“I thank God that I live in a day when the enemy is outside the Church, and I know where he is, and what he is up to.  But, I foresee a day when the enemy will be both outside and inside the Church ... and, I pray for the poor faithful who will be caught in the crossfire.”
—John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890)

Shouldn’t every bishop ask each of his priests individually if they agree with and actively support Church teachings on contraception?  Since all clergy just before ordination must swear on the Bible that they will defend Church teachings, shouldn’t this oath be reaffirmed every so often by the bishops on important matters such as contraception - especially since it is a known fact that a majority of Catholics contracept?  But some bishops might have to take their heads out of the sand in order to find out what exactly their priests are teaching in their name.  The problem has not been with priests but with some bishops.  But the horse is already out of the barn, isn’t it?

Amen!  I am 61 years old, and I attended a Cathlic boys’ school when ‘Humanae Vitae’ was published.  I was taught by the religious brother teaching my religion class that he opposed ‘Humanae Vitae’; he said outright that Pope Paul VI was wrong.  He then proceeded to teach my class how to use various artificial contraception drugs and devices.  This heretical teaching contiued at my Catholic college.  This article is correct in its’ summation; we are now seeing the rotten fruit of over 40 years of heresy being promoted by many bishopes and priests via the Health and Human Services mandate concerning insurance coverage of artificial contraception, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs.

Could this be the real reason behind the reluctance of bishops to excommunicate prominent Catholics especially those holding elective office…the dissent of priest post 1968 which perhaps misled the laity?

Contraception is the costliest plague, in both blood and treasure ever visited upon mankind. Obama conjures up memories of Adolph Hitler in his HHS mandate, and his reelection will signal the doom of this great experiment in self-government based on endowment by Our Reator.

Contraception is the costliest plague, in both blood and treasure ever visited upon mankind. Obama conjures up memories of Adolph Hitler in his HHS mandate, and his reelection will signal the doom of this great experiment in self-government based on endowment by Our Creator.

It is about time we hear this preached from the pulpit.  I have rarely heard a priest preach on the subject of contraception and abortion. We need Our Lord’s shepherds to lead us, now more then ever with the Obama administration attempts to undermine ” Holy Mother Church” and her teachings, necessary for our eternal salvation. ” Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us”

Excellent article… Thank you Father.

This is quite revealing and explains why I have been puzzled about Catholics who Receive the Eucharist while practicing contraception. Nancy Pelosi truly troubles me. I wonder how this meets with “freedom of conscience” promoted by the Second Vatican Council whereby when a majority of Catholics believe something is good, that makes it right. For someone who thought she know, now I am confused.

This is an excellent presentation of the “slippery slope” of this teaching!  God Bless you for writing it and making it so easy to understand.
I took a class from Dr. Janet Smith at the Theology of the Body Institute this January, and it was the first I had heard of the “priestly fracture”.  More Catholics need to understand how this came to be, I am so grateful for learning about this, and I think it will help many Catholics forgive and understand why their pastors never presented more truths about contraception.  The HHS mandate is opening up such an opportunity for more Catholics to become faithful and educated!  Let’s keep the prayers coming, God Bless our bishops!

Excellent column Fr. Markey but also terribly sad that we have come to this point.  But let us be optimistic.  As God brings good from evil, one senses a new age of Catholic persecution is upon us where the sheep and the goats will be separated acting to cleanse the Church from false doctrine and outspoken disobedience.  In the history of the Church this has happened a number of times and each time the Church has thrived afterwards.  Let us pray to Our Lady that all involved in this process have the grace of courage and perseverance to stay loyal to the Holy Father and all the Bishops who are in accord with him.

  This above version of the history of Humanae Vitae leaves out detail and results in slanted history.  Here are some missing pieces:
    1.  That generation of 1968 were the ex cathedra Catholics who were drilled on the specialness of ex cathedra infallibilty by nuns who readied them for the 1950 encyclical on the Assumption of Mary.  If you were 12 years old when the infallible Assumption encyclical was celebrated in Catholic schools, you were 30 years old when Humanae Vitae came out and you were using the inaccurate rythmn method not the fully developed NFP method.
    2.  Curran is always brought up because he was extreme.  These pocket history versions do not bring up the major European theologians who dissented and were not censured by any Pope since 1968…Fr. Karl Rahner who was post humously praised by Archbishop Amato of the CDF to John Allen at the Lateran conference in honor of Rahner nine years ago….nor do they bring up Bernard Haring who for years affirmed the traditional natural law objections to birth control as a major moral theologian in Europe but changed.
    3.  One problem for intelligent laity was that Christ never spoke about the issue nor did Paul so it looked like an issue started by celibates in the early Church who had to use tremendous effort in this area if they were to remain celibate themselves.  How could an issue be so central and not be addressed by Christ nor by God’s very detailed laws to the Jews nor by Paul?  If Onan was killed for coitus interruptus (Jerome said it was for Onan begrudging his brother’s advantage…I think Onan was risking the non appearance of Christ, a sacrilege…Christ had to come through the tiny house of Judah), then why later when God does a detailed law saying who one cannot sleep with ...does he not even mention coitus interruptus if the issue is so central.
    4.  Catholic conservative imprimatured moral theology tomes that post date Lumen Gentium 25’s religious submission of mind and will to the non infallible contain the concept of sincere, prayerful, counseled dissent in regard to the non
infallible and this concept is no where in the catechism ( see Germain Grisez’s ” Christian Moral Principles” page 854).
    5.  The Humanae Vitae generation saw articles in Time and Newsweek on the odd things saints and Popes said about sex in the Middle Ages.  But why doesn’t the Church show these oddities and then explain how they were inevitable in the context of the time.  Why does outside reading show them and Catholic education doesn’t show them.  Further John Noonan Jr. showed how asking for the marriage debt without willing children was venial sin for Augustine and for Aquinas copying him 700 years later and for all Catholics who followed them for centuries until it was overturned by the Church by
implication in explicitly affirming the natural methods.  The tradition then had problems.  Theologians were saying…let’s back up til we know how many problems.

