Self-giving Love - - - Humanae Vitae’s Paradoxical Wisdom - - -  Part Three

 

Part Three in a Series

 

By Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted

Over the past few weeks, I have written about the paradoxical wisdom of Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, and of the way John Paul II gave a fuller and more convincing explanation to this prophetic document in his Theology of the Body. We have considered the nature of married love, namely that to be authentic it must be total, i.e. the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning always belong together. Something has gone seriously wrong when a husband or wife says, “I give you everything except my fertility;” or “I accept you entirely except for your fertility.” On the other hand, immense blessings come to couples that follow God’s plan for marriage and, when appropriate, practice Natural Family Planning (NFP).
Now, in part three of this series, it might be helpful to consider some questions that are frequently asked about Humanae Vitae, NFP and related issues. Many of these are related to the important question of conscience.

Following my Conscience
What if a couple does not agree with this teaching of the Church? Shouldn’t they follow their own consciences? What if a priest says not to worry about this? Is it true that this is just man-made teaching?

These questions deserve thoughtful consideration, for as the Second Vatican Council taught in Gaudium Et Spes (#16), “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey… His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”
To follow our conscience is to be true to this secret core of our soul where God’s voice echoes. Our very dignity as persons demands this conformity with our own conscience; it is unworthy of us merely to follow the fashions of the time or to go along with what others are doing without thoughtful reflection and firm decision of our own.

Forming my Conscience
Before following our conscience, we must form it in accord with the voice of God. Our conscience is not the origin of truth. Truth lies outside us; it exists independent of us and must be discovered through constant effort of mind and heart. This is no easy task for us who suffer the effects of original sin and must contend with the constant temptations of the devil. Recall the clarion summons of St. Peter (I Pet 5:8-9), “Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1783) teaches, “Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-informed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings.”

As we see, to form one’s conscience well and to follow it with integrity is no small task. For a person’s conscience cannot invent what is true and good. It must search it out beyond itself. When acting correctly, we discover the truth through the grace of the Holy Spirit and the help of God’s word handed down to us in the Church. Then, when we submit our conscience to this objective truth, we act uprightly and grow to maturity in Christ.

An Erroneous Conscience
Sadly, as everyone knows, we humans do not always make good choices; we do not always form our consciences appropriately or we simply do not follow them. We can fail to make the effort to seek out what is true and good; we can be blinded by habitual sins or by the prevailing errors of our time. As the Catechism says (#1786), “Faced with a moral choice, conscience can make either a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law or, on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them.”
Humanae Vitae and the Theology of the Body, like all teaching of the Church on faith and morals, are reliable sources for forming our consciences in accord with the truth. If a couple decides to act contrary to these, they are acting contrary to the wisdom of the Church, which teaches with the light of the Holy Spirit. Paul VI, in Humanae Vitae #20, wrote, “The teaching of the Church about the proper spacing of children is a promulgation of the divine law itself.”

It could happen that a person, in mistaken yet good faith, acts contrary to this teaching. While a person with an erroneous conscience may not be culpable personally because of “invincible ignorance,” nonetheless the actions carried out as a result still cause great harm. “If… the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience”(Catechism, 1793). Let me illustrate this point by means of a parallel example. A mechanic, because he has not been given sufficient training, fails to replace a small but essential part of an airplane’s engine. Because of this failure, the plane crashes and all the passengers are killed. The mechanic is not guilty of the evil since he did not intend to cause it, yet the consequences are disastrous.

You and I are called to train ourselves to see correctly all that is at stake in our choices. Even if not guilty for a wrong that occurs, the wrong will still have harmful consequences.
We do well to follow the advice of the Church found in the Catechism (#1785), “In the formation of conscience the Word of God is the light for our path; we must assimilate it in faith and prayer and put it into practice. We must also examine our conscience before the Lord’s Cross. We are assisted by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, aided by the witness or advice of others and guided by the authoritative teaching of the Church.”

In the past 40 years, the failure to heed the teaching of Humanae Vitae has brought great suffering to many married couples and families. It has harmed the very fabric of our society. Perhaps these wrong actions were not culpable because of ignorance but the harm does not for that reason disappear. Now is the time for couples to consider again, or for the first time, the paradoxical wisdom of the Church on issues of married love and fertility.