Once upon a time, the Church shook when prefects of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) spoke.
The CDF was once renowned as being la suprema, the “supreme” department within the Vatican, because it had the final word on issues involving doctrine.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger ran the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to 2005 prior to becoming Pope Benedict XVI. During that time, his comments were perceived to carry enormous weight. Theological careers could rise or fall based on a mention by Cardinal Ratzinger and the universal sense was that, when he spoke, the full weight of the Vatican and the Papacy stood behind his words.
Times have changed indeed!
Under Pope Francis, the CDF clearly no longer enjoys the role of being the primary touchstone for assessing the doctrinal implications of his decisions and policies.
When the Pope wants a theological assessment of something, it’s clear that relies more on informal advisers, such as Argentine Archbishop Victor Fernandez, than on Cardinal Müller, CDF’s Prefect.
This appears to be just another indication of Francis’ general strategy of preferring to work around people who are not in sync with his agenda than to formally replace them.
As a result, seasoned Vatican-watchers no longer assume that, when the head of the CDF speaks, it is even a hint of the Papal mindset. Instead, Cardinal Müller appears to have become just another voice in the conversation, someone to be respected for his position and theological credentials, but certainly not conduit of the Pope’s understandings or viewpoints.
And so, one thing appears to be very clear: looking at Vatican organizational charts will tell nothing of who is really in charge or has influence in a particular matter.
One can only imagine the impact upon the seasoned bureaucrats within the walls and offices of the various Vatican Congregations! Whether this reality will remain the “new normal” for Vatican administration will be determined by the Pope who succeeds Francis.
And that is anyone’s guess, to be sure!
Saturday, June 10, 2017
Friday, June 9, 2017
ONLY TWO MIDWEST BISHOPS HAVE THE COURAGE TO DISASSOCIATE FROM THE GIRL SCOUTS OF AMERICA: WHY?
On April 2, 2014, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a report resulting from its inquiry, in which they cited the Girl Scouts' support of “sexual and reproductive health/rights” as a problematic aspect of the group's current affiliation with the international organization.
The Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth “recognized to be morally objectionable any type of promotion, advocacy, or education on ‘sexual and reproductive health/rights’ as this phrase is commonly understood, especially since the phrase often includes abortion.”
The report suggested that concerned parents discourage their girl scouts from participating in Girl Scout events and fundraising and stated that individual girl scouts can choose not to wear their pins. Moreover, the committee urged clear communication and strong parental involvement at the local level.
They suggested that, instead of associating with the Girl Scouts, “troops might encourage prayer for girls and young women around the world” and “propose concrete initiatives and projects of service and solidarity” that work to affirm “the authentic dignity and vocation of women.”
Overall, the committee report stated that the bishop conference’s interactions with the Girl Scouts were “pleasant, informative and respectful,” and the report left any broad policy recommendation regarding future association with Girl Scouts USA to the local bishops.
On Feb. 18, 2016, Archbishop Robert Carlson of St. Louis created the Catholic Committee for Girls Formation.
In a letter to Pastors, scout leaders and other Catholics, Archbishop Carlson urged a severance from the Girl Scouts, which he said promotes values that conflict with church teaching. He intended for the committee to demonstrate “ongoing commitment to educating and forming all young women.”
On May 1, 2017, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, made public his decision to transition his archdiocese from Girl Scouts USA to the American Heritage Girls.
In his letter, Archbishop Naumann explained that this decision was based on hundreds of hours of research. He described Girl Scouts use of pro-choice role models, claiming that these women “not only do not reflect our Catholic worldview but stand in stark opposition to what we believe.”
“To follow Jesus and his Gospel will often require us to be counter-cultural,” Archbishop Naumann wrote. “With the promotion by Girl Scouts USA of programs and materials reflective of many of the troubling trends in our secular culture, they are no longer a compatible partner in helping us form young women with the virtues and values of the Gospel.”
God bless these two Bishops for their courage in taking effective action to separate the Church from the Girl Scouts.
More Bishops need to join with them in condemning the Girl Scouts for their advocacy of abortion and other reproductive rights of women. To look the other way and ignore this issue is cowardly and despicable on behalf of those charged with the spiritual welfare of innocent girls so vulnerable to such secular and immoral rhetoric.
The Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth “recognized to be morally objectionable any type of promotion, advocacy, or education on ‘sexual and reproductive health/rights’ as this phrase is commonly understood, especially since the phrase often includes abortion.”
