17. Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.
Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.
And so the Pope’s warning has come to pass. And still the people cry give us more pills. A secular response came from an unlikely source – George Arthur Akerlof professor of economics @ Berkeley
Fr. Curran & fellow theologian Dan Maguire at the time the encyclical came out, drew a popular “Statement of Dissent” and many priests sign that document with him. It is likely that this is the single most ignored and derided papal document of all time.
I found an article by Cardinal James Francis Stafford @ Catholic News AgencyI thought it would be helpful to those who didn’t go through the late 60’s sexual revolution from a priests view of Humanae Vitae.
Yet if one looks at Pope Paul VI’s document especially the paragraph quoted above you can see that he could see what would be fall man.
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I just finished a book by Walter Percy, The Thanatos Syndrome. It was a sci-fi book about the sanctity of life. Walter Percy is a Catholic author. The protagonist is a psychiatrist with residual Catholic tendencies who notices something strange in his patients –a syndrome — that makes them numb to normal horrors, makes them less inhibited, makes them more likely to think like idiot savants (human calculators), less likely to think metaphorically (one might say, sacramentally, or even poeticaly). The syndrome looks suspiciously like modernism. His colleagues, also in the mental health business, don’t believe a person is really a person before 18 months old, and can be terminated because of any imperfection, and believe that euthanasia is the most humane thing for the elderly.
Thanatos was a Greek personification of death. It turned out that the syndrome was not accidental, but experimental.
It was a good book to read this month in light of this anniversary. I read it because there was an interesting passage concerning sacraments in the last chapter. The main character’s wife was Presbyterian, then Episcopalian, then pentecostal, and he’s describing her:
“She is herself a little holy spirit hooked up to a lusty body. In her case spirit has nothing to do with body. Each goes its own way. Even when she was a Presbyterian and I was a Catholic, I remember that she was horrified by the Eucharist: Eating the body of Christ. That’s pagan and barbaric, she said. What she meant and what horrified her was the mixing up of body and spirit, Catholic trafficking in bread, wine, oil, salt, water, body, blood, spit — things. What does the Holy Spirit need with things? Body does body things. Spirit does spirit things.”
The syndrome removed spirit from body. It made it so lives were just bodies, just cogs in the big machine from the moment of conception, feeling no real feelings, becoming animal-like in their appetites and their ability to process the world. If that were the case, babies could be killed easily if they weren’t going to be productive, if they were going to be inconvenient, if the brute, simple pleasure of the parent was going to be threatened, then there is no real reason to object to “mercy” killing.
Interesting take. Good to hear from you. I just got back from a sureal vacation to the place where in 1492 they called it the new world.
The only place on the island that was heaven on earth was the resort we stadyed at. The rest of the place is not fit for humans.
The poverity is like nothing I’ve seen before, Americas poor are very rich compaired to these folks.
I’d never go back unless it was on a missionary trip. The tourist industry however may pull them out of third world poverty but its going to take time.
All the people I met however were basicly happy. Make me think of Happy are the poor in spirit.
It’ll be interesting as to what will happen with this PZMeyers case.