Canadian Bishops’ Statement on the Encyclical Humanae Vitae (the Winnipeg Statement)
The statement issued by the Catholic bishops of Canada from their plenary assembly at St Boniface, Winnipeg, on 27 September 1968, two months after Humanae vitae. It affirms solidarity with the pope and gives pastoral guidance for those who cannot accept all of the encyclical.
The statement’s heading gives its date and place. Its six sections are headed “Solidarity with the Pope”, “Solidarity with the Faithful”, “Christian Conscience and Divine Law”, “Teaching Office of the Church”, “Preliminary Pastoral Guidance” and “Invitation to Social Pastoral Action”. Paragraph 16 asks those who teach in the church’s name to refrain from public opposition to the encyclical. Paragraph 17 acknowledges that some Catholics find it difficult or impossible to make all of its doctrine their own and says that they are not shut off from the body of the faithful. Paragraph 26 concerns those who accept the teaching but find themselves in what seems to them a conflict of duties.
It is the bishops’ own text and a primary source for how one national hierarchy received the encyclical. The wiki has read it in full only in the copy linked here, which is hosted by critics of the statement. The sentences quoted from paragraphs 2, 17 and 26 were compared with the text printed in Robert G. Hoyt, ed., The Birth Control Debate (National Catholic Reporter, 1968), as the Internet Archive’s full-text search shows it, and agree word for word; that book is available there only on loan. See Humanae Vitae.
Cited in
- 25 July 1968, firm date