Humanae Vitae

Humanæ Vitæ is a encyclical letter Pape Paul VI “on the Mariage and the published birth control” on July 25th, 1968.

Assertion of the catholic doctrines

In this encyclical, the Magistère recalls that the doctrines of the Église on the marriage are founded “on the insoluble bond, that God wanted and that the man cannot break of his initiative, between the two significances of the marital act: union and Procreation” (HV, 12).

In this encyclical, the Pope expresses the doctrines of the Catholic church on the artificial Contraception: In conformity with these fundamental points of the human and Christian design of the marriage, we must once again declare that is absolutely to exclude, like licit means of birth control, the direct interruption of the already committed process of generation, and especially the Avortement directly wanted and gotten, even for therapeutic reasons. Is pareillement to exclude, as Magistère of the Church has it several times declared, the direct sterilization, than it is perpetual or temporary, so much at the man than at the femme.

Est also excludes any action which, either in preparation for the marital act, or in its unfolding, or in the development of its natural consequences, would propose like goal or means of making impossible procreation.

And this encyclical would go until bringing into play the pontifical Infaillibilité: But when Magistère treats what relates to it into clean, the Foi and the Morale, and which, on the question of the nature of the marriage, the marital act and the guilty character of contraception, Magistère spoke in a way repeated, constant and clear during generations, all the conditions of infallibility such as Lumen Gentium exposed them seem to be joined together, which means that the catholics - including the theologists - must give their approval to this lesson.

The controversy

Oppositions

In an atmosphere of questioning of the established authority, everywhere in Europe, the encyclical seemed a refusal pure and simple of the Contraception and one baptized it malicieusement Digitus in Ogino, allusion to Digitus in Oculo, employed by Mgr Duchesne to qualify the encyclical Gravissimo officii munere of the pope Pie X. Even the Fathers of the council were shaken. The cardinal Alfrink, archbishop of Utrecht, declared that “the encyclicals are never infallible”, the theologist Hans Küng calling for its part into question the principle even of the infallibility. In France, the magazine Christian Témoignage published an open letter entitled “If Christ saw that”, separating the pope from the Church-people of God.

And of the supports

The abbot Victor-Alain Berto, the private theologist of Mgr Lefebvre with the Council the Vatican II, and secretary of the Coetus Internationalis Patrum (group of the bishop S traditional) during the Council, affirmed for example: “But there are also cases where ordinary Magistère of the Church, without declaration in form, without promulgated definition, is INFALLIBLE: it is when it is constant, when it is universal, when finally it gives the contents of its teaching like object of Foi, or of connection necessary with the faith .”

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