Patrick Coffin explains why the Church’s teachings on contraception articulated explicitly in Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae are not merely his opinion, but an infallible teaching upheld since the beginning of the Church.
Transcript:
Host: Christopher in Belmont, North Carolina, listening on 101.5 FM. Christopher, welcome to Catholic Answers Live.
Patrick: Hey, Christopher.
Caller: Hi, hello, thanks for taking my call. My question is: how do you answer this critique of the Catholic teaching on contraception that I heard from a Catholic theologian? They were saying that the Pope basically popped this teaching on the rest of the Church without any prior precedents, and that this wasn’t the way the Church should have gone with the teaching.
Host: Did Paul VI invent this teaching out of whole cloth, Patrick?
Patrick: No, Paul VI stands in the stream of 2,000 years of Papal and Biblical teaching. The reason why there aren’t 50 encyclicals on the teaching on contraception is not because there’s insecurity on the Church’s part, but because everyone, always and everywhere, understood it to be wrong. Even the anti-Catholic Protestants, so-called “Reformers,” saw that contraception is gravely offensive to God, that it undermines the one act whereby men and women co-create with God to create new human persons.
So this is not a teaching that’s papal opinion, it’s certainly not Paul VI’s, you know, personal angle on things that he just kind of capped onto the Church. His predecessors, whenever they raised the issue, always came down on the side that love and life belong together. There’s a very forcefully written encyclical that I recommend folks read, it’s also not too long, it came out on the last day of 1930. It’s called Casti Connubii. It’s on chaste marriage. It’s not just about contraception; it’s a beautiful letter about marriage and the consecrated life. And it was an implicit response to the Anglican decision to open the floodgates for contraception at that Lambeth conference we mentioned.
But I’m very sad if a Catholic leader’s gonna say that this is just Paul VI’s decision simply because he set aside the recommendations of a fewscore consulters, or commission members, who were already radicalized by some of the dissenters that were part of that mix. That’s another story, in a way, for a different show. But this is not the Pope’s opinion, this is Catholic teaching, rooted in Jesus Christ and the truth of the faith. It belongs to the truth about the human person.
Host: I’m glad you mentioned Casti Connubii, Pius XI’s encyclical, Patrick. I think it should be required reading–well, frankly, for all married couples–but especially for any couples who are preparing for marriage.
Patrick: Yup. It’s bracing, and Pius XI was sort of a proto-John Paul II. He spoke multiple languages, he loved rock climbing, he’s the first guy to leverage media, he did the first radio address around the world, introduced by a guy called Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio. And so yeah, I agree. But didn’t Popes write differently back then, Chris? With the capital W “We?” I miss those days.
Host: Yeah, its very forceful, and it’s clear, the prose is manly, and there’s no mistaking the intent of it at all.
For more on this question, see our article “Is Humanae Vitae Infallible Teaching?“