In 1965 Bishops Voted 9 to 3 that Artificial Contraception a Not a Sin (Part3)

continuation ... Part 3

Legacy of Humanae Vitae

In 1963, 70 percent of Catholics believed that the pope derived his teaching authority from Christ through St. Peter. By 1974, only 42 percent believed the same thing.[8] By 1999 nearly 80 percent of Catholics believed that a person could be a good Catholic without obeying the church hierarchy’s teaching on birth control.[9]  Catholic sociologist Andrew Greeley noted in 1985: “Certainly never in the history of Catholicism have so many Catholics in such apparent good faith decided that they can reject the official teaching of the church as to what is sexually sinful and what is not, and to do so while continuing the regular practice of Catholicism and even continuing the description of themselves as good, strong, solid Catholics.”[10]

John Paul II Takes a Hard Line

A refusal to tolerate any public dissent on the encyclical quickly became one of the hallmarks of John Paul II’s papacy. He moved aggressively to quell any dissent on the encyclical, promoting to the highest ranks of the hierarchy only those priests and bishops who agreed wholeheartedly with the ban and taking disciplinary action against clergy who dissented publicly. Widely respected Jesuit theologican Avery Cardinal Dulles said that adherence to Humanae Vitae became a “litmus test” that trumped all other issues, which resulted in the exclusion of qualified theologians from teaching positions and the advancement of bishops of “debatable quality.”[11]

Rhetorically, Pope John Paul II raised the teaching on contraception above almost all else in the church, using language that confirmed it was absolutely inflexible. In 1983, he issued a statement that said: “Contraception must objectively be considered so illicit that it can never for any reason be justified,” in response to several national bishops’ conferences which had suggested that contraceptive use (not abortion, but contraceptive use) was not a grave offense in situations such as when conceiving a child and becoming pregnant would threaten a woman’s health.[12] In 1988, he told Catholic theologians that they could not question the ban on contraception and to do so would be like questioning “the very idea of God’s holiness.”[13] In 1989, he sidestepped the fact that the teaching had never been declared infallible by proclaiming that Humanae Vitae had been “written by the creative hand of God in the nature of the human person.”[14] 

(to be continued ...)