Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Agenzia Fides) - “The Pope’s University could not let the celebration of the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae pass without a word being spoken.” These were the opening words of an introductory address given by Bishop Rino Fisichella, Rector of the Pontifical Lateran University, in the first session of the International Congress entitled, “Defenders and Interpreters of Life.” The Congress is being held May 8-10 and will conclude with an encounter with the Holy Father Benedict XVI. The focus of the Congress is the encyclical written by Pope Paul VI, in that year of 1968 that was so marked by turbulence and change. The content of Humanae Vitae continues being relevant, and 40 years later still offers essential teachings and reflections for modern man. Likewise, the chronological distance at which it is contemplated and the entire context in which it takes place, once again prove the justice and competence of the choices made in that moment.
The first session of the Congress focused on the role of the Second Vatican Council, which in some ways was what “gave birth” to the encyclical, in relation to the cultural changes of the 1970s. It was an encyclical that was very widely debated and very little understood, even in Catholic circles-who were obviously expecting the Church to grant them some concessions-but that, ten years later, Pope Paul VI himself recognized as one of the highlights of his Pontificate. Since Pius XI’s Casti Connubii (1930), the Pontiffs had taken interest in family affairs and the relation of man and woman. In 1968, family planning was recognized as a human right by the UN and the debate over contraception was at the heart of social interest with the first means of “control” that came out on the market, claiming to make women free and no longer dependent on men: the birth control pill, an invention of the United States biologist Pincus.
Following the inauguration of the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962, in the Spring of 1963, Pope John XXIII instituted a Pontifical Commission for a study on population, family, and birthrate, whose work was inevitably inter-related to that on the Council. In 1966, the Commission reached the point of accepting contraception in the area of responsible parenting. Pope Paul VI did not accept these conclusions, however, and drafted the text of the encyclical. It was a decision made almost completely on his own initiative, in a courageous and daring act that was, however, supported by two future Pontiffs: then Wojtyla and Ratzinger. These were some of the historical facts explained by Prof. Giovanni Maria Vian, Director of “L’Osservatore Romano,” that helped to understand the time period and the spirit in which the encyclical was pondered and written.
Lucetta Scaraffia, a Modern History professor at the Roman university “La Sapienza,” cited the Preface written by Cardinal Ratzinger in a later edition of Humanae Vitae, in which he affirms the fact that Paul VI was only guilt of one thing: of “thinking too highly of the human being.” Prof. Scaraffia offered an introduction to the cultural scene of those years surrounding the Encyclical, in which sexual licentiousness, the emancipation of the woman, and scientific progress (above all, with the pill) led to a sexual revolution without which, according to theorists, there could never be social transformation nor the possibility of human happiness. The founding principles for the ideology of those years even today continue on the rise. And this is where the re-reading of Paul VI’s Encyclical can serve as an innovation in the perspectives on the family, matrimony, and the relationship of love between man and woman. (PC) (Agenzia Fides 9/5/2008; righe 46, parole 603)
