Part III: The Four Vote Conclave and Benedict XVI

I went into Conclave time anxious, but trying to trust the Holy Spirit. Providentially, my seminar reading the week before the Conclave started was a chapter on the Holy Spirit by Walter Cardinal Casper. He noted in it that the modern inability to trust institutions is a indication and result of our forgetfulness of the Holy Spirit, who even in evil situations wrought by evil men brings about good. My brother and his wife were visiting on the days leading up to the Conclave, and in my discussions with them I found it was this specifically that retarded their faith. I say this, remembering my own lack of trust in the spirit. They could not bring themselves to believe that the Church is guided by God, by God's spirit, and yet has evil men in it. This mystery of God's providence and its interplay of human freedom is of course a difficult question to answer. And those who raise this question always say—if the Church isn't perfect who are they to ask me to be perfect. This makes me think, if John Paul II had a church full of clones of himself, i.e. if every parish priest was as loving, compassionate, concerned for the truth, etc. Europe would be converted over night, with the US close to follow. Instead we have priest committing every nature of sin, publicly contradicting the Church, and being in general slothful about the salvation of souls.

In this context the conclave began with a beautiful Mass in St. Peter's at which Cardinal Ratzinger gave a wonderful homily in which he laid out all the main (mostly ideological) problems facing the Church clearly and succinctly, naming and challenging the dictatorship of relativism as our key adversary. As an aside: many people said before the conclave that it might be time to have a pope from Latin America or Africa who could refocus the Church on the main issues facing the vast majorities of Catholic living in these areas. What the media and others meant by this was, it might be time to have a pope who focuses on the material realities of Africa rife with AIDS and South America with Poverty, ignoring the wellbeing of souls and changing Vatican “policies” on birth control and abortion, which of course are the cause of these problems. Their attempt was to be divisive and to those who think of the Papacy as a office of power it very well might have been. I myself had both an African and South American in mind, but on my part I thought of these two Cardinals purely based on their merits as teachers of the faith, not because of some sort of “soft-racism” or desire to change the Church's mission from saving souls to saving bodies. As I was saying Ratzinger gave a number of great homilies the days before the conclave, and having gotten a feel for the man I was sure that his personalism and charm made him a real candidate. However, his age, health, and the possibility that he might be seen as divisive made this a cautious optimism. So on Tuesday when I went down to St. Peter's square, after having just given a presentation on an article by Cardinal Ratzinger, I didn't expect to see white smoke just one full day into the conclave.

In the piazza I prayed a rosary, asking Mary to intercede for us with her spouse the Holy Spirit and her Son Jesus, that a holy pope might be chosen. I will not say that I did not have a short list of names that I wanted to hear announced as pope, in fact I even narrowed down the assumed name of the new pope to Benedict or Innocent, but I can honestly say that I was trying hard to be open to the papacy of whomever was announced. After my rosary I walked around, there were many, many, people in the square already. In one place the community of the Lamb was sitting on the ground praying the rosary. In another a group of seminarians were singing praise and worship songs from the States. Flags from around the world were blowing in the wind and the rain was holding off for the most part. I eventually joined the group of seminarians singing. Anyone who knows me might find this a little odd since I scream and bemoan the use of this sort of music, regularly, at Mass. However, outside of the Divine Liturgy I am much more open to new things, and I have secretly liked this type of music since my days of involvement in youth ministry. Anyway, this group of men in black were providing a powerful witness of love for Christ and his Church and so I decided to join them. At one point we were singing a song to Christ the King and at that exact moment the sky opened up and a ray of light hit the statue of Christ the King atop St. Peter's Basilica. Later, when discussing the days events, someone theorized that it was likely that at that moment they were announcing the results of the fourth ballot to the conclave and offering Ratzinger the Chair of Peter. Soon thereafter, smoke started to spew forth from the small exhaust pipe of the Sistine Chapel, at first grey, the more one looked at it the more you'd think it was white, but the bells weren't ringing. Among choruses of “Alleluia” and cheers from the crowd that we had a pope, about ten minutes after the smoke went up, the 20,000 lbs bell of St. Peter's started to move as did the other bells in the Carillon. Of course by this point the roar of the crowd and of the thousands rushing into the square blocked out most of the noise from the bell.

What was next seemed like a blur, the Cardinal Proto-Deacon came out and said “dear brothers and sisters,” in six languages, “annuciamus maximum gaude habemus papem.” At this point I was almost afraid to believe it, but logically it seemed certain that only Josef Cardinal Raztinger could have obtained the two-thirds vote so quickly. The Proto-Deacon continued, “emenetia Cardinale Josphus Sanctum Romanum Eccleasium Ratzinger,” who has chosen the name, “Benedetto XVI.” I was overjoyed at the name and the choice. Our group quickly started the chants: “Viva il papa! Viva!” and “Ben e det to!,” as well as singing songs of thanksgiving to God and the Holy Spirit. Not too long after Pope Benedict XVI came to the Balcony above the main gate to St. Peter's Basilica. I was convinced from that moment on that although he would be no John Paul II, the man was a Saint in his own right. That evening, I may have been the last person to do a presentation on the works of Josef Raztinger and also to get the first blessing of Benedict XVI! At our house chants and cheers of praise and thanksgiving to God could be heard all over the house. We rang our bells, and toasted the new pope all night long.

In reflection the convergence that has happened in my life over the last month can only be called God's Providence, the work of the Creator Spirit. As I prepare myself for the coronation on Sunday, I look back thanking God for the good works he has done for me. An I ask him to use me, despite my failings to build on the momentum in the Church that have resulted from the life and death of John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict. I must say that if I ever questioned why I am a Catholic and why I am studying for the priesthood here in Rome, this would be my answer. Laudateur Iesu Chisto!

Part II: Divine Mercy and the Death of John Paul the Great

Throughout the week of our retreat we prayed for John Paul, and on Friday, after the retreat had ended, while we were celebrating the end of the retreat we heard that John Paul had died. (Of course as we now know he did not die Friday) Immediately we went to the Chapel and celebrated the Mass for the Decease Roman Pontiff, how embarrassing to anticipate the Mass for the Death of the Pope!! After Mass on the verge of emotional breakdown I left to go down to the Basilica to pray privately. I spent the night thinking the Pope dead, and I was shocked by how fearful I was for the Church (maybe in another blog I will speak of this). Anyway, I found out only the next morning that John Paul was still alive. Saturday we went to Paray-du-Mondale, where the Sacred Heart appeared to St. Margret Mary and where her body and her confessors bones were located. After our scare the night before I found myself profoundly moved at how appropriate it was for me to be at the site of the Sacred Heart apparition on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday, as John Paul, my beloved spiritual father was dying. I was somewhat mad at myself for not being in Rome at the time but I think providentially being where I was united me to the Holy Spirit spiritually much more than I would have been in St. Peter's square. Of course that night, after night fall, liturgically on the morning of Divine Mercy Sunday, John Paul died.

Sanctae Johannes Paulus Magnus Pontifex Maximus
m. 2 IV 2005
Requiascat In Pace

It was appropriate for John Paul to die on the eve of the Second Sunday of Easter, rather than the day as some suggested he might, because he fell asleep in death in the darkness of Easter Morning only to be bathed in the Divine Light, the Divine Mercy, of the Rising Sun, of Easter Morning. This is also true for the Church, who in his death was cast into darkness, but was quickly reminded of the Light, of Christ Jesus' promise to Peter and the ten Apostles. The Sunday morning after he died I left Ars, with sadness lightly covering the joy that had been in my heart as a early spring snow fall occasionally lightly covers the budding spring flowers. As I heard more of the details of his death I was thankful that my prayers for him had been answered: from all accounts he died a saint's death. As the sun warmed by skin, the light snowfall of sadness gave way to some of the joy that was just beneath, however the day was on the whole quite somber. Retracing our steeps, our group, now much larger, returned through the mountains to Geneva. In Geneva, we took advantage of a brief layover to visit the Cathedral St. Francis de Sales had never been allowed to publicly entered—which had been renamed the Cathedral of the Swiss Reformation, or some nonsense of that nature, after it was stolen from the Church. Entering the ancient obviously Catholic Church, the emptiness inside was immense. In many of my blogs I often bemoan the fact that modern church architecture lacks a soul, but this beautiful Church was like a soul that lacked life. No altar, no blessed sacrament, very dead, very depressing, an example of the results of one of Satan's great victories against the Church.
(briefly) During the retreat the retreat master made reference to the great spiritual battle that we as priests, and those preparing for priesthood, are involved in. He pointed out that like those who haven't heard that the war has been lost, the Devil and his legions fight on, battling the Church, and occasionally winning battles despite the fact that the war is over and won by the Lamb. He noted the uncanny coincidence that in 1517 the protestants attack the Church and therefore the Spirit, i.e. the third pillar of the Creed; in 1717 the Masons spread syncritism and the seeds of modernism, attacking Christ as the only means of salvation and the second pillar of the Creed; and in 1917 the Marxists attacked God himself setting up the first officially atheistic state and undermining the greatest commandment (SHEMA ISRAEL) and the first pillar of the Creed of Nicea. Interesting, isn't it? Three dates, each two hundred years apart, and each building on the previous to undermine the faith handed down from the Apostles and Fathers of the Church. Father points out thought that throughout our priesthood, and, in fact, throughout the history of the Church the Church has always appeared the looser and often it has been written off, and yet it is still here, 2000 years after its foundation, hundreds of years after its enemies died, and will still be hear until the end of days, on the Day of Judgment when its Martyrs see their blood avenged. Being interested in the significance of numbers I also find it interesting that each of these three attacks where most likely started in a year ending in a six, but this might just be my imagination

(I digress) After celebrating the Liturgy of the Hours in the Cathedral, we went to St. Mary's Church where the pews were full and Mass was beginning. A smaller mostly Gothic church building, with more evidence of the artistic violence of the past century, but much more alive (i.e. a real church), was a great consolation to me.

When I returned to Rome I went immediately from the airport to St. Peter's square, suitcase in hand. Arriving, I found thousands of people standing around keeping vigil with the dead popes body. Everywhere I looked there were makeshift tributes and memorials to John Paul, from the governments “Grazie” posters that were plastered everywhere to, much more moving memorials made of: little scraps of paper (many plane and train tickets), candles, flags, and pictures. The next few days were surreal—on Wednesday I spent eight hours in line to see John Paul's body, not too bad considering that some waited 14-20 hours the next day. I found out only after I had viewed his body that I could have gotten in the back door with my ID, but it was an experience. I don't like crowds, claustrophobia, and so the experience that some had of waiting in line being fun was not my experience, but the wait did cause me to empathize with those in line. For this reason after, spending eight hours in line (4 am to 12 pm), having lunch I returned to St. Peter's to hand out water both Wednesday and then Thursday. This I much preferred since handing out water I was outside the queue but still able to talk with the people and help them out giving them water, helping them get out of the, then 16 hour line, to use the bathroom and then re-enter where they got out, and bringing notes, flowers, candles, etc. to the makeshift memorials which periodically got swept away only to reappear minutes later in the form of more flowers and candles. Shocked by the amount of love that John Paul engendered in these people, most (50% +) under 30 years of age, I remembered the Holy Cure of Ars who attracted 80,000 people a year to his little village for confession, catechesis, or just to catch a glimps of a saint. I have been at venues with large crowds before, often working them as crowd control, and I must say this line that came to pay their last respects to JPII was like no other crowd. They prayed, were kind and respectful to each other, helped each other out, and even their grumbling at long lines was good natured!! All day I conversed as best as I could in English, Italian, Polish, and French—trying to encourage those who were tired and make the time go by more quickly.

