Humanae Vitae

In 1930 the Anglican bishops at Lambeth resolved, by 193 votes to 67, that where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, other methods may be used (Lambeth Conference 1930, Resolution 15). On 31 December of that year Pius XI wrote that some, departing from “the uninterrupted Christian tradition”, had recently judged it possible to declare another doctrine; he proclaimed anew that any use of marriage in which the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offence against the law of God and of nature (Pius XI, Casti connubii 56 and dating clause).

The Second Vatican Council taught in 1965 that the parents themselves, and no one else, should ultimately make the judgment, before God, about having children, with a conscience conformed to the divine law and submissive to the church’s teaching office (Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes 50). It added that Catholics may not use methods of birth control found blameworthy by that teaching authority, and noted that certain questions had been handed to a papal commission, so that the council did not intend to propose concrete solutions at once (Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes 51 and note 14). Paul VI says that he confirmed and enlarged the commission, set up by John XXIII in March 1963, but could not treat its conclusions as definitive, because it was not in complete agreement and because some of its criteria departed from the moral doctrine constantly taught by the church (Paul VI, Humanae vitae 5–6).

His reply is dated from St Peter’s in Rome on 25 July 1968 (Paul VI, Humanae vitae 18 and dating clause). Married love, it says, calls for responsible parenthood, exercised both by those who decide to have more children and by those who for serious reasons decide to have no more, for a set or an indefinite time (Paul VI, Humanae vitae 10). But “each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life”, because the unitive and the procreative significance of the act are joined by God and may not be separated (Paul VI, Humanae vitae 11–12). Excluded therefore are direct abortion, direct sterilization, and any action before, during or after intercourse that is specifically intended to prevent procreation (Paul VI, Humanae vitae 14). Where there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, couples may confine intercourse to the infertile times (Paul VI, Humanae vitae 16). The pope expected that perhaps “not everyone will easily accept this particular teaching” (Paul VI, Humanae vitae 18 and dating clause).

The Lambeth Conference of 1968 recorded its appreciation of the pope’s concern for marriage and found itself “unable to agree” that all methods of conception control other than abstinence or the use of infertile periods are contrary to the order established by God; it reaffirmed three resolutions of 1958 (Lambeth Conference 1968, Resolution 22). One of them says that the responsibility for deciding the number and frequency of children has been laid by God on the consciences of parents (Lambeth Conference 1958, Resolution 115).

The Catholic bishops of Canada, on 27 September 1968, declared themselves in accord with the pope’s teaching on the dignity of married life (Canadian bishops, Statement on Humanae Vitae (1968), heading and paragraph 2). They acknowledged that a certain number of Catholics found it “either extremely difficult or even impossible to make their own all elements of this doctrine” and said that these should not be considered shut off from the body of the faithful (Canadian bishops, Statement on Humanae Vitae (1968), paragraph 17). Others, who accepted the teaching but found themselves in what seemed to them a clear conflict of duties and had tried sincerely but without success to follow the directives, could be assured, they wrote, that “whoever honestly chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience” (Canadian bishops, Statement on Humanae Vitae (1968), paragraph 26). The bishops of the United States, on 15 November, called the encyclical an authoritative statement that does not judge the consciences of individuals, and set norms for theological dissent, which begin from a presumption in favour of the teaching office (United States bishops, Human Life in Our Day (1968), ‘The encyclical and its content’, ‘The encyclical and conscience’ and ‘Norms of licit theological dissent’). The Catechism of 1992 repeats the encyclical’s distinction between periodic continence and every action meant to render procreation impossible (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2370).