Faith and reason

Humanae Vitae, 40th anniversary

Consider this: having worked within the U.S. Indian Health Service I have noticed quite a reluctance among many Native Americans to accept the contraceptive handouts so easily offered by physicians. My theory is that the American Indians instinctively shun what they could perceive as a method of finishing the job that guns and greed didn't finish. Then again, look at countries like Japan or Holland or many others who have a good start on wiping themselves out. Besides these, there are other arguments to show that McCormick's mere authoritarianism theory is wrong (see the article of Richard A. McCormick, "'Humanae Vitae' 25 Years Later", America Magazine, July 17, 1993: http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10960 ).

Like a mother instructing a child, the Church has a reason behind the command. That McCormick couldn't see this despite his great brilliance is a matter for examination and wonder; however, he is obviously not alone in his position. Does this mean that sometimes time and distance or special insight or special graces are called for? Also note, it is possible to assent to the pronouncements of the Church without understanding the reasons but that is maybe not what many professional theologians choose to do from having an ethos of having to grasp all the reasons. Others perhaps make their choices from more practical reasons out of their lived experiences.

J--

2008-08-07 19:50:41 GMT

Comments (1 total)

Author:olograces

I have found on the web site of Prof. William E. May a good presetation ofthe underlying principle of nautral family planning as opposed to contraception and also the definition of the irritating-sounding expression "intrinsically evil" used for contraception, homosexual acts and so on:

"The fundamental moral principle supporting recourse to the rhythm of the cycle is not the “Caiaphas” or “preference” or “totality” principle [see these explained earlier in the same article] we found undergirding contraception. It is, rather, the commandment to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves (see Deut 6:5, Lev 19:18; Matt 22: 37-39). And we love our neighbor only by loving the “goods” intrinsically perfective of him: goods such life itself and health, knowledge of the truth, appreciation of beauty, friendship etc. And we do not love our neighbor if we are willing intentionally to deprive him of these goods, to impede their flourishing in him, intentionally to destroy them. Thus, as John Paul II rightly says,

reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (intrinsece malum); they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances (Veritatis splendor, no. 80, 1).

The concept of the human person as a body person, a unity of body and soul, and the holistic, non-dualistic anthropology and love-centered, non-consequentialistic understanding of the morality of human acts serving as the bases for this concept underlie the practice of periodic abstinence or “recourse to the rhythm of the cycle.” At the very heart of this anthropology/morality is unconditional love of the body person, i.e. the human person made in God’s image. It is for this reason that “recourse to the rhythm of the cycle” is the “gateway” to the culture of life, just as its opposite, contraception, is the “gateway” to the culture of death."
(Source: CONTRACEPTION, GATEWAY TO THE CULTURE OF DEATH, on http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/may/contraception.htm )
K--

2008-08-09 20:39:24 GMT

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