At night I came down to walk the streets around Saint Peter's, with my collar on I had pretty much unlimited access to the areas around the Basilica, and so I walked around and looked at the people who had come from Poland, but also from the rest of the world to say good bye to a saint. Most of them came without a place to stay in Rome and so all along the streets neat lines of sleeping bags, backpacks, and shoes replaced what was normally empty sidewalk. As I walked by one group of young people there with their priest, all on their knees around a improvised shrine to Our Lady and John Paul, I heard them praying the rosary and was brought to tears. During the days before the funeral the media pretended to play nice, i.e. complementing JPII while slipping little criticisms in where they could. One of these was that the majority of the people who came were Poles. This might be true, one to two million Poles did come down from the North, but also two to three million people from all over the rest of the world came, not to mention the three million Romans (like myself) who live in the city, many of whom also came. They also suggested that many who came disagreed with the popes views but came because of his celebrity status—again, I am sure that this was true in some cases, and in others, like the scores of people I saw fingering their rosaries, this is untrue. More importantly, I think, people came because John Paul offered an authentic Christian witness, he called people by his life to conversion and although in their freedom many did not choose to accept his witness, they recognized it as authentic, as the witness of a true Christian man! It is hard to be a Christian, to submit your life to God, to become detached from this world, mortifying your body and senses, and so many don't do it, especially in this age of media driven materialism—BUT to see someone authentically detached from the world and in love with God, gains the respect of many who might like to do the same but lack the force of will, truly the trust in God, needed. Ironic, though, that the death of this man caused millions to leave their TV, homes, cars, etc. behind and come to Rome essentially as “street people,” to pay homage to Pope John Paul.
Friday was the funeral mass. Our choir was invited to sing with the “people's choir” and so I thought I would have a seat for sure, however I found out Thursday night that there were not enough tickets for everyone on my house and so the ones we had would be given out by lottery. There where thirty tickets available, I got lot number 31! And so, frantically I called and email anyone I knew to see if I could find a ticket. Luckly, someone got a better offer and so I got his ticket. Seated inside the front gate to St. Peter's Basilica, behind the altar and to the right, we could see all the dignitaries arriving, Cardinal Ratzinger who in days to come would be elected Pope Benedict XVI came by as friendly as he normally is. I could see the whole Mass, including the procession, as well as the whole plaza and via Conciliatione and I was awestruck. The Mass, which they say 2 billion people watched, was beautiful and I believe that in years to come, that Mass as well as the witness of the five million mourners will bring great graces to the Church in Italy and in Europe. For the next nine days we mourned the loss of John Paul. Nine Masses were celebrated for his intention at Saint Peter's and every day the Church was full, i.e. about 10,000 people went to that one Mass, each day for a week and a half! Each day for nine days it rained, except on the seventh day when the sky was clear (I love the symbolism of numbers). I went to five of the Masses, skipping the others because of school and other obligations. As the week progressed I prayed more an more, not for the soul of John Paul, but for his intercession with the Father. I asked him to intervene on our behalf for the selection of a new pope. I feel certain that John Paul is at the right hand of the Father this day, and I bet that the Church will solemnly confirm this before my days in Rome are up.
I must admit it was a very odd feeling, not having a pope. In the States at least you got to say “in union with our bishop n.” in the Eucharistic prayer at Mass, but here in Rome we omitted both Bishop and Pope, praying “in union with all the clergy.” But not only that, going to St. Peter's and looking at the window, or looking at my pictures of JP on my wall, I got the distinct feeling that we many never see another his equal in the near future. The nine days were a sad time for me.

Habemus Papem!!

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!! Praise be to the Lord on High and to the Lamb!
For he has guided his people in their time of sorrow, and given us a Shepherd. Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum;habemus Papam:
Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum,Dominum JosephumSanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Ratzingerqui sibi nomen imposuit Benedictum XVI



On the 19th of April in the year of Our Lord 2005 the Emmient College of Cardinals elected Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, Patriarch of the West, and Vicar of Christ. Accepting the elction His Emmenence Joesph Cardinal of the Roman Church Ratzinger asked to be known as Benedict P.P. XVI

Part I: Holy Week and the Week of Sundays

This may come off as a rambling, but hey I did warn you in the title!

I know I am a little behind the eight ball here, so to speak, but the Pope is dead. I will start with a few reflections of what had been going on in my life prior to this historic event. Lent was hard this year! I felt oppressed throughout the forty days, but then Holy Week came andmy burdens seemed lightened. I spent Holy Week here in Rome. On the Wednesday of Holy Week I served at the Holy Altar during mass with HE Cardinal Szoka and HE Cardinal Law (both of whom are now in the Conclave). Palm Sunday I went to the Mass in St. Peter's Square, where I recieved one of the Pope's last blessings, and then the Chrism Mass on Thursday Morning (which by the way is a great day to have the Chrism Mass on, and it will be the topic of another blog), the Holy Thursday Mass, the Good Friday Liturgy, and finally the Easter Vigil. On Holy Thursday I walked to the Seven Churches, and in prayer I was in awe of the fact that Jesus makes himself so weak, so frail, and so availible to us. (This is particularly seen in the recent outrages on EBAY) All in all the entire experience was very prayerful and, my brethren here in the house made it, quite joyful. On Easter Sunday, alone and apart from my family for the first Easter in my life, I and five brothers made our way to Ars in France for a retreat. There in the shadow of the Saintly Cure we were schooled in the cross that is the life of a priest. But for all the sufferings that the Saintly Cure endured, I am convinced by his witness that the fruits were sweeter than the difficulties were bitter. (TBCont..)

Continued from before...

Five of us left Rome Easter Morning, after spending the Vigil at St. Peter's. I normally dislike to travel on Sundays, never mind the Sunday of Sundays, but I made an exception for this pilgrimage. Filled with Easter joy my traveling companions and I greatly enjoyed the trip. We traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, the See which St. Francis De Sales was never able to enter publicly because of the Calvinists, and from there we took a train through the Alps into France to the ancient See of Lyon, where the great second century father of the Church, Ireneaus, led His flock.

(nota brevis: I was shocked by the number of Arabs in Lyons and the secularized despairing look of those who were not, truly France is falling away from the faith quickly)

Traveling through the mountains my heart was lifted up by the beauty of God's creation. The peaks rising up more majestic than the greatest towers of man pointing mans mind toward the transcendent power that created them, valleys low and yet teaming with vigorous trees ever green and a plethora of life reminding us of the promise of life offered even to those in the valley of darkness, white water rivers carving their way through solid rock canyons reminding us of the power of water (especially in Baptism); all spoke of the goodness of our risen lord Jesus the Christ. I remember that at the Vigil I was moved to tears at the sound of the alleluia, now traveling through the redeemed world my heart and lips overflowed with this word. As is traditional in Polish families, on Holy Saturday I had eggs, sausage, bread, etc., blessed and this blessed food was what we ate throughout Easter day. Away from my family for the first Easter Sunday ever this fellowship was quite comforting. After another brief train ride and taxi we were in Ars. My week in Ars made a great impact on my spiritual life. The French countryside reminded me of Emmitsburg, Maryland, the spiritual capital of the U.S. (in my humble opinion) and my proximity to Jean Marie Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests (which it is my great desire to be) was inspirational. As a side note: Emmitsburg with its farmland, rolling hills, and minor basilica is almost bizarrely similar to Ars. Throughout the week I was overjoyed by the good things God had done for me—after a long and oppressive lent, and a cold winter, the radiance of Christ Crucified and Risen seemed to radiate in everything. As I mentioned Holy Week in Rome was awesome. Holy Week helped me recall what the spirit of the Liturgy really was; one of the most striking parts of Holy Week was the beauty and symbolism of the liturgies. (I haven't forgotten parts two and three of my promised three part Liturgy blog, although it has been put off for some time.) From the grand procession on Palm Sunday, to the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday Morning, etc. this Holy Week seemed to fit together better than any other in my life and lift my soul on high.

Anyway, coming off of this spiritual high, and the great joy and spirit in which we traveled to Ars, our arrival in Ars was like gazing across a beautiful landscape and then having the sun set sending a vibrant splash of color, light and darkness, across the serene scene. The retreat in Ars was on the priesthood, about what it meant to be a priest, what it required to be given up and what it required to be taken up, and what place the priesthood had in the history of salvation. All this, of course, was done in the spirit of John Paul the Great's 1986 Holy Thursday letter to priests in which he proposes Vianney as a model of the priesthood. However, despite the fact that St. JM Vianney was the intended focus, as it became clear that the Holy Father was in extremis as we say I couldn't help but see and meditate on the similarity between the simple parish priest, the Holy Cure, and the man who only desired to be a simple parish priest, the Holy Father. We focused in our conferences on being with the people, on preaching and catechesis, on confession, on prayer, on self-sacrifice, etc., and in each of these areas I saw the Holy Father. This is of course not surprising since from early on JPII admired the Holy Cure, and since they both sought sincerely to model their own lives after their mutual master Jesus. Still struck by how good God is to make Himself so available to us through the flesh and blood of Christ in the Sacred Species, the Eucharist, in every tabernacle of the world. I came to realize that both of these great saints John Paul the Great and Jean Marie Vianney were only able to work the miracle they did through utter abandonment to Jesus on the Altar through His great Mother Mary. Taking this example to heart, I found myself desirous, in fact overwhelmed by the need, to prostrate myself before God and cry out De profundis, from the depths of my soul, to God to to help me. To use me like they used the Saints, to help me recognize my lowliness and emptiness at all times, and to fill up my nothingness with His being, with His love, and with His strength.

In Ars I chanted the Liturgy with the Benedictine Sisters, who sang like angels, and spent time before my Lord both in the Most Blessed Sacrament and in His creation. I walked for hours through the pristine farmland surrounding Ars, walking from the Basilica to neighboring twelfth century churches, praying to and praising God. In front of the pulsing heart of Jesus in the monstrance, I gave thanks to God for His goodness to me and offered Him, who gave me his life giving body and blood as food, my body and blood in service to His greater glory, asking him to work in me what I could not do myself. I also enjoyed Ars. There was a spirit in Ars, a spirit of Vianney, which the sisters in particular kept alive. The sisters spent time catechizing all the groups of children that visited, arranging for Holy Mass to be celebrated, or for Adoration, etc. The town people in Ars were very friendly and seemed to have a love for the Holy Cure now dead 150 years. Near the John Paul II seminary there was a farm were each day we watched the wonder of life. Though we had no TV the animals put on a show for us each day that was far superior to any cartoons. We also had the privileged to see a horse born, a reminder of the true pain and suffering in love that mothers undergo to bring life into the world. We also had the privileged to pray next to Vianney's pulpit, catachetical chair, and confessionals and even to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar, each day, beneath the body of the Saint using his own chalice. The Holy Mass was celebrated extremely well each day, using both Latin and English, and facing the ad orientum. I found myself caught up in the beauty of the Mass, only slightly distracted by the numerous French who joined us throughout the Mass. One such visitor, a member of the Society of Christ the King (an order which celebrates the indult Mass of 1962) remarked that he was sure that we were religious of some sort and was shocked to hear we were diocesan. I could sing the praises of Ars and of our retreat forever, but in the interest of meager brevity I will conclude.

