AS THE CHURCH GOES, SO GOES THE WORLD

By Tim Rohr

So the Pope and bishops are (once again) trying to figure out how to stop the bleeding in marriage and families. 

It's ironic that the focus for their current figure-it-out session is to "reflect" on the previous pope's "teaching" on the matter, Amoris Laetitia, a "teaching" which, in my opinion (and the opinion of many others), undermines marriage and the family, something our church leaders have been actually doing for decades, beginning with Pope John 23's creation of a Vatican Frankenstein, the Papal Commission on Birth Control (1961).

I call it a Frankenstein because the Commission grew into something neither John nor his successor (Paul 6) ever imagined: a Commission that voted overwhelmingly to permit married couples to contracept, forcing Paul to pen Humanae Vitae in the middle of the night to kill the beast he (and John) created. 

By the time the Holy Spirit showed up, slapped Paul around his room, and put a pen in his hand, the horses had already left the barn. And today, Catholics (in the West, anyway) contracept, abort, and divorce at the same rate as the rest of the society they live in.

Prior to the Commission's conclusion in 1968, Paul had been hinting that the Church's position on contraception - as a grave moral evil - could be changed and probably would be.

In 1964, upon expanding the Commission from the original 6 members (which included only Catholic prelates) to 72 (which included lay people), Paul said (emphases added):

"We say frankly that so far we do not have sufficient reason to consider the norms given by Pope Pius XII on this matter [of contraception] as out of date and therefore as not binding. They must be considered as valid, at least until We feel obliged in conscience to change them." - Paul VI Acta apostolicae sedis (AAS) 56 (1964) 588-59, 1964 address to the special papal commission on the use of contraceptives.

When a Pope uses "We," as he does here, he is not expressing a personal opinion. He is speaking magisterially. He also refers to the Church's teaching on contraception as a "norm," as if it is a discipline and not an unchangeable doctrine - which it is.

True, Paul tried to fix it with Humanae Vitae, but too late. John 23 had opened the door by establishing a commission to look into a moral matter that could never be changed, and Paul, upon radically expanding and prolonging the term of the commission, speaking with a papal "We," had let the world know that the teaching could change if "We feel obliged in conscience to change them." 

The Pope's "shindig" at the Vatican (with Jimenez in attendance) is going to go down the usual road, trotting out the usual bogeymen: economic and social pressures, blah, blah, blah. In short: blaming "the world - in fact, blaming everything and everyone but themselves.

They'll come up with another document, like all the other ones. And other than some new stuff added to the already useless offices of marriage and family, nothing will be done. Nothing.

As the Church goes, so goes the World. But don't expect our Church leaders to admit that. Nevertheless, don't despair. Christ is not sleeping.

By the way, here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church OFFICIALLY teaches on the matter:

2370 ... "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil.