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I find it difficult to comment upon Mr. Galvin's paper. His denunciation of Humanae Vitae and the circumstances surrounding it is so encompassing that, after having been enlightened by him to see its complete failure, it seems that we cannot but join in denouncing it. Yet the document deserves the hearing it cannot get from Mr. Galvin. He would have us believe, in his introductory remarks, that the encyclical abandons Scripture, tradition, Catholic doctrine, and Catholic philosophy - all of which should have been included "if it wished to present the Catholic teaching in all its fullness and beauty and with the requisite persuasiveness." The encyclical, however, refers to Scripture, tradition, Catholic doctrine, and the natural law. Mr. Galvin would have us think that because the Pope has not given us an extensive teaching on each of these topics that he has abandoned them. If this means anything it means that the encyclical proposes under the guise of the traditional doctrine a novel and rootless exercise in contradiction to it. This is to attribute to the Pope either an intent to destroy by confusion the minds and hearts of the faithful, or a total confusion about his subject. In the one case he is properly devilish, while in the other he is culpable of a serious neglect of his duties.
The fact is that the encyclical did not intend "to present the Catholic teaching in all its fullness and beauty," and did not intend an extensive discussion of the natural law and the traditional doctrine. The Pope intended instead to set the groundwork for a decision concerning certain difficulties that had surfaced in our times concerning the Catholic doctrine about sex and marriage. No more, no less. This he did with sufficient clarity, so that both those who accept his document and those who reject it know what he says and what he means. Those who reject it know that it comes to more of the same thing, and those who accept it rejoice that he has reaffirmed the traditional ban on artificial contraception. Mr. Galvin, then, can be driven to despair because the encyclical has not satisfied him, but he cannot demand of it what it does not intend to give; still less can he, without proof, convict Paul VI of abandoning the principles to which he claims adherence throughout his document. While Mr. Galvin is correct when he says that the large majority of Catholics have not been persuaded by the encyclical, it doesn't follow that the fault must lie with the document itself. It could be that those it should have instructed were so much habituated and accustomed to the mentality and use of contraception that nothing could reach them. I take it that Mr. Galvin is satisfied with Catholic teaching before Humanae Vitae, so that had it been imitated in substance and method the newer encyclical might well have convinced the bulk of those who remain unconvinced. That previous teaching, however, did not persuade the likes of Albino Cardinal Luciani, who was later to become Pope John Paul I. He was convinced, prior to Humanae Vitae, that the Church should change its teaching on contraception, and he was far from alone among the hierarchy.
It is a misconception of the role of the Vicar of Christ to demand of his encyclicals an elaborate theological treatise. His main role as the supreme and universal teacher is not to engage in theological dispute, but at the margin to overarch those disputes and tell us when necessary the basic truth about faith and morals. Humanae Vitae is a message from the shepherd to his flock, not the disputation of a particular theologian prepared for the judgment of a parallel magisterium.
According to the encyclical, the justification of artificial methods of birth control is based mostly upon an understanding of the demands of conjugal love and responsible parenthood. The document, therefore, by attending to the nature of conjugal love and responsible parenthood, teaches that when they are understood rightly they underscore the traditional teaching, which forbids totally the use of artificial contraception. Mr. Galvin's criticism, however, boils over as he contrasts the abysmal failure of Paul VI with the virtues of Casti Connubii, a document he seems to find satisfactory. Does his preference, however, permit him at the same time to falsify the document he so hotly opposes? While the Pope does discuss the question of contraception from the point of view of conjugal love and responsible parenthood, while he does admit the possibility of a legitimate limiting of birth by natural means ("made for grave motives and with the respect for the moral law"), it is not legitimate to conclude, as Mr. Galvin puts it, that "the encyclical step-by-step builds a case for birth control" - as if the document insinuates an approval of the contraceptive mentality, but must reluctantly concede that we are mired in the old and tired doctrine from which he cannot as yet extricate us.
