My parish is Our Lady of the Angles in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. It’s part of the Parishes on the Prairie Catholic Community — and that’s a topic for another time.
Aside from routine matters, we’re not exactly at the center of diocesan activity. That’s why I think our priest, Fr. Greg Paffel, getting this year’s diocesan Humanae Vitae Award is a big deal.
I’ll be talking about that, briefly, “Humanae Vitae”, and why I think human life matters.
- Cultural, Historical, and Personal Context
- Why Human Life Matters
- Fr. Greg Paffel: The Journey Home Interview
- Valuing Human Life: All Human Life
Cultural, Historical, and Personal Context
Each year our diocese gives their Humanae Vitae Award to someone “who has demonstrated courage in promoting Natural Family Planning”, NFP.1
From my viewpoint, NFP involves a married couple being responsible, using scientific knowledge of human biology.
It’s counter-cultural, but my teens and the Sixties overlap, so that doesn’t bother me.
The Sixties is also when a few regrettable ideas got traction.
I think I understand why so many folks defied antiquated rules. Or what they thought were antiquated rules, at any rate.
A half-century later, we’ve still got regrettable ideas in play.
“The True Voice of the Church….”
It’s apparently okay for folks to use a Catholic house of worship as a projector screen for not-exactly-pro-Catholic slogans. Despite a cardinal’s protest.
“Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory criticized a light show projected onto the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception by Catholics for Choice and other supporters of abortion as thousands of faithful gathered for Mass during the annual National Prayer Vigil for Life, Jan. 20.
“‘The true voice of the Church was only to be found within the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception last evening,’ Cardinal Gregory said in a statement….”
(“Cardinal Gregory Responds to Pro-Abortion Light Show Projected On National Basilica” , The Tablet (January 21, 2022)) [emphasis mine]
But it’s not all bad news.
Thanks to today’s information tech, any American with a halfway-decent Internet connection has access to what the Church says.
The trick is remembering that a sound bite on the nightly news may not accurately reflect what the Church has been saying.
And that brings me to “Humanae vitae”.
My First Look at Catholic Thought
I wasn’t a Catholic when my wife and I got married; which involved a little paperwork, since marriage is a sacrament.
One of these days I may talk about sacraments and marriage, but not today. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1113ff, 2360-2379, and more)
Anyway, part of the process included giving my word that I’d see to it that our children, if any, would be raised as Catholics.
That’s when the trouble started. I’d given my word, so part of my job was learning what being a Catholic meant: and that got me started reading “Humanae vitae”: “Of Human Life”.
This was before the World Wide Web, so I got a print copy of the English translation: nearly seven thousand words of academese.2
Scholarly language notwithstanding, I’d expected to find logical gaps big enough for semi-trailer traffic.
I didn’t find any. Which was frustrating, since I didn’t like the rules.
But the logic was watertight.
That put me in an awkward position. I could either stop thinking that, for example, reality is real and actions have consequences; or accept that the Church was right about artificial contraception.
On a related note, my father-in-law warned me that if I kept learning about the Church, eventually I’d know too much. He was right. After a while, I realized that the authority our Lord gave Peter is currently held by the Pope.
At that point, becoming a Catholic was my only viable option.
I really hadn’t wanted to become a Catholic. But doing so made sense: and would continue making sense, no matter how I was feeling. I enjoy being Catholic, by the way: and that’s yet another topic.
Why Human Life Matters
“Humanae vitae” isn’t a Vatican II document, but it came in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.
I see Vatican II as part what the Church has been doing recently, reviewing and revising our procedures and practices. It’s something we do on a massive scale every half-millennium or so. Procedures may change, our principles don’t, and I’ll get back to that.
Vatican II ran from 1962 to 1965.
Pope St. Paul VI wrote “Humanae vitae” in 1968. It’s an encyclical letter: a term whose meaning has been changing over the centuries.3 He addressed this particular encyclical letter to anybody who’s working for the common good:
Encyclical Letter
Humanae Vitae
Of the Supreme Pontiff
Paul VI
To His Venerable Brothers
The Patriarchs, Archbishops,
and Other Local Ordinaries
In Peace and Communion With the Apostolic See,
To the Clergy and Faithful of the Whole Catholic World, and to All Men of Good Will,
On the Regulation of Birth
(Humanae vitae, Paul VI documents, The Holy See/vatican.va)
Back before I became a Catholic, I’d noticed that it’s addressed to “the whole Catholic world, and to all men of good will”, so I didn’t feel guilty about reading it.
Being an American, I could and can see several ways a sufficiently irritable person might find the encyclical’s heading offensive. And that’s yet again another topic
But now, being a Catholic, and one who takes what the Church says seriously, I figure that reading it made sense. And I still accept the encyclical’s rules.
That’s because I think obedience makes sense. I’d better explain what I mean.
Obedience and Using my Brain
I’m a Catholic, so “the obedience of faith” is important. (Catechism, 142-165)
This obedience is not blind obedience. I should think about what I believe. (Catechism, 154-156)
Which is something of a good news / bad news situation.