St. Gianna pray for us! http://www.saintgianna.org/main.htm

@ bill bannon:  You don’t address the fact that all hormonal contraceptives, the most frequently used types, do cause abortions of persons already conceived.  Read the inserts provided with the medications - it’s not easy to find, but it’s there.

Did you know that many young non-Catholic Christians are learning the destructive nature of artificial contraception and rejecting it and learning either Sympto-Thermal or Billings natural family planning methods?  Did you know infertile couples are having successful conceptions and pregnancies due to the research done about natural family planning?

Shutting down our precious bodies with a course of artificial hormones is harmful and harms the environment.  There is no argument about the harm - we’ve just accepted that women aren’t worth anything that isn’t convenient.  Despite all the “green” talk in our culture - and I live as green as they come, it’s very important to our family! - and we are polluting our water with loads of hormones.  But it’s okay, because it’s convenient.

Father Markey, please tell me why the Catholic Church doesn’t just come out and say why, in a very practical sense, artificial contraception is so bad?  I will tell you why it is so bad: it makes people promiscuous.  Without the threat of pregnancy, people give in to their urges and this results in promiscuous behavior on a scale never before seen in all of humanity.  Anyone who doesn’t think this is true should visit a college campus and see how so many of our young people behave.  It causes more divorce (married people can be promiscuous too), more abortions (for those instances when the contraception fails, and it will inevitably fail if you use it enough), more broken families, and in the long run a drastically low birth rate (look at Europe, Japan, and South Korea).  Even the most disinterested college kids understand that the reason they have all the sex they’re having is because they can indulge in pleasure without responsibility.  Do you think the women in the pornography industry would do all the things they do if there was a threat of pregnancy?  The vasy majority would not.  Now having said all of this, I am truly perplexed why we do not hear such common sense coming from our pulpits.  If a layman like me can find this information on Catholic web sites, then why can’t our clergy?

Thank you, Father Markey, for this excellent synopsis of the contemporary history that has led to the current condition in which the Church finds itself, especially in America and Western Europe. We need to pray as Jesus did in John 17:20-23, “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.” Ut Omnes Unum Sint.

Thank you Father for this letter.  I would like to say however that I don’t trust NFP.  According to studies, NFP is not going to prevent pregnancy even if done properly.  There are a certain percentage of woman who should not become pregnant for various reasons (medicines they are on, mental health issues, healing from a former pregnancy, the risk to mother that what happened with a first pregnancy could happen again in pregnancy #2, and on and on….)  While I do not believe in abortion, I do believe in a families right to protect the mother and the already living children’s best health interests.  If you know having another pregnancy will put the mother’s health in danger and could possibly be fatal….what does the teaching say about this?  It seems there are gray areas left up to the individual conscience of the faithful.  NFP is good in practice when it would be ok either way to have a baby now or preferably wait, but what about when having another child would be a danger to the mother and therefore to the stability of the family (who might lose a mother)?  I know there must be someone somewhere that has all this figured out :)

@Bill B: Well, now that 50+ years have passed since the pill was introduced and abortion became legal to banish children conceived despite a pill that promised 100% effectiveness, let’s look at the cultural casualties, shall we? When oral contraceptives were introduced, non-marital births were just 5% of all live births. By 2010, non-marital births had steadily increased to 40% of all live births — despite an explosion of federal and state programs providing free or subsidized birth control. The social pathologies associated with non-marital sexual relationships — facilitated and fostered by artificial birth control — raises questions about this government’s reasons for implementing the mandate with the goals of securing women’s health and reducing both unintended pregnancies and the associated financial impact on government-assistance programs for such families.

The social problems we see today are fostered by the availability of contraceptives and abortion. These realities are inherently grasped by anyone who actually sits down and reads Humanae Vitae. Pope Paul VI warned of four results if the widespread use of contraceptives was accepted:

1.General lowering of moral standards
2.A rise in infidelity, and illegitimacy
3.The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men.
4.Government coercion in reproductive matters.
Does that sound familiar? 

Because it sure sounds like what’s been happening for the past 40 years. 

As George Akerloff wrote in Slate over a decade ago,

By making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother, the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father.

Instead of two parents being responsible for the children they conceive, an expectation that was held up by social norms and by the law, we now take it for granted that neither parent is necessarily responsible for their children. Men are now considered to be fulfilling their duties merely by paying court-ordered child-support. That’s a pretty dramatic lowering of standards for “fatherhood.”

So where should “intelligent Catholics” go to form their moral conscience, other than the teachings of Jesus Christ? The media? Do you still think that it’s just OBVIOUSLY SILLY to get your moral cues from a venerable faith (as opposed to what? Britney Spears?).

These are the facts, Mr. Bill. Wake up.

A good, timely article. One observation, however, regarding Fr. Markey’s statement that “some priests” have refused to read the letter from their local bishop regarding the Church’s position on the HHS mandate: having attended Mass at several parishes in Michigan and Palm Springs since release of the HHS mandate, I have heard not one priest mention either the mandate or the Church’s opposition to it!

Shannon,

If the situation is as grave as you make it out to be, then abstaining as long as necessary should be the choice.  As difficult as that is (I’m a NFP-practicing husband and father, I know it would be brutally tough), the reality still is that if one did not trust NFP enough and/or wasn’t able to learn the biology with the depth needed to prevent pregnancy 100%, through then they should abstain.

For their spouse and current children, this would be the most loving thing to do.