A respons to Polly Toynbee, a writer for the Left wing British paper the guardian, in response to a op-ed in which she blames JPII for the deaths of millions from AIDS in Africa:

I sensed a certain degree of emotivism in you article "Not in my name," which claims to speak for "rationalists who thought they understood this secular, sceptical age."

Many of your points may be valid, living here in Rome I know that many of the people who came were here because of the herd effect. However, I spent two days caring for and giving water to those who waited for as much as 14 hours in line to see the Holy Father's corps and I must attest that vast numbers of them were praying the Rosary, singing religious songs, and giving an awesome witness of Christian charity. Your quite right that ignorance of history and theology played a role in attendence of some of the world leaders in attendance, but with the vast numbers of Orthodox and Muslims present, as well as other groups, you must admit that part of what made that gathering of world leaders possible was not simply indifference but the ecumenical and inter-religous efforts made by John Paul.

This being said, what I really take issue with is your main premise the John Paul is somehow responsible for the deaths of millions. I believe you make a vague comparison between him and Stalin. There is a saying in the Church, "the Church doesn't impose it proposes." By this I mean, wereas Hitler, Stalin, and your own Queen Elizabeth I literally put people to death--in John Paul's case he proposes the Gospel and people choose to live or not to live by it (the Pope did not threaten to put their head on the Tower of London or something of that nature). Ironically, it was ussally those who choose not to live by the Pope's proposals who in the end died, both physically and spiritually.

Simple logic would hold that if the Pope's teachings were followed by all then few would die from AIDs, etc.

The Church and the Holy Father taught:
1) That sexual relations within marriage, and only within marriage, that were open to the
unative and procreative dimensions of the marital act, are good.
2) That contraceptives were dangerous to ones relationship with God and others.
3) That people even within marriage had to exercise their rationality concerning the
prudence have a child given an individuals circumstances.

Following these three clear teachings of the Church very few people would die from AIDS, and women who are at risk could make a conscious choice with their husbands not to get pregnant thus protecting their health. In fact following the Church's teachings is by far a safer course of action than using condoms, which have a about a 87% method failure rate and a 56% user failure rate for the AIDS virus, not to mention other viruses and infections for which "safety" varies. Following the Church's teachings also forces men to realize that women are other human persons, and not just things to be used for pleasure.

If you propose that somehow he forced people not to use condoms, then I ask why didn't he force them to follow the other two teachings

You also suggest that what is wrong with these teachings is that they are not reflective of the human condition. By this I assume you mean that humans are animals who can't help but "doing it," as a young college student passing me on the street today said to his friend. This however seems to be logically at odds with your claim to represent rational people, if some people are rational then all are rational (in nature), they all can take in information, make generalizations, and make choices based on those judgements. If this is the case then anyone can clearly see that the Church's was is the only sure way. The Church's teachings have always promoted the use of reason, but true reason which doesn't view the world materialistically but interpersonally. What you seem to be defending is a tired old skeptical rationalism, which denies all else but the material, but there is more to life than the material, in fact 99% of what matters in this world is not matterial but interpersonal.

One thing your right about: for Christians suffering is redemptive--something that while not desired is lovingly accepted--after all we boast only in Christ and Christ Crucified. Suffering is accepted by Christians because it is truely part of the human experience, a part which helps us become detached from the world and focused on "the other." What Christians fear is not bodily suffering but spiritual suffering, because we know that this world and its agonies are passing away. But I don't think you get that, and I think that it makes you mad to see people acting interpersonally rather than inter-materially.

In response to a young libertarian

In response to the following article by Teenaged Commentator Kyle Williams:


Where's the moral consistency in America? Saturday, April 09, 2005 by Kyle Williams
In an ironic time in America, "Sin City" is atop the box office while cable news channels broadcast wall-to-wall coverage of mourning Pope John Paul II's death. Is this a contradiction, or merely ignorance? Maybe it is insincerity. This pope was ...


_______________
Kyle,

Your article about the contradictions in American society was interesting. Your observation that there is a contradiction between what people say and what they do is quite correct. I worked in Washington for three years for the GOP and for the US Senate and my experience was that more often than not those "republicans" who always talked about morality often were outright hypocrites. Very few of them were living what they preached. However, I think there is a distinction to be made, some people know what is right, and yet are not virtuous enough to do it, while others do not know what is right and so they do whatever is pleasurable. Most
Christians--who know what is right because it is written in Sacred Scripture, and handed down to them by their parents and the Church through tradition--live with a certain degree of this hypocracy and contradiction in their lives. This is the reality of original sin, for you it might be that you are occasionally uncharitable to a brother or sister, a friend, to your parents, etc, despite the fact that you know that your were called by Christ Jesus to love one another as he loved you. For others who grew up in varying situations, such as those who were forced to endure the ludeness of public schools or whose parents deposited them in front of the TV since they were three years old, this may involve watching "pornographic" films and shows (i.e. prime time TV) while being staunchly against pornography. We are learning creatures, and while not excusing sin, we must be aware that sin and evil become easier as we become habituated to it, as we become addicted to it. Someone who knows that premarital intercourse is wrong, intellectually, may champion abstinence, but if they have engaged in it once it becomes infinitely more difficult to not do it again simply because at the biological level your body is designed to become chemically addicted to your wife (or husband). This is why governments must legislate morality. I am not suggesting that we force people to be good Judeo-Christians, but that we help people to be good men, and women. A good Christian man is first and foremost a good man, because Jesus, who we model our life after was the perfect man.

"The problem with the theology of Christian reconstructionism is not its morality, but rather its desire to impose morality on others – and this is an important distinction. I'm not saying there isn't right and wrong – there is – but I am saying it is wrong to impose moralism on others."

You know this is the same arguement that Sen. Kerry used to defend why he is "personally against" abortion, but votes to protect it. If something is wrong for a good Christian then it is equally wrong for any person because God does not give Christians a unique law but restates the natural law clearly. Thus in the duty of charity that we owe our neighbor, it is our duty as an individual and as a society to help people be good men and women. What is essential to being a good man is following the natural law--a law that is available to all, but is clearly restated in Revelation because man so often claims ignorance of it. Following the same schema as the Decalogue natural law teaches us: respect for our parents (i.e. the rights and duties associated with raising a family); the dignity of Human life (i.e. no murder, abortion, suicide, or euthanasia, and a preferential option for the poor); the dignity of marriage as a means for procreation and unity (i.e. no divorce or interference with the marital act such as contraception); respect for the duties and rights associated with property (i.e. no theft and share means with the poor); the primacy of truth (i.e. no perjury); the danger of lust (i.e. no pornography); and the danger of jealousy. As you see some of these proscriptions are easier to put into law than others, but they all must find some place in law because beyond being punitive law ought to be educational. In your article you say that its wrong to enforce morality--but you don't mean this because I am sure that you are ok with morality being enforced as regards murder and theft. "In a free society, the standards of protection are based upon the ability of citizens to secure their property. " What you mean is that you have bought into the libertarian
(utilitarian) notion that matters of sexuality harm no one and so you can't legislate against them. In reality however, sexuality is the most powerful human drive, and a disordered sexuality leads to an undermining of the whole natural law. When sexuality, and intercourse, become about pleasure and not about love, true Christian love, agape in the greek and caritas in latin, then anything goes because other people become things to be enjoyed and used. Historically, pornography led to infidelity, which led to a break down in trust between men and women, this in turn led to divorce, contraception, and entually abortion, it also often led to murder based in lust and jealousy, abortion led to a culture of murder, which in turn leads to euthanasia and eugenics. Today there are "scholars" in the United States who argue that parents should have the right to kill their child for two years AFTER they are born and in the Neitherlands doctors are able to murder children under twelve who they deem undesirable because of defects or illness. Lets not forget also that the breakdown of the family leads to poverty and therefore the greater likelyhood of crimes against persons and property, disrespect for parents, disrespect for parental duties, and the erosion of parental rights. JRR Tolken in his writtings about "Middle Earth" prior to his famous novel "The Hobit" wrote that in the begining the world was sung into existence, this is of course an analogy for creation, whether he admits it or not. Similar to Tolken's "sub-creation," as he called it, real Creation was accomplished by God's Word which "sung" all of existence into being and ordered everything in perfect diversity. Just as in a Opera if one instrument plays a wrong note or one voice sings off tune the whole is distorted, if you pull at (break) one of the commandments you do damage to them all.

"However, standards of morality can only be based on a sense of religious worldview." Here you are wrong. Just because the majority of people who talk about morality today are Christians doesn't mean that Christians are the only people interested in morality. Morality is not primarly based on a religious worldview, but rather on a human worldview. Aristotle, who did not believe in the Greek gods and was not exposed to Christainity or (most likely) Judaism, in his works promoted all of the commandments. Aristotle was able to see the commandments in nature because he lived the truely human life, the life that was focus on the search for truth the search for God. Does this mean his ethics were error free, no, without recourse to Revelation he made some mistakes, but his example and the example of other virtuous pagans demonstrate that morality is a fundamentally human endeavor. Not forgetting the most important commandments, the first three commandments about God are also natural laws, which were the first to be dispatched, they demonstrate mans natural capacity and yearning for God. You shall have only one God points us to the fact that we ought not make ourselves, material things, or ideologies our god, but rather search for the True God. True for the Jew or Christian this command identifies the True God, but even for an unbeliever like Aristotle this natural law is important because logically speaking there can be only one god, which can't be a created thing. You shall not take His name in vain shows us that we ought not use the term God frivolously as the pagans and atheists do, because the quest for god is so central to what it means to be human. Finally keep holy the sabbath shows us that we ought not be consumed by work, but rather that each man need leisure time in which to seek out God, as Aristolte also notes.
It is not surprising that in the late 1900s in intellectual circles God was being forgotten, and that soon thereafter other gods were appearing in his place: i.e. atheistic rationalism, materialism in its communist, socialist, fascist, and capitalist forms, as well as hedonism, scientism, etc. The result is, I fear that each of the commandments have been violate more often in the past century than in the 19 that preceded since the birth of Christ.

When I was your age I toyed with the libertarianism that I sensed in your article. If you will take a bit of advise that road leads no-where except to sin, vice, and error. I believe that in the world we live in, more so than ever, we need to have a limited government, but we can not give up on the promotion of basic morality through the law. If we do the law will eventually become a farce, a farce used against Christians. You are dead on that we need to teach people how to be more authentic in their Christian faith. As a Catholic I see that quite clearly, we have 1.1 billion faithful, 60 million in the States, including the Kennedy and Kerry families, but at least half of these do not know their faith well or do not live it. However, don't buy this nonsense about it being wrong to impose your morality on others--there is no such thing as YOUR morality, things are either moral or not, for all people at all times. It may be wrong to impose your customs on others, since custom changes, but morality does not and that is the big difference. Ultimately in the most gray cases people must make their own decisions based on their own consciences but the law should provide them with a certain measuring stick.

The Pope is Dead Long Live the Pope

On the Vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday Our Holy Father

the man born and baptized Karol Woytila

went to his Maker

Johannes Paulus Magnus Pontifex Maximus
m. 2 IV 2005
Requiascat In Pace

I firmly believe that his soul is at the right hand of God and so I ask his intercession:

John Paul, our father, pastor, and vicar of Christ
Intercede for us to my Lord and Your's and to His Father and Our Father
That through the witness of the Church the faith may be rekindled in Europe
Ask Him to grant the conversion of Italy and all of the European Continent
and the Unity of All Christians
By means of his many graces and through the sending forth of His Holy Spirt
For His greater glory. Through Mary to Jesus.

Amen

Form and Matter in the Liturgy—Sacrifice (Part 1)

When it comes to worshiping the Lord Almighty God, in my opinion, there is nothing too extravagant. All that we have we have received from him and therefore I think it is only fair to give him the better share of our toils. This, at least, is the lesson I take from the story of Cain and Able. As you remember, Cain kills his brother out of jealousy because God praises Able for his sacrifice (the best produce of the land) while ignoring Cain's sacrifice (a less than choice specimen of livestock). The moral of this story is that in offering sacrifices to God, NOTHING we could give God is a worthy repayment for what he is given us. However, acknowledging this, if we do give an “unworthy” offering it should be the best “unworthy” offering possible, it should be an offering not from our surplus but from our need. As Jesus says in the Gospels the poor woman's meager alms are better than the rich mans extravagant donation.

When it comes to the Divine Liturgy, the Mass, you often hear people say that God chose to be born in a stable, in squalor, and so, since he lived his life in relative poverty he doesn't need fine vessels, vestments, etc. when he is being worshiped. This of course is true—God needs nothing because all, that is, is his. The fruits of the earth offered by Able, belonged to God before Able sacrificed them to God. God had no need of them, but it pleased God that fallen man still realized that all that he had was a gift from God, and it pleased God that man was willing to sacrifice the best portions of his labors to the one who gives all things existence.

Today this is still the case, despite what we tell ourselves about our hard work, all that we “earn” is a gift from God. For nothing that exists exists without his willing it to be. “In the beginning was the Word...” In years past, poor peasants devoted huge portions of their labor to the construction of fabulous churches and the purchase of fine appointments for use in the liturgy. Today, while so many are fabulously rich compared with the masses of just a century ago, we scoff at fine vessels and vestments, while building inornate, drab, unprayerful churches. At the same time we build larger and larger homes, buy more extravagant toys, and live in greater luxury than even the Roman emperors of Jesus' era lived in.

Part of this is from an incorrect understanding of the Evangelical council of simplicity. There are those who ask, how one can justify purchasing beautiful things for the sacrifice of the Mass when there are poor among us. Isn't it socially unjust to have extravagant churches while the poor are homeless, hungry, without health care, etc. It of course shouldn't surprise you that Jesus predicted that the poor would always be with us. And yes, we are most definitely called to minister to them: to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, visit the sick, etc. However, Jesus' trice-repeated instruction to Peter and the Church which he would lead, “Feed my sheep,” “feed my lambs,” “feed my sheep,” was not only an instruction to care for the temporal well beings of people but also to feed their souls. “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that flows from the mouth of God,” and so feeding Christ's flock means feeding them with the bread of life, the word of God made flesh truly present in the Sacrifice of the Altar.

This brings us to the crux of the issue. God does not need sacrifice, yet sacrifice is present and requested by God throughout the Old Testament, and it is perfected by Christ in the New Testament. God does not need the best portion, and yet it pleases him that it is offered. Why is this the case?? Why does the God who is All in All, who owns all created things, place these burdensome requests for fine sacrifices upon the shoulders of his chosen people?? It is because, in truth, the sacrifices we offer are not to God's benefit but to ours. WE NEED THE SACRIFICE!! We need to learn how to sacrifice. Our sacrifices teaches us what true love is about. True love is the total emptying of self, a gift of self to another, with no expectation or guarantee of return. In turn, our sacrifices teach others what we believe in and they teach others how to love. Isn't this what Christ taught us on the Cross, to give ourselves totally? We may not be asked to give our lives, but ought we not give the best, choice, portion of our earnings to the worship of the one who gave us all we have?

When I visited Asissi a few months ago I was struck by seeing St. Francis' habit and his dalmatic (the vestment he wore while assisting at the Mass). His habit was really little more than a rag, far poorer then the rags that a poor person in the US might wear today. However, what struck me was that despite the fact that Francis was the evangelist of poverty, at the liturgy, serving as a deacon, the dalmatic he wore was at the same time a simple and yet quite beautiful woven silk and silver. I will conclude this first part of a multi-part series of the Catholic liturgy with this thought: when we celebrate the Mass, Catholics believe that Christ opens the gates of heaven to the faithful and that the priest steps to the threshold of heaven offering meager gifts of bread and wine and receiving in return the bread of everlasting life, the Word of God which sustains our life for all eternity. We as American's pay millions of dollars a year to transport our presidents and leaders safely and comfortably around the world, we also pay all that we can afford in order to transport our own families in similar safety and opulence, is it too much then to ask that we spend a couple dollars to transport our Lord and Savior's gift of his own flesh in similar safety, opulence, and reverance?


Form and Matter in the Liturgy—Why things matter in a created world (Part 2)Form and Matter in the Liturgy—Latin and Lace Smells and Bells(Part 3)

God's gift of Suffering

Yesterday I watched a fill called Shadowlands, and I was quite impressed. The film told the story of CS Lewis and one great love in his life, a dying woman. I will not tell you the story, watch the movie or better still read the book, upon which it is based. I did want to discuss again the concept of suffering, which is central to the movie and has particular significance in the wake of the various natural disasters which have been visited upon us, and most like will continue to be visited upon us.

A member of the Anglican Hierarchy, such as it is, recently stated that he refuses to believe in the idea of a vengeful God—a God who would wrathfully deal with our sinfulness. Obviously this is a result of the Anglican abandonment of Revelation, in favor of erroneous but more democratic theological thinking. Clearly a vengeful God who repays man's disobedience with suffering is clearly biblical. In fact, I would venture to say that it is built into the system, sin results in evil in the world which results in suffering through one of several venues. Man's rejection of God's friendship in the garden would have led to suffering and death, whether or not God cast man out of the garden. The more I think about suffering the more I come to realize two things, first that, though not particularly pastorally sensitive to say to those enduring it, suffering is a gift from God, and secondly that it is a gift that often seems more like a curse, we don't like it and often reject it thus compounding the sin and bring upon ourselves greater suffering.

First the most difficult proposition, that suffering is a gift. Modern man declares that, suffering is evil, and that if God who is supposed to be good allows it to happen to “good” people then either He is not good or He is not (existent).

First things first, it seems that there is a fallacy in the proposition “good” people, since goodness is relative to the fallen depravity of man. I question whether in reality, there has ever been a man (male or female), other than God's gift of our Lord and His mother. Isn't this the meaning of the story of Job—who is supposedly a just man. Job in the end vindicates himself as a just man through his humble acceptance of evils from the God who had given him so many goods, but while Job may be just, he is not sinless. Only four humans were ever born sinless, two who sinned and brought suffering to the world, and two who did not sin and brought eternal life to the world. By this I am not seeking to say that because of original sin we are all deserving of punishment. Oh, if only this was our only sin! Original sin makes it harder for us to do what is right, and because of this all of us have actual personal sins weighing on our souls. In most cases these sins are abundant, and so in fact I think there is no such thing as “good” people. Its not that your evil and you deserve what you get, but rather that you are not good and the suffering you experience calls you to realize this and become better. I am not trying to insult the rest of humanity, but to point out that we all must put things in perspective, as even Jesus says, “why do you call me good, only the Father is Good.”

Only God, who gives us all things, is good, if we accept good things from him, ought we not accept what we perceive is evil. If one where truly good, I do not believe they would suffer, because for them even pain would be a joy. Suffering and pain are objectively not good, God, who is all good, does not will that his creatures suffer. However, he does permit it. While suffering may be objectively evil, in a particular case it can be a good. This is true both in the natural realm and the supernatural realm. Hold your hand over a lit match and you will see this demonstrated. Does it hurt, yes, is it objectively evil, yes, but the fact that you suffered for an instant, in the subjective sense is good, because it convinced you not to leave your hand in the flame. If you hadn't felt that pain you may have left your hand in the flame until it was completely burnt, and rather than having an instant of pain in your hand you would have had the rest of your life without the existence of your hand. Thus while evil in itself, its evil is not a moral evil but a physical evil, and thus as a means to an end it can be good.
Evil, that is suffering, both physical and emotional, is indeed useful to man's salvation because it alerts him to the reality that, just like the hand over the match, something is not right! A fundamentalist preacher recently declared that the recent eruptions and Tsunami in Southeast Asia are a sign of the impending end and a punishment of our sins. He is of course right, but not in the way he intended. Suffering, and the death it causes are the result of sin, however not being God, I would not venture a guess as to whose sin a natural disaster is targeted to redress. In fact, it is not necessarily the particular sin of the people impacted, it could be the sin of the whole world. Suffering serves to get our attention, and while the recent disasters happened to a particular group of people they got the whole world's attention. These disasters also point to the impending end of the world—this world is passing away—but I would not care to venture a guess as to the date and the time. I am sure after Pompey, or Mt. St. Helen's, or any of the plethora of natural, and man made, disasters of the past two thousand years people said, 'well its all over,' and in truth it is, but the day and hour of the end is known only to the Father, it may be tomorrow or a century of tomorrows from now.

Suffering reminds man that his destiny is not in this world, that attachment to this world hampers one's preparation for the next, and that the price of sin is death. Suffering of the physical sort reminds man not to make idols out of the things of this world. Augustine discusses this at length in his treatise On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana, Book I). He says we enjoy things for two reasons, because they lead to an end or for their own sake. Things which we enjoy for the sake of something else are properly not enjoyed but used. Augustine says only God should be enjoyed, for if we enjoy things that are not God in the way that we enjoy God then we are committing idolatry. Emotional pain is also useful in the same way because it reminds us that while we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, our first duty and ultimate end is to love God. Emotional suffering and death helps us to stay detached, in a loving way, from those we love. If we love the other and wish the best for them then to become attached to the point which we wish that they did not leave us to enter the eternal kingdom is both uncharitable to them and idolatrous.

