Editorial

Reverence for human life and sexuality

The publication date for this editorial is May 29, the Memorial of Pope St. Paul VI, who was ordained a priest in 1920 and served in the Vatican diplomatic corps for 30 years before he was named archbishop of Milan. Elected pope in 1963, he presided over the final years of the Second Vatican Council and was responsible for beginning the implementation of its reforms.

Pope Paul VI was the author of several significant encyclicals and apostolic exhortations, including the 1967 encyclical “Populorum Progressio” (“The Progressive Development of Peoples”) and the 1975 apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Nuntiandi” (“On Evangelization in the Modern World”). But his most famous, and most controversial, publication was his 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae” (“On Human Life”), which addressed the regulation of birth.

The era in which “Humanae Vitae” was written was a turbulent one. It was a time of political and civil unrest, and it was a time when the meaning of human sexuality was being challenged and the practice of artificial contraception was changing the way people (both married and unmarried) engaged in sexual activity.

Many, both inside the Church and in the broader culture, had hoped that the pope would relax the Church’s long-held teachings on sexual activity. They were disappointed when Pope Paul affirmed the dual purpose of sexual intercourse as both unitive (expressing the total self-giving love between spouses) and procreative (openness to bearing children).

Artificial contraception, the pope argued, separates these two essential elements, compromising the true meaning of conjugal love and effectively degrading both spouses by disrupting the totality of self-gift intended by God.

This is a challenging teaching even today, but in fact the years that have passed since “Humanae Vitae” first appeared have shown that its warnings were prophetic.

“Humanae Vitae” argued against the use of artificial birth control methods, foreseeing that such practices could lead to grave consequences—including marital infidelity, a lowering of moral standards, the objectification and disrespect of women and societal harm. Pope Paul warned that reliance on contraception could open the door to widespread moral decline and the potential imposition of contraceptive practices by regimes as has happened in China and North Korea, whose public authorities focused exclusively on population control.

At the time that Pope Paul issued “Humanae Vitae,” there were many in the world who feared overpopulation. More than 50 years later, the opposite is true, as there is a greater concern with birthrates dropping below replacement level in countries around the world, including the U.S. An argument could be made that a contraceptive mentality has contributed in many cases to indifference or even opposition to openness to new life.

“Humanae Vitae” emphasizes the sacredness of marriage and sexuality as a total gift-of-self open to life. It argues against artificial contraception due to its potential for spiritual, moral, relational and cultural harms, and the encyclical proposes natural family planning as the morally licit way to regulate births responsibly while fostering communication, respect and intimacy in marriage.

St. Paul VI’s foresight concerning the social ramifications of contraception and its broader cultural implications remains influential in Catholic moral teaching and practice despite the fact that many people today—including some Catholics—ignore them.

Recent popes have all affirmed the Church’s teaching on human sexuality and have emphasized that responsible parenthood involves prayerful and conscientious decision-making by married couples, taking into account their personal situation, the dignity of each partner and the demands of the times. This responsibility is exercised through open dialogue and acceptance of life within the framework of marriage, using morally acceptable means such as natural family planning.

These same popes, including Francis and Leo XIV, have argued against a narrow or exclusive focus on sexual sins. They remind us that in the Catholic view of morality there are broader issues at stake such as indifference to war, poverty, injustice, environmental concerns and inhumane treatment of migrants and political opponents. Still, the Church’s traditional teaching on the role of sexuality as exclusive to marriage between one woman and one man remains.

As Pope Paul VI teaches in “Humanae Vitae”:

“[Married love] is a love which is total—that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions and not thinking solely of their own convenience. Whoever really loves his partner loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for the partner’s own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself … .

“[Married] love is fecund. It is not confined wholly to the loving interchange of husband and wife; it also contrives to go beyond this to bring new life into being” (#9).

On this day when we honor the memory of St. Paul VI, let’s thank God for the gift of human sexuality, and let’s pray for the grace to use it wisely.

—Daniel Conway