On the one hand, there’s a great deal to think about: and these days I’ve got access to translations of what folks like St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas thought about what we believe.
On the other hand, as a Catholic, I’m expected to think about what I’m doing. It takes effort, and sometimes means that I veto what my emotions are telling me.
Following whatever blind impulse pops into my mind is not an option. (Catechism, 2339)
Vatican II and “Humanae vitae” offended and upset a fair number of folks. I didn’t like what I found in “Humanae vitae”, so how come I accept what it says?
Natural Law, Positive Law, and Paying Attention
I wasn’t the craziest of ‘those crazy kids’, back in the 1960s.
But I paid attention to folks who said that buying stuff we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like wasn’t reasonable. Not that anyone actually defined having a successful career that way, and I’m drifting off-topic.
The point is that I paid attention, and thought about what I was hearing and reading. One idea that made sense was the notion that what’s legal isn’t necessarily right: and that a culture’s mores can be wrong.
As it turns out, that horrifying — to some — idea was right. Since I’m a Catholic, I see it as the difference between natural law and positive law.
Basically, ethical rules — natural law — are written into reality’s source code. It hasn’t changed, and won’t. Some things — not many, actually — are simply wrong. Always. Everywhere. (Catechism, 1950-1960)
Positive law is, in this context, the rules we make up:4 like which side of the road I should drive on, how old I need to be to vote, and whether or not I can vote.
Sometimes positive law lines up with natural law. Sometimes it doesn’t. When that happens, we’ve got problems. (Catechism, 2273)
Seeing Human Beings as People
“Humanae vitae” goes against the grain of my culture’s values and beliefs, partly because it insists that human life is important — all human life.
I’d better explain that.
Since I’m a Catholic, I think that we’re all people, that we’re made “in the image of God”. Who we are, who our ancestors are, or what we’ve done, doesn’t matter. Every human being is a person: no matter how young or old, health or sick, we are. And since it’s a gift from God, human life is precious, sacred. (Genesis 1:26–27, 2:7; Catechism, 355-357, 361, 369-370, 1700, 1730, 1929, 2258-2283)
A century and a half back, insisting that all human beings are people and should be treated as such inspired ardent opposition.
Some folks still seem overly aware of ethnic distinctions, and that’s still another topic.
Some of today’s hot-button issues involve, my opinion, differing views on whether or not very young human beings are, legally, people: real persons who should have a right to not be killed, even if their existence is inconvenient or bothersome.
Meanwhile, Across the Pacific
“The Human Life International Archdiocese of Cebu confers on Speaker Prospero Nograles (right) the Humanae Vitae Award for his ‘unwavering support for the sanctity of life and family in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church and the Constitution.’…”
(“Humanae Vitae Award” , Photo Journals, Press and Public Affairs Bureau, House of Representatives, Philippines)
One of the things I like about being Catholic is that we’re an international outfit. That helps me appreciate good news in other countries. Like a politico in the Philippines receiving a Humanae Vitae Award: and apparently not trying to cover it up.
Don’t get me wrong. I like being an American, and think my native land has more to offer than Pepsi and SpongeBob SquarePants. But I get the impression that many of us are still getting used to the idea that Catholics and other ‘foreigners’ can be Americans.
And that’s — you guessed it — even more topics.
Next, an interview with our Father Greg on The Journey Home with Marcus Grodi. I found it on YouTube, and it does a better job of introducing him than I could.
Fr. Greg Paffel: The Journey Home Interview
Valuing Human Life: All Human Life
Finally, thinking that human life is precious affects how I see capital punishment, euthanasia, medical experiments, and more:
- “Capital Punishment: It Could be Worse”
(February 3, 2024) - “Edited Twins, Genetic Engineering and Bioethics”
(March 11, 2023) - “Euthanasia for the Mentally Ill: Not a Good Idea?”
(January 18, 2023) - “Couney’s Baby Incubators vs. the Progressive Era”
(February 8, 2021) - “Where Have All the People Gone?”
(November 23, 2018)
1 Controversial, a bit counter-cultural; but I think it makes sense:
- Wikipedia
- USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)
- Diocese of St. Cloud (Minnesota)
2 Language, a letter, and an information system:
- Wikipedia
- “Humanae Vitae”
Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Paul VI on the regulation of birth (July 25, 1968)
3 Councils, documents, and a little history:
- Wikipedia
- Catholic ecumenical councils
- Encyclical
- Second Vatican Council (AKA Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, II; most recent of 21 ecumenical councils)
- Holy See / the Vatican
- Documents of the Second Vatican Council (1963-1965)
- “Humanae Vitae”
Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Paul VI on the regulation of birth (July 25, 1968)
- Dealing with rough patches, every half-millennium or so
- “Christopher Marlowe and His World” (March 6, 2021)
4 Some rules change, some don’t:
- Wikipedia
- Natural law, personal taste, and a no-longer-forgotten article
- “‘Christmas Sermon for Pagans’ : Viewpoints, Nature; and Hope” (December 23, 2023)
