BEND — Forty years ago, a Pontifical Commission reported to Pope Paul VI that in their estimation the Church’s long-standing prohibition regarding the use of artificial contraception was no longer justifiable.
The sense of the Commission was that science and technology had changed and that the Church needed to change to keep pace with the progress of the culture.
After prayerfully discerning the matter, His Holiness Pope Paul VI issued his clear and definitive statement that the use of artificial contraception separated the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage and that such an intentional separation always constituted a grave moral evil.
The issuance of Humanae Vitae was a great act of courage which represents, even to our very day, a bold stand in the face of a relativistic, individualist and materialistic culture. This teaching has been reiterated very strongly by Pope John Paul II, by the Catechism of the Catholic Church and by Pope Benedict XVI. It is this teaching which has been a point of contention, argument, disagreement and dissent in the Church before and after the issuance of Humanae Vitae. It is this teaching which, in many ways stands at the heart of the cultural battle in which we are now engaged.
The topic of this four-column series is not Humanae Vitae but rather the virtue of courage as it relates to the 1968 foundation of an active Catholic organization known as Catholics United for the Faith or CUF, for short.
The fact that the establishment of Catholics United for the Faith coincided with the rejection of Humanae Vitae by many in the Church is no coincidence. Just as Pope Paul VI’s encyclical was a courageous act, so also the founder, H. Lyman Stebbins, took a bold and courageous step in standing up and clearly stating: We accept and embrace this counter-cultural teaching, we are Catholic, we are united, we affirm our faith, we affirm our faith in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we affirm our faith that Christ is with His Church and we affirm this teaching of Pope Paul VI because he is Peter upon whom Christ has built His Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against Her.
In his own words: “We have announced our purposes and repeated them again and again; to give corporate expression of loyalty to the Pope and bishops in union with him, and thus to the Church, and thus to Christ; to defend the entire treasury of Catholic teaching; and to work for the genuine renewal called for by the Council, the renewal always needed in the Church, that is, the inner, moral, personal renewal of each one of us.” What a marvelous mission statement. It is a clear, faith filled, courageous, and challenging statement and it is important that we not allow it to be lost in the parade of years. After 40 years it still stands as valid today as it was in 1968.
It certainly could not have been easy for Mr. Stebbins to step outside the box. Remember in 1968 there was a lot of rebellion in our society but a lot of that rebellion was seen as seditious. The danger that authentically faithful lay activism, such as that proposed by Mr. Stebbins, would be seen or judged to be rebellious was very real. The proper understanding of the role of the laity was not yet well established in the Church but his action represented one of the best and most appropriate responses to the call of the Second Vatican Council for the laity to be salt, light and leaven in the world. Mr. Stebbins stood in the face of priests who openly rejected this teaching, he stood in the face of the commission members who had adopted a rather democratic model for deciding matters of morality, and he stood even when some bishops did not choose to stand. The founding of CUF was a courageous act.
I am reminded a bit of the Catholic Medical Association which in 1968 was known as the National Federation of Catholic Physicians’ Guilds. In 1968 the association boasted approximately 10,000 members. At the issuance of Humanae Vitae there was a movement in the guilds to oppose this teaching. A small but courageous minority stood in the face of this attempted coup, made it clear that the National Federation stood with the Holy Father and kept the organization faithful to the Church. By doing this they lost more than 9,000 members, in some ways, faith casualties of the cultural war which had just begun. Those faithful few were and are men and women of courage. Some of these same men and women today form the core of the Catholic Medical Association.
Courage in the Church is nothing new. Two examples of notable courage from the Old Testament come to mind. Recall Eleazar from the second book of Maccabees: Eleazar, one of the foremost scribes, a man of advanced age and noble appearance, was being forced to open his mouth to eat pork. (In our day the thought that someone would be willing to die rather than violate a disciplinary law is hard to imagine.) Those in charge of that unlawful ritual meal took the man aside privately, because of their long acquaintance with him, and urged him to bring meat of his own providing, such as he could legitimately eat, and to pretend to be eating some of the meat of the sacrifice prescribed by the king; in this way he would escape the death penalty, and be treated kindly because of their old friendship with him. (We will see later that fear of losing the esteem of men, perhaps particularly friends, is a powerful incentive to abandon a faithful and courageous stand.)
He told them to send him at once to the abode of the dead, explaining: At our age it would be unbecoming to make such a pretense; many young men would think the ninety year old Eleazar had gone over to an alien religion. If I should thus dissimulate for the sake of a brief moment of life, they would be led astray while I would bring shame and dishonor on my old age. Even if for the time being I avoid the punishment of men I shall never, whether alive or dead, escape the hands of the Almighty. Therefore, by manfully giving up my life now, I will prove myself worthy of my old age and I will leave to the young a noble example of how to die willingly and generously for the revered and holy laws.