The report suggested that concerned parents discourage their girl scouts from participating in Girl Scout events and fundraising and stated that individual girl scouts can choose not to wear their pins. Moreover, the committee urged clear communication and strong parental involvement at the local level.
They suggested that, instead of associating with the Girl Scouts, “troops might encourage prayer for girls and young women around the world” and “propose concrete initiatives and projects of service and solidarity” that work to affirm “the authentic dignity and vocation of women.”
Overall, the committee report stated that the bishop conference’s interactions with the Girl Scouts were “pleasant, informative and respectful,” and the report left any broad policy recommendation regarding future association with Girl Scouts USA to the local bishops.
On Feb. 18, 2016, Archbishop Robert Carlson of St. Louis created the Catholic Committee for Girls Formation.
In a letter to Pastors, scout leaders and other Catholics, Archbishop Carlson urged a severance from the Girl Scouts, which he said promotes values that conflict with church teaching. He intended for the committee to demonstrate “ongoing commitment to educating and forming all young women.”
On May 1, 2017, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, made public his decision to transition his archdiocese from Girl Scouts USA to the American Heritage Girls.
In his letter, Archbishop Naumann explained that this decision was based on hundreds of hours of research. He described Girl Scouts use of pro-choice role models, claiming that these women “not only do not reflect our Catholic worldview but stand in stark opposition to what we believe.”
“To follow Jesus and his Gospel will often require us to be counter-cultural,” Archbishop Naumann wrote. “With the promotion by Girl Scouts USA of programs and materials reflective of many of the troubling trends in our secular culture, they are no longer a compatible partner in helping us form young women with the virtues and values of the Gospel.”
God bless these two Bishops for their courage in taking effective action to separate the Church from the Girl Scouts.
More Bishops need to join with them in condemning the Girl Scouts for their advocacy of abortion and other reproductive rights of women. To look the other way and ignore this issue is cowardly and despicable on behalf of those charged with the spiritual welfare of innocent girls so vulnerable to such secular and immoral rhetoric.
Thursday, June 8, 2017
PRIESTS MAKE URGENT PLEA TO USCCB BISHOPS
An association of nearly 1,200 U.S. Priests is in the final development stages of issuing an urgent "plea" to the U.S. bishops to "formulate a plan now to meet this emerging crisis" of parish closings and consolidations.
In a working draft it calls a Proposal for Pastoral Care In and Through Priestless Parishes, the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests exhorts the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and "dioceses nationwide" to quickly address the issue.
Core to the plan is "new and more specific exploration" of lay ecclesial ministers to oversee non-sacramental aspects of parish life and administration. Priests note that:30 percent of U.S. Catholics have left the church; Church marriages have declined 60 percent since 1980; Catholic total membership is declining.
In developing the plan, the Priests state, "We have relied on the USCCB's 2005 document Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord, as well as the 2015 Tenth Anniversary Reflection on that document.”
The proposed text itself warns, "If the USA Church leadership postpones dealing with this issue, the window of opportunity will slowly close" and result in "greater collapse of parishes," "a loss of morale and health among priests," and "further decline of the morale and trust of people who depend upon us to meet their spiritual needs."
"As our Catholic presence diminishes, so will our presence in society in all of its aspects," the plan draft states.
"Obviously, the hard work of passing on the faith demands more, not less, personal presence of authorized pastoral ministers, ordained or non-ordained, working in collaboration and within the principle of subsidiarity," says the cover letter.
The letter adds, "We need a nationwide ... firm and uncontested basis for dioceses to employ lay pastoral ministers to lead parishes" and "we ... hope it will spark our bishops' collective attention to this critical issue. “It is part of our growing concern with the continuing decline of priests available and the pattern of closing/merging parishes to deal with the lack of priests to serve communities.”
Let us pray to the Holy Spirit that the USCCB will take cognizance of the issues which these Priests are raising and do something positive in advancing and promoting the primary mission of the Church to sanctify God’s People by making the Sacraments readily and easily available to them.
In a working draft it calls a Proposal for Pastoral Care In and Through Priestless Parishes, the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests exhorts the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and "dioceses nationwide" to quickly address the issue.
Core to the plan is "new and more specific exploration" of lay ecclesial ministers to oversee non-sacramental aspects of parish life and administration. Priests note that:30 percent of U.S. Catholics have left the church; Church marriages have declined 60 percent since 1980; Catholic total membership is declining.
