7ncyclical — A Magna for mankind

by ARCHBISHOP MURPHY
TWENTY years ago this month, all eyes were on the Vatican. An encyclical unrivalled before or since in the interest it aroused was to be born and the birth, after many false labours, was imminent. Bishops, journalists, priests, doctors and — most significantly — ordinary couples around the world awaited its delivery anxiously
Humanae Vitae had been conceived some five years before when Pope John XXIII set up a six-member commission to study the question of family planning. After his death, the commission was enlarged to 60 members by Paul VI, and sociologists, lay people and population experts were included for the first time. The group, however, became deeply divided, and though the Pope tried to rectify the split, two conflicting reports were eventually submitted. The majority report, which was leaked by the National Catholic Reporter in 1967, recommended change. The Church, it suggested, should overturn its present teaching and lift the ban on birth control.
In the outside world, meanwhile, many Catholics were already starting to use artificial contraceptives,albeit quietly and after deep thought. The age of the Pill had now dawned, and this was a time when natural methods of birth control were neither as wellresearched, or as fashionable as they are in some circles today. In March 1965, a Gallup poll commissioned by the Daily Telegraph had shown that 60 per cent of Catholics believed the Church should allow them to use contraceptives. Clearly, some now genuinely believed it would only be a matter of time before
the permission was granted.
By the time the document was finally published, however, the liberals' confidence had been smashed. A series of statements from Paul VI had indicated in no uncertain terms that he found no reason to convince him to change traditional teaching, despite the advice of the majority of those on his commission. By the time the encyclical actually appeared, on July 29, it was almost a formality. No change.
The Pope had been expecting some response, of course. He was not prepared, though, for the tremendous outcry which followed publication. In Britain reaction was particularly intense. Letters poured into the national papers, bishops were interviewed on TV, every Catholic who was anyone was asked to comment. Outside Westminster Cathedral scuffles were reported between rival factions, while in another London parish a week of prayer was held in the hope that the Pope would think again.
Two decades on, it is hard for those of a younger generation (mine) to quite believe the whole furore was for real Difficult, for us, to take in that a Papal reiteration of Church teaching would cause such a stir. We are, you see, used to nothing else. We can scarcely imagine a Pope who reviewed existing policy on moral issues, who even thought about changing the rules. We cannot recall the turbulent times of Vatican H, when the Church had a leadership which was in the vanguard of modernism and new ideas.
But perhaps most of all, we cannot remember a Pope who had to be obeyed. We know
plenty of people who use contraceptives, even sleep together outside marriage, and who seem to carry on being perfectly good, Churchattending Catholics. We are quite used to the Pope saying one thing, and the silent majority of his flock ignoring him, and doing something else.
But how naive, you might cry, to think any Pope, in any century, has ever been obeyed! The only difference between earlier times and now is that these days disobedience is out of the closet, in the open! All of which is certainly true: but what's different today is that Catholics not only disobey, they seemingly feel no guilt about disobeying. They disobey because they feel that what is being asked of them (non use of contraceptives) is totally unreasonable, and because they feel it is totally unreasonable they feel no guilt.
It is ironic, too, that this should be the case, because one of Pope Paul's big fears was that if he didn't issue Humanae Vitae, his credibility would suffer. In fact, the intervening years show that the exact opposite has happened. Has anything ever, in the history of the Church, done as much to lessen the authority of the Pope? Because not only does the Papacy say one thing and the people do the other, the media constantly reminds the world at large that this is the case (matters sexual, of course, always get a wide press).
Even more ironic is that the present Pope, and the world's next best-known Catholic, Mother Teresa, take full advantage of every microphone thrust at them to hammer home the "no contraceptives" message, so keeping the ban in the public eye and, unwittingly of coarse, emphasising the blatant disregard with which it is held.
What is more, some feel the compromise many Catholics have now chosen to make over birth control means they are more likely to ignore official Church teaching in other areas, too. Because one issue has become open to interpretation on grounds of overriding difficulties, the argument goes, other areas inevitably do too. Certainly the last major survey on Catholic opinion (1980), a joint University of Surrey and Gallup poll, found that young people were much less likely than any other age group to agree with Church teaching on a whole range of areas including papal infallibility, transsubstantiation, hell and eternal punishment. (Interestingly, though, they were
not so unlikely to disagree with the Church when it came CO issues of social justice, such as support for the poor at home and in the Third World. Perhaps if the Pope spent a bit less pressing home his line on contraception, he'd make some committed young Christians a lot happier with their Church.) What, though, of the future? Twenty years after Humanae Vitae, we have a Pope who proclaims its message far louder than did its author, and a people who flout that message far more blatantly than those who first received it. On the other hand, we have a Papacy which stands up firmly for what it believes in, and a Church which no longer either follows blindly or strays away, but which follows its own conscience and still manages, despite the odds, to hang on in there.