J.J.
    The reason I didn’t address that is because embryology developments show that identical twinning can occur up til day 14…after implantation…which made both Fr. Karl Rahner and Fr. Bernard Haring disagree with your school of immediate personhood after fertilization.  Even John Paul II notes in Evangelium Vitae that that moment of person-with-a-soul is not a decided question.
    The fertilized pre embryo can be teased in the laboratory into twinning for roughly two weeks because the cells are totipotential for that time which is to say they can divide up to day 14 into becoming two or five people so the cell mass could not have been a person since persons cannot divide nor can souls divide according to Aquinas who said also that souls fill every part of the body and their leaving the body results in death.  Modern embryology is bringing us back to the delayed ensoulment that reigned in the Church longer than immediate ensoulment.  Trent’s catechism ascribed immediate ensoulement only to Christ in the Incarnation:
       ” That this was the astonishing and admirable work of the Holy Ghost cannot be doubted; for according to the order of nature the rational soul is united to the body only after a certain lapse of time.”
    Regensburg criticized Islam for separating faith from reason.  The school of immediate ensoulment strikes me as doing that same thing by seeing pre embryos of the first 14 days as persons.  Persons don’t divide after 14 days into identical triplets.  Souls do not divide according to Aquinas whose delayed ensoulment will return.  Abortion is infallibly condemned in section 62 of Evangelium Vitae but the beginning point of abortion is not settled infallibly…ie at what point is a person present and embryology is saying it can’t be an individual until twinning is no longer possible at roughly day 14… after implantation.

Shannon,
Reading your article, I get the image of one of my children, looking at a new vegetable on their plate with the greatest of suspicion !

1. NFP works and works well.. you just have to do it. There are 2 major approaches and numerous adaptations for difficult cycles. (We have had a more challenging route ourselves).

2. NFP does not pollute the body and drive the natural cycles and body processes beyond God’s natural design. We may only suspect at all of the late life health issues which will be suffered aside from the currently known and published dangers.

3. NFP does not endanger the ova of the future daughters (and sons?)in the NEXT generation. (The old ones did).

4. When passed through the bodies and into the waste water systems (sewage plants) of the world…these hormone flushes are, infact changing the reproductive abilities of many of the benthic communities, leading to conditions of impo-sex and overall loss and diminishment of underwater species. ( Why has the fishing been so poor lately)? Almost all of the current technology facilities for the US alone can not remove them…
And in some area of the US… your communities sewage discharge becomes someone elses drinking water.

5. So, for todays generation “contraception is not “green” at all, infact it is harmful to the planet and all therin!

6. Is the rapid and steady rise of Autism and the apparant rise of homosexuality contributed to by the elevated hormonal bath? Will medical science study it? Or…has the research already been buried? This we’ll probably never know
Notice, that I have not even begun to look at the scriptural, moral and ethical issues. But if one were to simply read paragraph 17 of Humanae Vitae, we would see with todays eyes, prophesy fulfilled.

SO to come full circle, as I would tell my children, “eat your vegetables, they are so very good for you”.

Thank you father. It’s a long shot, but wouldn’t it be nice if this got published in your state’s Catholic newspapers?

Shannon: You present a complicated issue, but it has to be admitted that the same problem exists if contraceptives are used. A similar percentage of pregnancy can occur with either one. Couples in that situation are not “safe” with contraceptive use either.

What about those good priests who are “punished” by chanceries, priest assignment boards and bishops when parishioners complain about that good homily on contraception? Or, when they try to uphold it in Confession? This is still a problem. Bishops especially, need to find a way that priests can inform them when they have been persecuted by other priests, pastors, and diocesan administration.

SHANNON—That’s the point—NFP is NOT suppose to stop pregnancy completely because that is the whole point (tied together with the unitive purpose) of having sex while married.  But it IS a licit and moral way to actually (Naturally) Plan for a Family!  As Janet Smith qutoed Garrison Keillor - “If you don’t want to go to Minneapolis, what are you doing on the train?”  NFP is faithful to the entire teaching of the Church and natural law… It’s not intended to totally AVOID children, because every marital act must be OPEN to the possiblity.  One of the primary reasons articifical contraception is immoral is that it allows you to DEFY God’s will for a child by deny any possiblity of conceiving (though, as we know, no artficial contraception is 100% effective.)  It’s a MORAL thing—something I know many of us can’t comprehend or get riled against.

And BILL BANNON—its time to stop pointing fingers at others trying to excuse failure of moral conscience.  Just because others resisted and weren’t discipline doesn’t change the fact that many dissented—LIKE CURRAN.  And be careful when you accuse of presenting a one-sided argument, as yours is clearly an attempt to preserve an illusory and false freedom that was promoted by radical “theologicans” Yes, various ways of describing it can be found in the Fathers and Magesterial teachings throughout the years—but don’t forget that the Church has always sought ways to AID us in our growth and development, not by changing the teachings but helping us by grace to grow from one stage of moral development to another.  Abortion and contraception were not evils created by celibates—its part of the DNA of the CAtholic Church sicne the early days and even predates it as many God-fearers struggled to survive in Roman, Greek, and other pagan cultures….  Just because people DO IT, or a culture/government accepts, promotes, or ‘legalizes’ something doesn’t make it right, moral, or just. 

Oh, and true, Jesus and Paul may not have spoeken directly about it, but that hardly makes a case for your posistion.  They were part of a great tradidtion (as recorded in the Bible, and presented through Judaism (Old Covanent) and renewed and deepend in the New.  If its assumed as part of the faith, then unless they come across a specific instance of failure or abuse of the teaching, why WOULD they have to mention it?  And besides, who says they never did?  We know Scripture doesn’t contain all that Christ taught, and it certianly doesn’t contain all of Paul’s letters and teachings.  If you understood the concept of the Deposit of Faith and how these teachings are indeed embedded in the Catholic Faith from the beginning, you wouldn’t ask such questions.

Sorry for ranting… just passionate about the topic. Love you all—and I argue this for those who simply need to hear it.

@Shannon: I can’t say I have this all figured out, but as a layperson, I was taught in moral theology that we have a responsibility to educate our conscience according to the teachings of the Church. Then, when faced with a situation that seems to contradict our knowledge, we pray about its application to our situation. It is here that personal decisions are made between a wife and her husband, her doctor and God. There’s a BIG difference between taking artificial contraceptives to facilitate a promiscuous lifestyle or refuse the gift of life because it’s inconvenient, and quite another to use them for medical support. The Church does not want to risk the lives of women, but we have a responsibility to educate ourselves on ALL the alternatives and consequences, spiritual and otherwise, of our choices.  If I am in error, I pray someone will correct me, as I do not want to lead anyone astray.