In developing the plan, the Priests state, "We have relied on the USCCB's 2005 document Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord, as well as the 2015 Tenth Anniversary Reflection on that document.”
The proposed text itself warns, "If the USA Church leadership postpones dealing with this issue, the window of opportunity will slowly close" and result in "greater collapse of parishes," "a loss of morale and health among priests," and "further decline of the morale and trust of people who depend upon us to meet their spiritual needs."
"As our Catholic presence diminishes, so will our presence in society in all of its aspects," the plan draft states.
"Obviously, the hard work of passing on the faith demands more, not less, personal presence of authorized pastoral ministers, ordained or non-ordained, working in collaboration and within the principle of subsidiarity," says the cover letter.
The letter adds, "We need a nationwide ... firm and uncontested basis for dioceses to employ lay pastoral ministers to lead parishes" and "we ... hope it will spark our bishops' collective attention to this critical issue. “It is part of our growing concern with the continuing decline of priests available and the pattern of closing/merging parishes to deal with the lack of priests to serve communities.”
Let us pray to the Holy Spirit that the USCCB will take cognizance of the issues which these Priests are raising and do something positive in advancing and promoting the primary mission of the Church to sanctify God’s People by making the Sacraments readily and easily available to them.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
CHAOS AND SCANDAL IN THE DIOCESE OF JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI
Daily, it seems, we are witnesses to the reality that common sense has been turned on its head in our secular culture.
But now, it appears, the Church has joined with transgender activists agitating for people who identify emotionally to their self-identified gender rather than the anatomical gender of their biological sex.
Developments in the Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri have emerged prominently in recent national and local news.
Of course, the whole question of gender identity arose and became an issue in the public forum under the former Presidential administration which taunted the so-called civil rights of transgender individuals.
The issue first arose in North Carolina, in response to an ordinance adopted in Charlotte that would have allowed transgender people to use whatever bathroom they wanted. The State Legislature passed a law in March blocking local governments from enacting rules that grant such privileges to transgender people.
A similar law passed in Mississippi which would have allowed people to withhold services from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals on religious grounds.
In response, the former President said that these laws in North Carolina and Mississippi were “wrong” and “should be overturned.” The administration used the Department of Justice to warn the state of North Carolina that its law limiting bathroom access violated the civil rights of transgender people.
In Illinois, in response to a federal complaint, the Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 in suburban Chicago year granted a transgender student ( who was born male but identifies as female) limited access to the girls locker room at Fremd High School. Similarly, a transgender student at a Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 school was granted access to a locker room designated for the opposite sex. The Chicago Public Schools then announced that their students, teachers and staff could use whichever restroom matches their self-selected gender identity.
Transgender activists would have us believe that their ideology is based on science; however, the American College of Pediatricians has pointed out that transgenderism is classified as a mental illness and therefore has warned legislators and educators that conditioning children to accept transgenderism as normal is child abuse.
They advised, “When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind, not the body, and it should be treated as such.”
Dr. Paul McHugh, psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, was so concerned about the psychological origins of gender-identity disorder that he halted the practice of sex-reassignment surgery at his institution. He concluded that the research demonstrated that Johns Hopkins should no longer participate in what he called “unusual and radical treatment” for “mental disorders.”
Officially, the Catholic Church has some clear teachings on transgender issues.
Catholics are called to treat everyone with compassion. Yet the church maintains that people may not change what Pope Benedict XVI called “their very essence.” In a speech at the Vatican on Dec. 23, 2008, Benedict directly addressed transgender issues by cautioning Catholics about “destroying the very essence of the human creature through manipulating their God-given gender to suit their sexual choices.”
Similarly, in his encyclical Laudato Si, issued last year on the environment, Pope Francis called for men and women to acknowledge their bodies as a gift from God which should not be manipulated. “The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home,” the pope wrote, “whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation”
In his recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), Pope Francis warns that gender ideology “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences … It is one thing to be understanding of human weakness and the complexities of life, and another to accept ideologies that attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality. Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator. We are creatures, and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created”.
And so, it is curious indeed (if not the very essence of being scandalous) that Bishop John Gaydos of the Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri is spearheading a new policy that pushes administrators to admit students from same-sex parenting homes into Catholic schools, without the parents having to sign a statement promising to respect Catholic ethics.
Some teachers and Pastors (none of whom were consulted in the plan's formulation) object to this plan, saying it forces them in practice to ignore the psychologically and spiritually harmful environment of same-sex homes, and also exposes other students to scandal.
