps, the Bishops in the Netherlands put it most bluntly: "The assembly considers that the Encyclical's total rejection of contraceptive methods is not convincing on the basis of the arguments put forward."
Other Bishops signaled that they would not consider those disobedient to the encyclical to be separating themselves from the sacraments. The Belgian bishops put it this way: "Someone, however, who is competent in the matter under consideration and capable of forming a personal and well-founded judgment -- which necessarily presupposes a sufficient amount of knowledge -- may, after serious examination before God, come to other conclusions on certain points."
The US Bishops put it this way: Do not treat the Pope's words lightly, but follow your conscience after taking a serious look at them. That was also the position taken by bishops in Austria, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Mexico, the Philippines, West Germany, Japan, France, Scandinavia, and Switzerland.
The Pope was stunned. He would spend the rest of his life wondering why such open dissent was entertained at the very top of the episcopate. He became increasingly melancholy and prone to tears.
Meanwhile, Jesuit Father John Ford, who had assisted his fellow Jesuit Gustave Martelet in drawing up Humanae Vitae under Cardinal Ottaviani's direction, went back to the seminary where he had taught moral theology for years and found that the Jesuit seminarians there refused to take his classes, since they knew from others in the Order what he had done in Rome. As a result of what he considered his life's great coup, his teaching career was over.
The whole Catholic attitude toward authority in general shifted with the allowed dissent on Humanae Vitae.
Eventually, the Papacy was succeeded by a man, Karol Wojtyla of Poland, who quickly showed by his words and actions that he was even more strict on artificial contraception than Paul had been. He mounted a sustained conceptual and disciplinary defense of Humanae Vitae, insisting on its strict acceptance in his world travels. He solemnly celebrated the encyclical's tenth anniversary in 1978.
The following year he launched a long series of discourses on sex published as The Theology of the Body. He quashed all dissent on Humanae Vitae at the 1980 Synod of Bishops meeting to discuss the family. In 1981 he issued a long (120-page) document on the same subject, the Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris Consortio. In 1988, he followed that up with an equally long Encyclical (Veritatis Splendor) reasserting the teaching power of the church in this and other areas. Besides, he showed a clear determination to appoint only Bishops who will back him up on artificial contraception -- though the body of the faithful has drifted farther away from him, on this point, all through his time in office.
In the end, the piteous fruit of Humanae Vitae is this: a hierarchy appointed to accept and defend a Papal view and a laity which largely ignores it.
Priests, caught between the two, while expected to incorporate both views in their conduct, largely ignore the Church’s teaching on artificial contraception both in the pulpit and, perhaps more significantly, in the Confessional.
Paul Pope VI made a fateful wager in retaining a Commission he believed would tow the line when it came to upholding Castii Connubii and the traditional prohibition of the use of artificial contraception. He lost the bet and the price was the magisterial authority of Papal teaching itself.
As the Church stands on this, the 49th Anniversary of Human Vitae, the history of the document and its lasting effect upon the Church should be part of its sober reflection and consideration.
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