Hat lady,
    Post hoc ergo propter hoc…After this therefore because of this….is a logic fallacy.  Lower sexual moral standards have been caused ALSO by TV shows which have been offensive from the beginning of TV with Catholics like Dean Martin back then necking with show girls as he went from one to another and sang in a faux drunken stupor.  His and Sinatra’s multiple divorces also lowered standards.  Lower standards were caused by the automobile which is not an evil but was used for evil in that it allowed young couples to be off on their own and out of reach.  In fact the auto is probably involved in most infidelity.  The auto shows that a good object can facilitate evil.  Wine is a good object yet it can be used in the process of seduction.  Does that make wine and the auto and the TV intrinsic evils?  No.  The French theologian, John Gury said in 1850: ” In our days, the horrid plague of onanism has flourished everywhere’”.  In short natural contraception was widespread in Europe in 1850 and so lust doesn’t need chemicals.

I wonder what would happen if priests frequently gave homilies that said contraception was a mortal sin and precluded reception of communion to the 22% of Catholics who actually show up for Sunday Mass. I don’t think we’re going to find out.

http://cara.georgetown.edu/CARAServices/requestedchurchstats.html

Shannon, NFP when used correctly is as effective for avoiding pregnancy as any contraceptive.  The problem with these hypothetically dangerous pregnancies is that they are hypothetical.  There are numerous stories of women who have been told they must abort or die who come through the pregnancy unscathed, sometimes even with improvement in their medical condition. If a woman truly believes she absolutely does not want to become pregnant, total abstinence is available, though not necessary. NFP used with added days of abstinence for extra surety would be just as good. Contraceptives have failure rates and provide a false sense of security which often leads to abortion when they fail.  Deciding to use NFP is putting your trust in God rather than in chemicals and doctors.

No mention of John Paul II’s groundbreaking Theology of the Body which is a complete affirmation of Humanae Vitae? This series of talks beginning in 1978 that were given in Papal Audiences were meant for the world. Men and women, from the beginning were created in God’s image and in imitation of the Trinity’s sincere gift to one another, we are to be gift. The body is not meant to be used separate from the soul. As one entity, male and female, we are one day destined to be the bride of Christ. Contraception frustrates the total gift.

@ EVERYONE WHO RESPONDED TO ME:

I agree that Birth Control and other contraceptives have similar failure rates.  When you look at the statistics, NFP failure rate is higher than lets say condoms.  I personally, wouldn’t use oral contraceptives because I think the effects to the mother and the potential effects to the possible pregnancy are too great.  Personally, I feel like condoms are the best choice for us to space out pregnancies.  My husband would not like me very much if I had him abstain for a year following a birth (thanks for the advice, but I’d have to worry about my marriage at that point) My body can no longer recover from a c-section in 12 months after having a c-section after c-section…many doctors have told me I need to space them out further to prevent risk to me and the future baby.  Our last pregnancy was high risk due to all the tears to the uterus and our son was born by emergency c-section when I experienced severe pain at 37 wks. and my uterus tore.  So it’s not that I’m not open to pregnancy, but rather that for my health and for that of a future offspring it would be wise to space them out further to allow my body to heal.  I’ve been told not to have any more by several doctors actually due to the condition of my uterus after many c-sections or have reconstructive surgery to my uterus!  Somehow, I think reconstructive surgery would also be a unnecessary medical intervention and would be unwise for my situation.

@ bill bannon - without the conception, you have no human being.  No conception, no baby, no toddler, no preschooler, no teenager, no elderly person.  Conception = human life, soul or no soul.  If you’d been aborted by any means at any moment post-conception, you’d not be here.  No conception, no person.  “Ensoulment” has no effect on the fact of human life existing at conception - that fertilized egg has the entirety of a human being within.

Just how many of those protesting priests, (some of which are now bishops) even read Humanae Vitae? None, or very, very few, which means that they wouldn’t even know about Pope Paul’s plea to his fellow Priests and Bishops and we have seen the results. The evil one is in the Church, right now, still lurking somewhat, but as Our Blessed Mother has told us, his time is almost over and he is getting bolder. It won’t be too much longer when we will see the scandal that She predicted just over 100 years ago and it is a lot worse than the moral scandal of the homosexual ‘priests’ that invaded the Church of Jesus. A whole lot worse!!  +JMJ+

@Bill Bannon: “personhood” is no longer part of the debate. The definition changes according to whatever philosophical/theological opinion an individual has. “Humanhood” is the important thing now. Science has shown that, at conception, there is a life with a completely different DNA/genetic code than the mother. Being inside a human mother, the life is a human life. What women has ever given birth to a frog or an oak tree?

J.J.
  Actually a high percentage…maybe 50%... are going to fail to implant by nature.  Fertility treatments of the uterus have allowed more implantations in individual cases which is why we know that healthy not defective pre embryos are failing to implant by nature.  Is God allowing 50% or 40% of mankind to die in the first 8 days or so without having a brain that participates in choosing Him?  Seems implausible.  Ruminate on Regensburg as time goes by.

Shannon,NFP is extremely “reliable” when one “follows the rules”. An experienced NFP instructor can be very helpful, especially if one has medical issues. (Remember, NFP is a precise science; it is not the “rhythm method”).  Someone who may have a legitimate medical reason for needing to postpone pregnancy would benefit tremendously but getting the care of a physician who specializes in NaPro Technology (visit http://www.popepaulvi.com for more info), also one can find a list of NaPro docs in your area at One More Soul’s website:  http://www.omsoul.com

@bill bannon

“The fertilized pre embryo…can divide up to day 14 into becoming two or five people so the cell mass could not have been a person since persons cannot divide nor can souls divide according to Aquinas who said also that souls fill every part of the body and their leaving the body results in death.  Modern embryology is bringing us back to the delayed ensoulment that reigned in the Church longer than immediate ensoulment.”

Why couldn’t the soul be “divided” up along with the physical body cells?  If what is divided up results in a new person’s body, then why would not the soul, which you say Aquinas says “fill(s) up every part of the body,” come along with those divided cells and “fill up” the new body, as well?  Isn’t God the creator of that new life, and if so, can’t ensoulment follow along with God’s creative nature?