The 17-page policy drafted by the Jefferson City diocese was presented to all priests of the diocese on May 9 and to all diocesan school principals on May 11. One priest, who wishes to remain anonymous, objected to being morally responsible for students from same-sex homes when he knows they're living in objectively abusive situations.
Furthermore, the new plan would no longer require LGBT parents and students to sign the School Handbook, agreeing to practice Catholic ethics. Instead, they are encouraged to sign a nebulous document called Covenant of Trust, "which doesn't include this promise to abide by this code of ethics."
Proponents of the policy say it's worded in such a way as to give Pastors and Principals the right to refuse to enroll such students who would be immersed in an objective state of scandal at home and who would be a potential source of scandal to other students at school.
There are others who believe that in practice, gay-friendly or weak Priests will cave to political pressure and bend the rules to admit problematic students into Catholic schools. They foresee commonsense problems evolving, like the transgender bathroom fiasco and transgender sports issue currently plaguing public schools.
Jesse Barton, a teacher and parent in the diocese, has watched this policy unfold. He recently commented, "This document is ... carefully worded and ambiguous. ... The issue here isn't the policy; it's the praxis. Anyone with a mustard seed's worth of contemporary sense understands that arriving at the answer of 'No' [meaning no admittance] is a practical impossibility for the Pastors of our diocese."
What the eventual fallout will be as a result of this confusing and embarrassing moment in the history of the Diocese of Jefferson City remains to be seen.
But, one result is certain: the moral teachings of the Church seem no longer to be based upon objective moral norms but rather draw their binding force based upon the contemporary and subjective emotional impulses of a secular society more interested in political correctness than the right and dutiful observance of the moral order.
Already, a number of Catholics have called upon the Metropolitan of the Province of Saint Louis (of which Jefferson City is a Suffragan See), Archbishop Robert Carlson, to begin a formal investigation of Bishop Gaydos and the policy he has initiated. A complication arises in the fact that Bishop Gaydos is himself a native of Saint Louis.
The People of God, the Christian faithful, cannot but find themselves confused and disheartened by these events. Sadly, no one in authority is coming to their, to our, rescue!
But now, it appears, the Church has joined with transgender activists agitating for people who identify emotionally to their self-identified gender rather than the anatomical gender of their biological sex.
Developments in the Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri have emerged prominently in recent national and local news.
Of course, the whole question of gender identity arose and became an issue in the public forum under the former Presidential administration which taunted the so-called civil rights of transgender individuals.
The issue first arose in North Carolina, in response to an ordinance adopted in Charlotte that would have allowed transgender people to use whatever bathroom they wanted. The State Legislature passed a law in March blocking local governments from enacting rules that grant such privileges to transgender people.
A similar law passed in Mississippi which would have allowed people to withhold services from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals on religious grounds.
In response, the former President said that these laws in North Carolina and Mississippi were “wrong” and “should be overturned.” The administration used the Department of Justice to warn the state of North Carolina that its law limiting bathroom access violated the civil rights of transgender people.
In Illinois, in response to a federal complaint, the Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 in suburban Chicago year granted a transgender student ( who was born male but identifies as female) limited access to the girls locker room at Fremd High School. Similarly, a transgender student at a Wheaton Warrenville Unit District 200 school was granted access to a locker room designated for the opposite sex. The Chicago Public Schools then announced that their students, teachers and staff could use whichever restroom matches their self-selected gender identity.
Transgender activists would have us believe that their ideology is based on science; however, the American College of Pediatricians has pointed out that transgenderism is classified as a mental illness and therefore has warned legislators and educators that conditioning children to accept transgenderism as normal is child abuse.
They advised, “When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind, not the body, and it should be treated as such.”
Dr. Paul McHugh, psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, was so concerned about the psychological origins of gender-identity disorder that he halted the practice of sex-reassignment surgery at his institution. He concluded that the research demonstrated that Johns Hopkins should no longer participate in what he called “unusual and radical treatment” for “mental disorders.”
Officially, the Catholic Church has some clear teachings on transgender issues.
Catholics are called to treat everyone with compassion. Yet the church maintains that people may not change what Pope Benedict XVI called “their very essence.” In a speech at the Vatican on Dec. 23, 2008, Benedict directly addressed transgender issues by cautioning Catholics about “destroying the very essence of the human creature through manipulating their God-given gender to suit their sexual choices.”
