Humanae vitae dissent - is it heresy?

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HomeschoolDad

HomeschoolDad

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Does dissent from the Church’s teaching on contraception (as in Humanae vitae) make one a heretic?

I am not referring merely to knowing the Church’s teaching, giving it the assent of faith, but going ahead and using contraception anyway because of a lack of trust in God (that is simply called “sin”). Neither am I even referring to the modern trend of saying that one’s “conscience” tells them that contraception is no sin.

I am referring to those who simply say “the Church’s teaching on contraception is wrong because of x, y, or z” (e.g., those who say that Pope Paul VI’s appeal to natural law is wrong).

Note well: I am absolutely NOT advocating dissent from the Church’s teaching. Most people dissent from this teaching not from any scholarly reasoning, but because they listen to what modern society says, and take that as the truth. Average people don’t spend a lot of time considering whether the common run of what modern society accepts is true or not. And that is very wrong.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
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Pope Paul VI in issuing Humanae Vitae affirmed the constant tradition that comes to us from the apostles, in the matter of morals, which does not required a solemn declaration to express the infallible truth.
 
What you said is exactly what came to my mind when I saw this. Ditto.
 
Phemie said:
That ‘s what makes the Winnipeg Statement so problematic.
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It states (written 1968) “It follows that those who have been commissioned by the Church to teach in her name will recognize their responsibility to refrain from public opposition to the encyclical; to do otherwise would compound confusion and be a source of scandal to God’s people”.

Also, Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body fully vindicates and supports St. Paul VI Humanae Vitae and Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have also affirmed its teachings.

wherepeteris.com

Pope Francis, disciple of Humanae Vitae

One of the most prevailing fears (and one of the most often evoked) by Francis critics is that the Holy Father wishes to overturn Humanae Vitae (HV). The now 50 year old encyclical is currently disregarded by a vast number
wherepeteris.com wherepeteris.com
 
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Just skimming over it, I find this statement, which, however nuanced it may be, is indeed problematic:

26. Counsellors may meet others who, accepting the teaching of the Holy Father, find that because of particular circumstances they are involved in what seems to them a clear conflict of duties, e.g., the reconciling of conjugal love and responsible parenthood with the education of children already born or with the health of the mother. In accord with the accepted principles of moral theology, if these persons have tried sincerely but without success to pursue a line of conduct in keeping with the given directives, they may be safely assured that, whoever honestly chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience.

I’m calling out that one. What are these so-called “accepted principles of moral theology”? It sounds a whole lot like “the end justifies the means” to me. If there is a difficult situation — basically, the “can’t make NFP work” scenario (and it does happen) — there is always abstinence as long as need be. A cross, to be sure, but sometimes Our Lord gives us crosses that are very, very difficult. That’s just the way it is. We don’t get to pick them (as a wise priest-counselor once told me).

To use what I think is a proper analogy, suppose one spouse or the other loses the physical ability to have normal conjugal relations — for instance, in a catastrophic injury. Is the couple then allowed to have unnatural relations, making use of faculties that they might still possess? I think not. (I don’t wish to get any more graphic than that — we are all mature people here, and that kind of description isn’t necessary.)

Same thing with not being able to risk pregnancy. You just give it up. Nobody has ever died from being forbidden to have relations. The appeal to “conscience” is basically seeking permission from oneself to live in mortal sin.
 
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The word “Good” in “good conscience” is impossible to have if one breaks from humane vitae.
 
I have heard of that story, and if is indeed true (some say it is apocryphal), the nuns had the right to protect themselves against an unjust aggressor. It wasn’t contraception to render an otherwise licit marital act infecund, which is the issue here.

Even then, they could not have used a contraceptive pill if that particular medication was known to have a potentially abortifacient side effect. Are there any methods of chemical contraception that are not abortifacient? I don’t know.
 
“Love making” should involve love. Love desires the good of the other. Love does not count the cost. Contraception places an artificial barrier between lovers, whether physical or chemical. Either way, it is tantamount to saying “I give almost all of myself to you”

When was that ever good enough for true love?

“Be fruitful and multiply” did not have an expiration date, or any qualifiers on it.
 
The thing is that they just didn’t keep it to a way of dealing with penitents in the confessional. They proclaimed it to groups of young people like me in the early 70s at discussion groups when I was in university.

When a priest told me and 40-50 of my peers that using birth control was OK as long as both parties felt there was a good reason to delay pregnancy do you honestly think that when the time came for me to marry that I researched it any further? Of course not.

Not only did it lead to a generation of poorly catechised couples, it also, I believe, lead to this type of comment my parish priest made to me about 12 years ago. He was mentioning that he’d visited a family and they’d told him their teenaged daughter was pregnant and they were taking her out for an abortion. “I told them to do what was best for the family.” 😲 Thinking I’d misheard, I questioned and he simply shrugged.
 
I’m not sure I saw an answer here. Heretic or not? Since it’s hard to imagine people intellectually accepting the HV teaching but going against it anyway, does that mean that essentially everyone practicing ABC is a material heretic?
 