The zygote (the fertilized cell) is the first stage of embryonic life, which for 14 days can divide, forming a new body or bodies that can grow into another complete body or bodies.  I’ve never heard of that stage of embryonic life referred to as a “fertilized pre embryo,” which makes it sound like something other than what it is.

Still believe,
Watch Aquinas distinguish between accidental form (what you are suggesting…and divisible) and substantial form (what he is suggesting…and indivisible).

Summa T. (Part I/Question 76/ article 8) here: 

” But since the soul is united to the body as its form, it must necessarily be in the whole body, and in each part thereof. For it is not an accidental form, but the substantial form of the body. Now the substantial form perfects not only the whole, but each part of the whole. For since a whole consists of parts, a form of the whole which does not give existence to each of the parts of the body, is a form consisting in composition and order, such as the form of a house; and such a form is accidental. But the soul is a substantial form; and therefore it must be the form and the act, not only of the whole, but also of each part…. on the withdrawal of the soul, no part of the body retains its proper action…”

@ bill bannon RE “J.J.
  Actually a high percentage…maybe 50%... are going to fail to implant by nature.  Fertility treatments of the uterus have allowed more implantations in individual cases which is why we know that healthy not defective pre embryos are failing to implant by nature.  Is God allowing 50% or 40% of mankind to die in the first 8 days or so without having a brain that participates in choosing Him?  Seems implausible.  Ruminate on Regensburg as time goes by.”

Of course a high percentage of conceptions fail to implant but WE don’t know which ones.  That’s what makes artificial contraception so risky.  We don’t know.

“Many cardinals, many bishops, and many priests are on the road to perdition and with them are taking many souls.” - alleged message of Our Lady, Garabandal, Spain, June 18th, 1965.

The rage and hostility among many clerics following the publication of “Humane Vitae” was now understood in light of that message. Today, the despicable sex scandal within the Church fulfills the prophetic voice of Our Mother, given almost 47 years ago.

billbannon: Failing to implant “by nature” is not a sin. Knowingly participating in something that is known to cause this failure is. One is unintentional and cannot be helped, the other is done with the express intention of preventing pregnancy in the first place, with knowledge that if the egg does indeed become fertilized, the life may be terminated through the failure to implant. That’s a big difference.

@Shannon,  it sounds like you have a complicated case. I would encourage you to meet with a NaProTechnology doctor found at the Gianna Center in Manhattan. They will be able to assist you in learning more about NFP and helping with spacing out pregnancies in order for your body to heal.I wish you the best of luck.  http://www.fertilitycare.org/giannacenter  http://www.creightonmodel.com/

bill bannon wrote:

  The reason I didn’t address that is because embryology developments show that identical twinning can occur up til day 14…after implantation…which made both Fr. Karl Rahner and Fr. Bernard Haring disagree with your school of immediate personhood after fertilization.  Even John Paul II notes in Evangelium Vitae that that moment of person-with-a-soul is not a decided question.
  The fertilized pre embryo can be teased in the laboratory into twinning for roughly two weeks because the cells are totipotential for that time which is to say they can divide up to day 14 into becoming two or five people so the cell mass could not have been a person since persons cannot divide nor can souls divide according to Aquinas who said also that souls fill every part of the body and their leaving the body results in death.  Modern embryology is bringing us back to the delayed ensoulment that reigned in the Church longer than immediate ensoulment.  Trent’s catechism ascribed immediate ensoulement only to Christ in the Incarnation:
**********************************************************************************

I wonder how people who make this argument explain the Genesis account about Eve being made from a part of Adam’s body?  Was Adam devoid of a soul until Eve was created?

bill bannon wrote:
  The reason I didn’t address that is because embryology developments show that identical twinning can occur up til day 14…after implantation…which made both Fr. Karl Rahner and Fr. Bernard Haring disagree with your school of immediate personhood after fertilization.  Even John Paul II notes in Evangelium Vitae that that moment of person-with-a-soul is not a decided question.
  The fertilized pre embryo can be teased in the laboratory into twinning for roughly two weeks because the cells are totipotential for that time which is to say they can divide up to day 14 into becoming two or five people so the cell mass could not have been a person since persons cannot divide nor can souls divide according to Aquinas who said also that souls fill every part of the body and their leaving the body results in death.  Modern embryology is bringing us back to the delayed ensoulment that reigned in the Church longer than immediate ensoulment.  Trent’s catechism ascribed immediate ensoulement only to Christ in the Incarnation:
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I wonder how people who make this argument explain the Genesis account about Eve being made from a part of Adam’s body?  Was Adam devoid of a soul until Eve was created?

You said it well. We have HHS today because of the anti-Catholic Liberal priests. These scoundrels gave us homosexuals who abused boys which resulted in millions of dollars in court settlements.  They happily sat silent while our country degenerated into the moral abyss we find ourselves in today.  But, it still continues today. In spite of what our faux president and his party has done to the Church, they still remain happily mute.

Vance,
    Cardinal Law who put children in danger from Fr. Shanley by passing him around was an arch conservative on sexual doctrine.  Cardinal Groer was also promoted because he was conservative but had to step down from past sexual abuse.
Macial Maciel Degollado was believed by John Paul II because he was conservative and he turned out to be abusive.
Weakland was liberal and a transgressor but not of children.  History is different than our likes and dislikes.

GregB
    Adam was fully grown when God breathed a soul into him. Gn.2:7 then the LORD God formed the man* out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Formed first then ensouled.
Use of the passage leads into the old “formed” litmus test.  You don’t want to go there.

@Bill re: twinning:

Does that mean a cloned human could have no soul?

You seem to assume a twinning division (a divsion of the cells that results in twinning) is an identical process to a developmental division (a division in cells that results in further development of the single being).  As you stated, the lab has to “tease out”, whatever that means, the twinning cells, which would seem to imply a different process from developmental division.