Similarly, in his encyclical Laudato Si, issued last year on the environment, Pope Francis called for men and women to acknowledge their bodies as a gift from God which should not be manipulated. “The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home,” the pope wrote, “whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation”
In his recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), Pope Francis warns that gender ideology “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences … It is one thing to be understanding of human weakness and the complexities of life, and another to accept ideologies that attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality. Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator. We are creatures, and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created”.
And so, it is curious indeed (if not the very essence of being scandalous) that Bishop John Gaydos of the Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri is spearheading a new policy that pushes administrators to admit students from same-sex parenting homes into Catholic schools, without the parents having to sign a statement promising to respect Catholic ethics.
Some teachers and Pastors (none of whom were consulted in the plan's formulation) object to this plan, saying it forces them in practice to ignore the psychologically and spiritually harmful environment of same-sex homes, and also exposes other students to scandal.
The 17-page policy drafted by the Jefferson City diocese was presented to all priests of the diocese on May 9 and to all diocesan school principals on May 11. One priest, who wishes to remain anonymous, objected to being morally responsible for students from same-sex homes when he knows they're living in objectively abusive situations.
Furthermore, the new plan would no longer require LGBT parents and students to sign the School Handbook, agreeing to practice Catholic ethics. Instead, they are encouraged to sign a nebulous document called Covenant of Trust, "which doesn't include this promise to abide by this code of ethics."
Proponents of the policy say it's worded in such a way as to give Pastors and Principals the right to refuse to enroll such students who would be immersed in an objective state of scandal at home and who would be a potential source of scandal to other students at school.
There are others who believe that in practice, gay-friendly or weak Priests will cave to political pressure and bend the rules to admit problematic students into Catholic schools. They foresee commonsense problems evolving, like the transgender bathroom fiasco and transgender sports issue currently plaguing public schools.
Jesse Barton, a teacher and parent in the diocese, has watched this policy unfold. He recently commented, "This document is ... carefully worded and ambiguous. ... The issue here isn't the policy; it's the praxis. Anyone with a mustard seed's worth of contemporary sense understands that arriving at the answer of 'No' [meaning no admittance] is a practical impossibility for the Pastors of our diocese."
What the eventual fallout will be as a result of this confusing and embarrassing moment in the history of the Diocese of Jefferson City remains to be seen.
But, one result is certain: the moral teachings of the Church seem no longer to be based upon objective moral norms but rather draw their binding force based upon the contemporary and subjective emotional impulses of a secular society more interested in political correctness than the right and dutiful observance of the moral order.
Already, a number of Catholics have called upon the Metropolitan of the Province of Saint Louis (of which Jefferson City is a Suffragan See), Archbishop Robert Carlson, to begin a formal investigation of Bishop Gaydos and the policy he has initiated. A complication arises in the fact that Bishop Gaydos is himself a native of Saint Louis.
The People of God, the Christian faithful, cannot but find themselves confused and disheartened by these events. Sadly, no one in authority is coming to their, to our, rescue!
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANAE VITAE ON THE EVE OF ITS 49TH ANNIVERSARY: Part Three (Conclusion)
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.
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.
Monday, June 5, 2017
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANAE VITAE ON THE EVE OF ITS 49TH ANNIVERSARY: Part Two
The very Commission on Birth Control, convened by Pope John XXIII, which Paul VI would allow him to affirm the Church’s teaching regarding artificial contraception outlined in Pope Pius XI’s Encyclical, Castii Conubii, would seal the doom of his Pontificate.
Pope Paul VI could never have imagined such an outcome.
First of all, Pope John XXIII’s Commission on Birth Control was a Papal secret, and the Vatican had lived for decades with the assurance that it could contain its secrets. Even when Pope Paul conceded the Commission's existence, he left its composition and function mysterious.
All the participants were ordered to keep their actions strictly hidden. There would be no official publication of minutes or results. Everything they said or did was to be turned over confidentially to the Pope, who could use or suppress it at his discretion. If this original plan had been followed, and the Pope wanted to ignore what the commission did, it would no more exist on the record than had Pius XI's secretly drafted encyclical on the Jews. The idea of a "runaway" commission was remote from Paul's mind.
Paul was convinced that the Commission would end up confirming Casti Connubii, perhaps on newer grounds. In this belief, he was encouraged by John Ford, the preferred expert of the Curia.
