Iodine on wound

FORTY years have passed since the release of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae. Dissent hounded it before, during and after it came out. Even now, its debate continues, albeit in subtler, trickier forms.

Of course, when it was written, times were very different. The sexual revolution was at its red-hot boiling point. People, especially in the US and parts of Europe , just could not be told to restrain their sexual urges. The bulls would have been more docile.

Obviously, when making whoopee is involved, especially if we try to integrate it with love, marriage and responsible parenthood, I think it is far easier to teach latin metaphysics to gorillas.

Ideological and gratuitous claims were at their peak. There’s overpopulation, the world is going to explode, screamed the ideologues, citing some so-called scientific studies. Also, poverty was all over. That the poor have to be controlled was in the agenda of many leaders.

Then radical feminism also started to act up. Women have rights to defend themselves from aggressive men. They have rights over their own bodies, the feminists shouted. Why should they be prevented from doing what they would think was right for them?

These were strains that prevailed and dominated the environment. Even many Churchmen got swayed by these sentiments and began to think that maybe it was time for the Church to relax her moral standards. At least, artificial contraception should be made acceptable.

Thus, when Pope Paul issued the encyclical, reaffirming the Church’s position on sexual morals and responsible parenthood, there was howling and head-banging. The picture was akin to a child being administered a tincture of iodine to his freshly opened wound.

When the critics got tired of screaming, they went to laughing and ridiculing the document, and eventually ignoring it as they continued to promote population control, contraception, abortion, and the other logical consequences. They were swallowed up by the spiral of their own myopic reasoning.

The dispute simmered down, even hibernated, but the division deepened. Still, the forty years have also brought in some quiet but significant changes. For one, many of the fears of the critics were proven wrong.

Overpopulation? The problem now is depopulation. People in many places are aging. The prospect of a depleting population, even of extinction is getting clearer.

Over-fertility of women? Now almost everyone is convinced we are reaching below-replacement fertility levels. People are getting averse to have babies. Not even big government incentives are convincing them.

Contraception will stop the coming of abortion? Data worldwide show they always go together, one cannot be without the other. Poverty is due to overpopulation? Poverty is due more to greed and corruption of some people. Thus, poverty will stay even if there are fewer people.

In fact, studies show that greater economic activity occurs where there is a greater concentration of people in a certain place.

Contraception and other birth control methods can mean better married life, better attention to children, etc.? They debase marriage and inculcate wrong values in the family. Sex is trivialized, fidelity is undermined.

Birth control enhances women’s rights? Birth control has only reinforced the depersonalization and objectification of women. Church is out of touch with reality? Could it not that the critics are out of touch with the integral nature of sex, love, marriage, responsible parenthood?

The tampering of the nature as in the case of China with her two-child per family policy has led to severe imbalance between the sexes. This is an active social volcano waiting to explode.

There are many other birth-control fallacies debunked through the years. Humanae vitae has been vindicated. That’s why, the birth and population controllers are reengineering themselves.

Thus, you now hear talks about reproductive health, again to appeal more to emotion than to reason, let alone, to faith in God and in humanity. We are now entering into a more ridiculous sequel of the debate.

Added to that is some move of well-intentioned leaders, even Church leaders, who try to blend Church and pagan positions by saying that Humanae vitae can have both Church and secularized governments working together in promoting natural family planning.

But this would be corrupting the spirit of Humanae vitae. It would frame the Church position within the cafeteria pagan position, and would convert the natural family planning from being a way of life to a contraceptive method only.