Quite right, in all of this good discussion, nobody has approached the original question.

It is not at all hard to imagine someone saying “I know it’s wrong, but I just can’t follow that teaching at this point in my life”. Not condoning such a mindset, just stating the fact that people know something is wrong and go ahead and do it anyway, all the time. That’s essentially what sin is.

Not so the present situation. People manage to tell themselves that they see nothing wrong with contraception. The reasoning isn’t usually terribly sophisticated. I suppose a better way to phrase the question would be something like “does it rise to the level of heresy to say that a moral teaching of the Catholic magisterium, in a matter that doesn’t admit of doubt or interpretation, is wrong?”.
 
EWTN:

"Duty of obedience

"In the first place, let us point out that, according to the teaching of the last council, the doctrinal authority of the Pope and the Bishops is not limited to infallible teaching. The duty of obedience is not restricted to definitions of faith: “That religious assent of mind and will is due in a very singular way to the authentic Magisterium of the Sovereign Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra: this implies the respectful acknowledgement of his supreme teaching authority and the earnest adherence to his statements, in conformity with his manifest thought and desires, as well as with the deductions possible, especially because of the nature of the document or the frequent repetition of the same doctrine or the mode of expression”.

Source: https://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/AUTHUMVT.HTM

Catholic Answers: Is Humanae Vitae Infallible Teaching? | Catholic Answers
 
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HomeschoolDad said:
People manage to tell themselves that they see nothing wrong with contraception. The reasoning isn’t usually terribly sophisticated.
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Their articulation of their reasons may not be sophisticated, but their interior thinking is another matter entirely. Humanae Vitae, the document does not fit into humanae vitae, their lives. This is a judgment based on many factors, good, bad, silly, profound, and private. It generally is not like “dissent” on liturgy, Christology, etc. but is something considered on a very deep personal level.

The world would be a better place if more people subscribed to the vision of human life proposed in Humanae Vitae, but that cannot be limited to contraceptive issues. Implementing responsible family planning is not easy. It rarely reaches the point of heresy, even if a couple does not agree with Humanae Vitae.
 
Pitcairn17 said:
I’m not sure I saw an answer here. Heretic or not? Since it’s hard to imagine people intellectually accepting the HV teaching but going against it anyway, does that mean that essentially everyone practicing ABC is a material heretic?
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The determination of whether one is a heretic is a legal matter subject to canon law. You and I are not qualified to use it with any authority. We can speculate about the legal status of someone else or ourselves, and we can also discern whether or not our actions violate Church teaching, or whether or not our beliefs are heretical. But the determination of whether one is in fact a heretic is speculation on our part.

And speculation generally leads to chaos, confusion, and dissension.
If you are wondering what determines a heretic, canon law will tell you.
There are conditions, and it’s not simply a matter of someone doing something wrong or believing incorrectly.

(you can have a great discussion about adherence to the Church’s moral theology. Throwing the word heretic in really does not further a fruitful discussion.)
 
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The "Congo nuns’ is a debunked issue. Never happened. Was a proposed hypothesis by some writers, that’s all.
 
Dovekin said:
Their articulation of their reasons may not be sophisticated, but their interior thinking is another matter entirely. Humanae Vitae , the document does not fit into humanae vitae, their lives. This is a judgment based on many factors, good, bad, silly, profound, and private. It generally is not like “dissent” on liturgy, Christology, etc. but is something considered on a very deep personal level.
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Maybe by some people, but I do not think that the average Catholic in the pew considers it “on a very deep personal level”. They just flatly say “we don’t agree with that”, and proceed to do what they want to. They have never been catechized in a fashion that would put this on their shoulders as a gravely important burden of conscience, or if they were catechized this way, they just willfully ignored it.

I know that contraception is far from the worst sin in existence. However, it crosses a lot of thresholds. It is a mortal sin. It is a sin of the flesh, and Our Lady of Fatima said that the sins that send more people to hell than any others are the sins of the flesh. Sins of the flesh are not the worst sins there are, but they are the easiest to fall into, and the hardest to quit once entrenched. Human nature inclines towards them.

Put another way, the typical Catholic probably never experiences a grave temptation to rob a bank (a sin of the world) or to worship Satan (a sin of the devil). But temptations of the flesh, often grave temptations, are part and parcel of the lives of almost everyone, at least at some point in their lives. So much the worse if the faithful have been spiritually anesthetized, or have anesthesized themselves, to believe that it is no sin in the first place.

There are other reasons besides the sin of the flesh factor. Catholics see everybody else practicing contraception. There is no explicit biblical prohibition of it. (The sin of Onan was about more than just avoiding conception.) Practicing NFP is not easy, and there is always the chance of an “oops baby”, a chance many think they just cannot take. (If they perceive themselves as having a “complete family”, one or the other partner typically gets sterilized.) And a point that is rarely considered in discussion about the morality of contraception, but it is demographic suicide for those groups who choose to have few children. (Something about the meek inheriting the earth, eh?)
 
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