Church birth control commission docs unveiled

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Information provided by a prominent American theologian close to the famous papal “birth control commission” of the 1960s shows it was tilted in favor of changing Church teaching on contraception from the start. Pope Paul VI eventually said no to the commission and reaffirmed Church teaching in his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”).

The new information depicts the commission’s secretary general as a supporter of change who influenced the commission’s proceedings to produce that result. It also suggests a substantial number of members and advisers of the body were predisposed in favor of change, or at least more than merely open to it.

osv.com/tabid/7621/itemid/7539/Church-birth-control-commission-docs-unveiled.aspx
 
Abyssinia said:
Information provided by a prominent American theologian close to the famous papal “birth control commission” of the 1960s shows it was tilted in favor of changing Church teaching on contraception from the start. Pope Paul VI eventually said no to the commission and reaffirmed Church teaching in his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”).

The new information depicts the commission’s secretary general as a supporter of change who influenced the commission’s proceedings to produce that result. It also suggests a substantial number of members and advisers of the body were predisposed in favor of change, or at least more than merely open to it.

osv.com/tabid/7621/itemid/7539/Church-birth-control-commission-docs-unveiled.aspx
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So I guess the system still works!

Three cheers for Pope Paul VI !!!
 
mark_a said:
So I guess the system still works!
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That would be the “Papal Infallibility” system, would it not? 😉

…keeping the Pope from teaching in error on faith and morals for 2,000 years…
 
Yes, the Pope went with the “minority” position on birth control. Thank God.

Peace,
Ed
 
This tilting of the commission in favor of artificial birth control is, actually, old news. I am old enough to have followed what happened in the 1960s, and this was brought out in the media then. I thought that this commission created a bad situation in the first place, because as soon as this commission was formed to advise the Pope about this teaching, very many Catholics thought that the prohibition of Catholicism against artificial birth control had been dropped. Then when they found after some time by the Pope’s final statement that it had not been dropped, they had already decided that the prohibition no longer was valid, and they revolted against this teaching of the Church. This development lies at the beginnings of widespread dissent against the teaching of the Church, even by priests, many of whom began telling couples then that it is all-right to use artificial birth control. Catholicism has yet only half recovered from the great wave of dissent that began in the later 1960s.
 
Wow, I knew the high level summary of this, that the arguments for change were theologically suspect, but that was about all. But my oh my how the pieces fit together.

Pope Paul even stacked the deck against the status quo, to give it the best and most worthy challenge, and the challenge still fell short.

I am going to read all those documents and see if I can make heads or tails of it.

Note to self: do not doubt the Holy Spirit.
 
Ironically enough, even had the pope changed it and given the green light on ABC, most Catholics use it anyway. The end result was Catholics using ABC in huge numbers with NFP being a tiny minority. The official teaching may be comforting to pro-NFP Catholics but the result is little to no change really in actual behavior out in the field…
 
gurneyhalleck1 said:
Ironically enough, even had the pope changed it and given the green light on ABC, most Catholics use it anyway. The end result was Catholics using ABC in huge numbers with NFP being a tiny minority. The official teaching may be comforting to pro-NFP Catholics but the result is little to no change really in actual behavior out in the field…
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Well, yes, that is sadly true. But the commission didn’t cause the disobedience. Human sinfulness did that. There was never a commission to check on cheating and stealing, but hordes of people do that and rationalize it (i.e. tax cheats, for one example). Huge numbers of catholics divorce and remarry outside the church, but nobody pretends its a commission’s fault.

People just LIKE their sins and don’t like to be told that they shouldn’t be doing them. That’s nothing new either, just look at the lives of the OT prophets. That was basically their entire JOB: tell the truth to people who don’t want to hear it.

And I don’t think Humanae Vitae was the beginning of the rebellion. Actually, I think it was the beginning of the END. It was the point at which Rome finally stood up to the encroachments and said “NO MORE.” Sure enough, ever since then we’ve actually had steady progress at the top towards re-emphasis on the real meat of catholic teaching and it HAS been trickling downwards ever since. I think the rebellion started percolating just after World War 2 and really only showed its face in various attempts to hijack the meaning of Vatican 2 away from the actual content of the Council documents. HV was IMO the “Battle of Midway” in the struggle for the soul of the catholic church. The ‘Japanese’ still hold an awful lot of islands, but time isn’t on their side. 👍
 
manualman said:
People just LIKE their sins and don’t like to be told that they shouldn’t be doing them. That’s nothing new either, just look at the lives of the OT prophets. That was basically their entire JOB: tell the truth to people who don’t want to hear it.
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It’s so true. It reminds me of Bishop Sheen: “We don’t need a Church to tell us what’s right when the world is right, we need a Church that tells us what’s right when the world is wrong!”
 
mark_a said:
So I guess the system still works!

Three cheers for Pope Paul VI !!!
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Yes, the Holy Spirit protects the pope from doctrinal error, not theological commissions.

Edit: And the Holy Spirit had his work cut out for him in this case. At this time, the birth control pill was being pushed hard by many, including Catholic physician John Rock, who had a hand in developing it. He then published a book, “The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor’s Proposals to End the Battle over Birth Control,” to push for a change in Church doctrine. That got him cover stories on Time and Newsweek. Many liberal clergy, even at high levels were agitating for a change. And Paul VI was not a particularly strong personality; yet he had to oppose all these forces arrayed against Catholic teaching. The Holy Spirit certainly had a hand in protecting the pope from doctrinal error.

Subsequent events have demonstrated how correct Paul VI was in Humanae Vitae.
 
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