The intent of the document shows itself to be different. It is to teach that, granting all the possible concessions to his adversaries, and even agreeing with them wherever possible, the moral law stands: sexual union is ordered to reproduction, the end of marriage is to beget and educate the begotten, artificial contraception renders the sexual union intrinsically disordered, and serious consequences result from this disorder. Mr. Galvin is correct when he says that the document begins on the negative note of doom and gloom all around; it rehearses the trials and difficulties of marriage, notes the problems of starvation and overpopulation, and as well the changes that have taken place in the consideration of the education of children, the place of woman in the conjugal act, and the nature of conjugal love itself. While one might have hoped for a more positive beginning, with less if any concession to a modern mentality, hostile as it is to any sane teaching on marriage, we yet know that it becomes easy to find fault with those in authority in the measure in which we are not ourselves responsible for the general welfare of others. How then does anyone know how the Pope should have discharged his own responsibility? How does anyone know that it would have been better discharged by following his own inclinations? What we all know is that Paul VI saw fit to write the document he did, and that we believers have the obligation to accept it according to the most balanced reading we can give it. It is unfortunately possible in this case that someone, lusting for anything the Pope will give him, could rip the first part of the document out of context, and try to justify Natural Family Planning as the norm of matrimony - as has indeed too often happened. That, however, is to misread the whole, which teaches that though there be modern problems, perceived or real, though there may be grave reasons that permit Natural Family Planning, the traditional doctrine remains the norm, and it is based as always upon the foundations of nature and revelation.
Mr. Galvin is also disturbed by what he considers the undue emphasis upon consequentialist arguments, which he atttributes to "the weakness of Humanae Vitae's other claims." There is, however, no such undue emphasis, or even any emphasis at all. The Holy Father states, at the beginning of the section on the consequences of artificial birth control, that upright men might become more convinced that it is an evil by reflecting upon those consequences. Since effects are signs of their causes, there is nothing exceptional in pointing out those consequences, so long as they are not in this case the burden of proof. Why couldn't the Pope think that in our time, when the knowledge of parts of the natural law have been all but extinguished in the minds and hearts of even the faithful, that an argument from effects might be more telling for them? And if it is not, then what? The emphasis of the encyclical lies in its reaffirmation of the natural law concerning sexual relations, and of the intrinsic disorder of artificially disrupting the natural order which is the measure of our sexual relations.
Mr. Galvin's last criticism is the most radical. Here he tells us that the entire teaching of the encyclical depends upon the assertion that there is an inseparable connection between a unitive and a procreative meaning in the conjugal act. He finds this a bare assertion unparalleled in the history of the Magisterium, and it comes in his mind to a rejection of the traditional teaching of the Church. It undermines, as he would have it, the natural law, and rejects as a consequence the teaching of St. Thomas, without which we flounder.
The document, however, reads differently. After discussing conjugal love, responsible parenthood, and respect for the nature and purpose of the conjugal act, it says that the Church teaches "that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life." It then gives the basis for that constant and traditional magisterial teaching, which is that there is an "inseparable connection willed by God and unable to be broken by man, on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning." Now, contrary to Mr. Galvin, the Pope does not depart from the traditional dogmatic teaching, which he clearly asserts. He claims that the traditional teaching, with which he does not tamper, rests upon the two inseparable meanings of the marriage act. His intent seems to be that there is a unitive meaning to the marriage act, but that it cannot be separated from the procreative meaning so that it becomes the avenue to contraception. Now granting that the particular statement is new (if it is), why should our first reaction be to ridicule it by a series of pointless and obfuscating rhetorical questions? Why not rather ask whether it is true? Does Mr. Galvin know that there is no unitive meaning to the marriage act? Why, instead of becoming delirious, does he not prove the opposite - and prove rather than telling us that Humanae Vitae is so disastrously flawed that it must be discarded as the authoritative teaching it claims to be?
Despite Mr. Galvin, with all his sound and fury, the fact stands: the encyclical teaches with magisterial intent the traditional doctrine of the Catholic Church. Why not, then, as faithful Catholics, accept that teaching in the sense in which it is proposed, and, if we wish, discuss it calmly and deliberately, with due respect for the document itself, and for the Vicar of Christ, who was, after all, the author?
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