I am not sure that God wants us to be comfortable and happy in this world. He has tried that before and time and time again every time people are prosperous and happy they see to forget God en masse. It is not that God is a party killer, but that God is and knows the Truth!! He knows the truth about man, the truth which we ourselves often forget. Man is and always has been, from the beginning of time destined for communion with God, for heaven. I honestly believe that even original man, before sin, was destined to “die,” if in the most pleasant of ways, possibly along the lines of the Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin Mother of God. All men have always been called to be with God forever, but in the state of original sin we forget this and and choose to live in this world as if it is the only. St. Paul states it well when he says, if Christ was not raised from the dead then we shall not rise, and if we do not rise eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. But God knows what we forget, that man is destined to rise, with Christ, that man has been destined since his creation to be with the One in whose image and likeness he was fashioned.

For man to live life for today, when in reality he is destined for tomorrow, i.e. for Heaven not Earth, is then a state of denial. It is a state of denial that will have eternal ramifications. Soren Kierkegaard calls this despair: despair over being what we do not want to be, not being what we want to be, and over not knowing what we are. We are in despair because we are not omnipotent, eternal, and omniscient—we are not God. We are in despair because we are subsistent, we are man a radically subsistent being. And, we are in despair because we don't know what being man really is!! Suffering lays open our state of despair and provides us with a moment in which we can embrace our destiny eternity. If we reject the moment then it is just that a lost chance, however if we utilize it the we embrace the eternal consciousness. Man doesn't like this! He doesn't like being forced to see himself as he is. He prefers to live in his pretend world of dillusion, in which he is an island, independent of the rest of humanity and more importantly independent of God.

Man is quite happy to live in the despair that is not realizing that one is in despair, the despair that is not knowing your telos (Greek for end or purpose) and not caring because you think you don't have one. It is for this reason that man throughout the ages has taken offense at God. When nature, which man holds (and rightly so) as an agent of God, forces man to ask the basic questions that are basic life tasks for man, but which often man forgets to ask (or ignores the answer), man takes offense at God. In the Papal encyclical Fides et Ratio, John Paul II notes:
a cursory glance at ancient history shows clearly how in different parts of the world, with their different cultures, there arise at the same time the fundamental questions which pervade human life: Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life? (Fides et Ratio, 1)

These questions have over the ages, the Pontiff points out, resulted in the various religions of the world—which are man's natural desire to reach toward the transcendent. While man searched for God in the world religions he was limited by his own capabilities and fallen nature, and so in his mercy, God, who had been rejected by man, revealed himself to man through the children of Abraham, and later through his own Son, through his own being, his own word, that he sent into the world. The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, revealing to us in himself the Father who sent him. This is the center of history, i.e. in the conception, birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; this is the moment of import to all mankind, because at this moment God answered all our questions And yet though man had an innate desire for God, man rejected Him when He revealed himself to Man. Man prefered to live a lie, he prefered to fashion God according to his own likings, he wanted to know God, but when he hear him man didn't like what he said.

Here we arrive at my second point, percisely that man rejects the gift of suffering, and thus increases the the quantitative amount of suffering in the world. The gift of suffering is first and foremost the gift of God, who can not suffer, suffering for us. God sanctified the physical evil of suffering in and through the Passion of his Son. In living the human life, complete in all senses, Jesus redeems man, and in suffering with man he makes our suffering redeeming. Suffering is an essential part of Christianity. Paul speaks of uniting his sufferings to those of Christ to fill up what was lacking in his sufferings. I am not sure there was anything lacking in the sufferings of Christ, who suffered more than any man, but this sentiment points to the fundamental truth that in humbly accepting sufferings, God grant us bountiful graces. However, knowing God, man has chosen to reject the sufferings that befall him as a curse of God. They have taken offense at the thought that God knows best. They take offense of the fact that God asks them to deny themselves and take up their cross, following Him. They wanted to know God, and now that they do they resent Him. For, of course, it is essential to know a person to resent Him. But rejecting God is a sin, and so if the first premise is true, that suffering is the result of sin, then in rejecting suffering we sin and call down further sufferings upon ourselves. Sin multiplies the sufferings of man, we see this in the great sinners of the twentieth century, Lenon, Stalin, Hitler, Moa, etc. If we choose to ignore suffering, if we choose to ignore the fact that our hand is in the fire and it hurts, whose fault is that. Man can never advance until he realizes that he is helpless without God. Man will never move beyond barbarity until he is civilized by God.
And this is the world we live in, a world which damns God for suffering, thus calling down all the more suffering. It is a sad state, will we ever learn? I don't know, but what I do know is that this suffering isn't the worst part of our situation. The worst part of the contemporary existential problem is that in the end, when we die, we will be faced with an eternity to reap what we soe. I think of a famous quote from one of our founding fathers, “I shudder to think that God is Just.”