And as we have seen, pluripotent cells can leave an ensouled body (adult stem cells) and be grafted into other ensouled bodies. Therefore,
I don’t see by logical necessity that in a twinning division, the twinned cell cannot be infused with another soul.  Is the twinning division resulting in one “whole body” or two?  It seems, by necessary implication, it results in two, and therefore, no reason the twinned cell cannot be infused with a separate soul at the time of the twinning.  The twinned cell is no longer “one whole” with the other cell, and therefore (much like in the original conception) can be infused with another soul.  In a sense, the twinning becomes a second sort of conception - the conception of another whole. 

By the same reasoning, the original cell maintains its “wholeness” and therefore, its soul remains with it, maintaining Aquinas’ soul-substance integrity.

Is God allowing 50% or 40% of mankind to die in the first 8 days or so without having a brain that participates in choosing Him?

You are conflating two sepaerate things - the immaterial soul, which can return to God upon demise of the body (regardless of its stage of development), and the ability of that soul to express its rationality through union with the body because of the body’s stage of development.  How do we know whether the soul can participate in choosing Him at that stage, based upon those conditions?  The brain does not create the soul (which it seems is what you are implying) but rather allows the soul to manifest itself corporally.  As the Church teaches, the sacraments are the ordinary means of salvation.  We are limited to those means, but God is not.  For this reason, the Pope expressly declined to pronounce on the fate of departed unbaptized infants, departed unborn, etc.

C Matt
  If you cut your finger off in the kitchen, it has life still in it (for Aquinas, it has the vegetative soul) for a time but it does not have a rational soul anymore.

  Aquinas accepted Aristotle’s progression of a vegetative soul first, followed by and subsumed by a sensitive soul followed by and subsumed by a rational soul.  If I donate my stem cells or my kidney to another human being, as they are separated from me, they would revert to the vegetative soul state as they left (still alive) and would be subsumed into the rational soul of the other person.  That is the transfer of a part not the division of a rational whole being.  If the blastocyst is a person as alledged in pro life jargon, we are talking about the splitting of a being not the transfer of a part.  Unless you are seeing a third category other than it being a person (pro life) or a non souled human matter cell mass (me).

Humanae Vitae proceeds from the idea that all marital sex must be open to procreation. That is just wrong and denies the unitive value of marital sex and that it is an expression of love, which Christ likened to his love for the church. I recently read the essential argument from the Birth Control Commission made up of lay people, priests and bishops. Its argument for approving contraception is so reasonable and logical.

Humanae Vitae was the most courageous decision of the Paul VI papacy. If dissenters from it had been disciplined,we might have avoided the still present controversy that cost us the scandalous election of a socialist president.  The scandal continues in the Republican lack of support for Rick Santorum that I clearly consider the most pro-life and conservative candidate.  If CINO help reelect Obama, they will surely merit the wrath of God and most deserve to lose the religious freedoms our nation was founded on.  Eschewing doctrine and discipline was a grave error of VCII.

Jim: Satan’s arguments are always reasonable and logic but seriously flawed as were the attempts to overrule a mandate of God against contraception as early as the first century in the Didache.  Had the committee succeeded, the infallible authority of the Magisterium would have been compromised. Thank God for Pope Paul VI’s decision to save the Church from collapse. VCII contained the seeds of its own destruction that have been trying to sprout ever since.

Bob Rowland
    Humanae Vitae was introduced at its press conference in 1968 by Monseignor Lambrushini who twice noted it was non infallible.  And that message went out to the Assumption generation who had been told in 1950 as Catholic school children that ex cathedra encyclicals were above all others and meant that the Pope could not err in that issue.  If you were 12 in 1950, you were 30 when Humanae Vitae was introduced as non infallible.  To that Assumption generation, Paul VI not using infallibility meant he wasn’t sure of what he was saying or he would have used the word formula of the Assumption.
John Paul II later did just that in Evangelium Vitae section 62 in condemning abortion. 

  Germain Grisez, conservative on most things, argued not that HV was infallible but that the issue itself was infallibly settled in Tradition.  Fr. Karl Rahner maintained it was not and Rahner’s job for years was editing the Enchiridion
Symbolorum…the Catholic tome which keeps track of authority levels of diverse issues.  You might believe it’s infallibly settled in Tradition but Rahner didn’t and that was his job…discerning authority levels for the Enchiridion Symbolorum.
    The Didache is only doubtfully about contraception but does clearly attack abortion.  Don’t mention it though in Harvard Square.  It’s not a great piece of literature.  It is derivative in one section and when it speaks on its own, it says some bizarre things like the following from chapter 3:
    ” My child, do not be a liar for lying leads to thievery.”. Lol….this is the only piece of Christian literature I ever heard of that says breaking the 8th commandment leads to breaking the 7th commandment.
    Here again from chapter 3:
      ”  Do not be a sorcerer, nor be involved in astrology or magic purifications. Do not desire to see these things, for that is how idolatry comes.”
    He is warning about things that already are mortal sins but he seems to think they are not but that they are preparatory to idolatry which is a mortal sin.  That’s like me telling you not to break a bottle over your brother’s head because that will lead to your shooting him with a gun.  Only those who have not read the Didache will be impressed with it.  Any chapter out of Aquinas is superior to the Didache.  Frankly anything by most saints is better than the Didache.

bill bannon:  I suggest that you obtain a copy of Father Mitch Pacwa’s article in the National Catholic Register: Abortion, Contraception, and the Church Fathers.  I go with the Church Fathers, not with the rationalization that occurred after VCII.

Bob,
    His article was deficient.  I read it.

WFBC:  Document the deficiency. I never accept unsubstantiated blanket statements at face value.