Ford had decided that old natural law arguments against contraception were weak, but the Church could not have erred, so new grounds must be found for bolstering the truth. If the Onan story could be sacrificed, then so could traditional (Thomistic) views on Natural Law, so long as the Church remained consistent in its condemnation, on whatever grounds.
Ford brought to Rome a Catholic philosopher, Germain Grisez, who helped him develop a new "will to life" argument. The Pope probably hoped this prefigured the outcome of the Commission's reflections.
The Pope was astonished when the Commission attacked the entire Casti Connubii position. And he was especially angered when the Commission's rejection of that former teaching was leaked to the Press.
What Paul VI thought he was fostering as a shrewd way of containing a problem had backfired. Miserably so. And, since the Council Fathers had failed to incorporate the teachings of Castii Connubii into any of their conciliar decrees, the task of drafting Humanae Vitae more difficult than he had ever anticipated.
The Pontifical Commission met five times, at first in the fall of 1963. Six men commissioned by Pope John XXIII meeting first in Louvain. The second meeting (and all subsequent ones) took place in Rome, in the spring of 1964, attended by thirteen men. The number was increased to fifteen for a meeting that summer.
Up to this point, no one had presumed to recommend altering the Church's teaching on artificial contraception.
However, things changed at the fourth session, held in the spring of 1965, when the size of the commission jumped up to fifty-eight, with five women included among the thirty-four lay members.
An expert called in for consultation was John T. Noonan, from Notre Dame in Indiana, whose study of the church's changing positions on usury had won scholarly acclaim. He was working on a similar study of changes in the prohibition of artificial contraception -- a book that would appear just as the commission was disbanded. In addition, a lay couple, Pat and Patty Crowley, had been invited to share the results of a questionnaire which they had circulated among the members of the International Christian Family Movement. They had surveyed the members, all devout practicing Catholics, on their experience of the use of the rhythm method of contraception.
The Commission members were stunned by the findings of the survey. The most conscientious Catholics, who followed this nervous procedure with precision, found that it was not certain -- which left them in great fear until the next menstruation (which might not occur). And in this concentration on the wife's physical conditions, her psychological needs for fondness, affection, and tenderness had to be ignored or repressed. The comments of the couples surveyed made riveting reading in the commission.
A husband, a scholar, wrote: "I have watched a magnificent spiritual and physical union dissipate and, due to rhythm, turn into a tense and mutually damaging relationship. Rhythm seems to be immoral and deeply unnatural. It seems to me diabolical."
His wife gave her side of the story: "I find myself sullen and resentful of my husband when the time of sexual relations finally arrives. I resent his necessarily guarded affection during the month and I find I cannot respond suddenly. I find, also, that my subconscious dreams and unguarded thoughts are inevitably sexual and time consuming. All this in spite of a great intellectual and emotional companionship and a generally beautiful marriage and home life."
The Commission was hearing that the rhythm method made people obsessed with sex and its mechanics while minority members at the Council were arguing that rhythm allows people to escape the merely animal urges and enjoy the serenity of sexuality transcended. The commission was also hearing from doctors that nature, of course, provides women with their greatest sexual desire at just the fertile times that rhythm marked off bounds.
The Commission members, even trained theologians and spiritual counselors who had spent years expounding the church teachings, felt they were looking at reality for the first time. To their shared surprise they felt that Church teaching had to change on this matter, that the truth, once seen, could no longer be denied. When the nineteen theologians on the Commission, convened for a separate vote, were asked whether Church teaching could change on contraception, twelve said yes, seven no.
This set off alarm bells for Pope Paul VI.
For the next meeting, the last and the longest, from April into June of 1965, members of the Commission were demoted to "advisers" (periti) and the Commission itself was re-constituted of sixteen Bishops brought in to issue the final report.
These Bishops would listen to those who had done the actual conferring, but theirs would be the final verdict. Debate before them would be presided over by Cardinal Ottaviani of the Holy Office.
The Crowleys brought another survey with them, this one of 3,000 Catholics -- including 290 devout subscribers to the magazine St. Anthony's Messenger -- of whom 63 percent said that rhythm had harmed their marriage and 65 percent said that it did not actually prevent conception, even when the right procedures were followed exactly.
The Jesuit priest Josef Fuchs, who had taught Casti Connubii's standards for twenty years, said he was withdrawing his moral textbook and resigning his teaching post at the Gregorian University in Rome now that he could no longer uphold what he was asked to profess. The vote of the theologians who were presenting their findings to the bishops was now fifteen to four against the claim that contraception is intrinsically evil. The vote of the larger group was thirty to five.
