On Humane Vitae

To restrict Divine assistance to a few extraordinary acts of the solemn Magisterium made through the centuries is to forget that the Lord promised to be with the Church all days until the end of time. At any rate, it is a theologically certain doctrine that the Holy Spirit aids the Church in proclaiming moral and disciplinary laws. This Divine assistance guarantees that, when it is a question of laws imposed on the universal Church, the Church can contradict neither Revelation nor the natural moral law. The Constitution Auctorem Fidei condemned a proposition of the pseudo-synod of Pistoia, according to which “the Church, governed by the Holy Spirit, could impose a disciplinary law that would be not only useless and more burdensome for the faithful than Christian liberty allows, but also dangerous and harmful.” (D. Sch. 2678). If this is true of disciplinary laws, a fortiori it ought to be true of moral laws imposed by the Church on all the faithful.

The Holy Spirit furnished such assistance in the case of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which authentically interprets natural law. The line of conduct the Pope followed is in keeping with Divine demands. It is not an unbearable weight that uselessly burdens the faithful; rather, its observance is necessary in order to avoid evil and do good in this matter. Those who proclaim the contrary are forgetting a little too soon the conciliar teaching on the universal call of all men to perfection. It is not merely man in the abstract who is called to perfection (the “thesis,” as one journalist puts it), but it is man—poor, weak and sinful, as we all are in varying degrees (the hypothesis of our journalist). If we were left to our own resources, not only would this precept be impossible for the majority to observe, but many others besides. “Without Me, you can do nothing,” says the Lord. And, commenting, Saint Augustine declares: “He does not say: without Me, you can not do something big, but: without Me, you can do absolutely nothing.” And consequently, side by side with the precept is found the grace to help men of good will. Because men are weak, the Lord instituted a sacrament to remedy the evil they bring upon themselves by sin, like its Divine Founder, the Church will never cease to proclaim to men God’s demands. For these demands are the path which must be followed in order to attain to the fullness of both heavenly and earthly joy. Moreover, the Church, like Christ, is merciful. She takes to her heart the sinners, whose tears She dries whose wounds She heals. Therefore, though the Encyclical is not infallible, it proposes a sure way of life that Catholics ought to follow with an untroubled conscience. They may rest assured that this road will lead them to God, and that, in Him, married couples will find joys which the satisfaction of their natural desires could never give them.

 

RECENT COLUMNS

Archives