// Comments from the Fellows

Fr. Peter Ryan, S.J., STD

Challenges of Humanae Vitae

The significance of Humanae Vitae is not to be found primarily in the status of the document but in the teaching it contains. The core of that teaching-contraception is intrinsically wrong-reiterates what the Church has taught through the ages. Humanae Vitae articulated the teaching at a time (1968) when questions were being raised about whether a newly discovered technique for preventing conception-the pill-is contraception. Previously, conception could be prevented only by interfering with a couple's outward behavior during intercourse, for example, through withdrawal or the use of a condom. Since the pill is not taken at the time of intercourse and therefore does not affect the couple's behavior, the question arose as to whether the use of the pill was included in what the Church condemns.

Pope Paul VI asked his Commission for the Study of Problems of Population, Family, and Birth to look into that question. It may be that the Pope himself was unsure about whether the pill is contraception, but there is no basis for the oft-reiterated claim that he was in doubt about whether contraception itself is intrinsically wrong. The nearly unanimous conclusion of the commission was that the pill is indeed contraceptive. Paul VI agreed, but disagreed with the proposal, endorsed by a majority of the commission, that Church teaching on the intrinsic evil of contraception be changed. Instead, he reaffirmed that teaching.

Of special significance is his definition of contraception, which makes it clear that what is relevant is not the behavior involved but the intention to impede, no matter how that intention is carried out. The Pope thus indicates that the Church's condemnation of contraception extends to the pill, for he excludes as morally wrong " any action which either before, at the moment of, or after marital intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation-whether as an end or as a means" (no. 14). Also clear from this teaching is that although contraception presupposes an act of intercourse, it is not itself a sexual act, for it involves a distinct choice.

The reference to marital intercourse leaves open the question of whether attempting to impede conception in acts of nonmarital intercourse is an additional evil. Although Humanae Vitae does not specifically say that contraception compounds the evil of nonmarital acts, it cannot reasonably be understood as supporting the view that it does not. The magisterium has traditionally condemned contraception as contralife, and its condemnation on that basis obviously is not limited to marriage.

This point is evident, for example, in the Si aliquis canon, which was part of the Church's universal law from the thirteenth century until 1917. That canon does not refer only to married couples but states: "If anyone for the sake of satisfying sexual desire or with premeditated hatred does something to a man or to a woman, or gives something to drink, so that he cannot generate, or she cannot conceive or offspring be born, let that person be treated as a homicide" (see Corpus iuris canonici, eds. A. L. Richter and A. Friedberg [Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1881], 2, 794). The canon does not say that contraception is homicide, but only that, like homicide, it is contralife: Whereas homicide intentionally ends the life of an already existing person, contraception intentionally prevents a life from coming into existence. Although Humanae Vitae does not argue explicitly that contraception is contralife, its footnote 14 refers to the Catechism of the Council of Trent's treatment of marriage, which does reject it as contralife ( The Roman Catechism , part II, chap. 7, no. 13).

In rejecting contraception as contralife, the Church made it clear that, like other choices, the choice to contracept has an intrinsic meaning. A couple cannot reasonably define the act purely in terms of the end they have in view and discount the significance of their chosen means. They may well have in view the good end of enjoying intercourse as a married couple without risking conception when their other responsibilities would make it irresponsible for them to conceive, but if contraception is their chosen means, they make a contralife choice. Humanae Vitae 's definition of contraception, if applied also to nonmarital intercourse, perfectly captures the idea of contraception as a contralife choice: Any act before, during, or after sexual intercourse that is specifically intended to impede conception is morally wrong for that very reason-wrong precisely because it is intended to prevent a new person from coming to be.

Humanae Vitae , however, is concerned with contraception within marriage, and Paul VI offers a rationale for condemning it that differs from previous magisterial explanations. He explains its wrongness in terms of the attempt to separate the unitive and procreative meanings of the marriage act from each other. "E ach and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life" (no. 11) because there is an " inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act" (no. 12).

This explanation can be understood in either of two ways. It may mean that contraception is wrong because, although a couple can, they ought not engage in a marriage act in which the two meanings are separated. Or it may mean that contraception is wrong because their act cannot be marital if the two meanings are separated.

A closer look shows that the second understanding is the correct one. As William E. May points out, Gaudium et spes 49, which Humanae Vitae cites, speaks of conjugal acts as being "noble and worthy," and goes on to say: "Expressed in a manner which is truly human ( modo vero humano ), these actions signify and promote that mutual self-giving by which spouses enrich each other with a joyful and thankful will." Conjugal acts are by definition noble and worthy, but a married couple's sexual acts cannot be so-and thus cannot be true conjugal acts-unless they are done in a truly human way.

Canon law confirms this point: A marriage can be consummated only if " the spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion a conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring" (canon 1061,1). The act must be both unitive and procreative. Unlike most of their forebears before Vatican II, canonists now agree that violent acts of intercourse imposed on an unwilling spouse are not marital: Being at odds with the unitive meaning of marriage, they are not expressed humano modo . So also, though canonists are still not agreed on the point, contraceptive acts of intercourse are not marital: Being at odds with the procreative meaning of marriage, they are not expressed humano modo (see May, "The Significance of the Consummation of Marriage, Contraception, and Condoms to Prevent HIV," accessed at http://www.culture-of-life.org/content/view/64/104/ ).

Humanae Vitae confirms this analysis by teaching that " the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them fit to generate human life" (no. 12). William May notes that the usual English translation is "capable of generating," but the proper translation of the relevant words ( eos idoneos facit ) is "renders them fit [or worthy ]." Since a couple cannot be rendered fit to generate new life by an act in which they are trying to prevent a new life from being generated, that act cannot be marital.

Humanae Vitae 's explanation of the wrongness of contraception shows that marital intercourse is not a plastic reality but has an intrinsic meaning. No matter how much a couple might want to engage in marital intercourse, their act cannot be marital if they are trying to exclude the procreative meaning, which the encyclical says is "inherent to the marriage act" (no. 12). Even if they have in view the good end of enjoying intercourse as a married couple without risking conception when their other responsibilities would make it irresponsible for them to conceive, if contraception is their chosen means, they render their act nonmarital.

Pope John Paul II builds on this teaching in his Theology of the Body. Concupiscence, he explains, has veiled "the nuptial meaning of the body," and integral to the nuptial meaning is the procreative meaning. When that procreative meaning is deliberately prevented from being expressed in intercourse, then a couple's act of intercourse cannot express the body's nuptial meaning. Their act cannot be marital. John Paul II's profound Scriptural analysis leads him to conclude that the moral norm excluding contraception "belongs not only to the natural moral law, but also to the moral order revealed by God: also from this point of view, it could not be different, but solely what is handed down by Tradition and the Magisterium" (General Audience [18 July 1984]; Insegnamenti , 7.2 [1984] 103).

As noted earlier, the significance of Humanae Vitae is not to be found primarily in the status of the document but in the teaching it contains. Paul VI says that the core of that teaching-contraception is intrinsically wrong-reiterates what the Church has taught through the ages and is a truth that must be held. John Paul II goes further and says it is a truth of revelation to be accepted with faith.