The climactic vote of the commission -- the one of the sixteen bishops -- was nine to three for changing the Church's position on artificial contraception, with three abstentions.
An agreement had been reached before the vote was taken to submit only one report for the commission, but Cardinal Ottaviani and Father Ford, seeing how things were going, had prepared a document of their own, which would later be misrepresented as an official minority document. There was only one official document, the sole one voted on by the bishops who had authority to report the body's findings. (Ottaviani was the one who had brought in these officials, hoping to get the result he wanted. When he failed to, he ignored his own device.)
The so-called “minority report" said that any change was inconceivable because “The Church could not have erred through so many centuries, even through one century, by imposing under serious obligation very grave burdens in the name of Jesus Christ, if Jesus Christ did not actually impose these burdens."
It was the one argument that, in the end, mattered to Paul VI. He took advantage of the so-called "minority report" to say that he could not accept the Commission's findings since there had been disagreement with it. Nine of the twelve bishops, fifteen of the nineteen theologians, and thirty of the thirty-five non-episcopal members of the commission were not enough for him.
The Commission members left their work convinced that the Pope could no longer uphold the teaching against artificial contraception. When their report was leaked to the press, Catholics around the world took heart at the signs of change.
Yet, what would unsettle their faith and rock the very foundation of Papal authority was what Paul VI did next: issue Humanae Vitae, with its reiteration of Casti Connubii's ban: "The church, calling men back to the observance of the natural law, as interpreted by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life."
The vast majority of Catholics worldwide responded. We shall consider that response in Part III of this continuing series.
Pope Paul VI could never have imagined such an outcome.
First of all, Pope John XXIII’s Commission on Birth Control was a Papal secret, and the Vatican had lived for decades with the assurance that it could contain its secrets. Even when Pope Paul conceded the Commission's existence, he left its composition and function mysterious.
All the participants were ordered to keep their actions strictly hidden. There would be no official publication of minutes or results. Everything they said or did was to be turned over confidentially to the Pope, who could use or suppress it at his discretion. If this original plan had been followed, and the Pope wanted to ignore what the commission did, it would no more exist on the record than had Pius XI's secretly drafted encyclical on the Jews. The idea of a "runaway" commission was remote from Paul's mind.
Paul was convinced that the Commission would end up confirming Casti Connubii, perhaps on newer grounds. In this belief, he was encouraged by John Ford, the preferred expert of the Curia.
Ford had decided that old natural law arguments against contraception were weak, but the Church could not have erred, so new grounds must be found for bolstering the truth. If the Onan story could be sacrificed, then so could traditional (Thomistic) views on Natural Law, so long as the Church remained consistent in its condemnation, on whatever grounds.
Ford brought to Rome a Catholic philosopher, Germain Grisez, who helped him develop a new "will to life" argument. The Pope probably hoped this prefigured the outcome of the Commission's reflections.
The Pope was astonished when the Commission attacked the entire Casti Connubii position. And he was especially angered when the Commission's rejection of that former teaching was leaked to the Press.
What Paul VI thought he was fostering as a shrewd way of containing a problem had backfired. Miserably so. And, since the Council Fathers had failed to incorporate the teachings of Castii Connubii into any of their conciliar decrees, the task of drafting Humanae Vitae more difficult than he had ever anticipated.
The Pontifical Commission met five times, at first in the fall of 1963. Six men commissioned by Pope John XXIII meeting first in Louvain. The second meeting (and all subsequent ones) took place in Rome, in the spring of 1964, attended by thirteen men. The number was increased to fifteen for a meeting that summer.
Up to this point, no one had presumed to recommend altering the Church's teaching on artificial contraception.
However, things changed at the fourth session, held in the spring of 1965, when the size of the commission jumped up to fifty-eight, with five women included among the thirty-four lay members.
An expert called in for consultation was John T. Noonan, from Notre Dame in Indiana, whose study of the church's changing positions on usury had won scholarly acclaim. He was working on a similar study of changes in the prohibition of artificial contraception -- a book that would appear just as the commission was disbanded. In addition, a lay couple, Pat and Patty Crowley, had been invited to share the results of a questionnaire which they had circulated among the members of the International Christian Family Movement. They had surveyed the members, all devout practicing Catholics, on their experience of the use of the rhythm method of contraception.