Humanae Vitae

A received wisdom exists among both liberals and conservatives regarding Humanae Vitae: "In opposition to 'the spirit of Vatican II' which otherwise prevailed in the Church at that time, Humanae Vitae was a strong reaffirmation of the Church's traditional teaching on birth control. Liberals were dismayed to see the Church return to a 'pre-Vatican II' approach, while conservatives were pleased to see a period of experimentation brought to a halt."The purpose of this article is to determine what correspondence, if any, exists between reality and this accepted history. When we examine closely the actual text of the encyclical, do we find that it indeed reinforces the constant teaching of the Church? Or is it possible that it repudiates nearly everything taught by Pope Paul's predecessors? What if Humanae Vitae was not a stabilizing influence at all, but instead was a radical new element in the history of Catholic moral doctrine?We may begin by noting that amidst the many disputes regarding Humanae Vitae, one fact is indisputable: the encyclical has absolutely failed in its mission to teach and to persuade Catholics. Statistics show that contraceptive usage is ubiquitous. Widely available data indicate only five percent of women of childbearing years are refraining entirely from the use of artificial contraceptives. The total effect of contraceptive usage by American Catholics has resulted in a birth rate far below the replacement level, correlating with data from virtually every Catholic country in Europe - most notably Italy, which has one of the lowest birthrates in the world.The Alan Guttmacher Institute reports that fertility rates remained "much higher" for Catholics than for Protestants "until the late 1960s" (when Humanae Vitae was released), but since that time they have plummeted to levels even lower than those of Protestants. The proportion of Catholics using birth control is so large that it could not possibly be any larger even if Humanae Vitae had come out and repudiated the Catholic teaching. As John Kippley, founder of the Couple to Couple League, explained: "With a continuation of the status quo [1991], a parish priest can expect that about 97% to 99% of his newlyweds will be using unnatural methods of birth control."How then do we explain such an abject failure of the teaching authority of the Church? For three decades liberals have claimed that the low acceptance rate of the encyclical indicates that it must be wrong. These dissidents have no difficulty establishing a prima facie case: "How could a teaching of the Church be so utterly rejected if it is indeed true?" But this argument is self-referential: "The teaching is false because I reject it, and I reject the teaching because it is false." Counterpoised against this tautology is a massive amount of evidence concerning the lethal effects of contraception, spiritually as well as physically. Everyone has seen statistics describing the skyrocketing incidence of pornography, masturbation, fornication, adultery, divorce, homosexuality and abortion since 1968. These "leading cultural indicators" demonstrate that the much touted "sensus fidei" may be nothing more than mass apostasy.At a more fundamental level, for a believing Catholic, rejecting this teaching amounts to rejecting the Faith. For this moral doctrine has been taught repeatedly and dogmatically, not by one pope, but by every recent pope, not just in recent times, but throughout the history of the Church. If the teaching on contraception is false, then the authority of the Magisterium is empty. As Fr. John Hardon, S.J., has said, "Professed Catholics who practice contraception either give up the practice of contraception or they give up their Catholic faith." Meanwhile the Church apparatus has clung with equal tenacity to the belief that there is no problem with Humanae Vitae. On this issue they have reacted as they have to so many other problems in recent decades: a resolute head-in-the-sand approach. While the liberals' approach amounts to discarding the Faith, the approach of the hierarchy means despairing of the faithful. For this position essentially says, "We recognize that virtually all Catholics are living in a state of serious sin, but there is nothing we can do about it, so we wash our hands of responsibility." This responsibility will not be shrugged off so easily. As Fr. Hardon's writings point out, contraception is not only "fatal to the Faith," but "fatal to salvation" as well: "The practice of contraception is a grave sin. Those who indulge in the practice are in danger of losing their immortal souls…. Christianity has always held, holds now, and always will hold, that contraception is a serious offense against God. Unless repented, it is punishable by eternal deprivation of the vision of God, which we call eternal death." It is intolerable that the Church should stand by passively as the vast majority of its members - amounting to hundreds of millions of souls - lead lives that must come to eternal perdition. Isn't it likely that the failure is not only on the part of those listening, but also on the part of those preaching as well? This is where we must consider a third alternative: "The doctrine is true, but the presentation has been fatally flawed." By "presentation" I do not mean rhetorical style; it is not simply a matter of saying the same things in a different way. Rather, Humanae Vitae needed to say very different things if it wished to present the Catholic teaching on birth control in all its fullness and beauty and with the requisite persuasiveness. It is the abandonment of Sacred Scripture, of Catholic tradition, of Catholic doctrine, and of Catholic philosophy that has rendered the encyclical incapable of convincing the faithful and has left the Church unable to cope with the moral breakdown that has afflicted virtually every Catholic country in the world.As the noted natural law philosopher J. Budziszewski said in the journal First Things: "Though addressed not only to Roman Catholics but to 'all men of good will,' Humanae Vitae is both diffuse and elliptical; its premises are scattered and, to non-Catholics, obscure. Though the encyclical letter is magisterial in the sense of being lordly, it is not magisterial in the sense of teaching well. It seems to lack the sense, which any discussion of natural law requires, of what must be done to make the self-evident evident, to make the intuitive available to intuition, to make what is plain in itself plain to us."Below I explore in detail nine specific problems that have rendered Humanae Vitae impotent and resulted in the rejection of its conclusions. 1. Bureaucracy and DelayBy the time the encyclical Humanae Vitae was released, it was quite literally a "dead letter." Opposing viewpoints had been released to both Catholic and secular media in a steady stream. Rebuttals to the Church's position had been prepared and signed, only awaiting the moment of the encyclical's release for them to be submitted for publication. In hindsight, Humanae Vitae appears quite naïve when it makes the statement, "We believe that the men of our day are particularly capable of seeing the deeply reasonable and human character of this fundamental principle." Now that three decades have passed, isn't it time that we as the Church started taking responsibility for our own failings and stopped bemoaning the fact that the encyclical was never given a fair hearing? The decision to appoint a "Papal Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population and Birth Rate" sealed the fate of the encyclical in three ways.First, the decision to place the fate of a crucial Church doctrine in the hands of a commission can only be considered an act of imprudence. Janet Smith, who has researched the background of Humanae Vitae more extensively than anyone else in the world, says, "It is not possible to find a published statement that makes clear the purpose of this commission." In the actual event, the creation of the Papal Commission turned out to be a major disaster. The commission released to the press a "Majority Report" that advocated a change in the perennial teaching of the Church. A seemingly authoritative document from the Vatican was now widely available in the press, signed by nine cardinals and archbishops, which said "responsible parenthood" could include the use of contraceptives. This viewpoint had the field all to itself for more than two years, sufficient time to garner increasing support and to turn public opinion away from the teaching of the Church. Secondly, the appointment of the Papal Commission occasioned a delay of many years. The Pill was introduced in 1958. Vatican II opened in 1962. The study commission was appointed by Pope John XXIII in 1963 and later expanded by Pope Paul VI. The topic was covered in the 1965 Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes, but in only a cursory manner because Pope Paul VI had reserved this topic for himself, awaiting the recommendations of the commission. There is evidence that the Vatican II document only worsened the situation; upon the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, a Congress of theologians released a statement saying, "The Encyclical does not meet the expectations aroused by the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes."These expectations were fed a steady diet of articles from various theologians, pundits and experts. Already by 1966, Richard McCormick, author of the compendium "Notes on Moral Theology" in Theological Studies, wrote that contraception had become "the major moral issue troubling the Church," and that the literature in the previous six months was "voluminous." Note that Humanae Vitae still was not to appear for two more years. It was during these crucial years that the consensus of society turned away from the Church. It was during these years that the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Griswold vs. Connecticut decision invalidating state restrictions on the dispensing of contraceptives. It was during these years that contraceptive usage rates began to skyrocket, forcing the Church into the position of requiring people to cease doing something that had become an integral part of their lifestyle, rather than merely maintaining the status quo.This result can only be compared to the difference between driving a train and righting a train that has gone off the tracks. One requires virtually no effort, so little in fact that one might be tempted to take one's eye off the track. The other requires the coordinated efforts of thousands of men and even then is not guaranteed success.Lastly, this bureaucratic approach dealt a fatal blow to Humanae Vitae itself, since it leads off with an admission that the Papal Commission reached an opposite conclusion. The message of the encyclical is thus crippled by a description of conflicts within the teaching authority of the Church. Readers of Humanae Vitae find that the well has been poisoned before they even come to the Church's point of view, a defect that will always remain a permanent part of the encyclical.2. Lack of Context on Christian MarriageAt the Lambeth Conference of 1930, the Church of England approved the use of contraception by married couples, the first time such a thing had been permitted by any Christian denomination. Pope Pius XI was faced with a serious crisis, arguably as serious as the crisis faced by Pope Paul VI in the 1960s. Birth control usage became widespread among Protestants following this historic event, and fertility rates among white Protestants soon entered a period of decline from which they have never recovered. So the stakes were high.The response of Pope Pius XI was immediate, since he realized that delay would sow doubt and confusion in the minds of the faithful. Fortunately he was able to release the Catholic response in the same year, 1930. His response did not require any panels, commissions or committees; it was dogmatic and magisterial. Most notable about his response, however, was the fact that his encyclical was titled "On Christian Marriage," not "On Birth Control." He responded to the Anglican challenge by reaffirming the entire Christian view of the married life. Certainly he was firm and unambiguous on the issue of contraception - much more so than Humanae Vitae despite the latter's focus on this single topic - yet he was equally firm and unambiguous on several other controversial topics.What Casti Connubii presents to the faithful is an entire Catholic way of life, one that must include fidelity, permanence and fruitfulness. Marriage may not be attempted on an a la carte basis; one does not pick and choose individual items. When you make the choice for Christian marriage, then you buy the whole package, including generosity in accepting children from God. This approach was magisterial, systematic, logical, and - not least - successful.In contrast, Humanae Vitae presents only a short synopsis of Catholic teaching on marriage. The general discussion of Christian marriage is contained in sections 8 and 9, little more than a dozen sentences combined. Personalist concepts of marriage such as "fully human" and "total" are each given their own paragraphs, while the three traditional foundations of marriage - fidelity, permanence and fruitfulness - must together share a single paragraph.There is another way in which the lack of Catholic marriage doctrine has contributed to the failure of the encyclical: by disowning the virtue of obedience. Humanae Vitae actually quotes from Ephesians chapter 5, but commences with the very next verse (Eph. 5:25), deliberately excising St. Paul's instruction, "Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord" (Eph. 5:22-24). Casti Connubii, in contrast, united Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium as it explained the truth of Christian marriage: "Domestic society being confirmed, therefore, by this bond of love, there should flourish in it that 'order of love,' as St. Augustine calls it. This order includes both the primacy of the husband with regard to the wife and children, the ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience, which the Apostle commends in these words: 'Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, and Christ is the head of the Church.'"During this era in which the Church has maintained a vow of silence on the virtue of obedience in marriage, the crisis over Humanae Vitae has continued and has been characterized most often as a crisis of obedience. The period immediately after Humanae Vitae's promulgation was marked by massive defiance and dissent. Theologians openly defied the Vatican; many bishops' conferences issued statements implying that Catholics could use contraception in good conscience. Pope Benedict XV would not have been surprised by the way a devaluing of the virtue of obedience in the family has resulted in the abandonment of obedience in the Church. He pointed out the natural connection in his first encyclical (Ad Beatissimi 1914):"The unrestrained striving after independence, together with overweening pride, has little by little found its way everywhere; it has not even spared the home, although the natural origin of the ruling power in the family is as clear as the noonday sun; nay, more deplorable still, it has not stopped at the steps of the sanctuary."Humanae Vitae has thus contributed both directly and indirectly to a crisis in which we have gone from losing the battle on birth control to losing the very concept of obedience itself.3. Natural vs. Artificial MethodsDefenders of Humanae Vitae protest against a "misreading" that views the encyclical merely in terms of a contrast between "artificial" and "natural" methods of birth control. But this is not a misreading at all; this is the stated message of Humanae Vitae. Consider first the title of the encyclical, "On the Proper Regulation of the Propagation of Offspring." The question is already settled before the discussion has begun: there should be a "regulation"; the issue to be discussed is using "proper" methods.In fact, the encyclical step by step builds a case for birth control. First it discusses the "serious difficulties" of population, conceding the argument to the population control advocates. Then it speaks of "responsible parenthood," commending a decision to "avoid new births." Then it evaluates means to achieve this goal, condemning "artificial methods" while praising "legitimate use of a natural disposition." The title of the advisory commission is enlightening: "Papal Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population and Birth Rate." Family, population and birth rate have now become "problems"; they are no longer bona, "goods." The encyclical starts off with a dire warning about overpopulation, and later refers readers to Pope Paul VI's prior encyclical, Populorum Progressio, where we find even gloomier statements about "depressing despondency" caused by "population increases."Section 20 of Humanae Vitae tells us that the job of the Church towards the faithful is to "strengthen them in the path of honest regulation of birth" while comforting them "amid the difficult conditions which today afflict families and peoples." In other words, "People are miserable, so we will help them regulate births that there might be fewer people to be miserable." This is a far cry from the attitude of generosity displayed in documents from Pope Paul's