Bob,
    I don’t think you’re reading the Fathers or you would not have been impressed by the Didache.  Did you read Jerome’s ” Against Jovinianus”?  Did you read Augustine’s “The Good of Marriage”?  Both contain sexual errors now rejected by the Church.  Here they are:

    Jerome ( a non virgin like Augustine) copying from the Stoics their idea that procreation only justifies having sex…rejected when the Church accepted the use of the infertile periods:

“Against Jovinianus” Book I section 20
    ” Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?”
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    Augustine laying a venial sin guilt trip on millions of future Catholics by saying asking for the marriage debt is venial sin if procreation not intended:

    Augustine.  On Marriage and Concupiscence
Chapter 16 [XIV.]— “A Certain Degree of Intemperance is to Be Tolerated in the Case of Married Persons; The Use of Matrimony for the Mere Pleasure of Lust is Not Without Sin, But Because of the Nuptial Relation the Sin is Venial.
....To escape this evil, even such embraces of husband and wife as have not procreation for their object, but serve an overbearing concupiscence, are permitted, so far as to be within range of forgiveness….”

    Again rejected by the Church when she explicitly affirmed the use of the infertile periods.

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    Aquinas, an actual virgin, copied the bad ideas of Augustine 700 years later:

    Summa theologica/ Supplement…question 49 art 5 “I answer that”: 
  “Consequently there are only two ways in which married persons can come together without any sin at all, namely in order to have offspring, and in order to pay the debt, otherwise it is always at least a venial sin.”

    For Augustine and Aquinas, paying the debt was free of sin…asking for the debt was venial sin if procreation not willed.  Rejected by the Church in the use of the infertile periods.

    You Bob are reading pocket histories of the issue by priests who are avoiding the mistakes if the Fathers.  That is propaganda.  Pope Leo XIII wrote to Catholic authors to knock it off as to the lopsided histories.  Pacwa simply did the old incomplete rendition because the clergy think you can’t process the whole story.  It’s a form of clericalism and Pope Leo is ignored.

Bob,
I was WFBC.  The initials (mine and a granddaughter mixed) followed me from another website without my noticing.  Documentation done above.  Pacwa (you’ll see me in the comments that day) mentions nothing erroneous in the Fathers and thus inflates their authority… nor does he face the fact that Stoicism’s ideas filtered into the Fathers.  Jerome called Seneca “our Seneca” ignoring that Stoics including Seneca believed in infanticide besides believing that sex was only for procreation not for expressing love.  Love as part of sex is not mentioned in Catholicism until Von Hildebrand in the 20th century with about four tiny exceptions in fragments…one in Aquinas.  Here’s Jerome praising his Stoic source: ” Aristotle and Plutarch and OUR SENECA have written treatises on matrimony, out of which we have already made some extracts and now add a few more” Against Jovinianus Bk.I
Stoic natural law lingo is actually found at least twice in Paul’s epistles to they had widespread influence and were stoical during sex I suppose.  Aquinas at least allowed for the loss of reason during sex as appropo to the act.  Not Jerome:

    ”  It is disgraceful to love another man’s wife at all, or one’s own too much. A wise man ought to love his wife with judgment, not with passion.”.  Spoken like an ex fornicator or a Stoic….take your pick.  Jerome must have missed the Song of Songs even though he translated it.

Bill bannon wrote:
GregB
    Adam was fully grown when God breathed a soul into him. Gn.2:7 then the LORD God formed the man* out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Formed first then ensouled.
Use of the passage leads into the old “formed” litmus test.  You don’t want to go there.
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You seem to be trapped in the era of Aquinas and Aristotle.  Since the death of the Angelic Doctor the Catholic Church has put forth the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, where the Blessed Virgin Mary was decreed to be free of the stain of Original Sin from her conception, among being given other spiritual gifts as well.

Greg
    If the phrasing of the IC was actually infallible proof that Mary was ensouled at conception, why has not a Pope drawn that conclusion instead of lower level apologetics people?  Answer: because the Popes know the phrase involved is a dramatic expression rather an empirical comment much like Joseph not having relations with Mary “until”....here:
Matt. 1:24
When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.
25 He had no relations with her UNTIL she bore a son, 12 and he named him Jesus.

    Do we think then that Joseph had relations with Mary because of the word UNTIL.  No…it’s a dramatic phrasing not an empirical comment.
    Apparently John Paul II is not unconvinced of this misuse of the IC since he states that the Church has not committed
itself to ensoulment’s time (Evangelium Vitae, section 60, second paragraph).

Correction: should be “John Paul II is not convinced by this misuse of the IC”.

What role does God the Creator play in the sex act?  Did He stop creating in the book of Genesis?  It is my understanding that only God can create an immortal soul.  The Church teaches that God made humans in His image and likeness.  I have yet to read of anyone who has deduced a proper Trinitarian image and likeness for marriage and procreation.  I think it was Pope John Paul II who said something about comparing human procreation in marriage to the Father and the Son giving rise to the Holy Spirit.  The problem is that humans can’t create eternal souls.  To me the answer is to be found in the teaching that Three Persons make up one Godhead.  God is Three and He is also One.  There were Three Partners in the act of creating Adam.  The only way that you can make the sex act correspond to the creation of Adam is to have three partners.  Those three partners are God (Godhead), man(husband), and woman(wife).  I call it the Trinitarian Recapitulation.

Greg,
    Go here for Aquinas saying that the soul cannot be connected to the sex act:

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1118.htm

peace….I’m leaving the thread inter alia to do taxes.

From what I read he said that the generation of the body cannot give rise to the eternal soul that can exist beyond the death of the body. That is exactly what I said when I said that humans cannot create an eternal soul. Without God there is no way the sex act can in and of itself create a complete human being composed of both a body and an eternal soul. The act of procreation is incomplete until God infuses the eternal soul.

There are two purposes of human sexuality, reproduction and bonding. Only a minority of the acts of marital intercourse are intentionally directed towards reproduction.

After menopause reproduction is impossible, yet intercourse is permitted, even encouraged. Marriage post-menopause is permitted despite it being as infertile as same-sex marriage.

Popes do not claim to make up the Teaching, they claim to be stating it - sometimes in new formulations. The real test is whether the formulation is recognised as belonging to the Deposit of Faith by the sensus fidei.

Most otherwise practising Catholic couples who use artificial contraception with a clear conscience, understand that marriage includes children, but they do not believe that every act of intercourse must be non-contraceptive.

