Contraceptives were rejected by 20th century popes – 10/01/2024 – Balance

Two of the most important popes of the 20th century, the Italian Paul 6th (1897-1978) and the Polish John Paul 2nd (1920-2005), played a key role in defining the official teachings of Catholicism on marital sexuality and the generation of children. . Both vehemently rejected the use of artificial contraceptives, arguing that marriage should reflect the fertility of the union between man and woman present since the narratives of the biblical book of Genesis.

The ideas defended by both reiterate traditional positions of Christian doctrine since the first centuries of the Church — Christianity was opposed, for example, to the use of contraceptives and abortifacients, which was common in the society of the Roman Empire. But the teaching of the two popes is also a response to the technological transformations of the last century and changes in other Christian churches.

In the 1960s, for example, a decade in which the Catholic Church underwent a series of reforms designed to improve the institution’s dialogue with the modern world, Paul 6 convened a commission of experts, theologians and bishops to analyze the issue of the use of forms artificial birth control. The moment corresponded to the first wave of use of female oral contraceptives and the liberalization of sexual mores. Furthermore, Protestant denominations had already given cautious approval to the use of such methods.

Although the commission convened by Paul 6th had recommended that the pontiff also approve the practice (with few dissenters against the idea in the group), the pope did not follow the team’s opinion and reaffirmed the ban on all artificial contraceptive methods. He summarized his arguments in what would ultimately become the most important and controversial document of his papacy, the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” (“On Human Life”), published on July 25, 1968.

The Italian pontiff assumes that the union between the members of a couple includes two primary, complementary and equally important functions: the unitive (the bond of love between the two) and the procreative (for the generation of new human lives). It is a link that would reflect the sacredness of love between God and human beings, as well as the role of each person as a participant in divine Creation, in a continuous process.

“Whoever reflects carefully must recognize that an act of reciprocal love that harms the availability to transmit the life that God, Creator of all things, inserted into it according to particular laws, is in contradiction with the constitutive design of marriage and with the will of the Author of human life,” he writes. “To use this divine gift by destroying its meaning and purpose, even if only partially, is to be in contradiction with the nature of man, as well as with that of woman and their most intimate relationship.”

Paul 6 does not oppose the use of natural methods of contraception, based on abstaining from sexual relations when the woman is in her fertile period, because such an approach would take into account the intrinsic nature of the human being and would be a sign of mutual understanding of the cycles and the needs of each member of the couple. The encyclical also admits the use of artificial contraceptives for therapeutic purposes, so that preventing pregnancy is not the real objective, but just a by-product of their use.

The ideas present in “Humanae Vitae” were endorsed and deepened during the pontificate of John Paul II, especially in a series of conferences by the pope, held between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, brought together as the “Theology of the Body ” of the Eastern European pope.

John Paul II argues, among other things, that the rigid separation between body and soul is alien to authentic Christian thought. There would be a much deeper union between these two realities, which means that the spiritual dimension of the loving and sexual union between husband and wife would have a profound role that should not be tainted by the use of contraceptives.