predecessors, who continually strove to enlarge the appreciation of fruitfulness. Pope Pius XII's 1958 "Address to Large Families," for example, is a masterpiece that every Catholic family should read and ponder. Compare Humanae Vitae's pinched, meager attitude with Pius XII's lyrical poetry in praise of new life when he calls for "esteem, desire, joy, and the loving welcome of the newly born right from its first cry. The child, formed in the mother's womb, is a gift of God, Who entrusts its care to the parents."The new goal established by Humanae Vitae is "responsible parenthood" rather than "generosity towards children." Living out the message of the encyclical "undoubtedly requires ascetical practices," and "perfect self-mastery," Humanae Vitae claims. "Responsible parenthood" means that before deciding to have a child, a couple must "recognize fully their own duties towards God, towards themselves, towards the family and towards society, in a correct hierarchy of values." Humanae Vitae offers no explanation of these duties, leaving couples to wonder if adding to population growth could likely be a violation of their obligations. No longer does there exist a presumption in favor of fertility, with any type of birth control - even natural means - reserved for extraordinary cases. Now the "decision to raise a numerous family" must be "deliberate"; it is no longer a natural and spontaneous outgrowth of the marriage commitment.We find reasons for avoiding a new birth as basic as "harmony and peace of the family" and "better conditions for education." These reasons can "derive from the physical or psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from external conditions," while an earlier section had listed "physical, economic, psychological and social conditions." In other words, one is hard pressed to imagine reasons that would not qualify. Later on, Humanae Vitae lowers the bar even further, citing merely "plausible reasons" to seek "the certainty that offspring will not arrive." All one need do is "take into account the natural rhythms immanent in the generative functions." The encyclical repeatedly differentiates between "artificial" birth control and a "natural" disposition. For example, when Humanae Vitae famously predicts the harmful results of widespread adoption of contraception, it refers to "the consequences of methods of artificial birth control." It thus defines the problem as being one of methods that are artificial, not a lack of fruitfulness, a failure of generosity, etc. Ironically, despite repeated emphasis on "the path of honest regulation of birth" through "the use of marriage in the infecund periods only," Humanae Vitae achieved a result directly contrary to what it intended. Fr. Paul Marx, OSB, founder of Human Life International, and a leading teacher and proponent of NFP in the 1960s, has reported, "With Humanae Vitae, NFP more or less died in the USA. I did 9 international symposia and many weekend conferences on NFP in various parts of the USA. No bishop encouraged me."4. Missing References to ScriptureVatican II called for a renewed effort on the part of the Church to investigate and reinforce the scriptural basis for its moral teachings. It is ironic that Humanae Vitae, one of the first encyclicals released after Vatican II, should have taken just the opposite approach and stripped all the scriptural foundation from its arguments. Humanae Vitae makes no reference to any of the standard texts that have been cited for millennia.In a recent symposium in the journal First Things, Gilbert Meilaender and Phillip Turner described the fundamental importance of Scripture, especially for reaching across denominational lines:"As theologians representing the Lutheran and Anglican churches who seek a common mind with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, we think it most appropriate for us to direct our attention to the first of the questions posed for this symposium: 'Do you judge the argument of Humanae Vitae with respect to artificial means of contraception convincing?' Our answer in brief is no … Though the first three chapters of Genesis are generally cited as loci classici for beginning a discussion of marriage and sex, they are not discussed in Humanae Vitae. Had more adequate reference been made to Holy Scripture, it might indeed have proved to be the case that 'a teaching rooted in natural law' would have been 'illuminated and made richer by divine revelation.'"The scriptural supports for the Church's teaching are numerous and compelling, sufficiently so that all Christian denominations shared the Catholic position until 1930. First of all there is the commandment to "Increase and multiply and fill the earth" found in the very first chapter of the Bible (Genesis 1:28).Moreover, God gives this commandment not only to Adam, but He repeats it in every case where He makes a covenant with man. God speaks the same words twice to Noah (Genesis 9:1 and 9:7). God tells Abraham to be fruitful when he changes his name from Abram (Genesis 17:4-6). God gives the same instruction to Jacob when he changes his name to Israel (Genesis 35:10-12). God confirms his covenant with Moses in the same way (Lev. 26:9). The commandment to be fruitful surely must take priority as not only the first given by God to man, but also the one most often emphasized by God.The story of Onan is another Old Testament reference that directly condemns birth control in the strongest possible way. Despite some modern opinions, all classical Jewish commentators, St. Augustine, statements of popes, and even all three of the major Protestant founders agree upon the plain meaning of the text: "Intercourse even with one's legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented. Onan, the son of Judah, did this and the Lord killed him for it."As Pope Pius XII noted, the Old Testament abounds in additional references to fruitfulness: "With what delicacy and charm does the Sacred Scripture show the gracious crown of children united around the father's table! Children are the recompense of the just, as sterility is very often the punishment for the sinner. Hearken to the divine word expressed with the insuperable poetry of the Psalm: 'Your wife, as a fruitful vine within your house, your children as olive shoots round about your table. Behold, thus is that man blessed, who fears the Lord!', while of the wicked it is written: 'May his posterity be given over to destruction; may their name be blotted out in the next generation.'"My own favorite is Psalm 127, "Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them." The New Testament as well is not lacking in scriptural supports for the Church's teaching. Pope Pius XI, for example, again unites Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium, "St. Augustine admirably deduces from the words of the holy Apostle Saint Paul to Timothy when he says: 'The Apostle himself is therefore a witness that marriage is for the sake of generation: "I wish," he says, "young girls to marry." And, as if someone said to him, "Why?," he immediately adds: 'To bear children, to be mothers of families."Another New Testament reference is Galatians 5:19-21, a catalog of sins that St. Paul condemns as "works of the flesh." Among them in the original Greek is pharmakeia, which is usually translated as "sorcery" but which in the first century A.D. specifically referred to the mixing of potions for illicit purposes, including the prevention of pregnancy. Two additional references to pharmakeia (Rev 9:21, 21:8) indicate a similar usage linking it with sexual sins and with murder. St. Paul says, "I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God." 5. Missing References to TraditionCatholic theology has never been something that can spring full-blown from the brow of Zeus, but rather should manifest beliefs that have been held "always and everywhere by all the faithful." Humanae Vitae stands in stark contrast to the papal pronouncements of Pope Paul's predecessors, by ignoring the history of its controverted teaching, claiming only its own authority, and making use of few sources more than a decade old. This despite the fact that the teaching on contraception is almost unparalleled for the vast range of traditional sources supporting the teaching of the Church. The theologian John T. Noonan was a member of the Papal Commission who supported the recommendation to overturn the Church's teaching. Yet in 1965 he wrote the following:"In the world of the late Empire known to St. Jerome and St. Augustine, in the Ostrogothic Arles of Bishop Caesarius and the Suevian Braga of Bishop Martin, in the Paris of St. Albert and St. Thomas, in the Renaissance Rome of Sixtus V and the Renaissance Milan of St. Charles Borromeo, in the Naples of St. Alphonsus Liguori and Liege of Charles Billuart, in the Philadelphia of Bishop Kenrick, and in the Bombay of Cardinal Gracias, the teachers of the Church have taught without hesitation or variation that certain acts preventing procreation are gravely sinful. No Catholic theologian has ever taught, 'Contraception is a good act.' The teaching on contraception is clear and apparently fixed forever."Listing even a fraction of the traditional sources would require an article of its own. Here is just a sampling of quotations that indicates the unbroken tradition going back to apostolic times and encompassing every period of the Church's history:In 195, Clement of Alexandria wrote: "Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted" (The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2).St. Augustine: "Sometimes this lustful cruelty or cruel lust goes so far as to seek to procure a baneful sterility, and if this fails the fetus conceived in the womb is in one way or another smothered or evacuated, in the desire to destroy the offspring before it has life, or if it already lives in the womb, to kill it before it is born."St. John Chrysostom made numerous references to contraception, including this one: "Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility, where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well.... Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation" (Homilies on Romans 24 [A.D. 391]).A medieval source, the Penitential of Vigila of Alvelda (c. A.D. 800), stated: "A woman, also, who takes a potion shall consider herself to be guilty of as many acts of homicide as the number of those she was due to conceive or bear." St. Thomas Aquinas says, "Next to murder, by which an actually existent human being is destroyed, we rank this sin by which the generation of a human being is prevented."This tradition did not gradually taper off, but continued to evoke unanimous consent until the very day of Vatican II's commencement. The same Notes on Moral Theology that previously documented the voluminous discussions occurring in 1966, was able to say in 1962, "Since theological discussion of the annovulant drugs began some four or more years ago, moralists have never been less than unanimous in their assertion that natural law cannot countenance the use of these progestational steroids for the purpose of contraception." He declared that the moral status of the pill was a "theologically closed issue."Why is all this tradition missing from Humanae Vitae? Writing in Fidelity magazine, Fr. Anthony Zimmerman, SVD, a priest serving in Japan and an ardent defender of the Church's teaching, explains "Why Aquinas Was Kept Out of Humanae Vitae":"St. Thomas made the welfare of the human race pivotal for his rejection of contraception. Yet we do not find his name in the text of Humanae Vitae, except in footnote 9, which really does not allow him to speak. Why did the Vatican exclude the pivotal argument of Aquinas from Humanae Vitae? I once had an experience at the Vatican which suggests to me that he was purposefully excluded... It was not yet politically expedient in 1968 to use Thomistic argument. The argument of St. Thomas about the need to preserve the race might have backfired. At any rate, when we were editing the book Natural Family Planning for the 1980 Synod of Bishops, [Father Gustav Martelet's] contribution, which contains the fear of public reaction against the natural law argument even as it is in Humanae Vitae now, generated scruples in one or the other of our staff."6. Missing References to the MagisteriumSir Isaac Newton was arguably the greatest genius ever to live, yet he was humble enough to claim that his achievements were possible only because he "stood on the shoulders of giants." Until recently, a similar attitude was a hallmark of papal teaching. Every pope was careful to demonstrate the continuity between his own teaching and that of all his predecessors. Pope Pius XI, for example, while not neglecting any aspect of the patrimony handed down to him, gave pride of place to his predecessor Pope Leo XIII: "We follow the footsteps of Our predecessor, Leo XIII, of happy memory, whose Encyclical Arcanum, published fifty years ago, We hereby confirm and make Our own, and while We wish to expound more fully certain points called for by the circumstances of our times, nevertheless We declare that, far from being obsolete, it retains its full force at the present day." To what advantage might Pope Paul VI have made use of passages from Arcanum such as this one: "God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time." Or this passage from Pope Leo's most famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum: "No human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage ordained by God's authority from the beginning: 'Increase and multiply.'"No such acknowledgement is found in Humanae Vitae. Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI are entirely missing; neither is named in the document itself. Pope Leo is included in one footnote, among a long list of sources. Pope Pius XI's encyclical Casti Connubii is footnoted four times, in all four cases in shorter or longer lists that include documents from at least one other papacy. In no instance is there a direct quotation.Instead there is a section which describes "the various changes that have taken place in modern times," "changes in how we view the person of woman and her place in society," and the "stupendous progress in the domination and rational organization of the forces of nature." Humanae Vitae says that since we have a "new state of things" with a new "meaning which conjugal relations have with respect to the harmony between husband and wife," then we "require that the Magisterium of the Church give new and deeper consideration to the principles of moral teaching concerning marriage." Thus Humanae Vitae commences by making sweeping claims to invalidate the applicability of all prior pronouncements. Unlike his predecessors, Pius XII does appear twice in the encyclical, and he is footnoted several times. But when one investigates more closely, it is apparent that his views are not represented. The quotation below represents a key passage from Allocution to the Italian Midwives that shows how Humanae Vitae took a diametrically different approach from Pope Pius XII: "Now, on married couples, who make use of the specific act of their state, nature and the Creator impose the function of providing for the preservation of mankind. This is the characteristic service which gives rise to the peculiar value of their state, the bonum prolis. The individual and society, the people and the State, the Church itself, depend for their existence, in the order established by God, on fruitful marriages. Therefore, to embrace the matrimonial state, to use continually the faculty proper to such a state and lawful only therein, and, at the same time, to avoid its primary duty without a grave reason, would be a sin against the very nature of married life."Here in one paragraph are so many of the items that are missing or attenuated in Humanae Vitae: we have the "matrimonial state," we have its "characteristic service," we have the "bonum prolis," we have "the order established by God," we have "fruitful marriages," we have "primary duty," we have "the very nature of married life"; in short, we have the structure of Natural Law as articulated by the Magisterium of the Church. While Humanae Vitae does refer to the documents of Vatican II, we need to consider two points when evaluating these references in the context of magisterial tradition:First, when Humanae Vitae refers to Gaudium et Spes, Lumen Gentium, Inter Mirifica, Apostolicam Actuositatem, and Populorum Progressio, we are reminded that they were "solemnly promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI." The preponderance of documents from his own pontificate, rather than demonstrating continuity of Catholic tradition, indicates a focus on the present to the exclusion of the two-millennia history of the Church. Second, all the discussion of marriage and family in Vatican II amounts to one chapter of Part II of Gaudium et Spes, a document designed to deal with all the issues of "The Church in the Modern World." So the Council cannot contribute an extensive amount of doctrine. Moreover, this is the very place where Pope Paul VI intervened to insist on significant changes to the description of birth control and the purpose of marriage. When Humanae Vitae cites the following statement from GS: "Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of their parents," it is quoting words interjected into the document at the