The simple fact is that the majority of the faithful and priests (and I suspect bishops) do not believe that using non-abortifacient contraception to space their families is forbidden by God.

The Catholic Church is proving correct everything non Catholics feared from it as a Member of American Society since the first catholics Moved here in Mass.. Considering over 90% of the Churches following does not even obey their Old Backdated Manly views on Womens Issues, to what end? The Bishops have Publicly called for the Insurrection
of its Members against a Democratically Created Constitutional Law. Just as all us non Catholics have always feared.. The Influence of a Italian Foreign Entity (The Vatican is indeed recognized as such and has its Own US Diplomats there)upon our National Government.

Tax the Buggers… Hold them account to ALL our Laws (Including their Crimes in regards to Child Abuse). Hold these Hypocrites FULLY to Account for their Interference with our Domestic affairs from Italy.

What would we do if a Communist Government Actively called for its followers in our Country to Actively Resist? We would lock THEM ALL UP that are here.. And Sanction and possibly declare WAR on the Foreign Entity responsible.

If you do not like our Laws.. Laws passed Lawfully and Democratically in a Free and Fair System… THEM LEAVE.. Simple as that. It is not the responsibility of the rest of us to condone your Sexism… Your Bigotry… Your Discriminatory Practices..

Hide your Misconduct all you want behind a Illusion of Separation of Church and State. a Day of Reckoning is coming, for all those religious peoples that seek to Perpetuate Discrimination against others.

I say in light of the Bishops entering politics… we should oblige them.

I call for the arrest of all Catholic Leaders INCLUDING the Opoe for their roles in the GLOBAL Sex abuse scandals.. In which MANY laws were broken, and lives destroyed.

I say end the charade.. and hold these groups ACCOUNTABLE for their Actions and Words World Wide.

When I look at the Declaration of Independence, the first unalienable right stated is that of Life.  In the U S Constitution the Preamble reads:
*
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
*
Pay particular attention to the phrase “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”  Posterity is future generations, generations as of yet unborn.  Liberty is the common heritage of all generations of Americans.  How do you abort Posterity and at the same time “secure the Blessings of Liberty” of this aborted Posterity?
Thanks to disastrous Supreme Court decisions the words “and our Posterity” have been pretty well removed from the Preamble. 

As a matter of record for posterity let it be said here that speaking for myself that after 40 years of Mass attendance {that’s 2080+ times) I have NEVER heard the subject of contraception brought up in a homily - I did hear one homily many years ago that mentioned briefly in passing that Abortion was an evil to be avoided. This is not just theory this is my personal experience. This works out to be less than 5/100ths of 1 measly percent “implementation” of the will of the Holy Spirit in the last 40 years. On the other hand I can not count all the many times that I have heard about the “evils of gun ownership” or even the need to support Public Television and donate to the Church etc. etc. So while I can not give these Progressive causes an explicit statistic I can say that they have been very amply represented in the pulpit. So you see “Reverend” Judas Charles Curran you can bask in the Secular World’s adulation about your “courage” for “standing up” to Holy Mother Church and by my experience anyway your side has won an overwhelming propaganda victory in the pulpit. Keep collecting the royalties from all those “required reading” text books of yours foisted year in and year out upon each new class full of Sandra Flukes at Georgetown, Notre Dame et alia; there are many more pieces of silver coming your way as the “Prince” of this world will make sure that you are well taken care of.  Moreover after singing the same song for over 40 years to the same “captive” audiences of naive students who (for a good grades sake) ubiquitously nod in agreement stroking your ego I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you might even “believe” your heresy yourself ..... All I know for certain is that there is something positively blasphemous and demonic about implicitly teaching these students that the proper relationship of Christ to his Church is a “contraceptive” one (which is exactly what you are doing when you advance a contraceptive relationship between husband and wife). Does it ever nag at your conscience even the tiniest bit that YOU have contributed mightily to the deaths of 53 Millions of babies? That your contraceptive drenched dreams clearly correlate with the depersonalized narcissistic post modern nightmare that America and the West have become. I suppose not. Well if by any chance you do read this ponder on it a while.

Contraception is, like most sins not only immoral but expensive, the cost in human life and human misery simply incalcuable.

Excellent article and comments, particularly the thread started by billbannon…  FredFlint excepted, (He found himself here by accident;  he is really Bill Maher or Dan Savage…)
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Funny how many really bad things started happening in Western culture in 1968, the year of our society’s first suicide attempt.  Is this just coincidence, or is there some cosmic rationale for the lunacy that’s befallen us since the ‘Summer of Love’?
.

The pope had formed a commission to reccomend whether or not there should be a change to the church’s position on contraception. The commission was 75% in favor of change. The curia added more members. Still 75%. then they added more bishops. Same result. Then they advised the pope that if there was a change it would menn that his prior colleagues had been wrong. That turned the tide and is the problem today. No pope or some bishops for that matter will ever admit that he or one of his colleagues ever was wrong. That would endanger this cloak of infallibility that they have all carefully tried to cover everything they say. What is really going on here is that the Holy Spirit finding the church leadership blinded by their own self interest is taking his case to the people of God. That is why you will not stop this call for repeal and the resort to conscience, because the holy Soirit is behind it.

Thanks for the article Father!  I am blessed to be living in a parish whose priests do proclaim this truth.  I think something helpful to hesitant preachers would be a book of example homilies.  This could include some suggestions on how to speak clearly on serious moral topics without destroying the innocence of the children in the pew.  I think people used to be better at this . . .because occasionally am cringing in the pew as my children are hearing a very good homily, but beyond their need-to-know level.  I think it would also be great if more parishes made use of hand outs.  Give the ushers a stack of Catholic Answer tracts on the topic of the sermon to hand out to the adults leaving. 

Keep up you good work, and may God bless you in your labors.

Thank you for this accurate and interesting history on these papal documents. Many of us in the “young parent” generation (<50yrs old) in the church raising families were not taught this important history. My husband and I are now presently reading many letters/encyclicals from the Vatican archives, and this is another great informative piece to store away and read again. I will be forwarding this to many friends in my CT parish. Thank you for this.