// Comments from the Fellows

E. Christian Brugger, D.Phil

HUMANAE VITAE TURNS 40: A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE

Pope Benedict XVI, in a speech last May marking the 40 th anniversary of Humanae Vitae , stated that “the truth expressed in ‘ Humanae Vitae ' doesn't change.” It might also be said that the rejection of that truth doesn't change either. People have attempted to exclude procreation from intercourse and intercourse from marriage since the beginning of recorded history. (Vaginal suppositories date back to the ancient Egyptians who used a vaginal paste made of crocodile dung smashed up with fermented dough.)

The truth to which the pope refers, of course, is the intrinsic bond between procreation and marital love. The bond holds together three important things that people want and pursue: babies, sexual intercourse and marriage. Although the three can appear to be three separate and separable human goods, distinct ends to be pursued without regard to each other; Catholic faith and sound moral reasoning show this to be wrong. They really are aspects of the one good of marriage (which Vatican II teaches is an exclusive and permanent one flesh union of persons ordered to new life and the perfection of spouses). Pope Paul VI, after carefully studying the issue, became completely convinced that if people gave vent to their fallen proclivity to pursue having babies, sexual intercourse and marriage apart from one another, terrible harm would come to men and women. He warned famously that if the truth is disregarded, there would be 1) a general lowering of moral standards and increase in marital infidelity, 2) a disregard for the physical and emotional welfare of woman by men; 3) that governments would use family planning measures for coercive purposes and 4) that by treating their bodies like objects of domination, men and women would begin to generate human life in ever more arbitrary and immoral ways (no. 17). There is no denying the historically unprecedented increase of these in the past forty years.

Critics will sneer and say ‘come now, laying fault for all these at the feet of contraceptive use is like laying fault for a heat wave at the feet of increased popsicle sales.' But these critics are shutting their minds prematurely. The Pope was not saying increased contraceptive use would result in these things. He was saying that rejecting the truth of the intrinsic relationship between having babies, sexual intercourse and marriage would result in these things. And this is indisputable. Despite the turmoil of the decade, Western societies in the 1960s still maintained ambient cultural norms supporting sex in marriage, marriage between a man and a woman, abstinence as the preferred form of avoiding pregnancy, and babies as the fruit of married love. Consider for a moment the socially sanctioned ethical novelties of the last forty years relating to sex and life that rely on a rejection of these norms: co-habitation, promiscuity, abortion, ‘gay marriage,' In vitro fertilization, freezing, eugenically selecting, experimenting on and destroying human embryos, ‘designer' and ‘savior' babies, sperm and egg donation, pregnancy reduction, dead donor insemination, inseminating single and post-menopausal women, inseminating lesbians, human cloning, and so on. Some would praise these as cultural advances. Others like myself look at them and the world in which they are considered increasingly normal and fear for the future. But both supporters and opponents alike have to admit that the cultural acceptance of these behaviors is conditioned on the rejection of the truths defended in Humanae Vitae .

Pope Paul VI was not a prophet. He was a man of faith and a student of human nature. He saw clearly that separating new life from married love would unleash not the angels but the demons of human nature. He saw that sex separated from committed love would breed exploitation and broken relationships; that the pursuit of children as rights and not as gifts would inevitably lead to the welfare of children being subordinated to the wants of adults; and that setting aside the truth of conjugal morality would harm not only our concepts of life and marriage, but undermine the very dignity of the human person.

He also saw clearly that by practicing conjugal morality with the help of grace men and women could achieve the ennobling goal of self-mastery; that the periodic continence that chastity requires would not harm human love, but “confer upon it a higher human value” ( HV , 21); and that if public authorities and experts in science joined with husbands and wives to strengthen and not denigrate the bond between life and love, we could build a civilization of love, what JPII called a “culture of life.” Catholics today should be very grateful that the Successor of Peter saw and said what he did in 1968. Few at the time were able to see the truth and even fewer were willing to say it. It is not, of course, Pope Paul VI who deserves praise but the Spirit of Christ who guides the Church into all truth, even while Christ's foolish members avert their eyes.

E. Christian Brugger is an Assistant Professor of Theology at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington, VA. He earned his D.Phil. in Christian Ethics from the University of Oxford. He also holds Masters degrees from Harvard Divinity School (moral philosophy) and Seton Hall University (moral theology).