Sorry, but my Australian experience and former Protestantism means I take some Catholic teachings with a grain of salt. And the ban on artificial contracepition is one of them. Pope Paul VI set up a committee himself to investigate the issue, made up predmoniantly of good Catholics, and they recommended the contraceptive pill should be available to married couples. But he chickened out. I’ll say it again - I think God was speaking through the committee the pope appointed, but the pope wasn’t willing to believe it.
"Change in the Air
Rock’s Argument for the Pill
In the mid-1960s, one of the Pill’s most prominent Catholic advocates, Dr. John Rock, insisted that the Pill should be acceptable to the Roman Catholic Church as a variant of the rhythm method. He was confident that the Vatican would eventually accept his argument that the Pill was a “natural” form of birth control and allow Catholic women to use it for contraception.
The Pope’s Encyclical
Pope Paul VI It was not to be. On the morning of July 25, 1968, the Vatican called a press conference to announce its decision on the Pill. In the papal encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae (“Of Human Life”), Pope Paul VI ended the speculation over oral contraceptives and birth control once and for all. He reaffirmed the Church’s traditional teachings and classified the Pill as an artificial method of birth control. To go on the Pill or use any other contraceptive device would constitute nothing less than a mortal sin.
Ignoring the Vatican
Within just two years of Humanae Vitae, almost as many Catholic women used the Pill as non-Catholics. By 1970, two-thirds of all Catholic women and three-quarters of those under 30 were using the Pill and other birth control methods banned by the Church. In 2002, Humanae Vitae still defined the Church’s position on birth control, and many observers of the Church believed that it contributed to the erosion of the Vatican’s authority during the last decades of the twentieth century"
So he not only lost a lot of priests and nuns, but from that time on, a lot of Catholics no longer regarded the Vatican with the same regard as previously.
From “Saints and Sinners … A History of the Popes” by Eamon Duffy - "To his horror, instead of closing the question, Humanae Vitae provoked a storm of protest of protest, and many priests resigned or were forced out of their posts for their opposition to the pope’s teaching.
Paul never doubted that he had done what had to be done, but his confidence was shattered. He never wrote another encyclical, and the last ten years of his pontificate were marked by deepening gloom, as he agonised over the divisions within the church and his own unpopularity. the mass exodus of priests and religious, and the growing violence of the secular world…"
That’s why I haven’t got much time for this "infallibility’ bit.
First of all – any committee appointed by a Pope nor any group of priests or religious does not possess the charism of infallibility. It is an established fact that the pill is an abortafacient – that is can cause spontaneous abortions of an implanted fetus. This is morally reprehensible.
Finally – don’t try to use Humanae Vitae against the Catholic position. I have forgotten more about this document than you purport to know. Humanae Vitae has PROVEN to be a truly prophetic document. Paul VI warned that if artificial contraception was embraced, the domino effect it would create would lead to the unspeakable horror of abortion and euthanasia – and id DID. He argued that once the life-giving aspect of the marital sexual act was removed in the name of convenience, the relativism that would arise from it would be devastating.
You make the argument that because of** dissention
among Catholic women who use the pill and other dissidents among nuns and priests despite the Church’s teaching against it – that this somehow makes it right. This is perhaps the most ludicrous **
of your positions.
**The Church is the fullness of Christ (
Eph. 1:22-23) and the pillar and foundation of Truth (
1 Tim. 3:15). You profane the Eucharist with your obstinate rejections of the truth every time you receive. **
The truth isn’t up for grabs, pal.
I do think the word Catholic in the first sentence could also be changed to Protestant or Christian.
Peace, Carlan
Peace, Carlan
