This coming July, 2017, the Church will observe the 49th Anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s promulgation of his Encyclical Letter, Humanae Vitae.
By all accounts, this document singularly doomed the Pontificate of a man widely looked upon by many as one of the most brilliant and capable Popes of modern history.
Paul VI himself could not have imagined such an outcome and would spend the remaining ten years of his Pontificate as if sleepwalking, unable to understand what had happened to him.
In the following series of blogs, I shall endeavor to summarize the events leading up to and including the publication of the Encyclical and the dissent which greeted its promulgation almost immediately.
Sadly, few Bishops and even fewer Priests are aware of the circumstances immediately preceding and surrounding the Encyclical which did much in undermining the moral authority of the Papacy itself.
At the very beginning of Vatican Council II, Cardinal Suenens (Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussel from 1961 to 1979), whose leadership at the Council made him a major architect of 20th century Roman Catholicism, suggested to Pope John XXIII that he establish a commission to study the morality of artificial contraception. The commission would obtain data from sources independent of the Council for use in the Council as the Bishops reflected upon the question in their final debates.
Succeeding to the Papacy following the death of Pope John XXIII in 1963 , Paul VI continued the Second Vatican Council which he called to conclusion in 1965.
In 1964, the United Nations convened a conference among world leaders to address the issue of family planning within the context of population growth, especially among the poorest nations of the Third World. Pope Paul VI, desirous of issuing a Papal response when the UN Conference concluded its deliberations, decided to expand the mandate of the commission established by his predecessor.
However, in one of history’s often quiet but impactful developments, the UN Conference concluded its work, released its findings and opinions, without the Papal Commission on Birth Control ever having been able to arrive at any conclusions which the Pope might find useful in drafting a response to the findings of the UN.
It was at this moment that Paul VI made a calculated, yet fatal error of judgment.
Pope Paul VI desired to reinsert the Church’s moral teaching about birth control into the Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudiam et Spes). That teaching had been promulgated by Pope Pius XI on 31 December 1930, in his Encyclical Letter, Casti Conubii, which constituted the Church’s response to the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican church. Pius XI had stressed the sanctity of marriage, prohibited Catholics from using any form of artificial contraception, and reaffirmed the prohibition on abortion. He also explained the authority of Church doctrine on such matters of sexual morality, adding that civil governments needed to follow the lead of the Church in this area.
Paul VI wagered that, if he had lost his bid to reinsert Casti Connubii's doctrine into the teachings of Vatican II, he could remove the whole subject of birth control from the Council's consideration, saying that it was being handled for him by the Papal Commission on Birth Control convened by his predecessor, Pope John XXIII.
Paul’s strategized that the very existence of the Birth Control Commission would give him options for such a maneuver.
Yet it would be that very Commission which would seal the doom of his Pontificate, as we shall see in Part II of this series.
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