The Commission members were stunned by the findings of the survey. The most conscientious Catholics, who followed this nervous procedure with precision, found that it was not certain -- which left them in great fear until the next menstruation (which might not occur). And in this concentration on the wife's physical conditions, her psychological needs for fondness, affection, and tenderness had to be ignored or repressed. The comments of the couples surveyed made riveting reading in the commission.
A husband, a scholar, wrote: "I have watched a magnificent spiritual and physical union dissipate and, due to rhythm, turn into a tense and mutually damaging relationship. Rhythm seems to be immoral and deeply unnatural. It seems to me diabolical."
His wife gave her side of the story: "I find myself sullen and resentful of my husband when the time of sexual relations finally arrives. I resent his necessarily guarded affection during the month and I find I cannot respond suddenly. I find, also, that my subconscious dreams and unguarded thoughts are inevitably sexual and time consuming. All this in spite of a great intellectual and emotional companionship and a generally beautiful marriage and home life."
The Commission was hearing that the rhythm method made people obsessed with sex and its mechanics while minority members at the Council were arguing that rhythm allows people to escape the merely animal urges and enjoy the serenity of sexuality transcended. The commission was also hearing from doctors that nature, of course, provides women with their greatest sexual desire at just the fertile times that rhythm marked off bounds.
The Commission members, even trained theologians and spiritual counselors who had spent years expounding the church teachings, felt they were looking at reality for the first time. To their shared surprise they felt that Church teaching had to change on this matter, that the truth, once seen, could no longer be denied. When the nineteen theologians on the Commission, convened for a separate vote, were asked whether Church teaching could change on contraception, twelve said yes, seven no.
This set off alarm bells for Pope Paul VI.
For the next meeting, the last and the longest, from April into June of 1965, members of the Commission were demoted to "advisers" (periti) and the Commission itself was re-constituted of sixteen Bishops brought in to issue the final report.
These Bishops would listen to those who had done the actual conferring, but theirs would be the final verdict. Debate before them would be presided over by Cardinal Ottaviani of the Holy Office.
The Crowleys brought another survey with them, this one of 3,000 Catholics -- including 290 devout subscribers to the magazine St. Anthony's Messenger -- of whom 63 percent said that rhythm had harmed their marriage and 65 percent said that it did not actually prevent conception, even when the right procedures were followed exactly.
The Jesuit priest Josef Fuchs, who had taught Casti Connubii's standards for twenty years, said he was withdrawing his moral textbook and resigning his teaching post at the Gregorian University in Rome now that he could no longer uphold what he was asked to profess. The vote of the theologians who were presenting their findings to the bishops was now fifteen to four against the claim that contraception is intrinsically evil. The vote of the larger group was thirty to five.
The climactic vote of the commission -- the one of the sixteen bishops -- was nine to three for changing the Church's position on artificial contraception, with three abstentions.
An agreement had been reached before the vote was taken to submit only one report for the commission, but Cardinal Ottaviani and Father Ford, seeing how things were going, had prepared a document of their own, which would later be misrepresented as an official minority document. There was only one official document, the sole one voted on by the bishops who had authority to report the body's findings. (Ottaviani was the one who had brought in these officials, hoping to get the result he wanted. When he failed to, he ignored his own device.)
The so-called “minority report" said that any change was inconceivable because “The Church could not have erred through so many centuries, even through one century, by imposing under serious obligation very grave burdens in the name of Jesus Christ, if Jesus Christ did not actually impose these burdens."
It was the one argument that, in the end, mattered to Paul VI. He took advantage of the so-called "minority report" to say that he could not accept the Commission's findings since there had been disagreement with it. Nine of the twelve bishops, fifteen of the nineteen theologians, and thirty of the thirty-five non-episcopal members of the commission were not enough for him.
The Commission members left their work convinced that the Pope could no longer uphold the teaching against artificial contraception. When their report was leaked to the press, Catholics around the world took heart at the signs of change.
Yet, what would unsettle their faith and rock the very foundation of Papal authority was what Paul VI did next: issue Humanae Vitae, with its reiteration of Casti Connubii's ban: "The church, calling men back to the observance of the natural law, as interpreted by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life."
The vast majority of Catholics worldwide responded. We shall consider that response in Part III of this continuing series.
Thursday, June 1, 2017
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANE VITAE ON THE EVE OF ITS 49TH ANNIVERSARY: Part One
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)