behest of Pope Paul VI himself.7. Reliance on Consequentialist PhilosophySection 17 of Humanae Vitae lists four consequences that will ensue upon widespread acceptance of contraception. This section is not overstated, and even more extensive claims could be supported. The problem with the consequentialist arguments is the undue reliance placed upon them due to the weakness of Humanae Vitae's other arguments.Human beings are not capable of perceiving all the ultimate consequences of their actions. The causal links between an action and its consequences are always tenuous. More importantly, consequentialist arguments cannot establish the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of a moral action. Bad consequences do not make an action wrong, and good consequences do not make an action right. A discussion of consequences can only reinforce a position that has been established on a solid moral basis. Since the publication of Humanae Vitae, the defense of the Church's position has relied almost entirely on examining the social consequences since 1968. Janet Smith, for example, is the foremost defender of Humanae Vitae in the United States, perhaps in the world. Although she is a professor of philosophy with a Thomistic background, she relies primarily on consequentialist arguments when giving her many presentations on the topic. The most notable defense of Humanae Vitae in the United States in the last few years has come from a pastoral letter from a well-respected American bishop. Oddly, however, the document complains about the "terms of academic theology" used in Humanae Vitae, as though our problems would be solved by means of even greater ambiguity and imprecision! Humanae Vitae itself is quoted only in reference to its prediction of consequences; not another line from the encyclical appears anywhere in his pastoral letter. What does it say about the intellectual status of the Church when the best defense of Humanae Vitae offered in many years (Janet Smith calls it "arguably the very best to date") relies on moral reasoning such as this: "Few couples understand their love in terms of academic theology. Rather, they fall in love. That's the vocabulary they use. It's that simple and revealing. They surrender to each other. They give themselves to each other. They fall into each other in order to fully possess, and be possessed by, each other. And rightly so."Three decades of experience have shown that consequentialist arguments are unconvincing unless the person has already decided on the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of birth control. That's why we see them used so frequently by those who already agree with the teaching of the Church, with so little effect on those who do not. To make any headway, we need to abandon our reliance on consequentialist arguments, except as anecdotal evidence, and begin again to teach the faithful how to distinguish right from wrong.8. Reliance on Personalist PhenomenologyThe entire argument of Humanae Vitae rests upon the sentence, "That teaching, often set forth by the magisterium, is founded upon the 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."In the entire history of the Church, has the magisterium ever put forward as a dogmatic statement such a bare assertion? When Humanae Vitae refers to "That teaching, often set forth by the magisterium" it means the prohibition of contraception - which certainly has been "often set forth." But when it speaks of an "inseparable connection" between "the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning," Humanae Vitae is creating out of thin air a concept that has never before existed in any form of Catholic doctrine. After this breathtaking act of bare assertion, the encyclical gives virtually no support to its novel concept. Why are there two meanings and not more than two or less than two? What makes them inseparable? Such fundamental questions are left unanswered. A strained comparison between contraception and marital rape represents Humanae Vitae's only attempt to elucidate this new formula. Nor is it going out on a limb to say that virtually no one, whether defender of Humanae Vitae or dissident, has found this explanation convincing. We must recognize that this new formulation stands in sharp contrast to the justification offered by traditional Catholic theology. The substitution of the new concept "meaning" in place of the traditional language of "end" or "purpose" represents a radical restructuring. This transformation is like taking a house, moving it down the road and placing it onto an entirely new foundation. Philosophers may then debate whether it is the same house at all. The walls and the roof are the same, but can you call it the same house when it has a different foundation in a new location?How did the magisterium come to discard the natural law explanation of such a fundamental institution as marriage and replace it with a novel and untried philosophy? The answer, in a word, is "Personalism." Soon after its release, Cardinal Wojtyla (now Pope John Paul II) offered an extended testimony to the thoroughly personalistic nature of Humanae Vitae. Pope Paul himself confirmed that he relied on the new personalist philosophy in writing Humanae Vitae: "We willingly followed the personalistic conception that was characteristic of the Council's teaching on conjugal society, thus giving love - which produces that society and nourishes it - the preeminent position that rightly belongs to it in a subjective evaluation of marriage."Pope Paul VI thus confirmed the opposition between Humanae Vitae and the dogmatic pronouncements of Pope Pius XII, who only seventeen years before had said, "Now, the truth is that matrimony, as an institution of nature, in virtue of the Creator's will, has not as a primary and intimate end the personal perfection of the married couple but the procreation and upbringing of a new life. The other ends, inasmuch as they are intended by nature, are not equally primary, much less superior to the primary end, but are essentially subordinated to it." Pope Pius was insistent that this was not just his personal opinion but the received teaching that he was unable to alter or deny, "We Ourselves drew up a declaration on the order of those ends, pointing out what the very internal structure of the natural disposition reveals. We showed what has been handed down by Christian tradition, what the Supreme Pontiffs have repeatedly taught, and what was then in due measure promulgated by the Code of Canon Law" (n.b.: still very much in force in 1968).Rev. John R. Waiss of the Tilden Study Center succinctly expresses the difference between personalism and natural law: "In his encyclical Paul VI moved the Catholic Church away from the traditional natural law arguments that were based on an 'objective' teleology, i.e., one that emphasizes the causal link between sex and procreation or the natural law arguments by design. Humanae Vitae (and subsequent interpretations by John Paul II, especially his theology of the body) has taken Catholics and other people of good will in another direction. The encyclical develops the natural law in regard to the meaning of the marital union. It tries to get us to ask: what does the marital union say? What does contraception say? How does contraception affect what the marital union says? Humanae Vitae develops the natural law argument based on a 'subjective' teleology" (emphases in the original).It is apparent that Humanae Vitae acted as a springboard by which personalism could launch its new philosophy of marriage, displacing the traditional teaching. Since that time, it has replaced all the customary supports of the Church such as history, tradition, authority and hierarchy with an impenetrable philosophy of interpersonal relationships that has proven disastrous in practice. Mustn't we consider the following questions?How should we evaluate the phenomenological underpinnings of personalism as a sufficient basis for building a Church? Is it possible to reconcile personalist phenomenology with teleological natural law theory and practice? What is to become of 1960 years of prior history and tradition - are they to go down the Orwellian memory hole? What happens to doctrines like obedience that don't fit onto the procrustean bed of personalism? What shall we do with personalism when the next pope introduces his own brand of philosophy - "Catholic deconstructionism," for example? And what are we to make of previous magisterial judgments of the Church, such as this one by Leo XIII, when upon concurring with the testimony of a long line of predecessors, he concludes with the words of Innocent VI: "[St. Thomas Aquinas'] teaching above that of others, the canonical writings alone excepted, enjoys such a precision of language, an order of matters, a truth of conclusions, that those who hold to it are never found swerving from the path of truth, and he who dare assail it will always be suspected of error."9. Without Teleology there is no Natural LawOur final reason for the failure of Humanae Vitae is last in order, but first in importance: the denial of teleology. Teleology incorporates two principal aspects: design and purpose. Just as eyes are designed to see and fish are designed to swim, we have been designed by our creator for a purpose. Specifically, teleology means that our sexuality, the conjugal act itself, and the institution of marriage have all been designed by God to achieve a purpose, His purpose.The absence of teleology has affected Humanae Vitae on two levels. On a practical level, the absence of a "primary purpose of marriage" has been the most often noted element of Humanae Vitae's new approach to marriage. On a more fundamental level, the absence of teleology means that the encyclical can have no coherent approach to natural law.We have already seen examples in which the primary purpose of marriage was spelled out clearly in the past, but was excluded from Humanae Vitae. To summarize and conclude, here are the words of Pope Pius XII from his Allocution to the Italian Midwives in which he specifically rejects personalist language (i.e. "reciprocal gift and possession"), and then describes the "great law" of marriage:If nature had aimed exclusively, or at least in the first place, at a reciprocal gift and possession of the married couple in joy and delight, and if it had ordered that act only to make happy in the highest possible degree their personal experience, and not to stimulate them to the service of life, then the Creator would have adopted another plan in forming and constituting the natural act. Now, instead, all this is subordinated and ordered to that unique, great law of the 'generatio et educatio prolix,' namely the accomplishment of the primary end of matrimony as the origin and source of life.Those who proselytize on behalf of Humanae Vitae recoil from such natural law language due to a widespread belief that people cannot understand it. But the historical evidence all comes down on the other side. Here follows an example of the type and quality of teaching that was once presented to average Catholic laymen and women starting out on their marriages:Since Catholics maintain that the primary purpose of the generative faculties is reproduction, they have always prohibited the deliberate exercise of this drive outside of marriage. [Note how the same argument applies against fornication, adultery, sodomy, etc.]… Happiness and success in marriage can result only from the fulfillment of God's plan in establishing marriage. We want to know, therefore, what God intended when He created man "male and female," and blessed marriage as the union of "two in one flesh," saying, "increase and multiply" [Beginning Your Marriage, Cana Conference of Chicago, 1957].In simple marriage manuals once handed out to newlyweds we find a level of discourse that has virtually disappeared in the Church today. We see teleological natural law arguments presented in a way people could immediately grasp. And we must be struck by the success of this method compared to the methods of Humanae Vitae. At the beginning of this article we documented the precipitous decline in fertility rates among Catholics that started in the late 1960s. It is indisputable that the Church was extremely successful during the years that it believed and taught natural law. It is equally indisputable that the Church has failed in this important task during the years that it has abandoned this philosophy. Some say that this is only a coincidence, that one cannot claim post hoc, ergo propter hoc. But what possible reason could there be to stick with a methodology that has been such a failure, and what possible harm could there be in using the method that was so successful? Is it because we're so concerned about losing that last one to three percent? Or is it simply an unwillingness to examine ourselves humbly, to confess our mistakes, to admit defeat, and to retrace our steps?Now we can now see why the absence of teleology has crippled the philosophical coherence and integrity of the encyclical. We can understand the reason Budziszewski said, "Though the encyclical letter is magisterial in the sense of being lordly, it is not magisterial in the sense of teaching well. It seems to lack the sense, which any discussion of natural law requires, of what must be done to make the self-evident evident, to make the intuitive available to intuition, to make what is plain in itself plain to us." Back in 1968, and during the intervening years, many commentators expressed their appreciation for the absence of teleological arguments. They were certain that this medieval method and language was holding the Church back from making progress in the modern era. Most of all, they thought that this holdover from the pre-Reformation Church was limiting our ability to engage in ecumenical dialogue. From our vantage point of hindsight, we know that abandoning natural law did not bring about an ecumenical reunion, but it did cause a new schism. This result is not surprising to participants in the newly reinvigorated discussion of natural law, which includes such prominent philosophers as Alasdair MacIntyre, John Finnis, Germain Grisez, Robert George, Russell Hittinger, and Ralph McInerny. They have demonstrated that the only way we can engage in meaningful dialogue with other moral systems is through the instrumentality of teleology. The Rev. David K. Weber expressed this well in First Things:If we conclude that rival moral systems are closer to a serious and fruitful encounter, it is because these rival systems are becoming more teleological in a Thomistic sense…. While they may explicitly reject a teleologically fixed moral order, they must, in giving a public account of their moral philosophy, smuggle in such an order to render their philosophy intelligible. So, for example, no moral system can speak of moral progress unless it articulates the direction and goal of that progress.This revival of interest in natural law is often dated to the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981). Gilbert Meilander, in describing the world as seen by MacIntyre, could just as easily be describing the Church after Humanae Vitae:What we had lost was a teleological understanding of human life. The moral duties and virtues that traditional morality commended made sense only if they were understood as depicting the means by which we could get from our present self-interested and sinful state to a quite different state: human nature in its flourishing condition, as it could be if its telos were realized…. Only if understood as the way from our present corrupted nature to our promised flourishing nature could these precepts make sense. Ripped from that setting, traditional precepts were bound to seem arbitrary and hard to defend - with the flavor of inexplicable taboos.Could there be a better description of society's failure to appreciate Humanae Vitae's condemnation of contraception, a precept "ripped from" its setting in Scripture, Tradition, the Magisterium and teleological natural law? Doesn't popular opinion view it precisely as an "inexplicable taboo"? The participants in this "school" of natural law are still far from reaching consensus, and there is disagreement about moral issues, contraception included. But since the main thesis of Alasdair MacIntyre's book was that the loss of teleology had made meaningful moral discourse impossible, the fact that there are important moral theologians who are able to talk to each other again is a sign of hope.Why then should the post-conciliar Church, as represented by Humanae Vitae, abandon its patrimony of teleological realism at the very time when the rest of the world is re-discovering its glories? (MacIntyre, for example, was previously a Marxist.) Should we not instead return like a Prodigal Son to the philosopher whom Pope Leo XIII described as "likened to the sun, for he warmed the whole earth with the fire of his holiness, and filled the whole earth with the splendor of his teaching"?Only when she returns to her "perennial philosophy," only when she reclaims the teleology that has stood the test of time, only when she abandons philosophical fads, only then will the Church once again speak with authority, with the conviction of Truth, with logic, precision and consistency, and with the ability to move the hearts of both the faithful and "all men of good will," as she desires to do.