Humanae Vitae
, A Teaching Of Natural Law For Mankind by Gary L. Morella
The conscience is (the voice of God within) and why Catholics who have a well formed conscience and a healthy understanding of what the Church is (the Bride of Christ, guided by the Holy Ghost), should be very willing to embrace the teachings of Humanae Vitae. But was Humanae Vitae a divinely revealed truth intended just for Catholics? Humanae Vitae clearly answers this question in the negative. In order to see this, relevant portions of Humanae Vitae will be examined which speak directly to this question. However, some preliminary work must be done on two very important moral concepts, conscience and the natural law, in particular, the Catholic understanding of how these concepts extend to mankind in general.
Aquinas in Disputed Question on Truth, On Conscience, tells us that while a conscience always binds, it does not necessarily excuse. There is such a thing as an "informed conscience" since one's conscience may be badly formed and one may be culpable for that. The binding nature of conscience comes from judging that something should be done or not done. By conscience we judge that something done is well done or ill done, and in this sense conscience is said to excuse, accuse, or torment. [ST First Part Q79 A13].
Aquinas says that every kind of conscience binds whether correct or erroneous. This on the surface appears disturbing if one fails to ask, "Is the action obligated by an erroneous conscience good?" Aquinas did not miss this point. He argues that an erroneous conscience is one that does not know, i.e., ignores what is truly good, evil and indifferent. He then considers that since you can only do what you know you ought to do, it follows that an erroneous conscience excuses as well as binds, all the more so because you cannot be held responsible for an act you do not know you are committing. He quickly qualifies this statement, however, by observing that there are degrees of ignorance and not every kind of it renders an act involuntary. You can be responsible for your ignorance.
Being a research mathematician by profession charged with sonar signal analysis, I will consider an underwater acoustics application example. If you are doing an echo-echo correlation analysis of sonar data that is absolutely dependent on a priori information per a directive for this analysis and you perform the analysis freely making your own assumptions giving totally erroneous results, you cannot claim ignorance because you did not check the information available to you. This is not innocent ignorance but rather lazy ignorance for which you're totally culpable.
This is an example of an erroneous conscience that you followed for reasons of expediting a lab project. You determined that this conscience was binding in that if you did not follow it, you in your mind would have shirked your duty to complete the project on time. The problem was not that you did not follow your conscience but rather the consequences for following it in ignoring some very clear directives that resulted in an inexcusable action on your part.
So Aquinas says that there are degrees of ignorance and not every kind of it renders an act involuntary. It is possible for one to be responsible for his ignorance, either because he directly chooses it or because he has been negligent about what he is held to know. In the example case, what the sonar analyst was held to know were some very important conditions upon which the correct analysis of his sonar data absolutely depended. Ignorance is an excuse only where it is innocent.
One may be responsible for having an erroneous conscience, and that obviously affects whether we can say that the erroneous conscience both excuses and binds. We know it binds but does it excuse? That becomes the overriding question. Catholics are often told to follow their conscience in regard to obeying the Church laws against artificial contraception per Humanae Vitae. These Catholics may be brainwashed by those dissenting from Church teaching by buying into their specious arguments in place of the Universal Catechism. They take the dissidents’ advice and contracept to their hearts content. In their minds they are simply doing what they have been told, i.e., following their conscience. Are they excused from the mortal sins that are committed? Hardly, since they are also aware of the Universal Catechism which overrides any co-Magisteria formed by dissenting theologians since it speaks for THE one and only Magisterium that counts - Holy Mother Church. If from the cradle to reason they are never exposed to the existence of a Universal Catechism or the concept of one Church Magisterium and only are aware of dissenting opinions that they are duped into believing are true, i.e., they are living on a remote island with CWTN, the Curran Word Television Network (Charles Curran being the most well known of the dissenters from Humanae Vitae), with absolutely no exposure to the truth, then they might come under the category of involuntary ignorance which would hold them less culpable however unlikely this scenario may seem.
In this case, it seems to me, that for reproduction of the species, it would occur to even these types that mankind would die out if death rates exceed birth rates. This totally ignores any real natural law principles since the most important natural law principles are metaphysical as opposed to biological; animals reproduce for the survival of the species; humans procreate for the Kingdom of God, which is not of this world.
At a given moment what one judges to be what he should do is what he should do. He is obliged to follow his conscience. However, what he judges that he should do might be a mistake. Then he does not know, is ignorant of, what he really should know. It is because his error may deal with something about which he should know better that ignorance is not an excuse for him.
This last sentence was important for Cardinal Newman as it was for Aquinas since it determines the degree of culpability (excusability) of one following an erroneous conscience.
Aquinas makes the distinction that correct and erroneous consciences bind differently. A correct one binds absolutely. No excuses here. An erroneous one binds accidentally and in a certain respect where one may talk about culpability and excuse. He who has an erroneous conscience, believing it to be correct - otherwise he would not err - adheres to the erroneous conscience on account of the rectitude he thinks it to have; he adheres then per se speaking to a correct conscience and to the erroneous conscience as it were accidentally, insofar as the conscience he believes to be correct is erroneous. Thus, it is said that he is bound, properly speaking, by a correct conscience, and accidentally by the erroneous.
There almost seems to be a dilemma here in that in Aquinas in his responses in his commentary makes it clear that even if one follows an erroneous conscience in regard to a perturbation of some moral teaching, he may not sin by following the dictates of his conscience which he is bound to do. But he may very well sin in regard to the mortal consequences of same, as his action may not be excused for various reasons.
In summary Aquinas says, "Everyone is bound to examine his acts in the light of the knowledge he has from God, whether natural, acquired or infused; every man ought to act according to reason."
The practical judgment of conscience imposes on the person the obligation to perform a given act making the link between freedom and truth clear. Conscience expresses itself in acts of judgment, which reflect the truth and the good, and not in arbitrary decisions of a situational ethics nature which makes truth relative. One needs to be guided by an insistent search for truth in regard to actions performed, not on an alleged autonomy in personal decisions where man is reduced to freedom with no soul.
The formation of a correct conscience begins with belief in God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived and belief in his Son, Jesus Christ.
Since the outpouring of dissent which began in earnest in 1968 with the publication of Humane Vitae, several arguments have been put forth to defend the denial of this teaching and other Catholic doctrines. These arguments include a view that trivializes the importance of Church doctrine, attempting to make it a suggestion rather than God's law. There is considerable evidence in Scripture and Church tradition, however, that this view is very much in error. One's salvation rests not only on fidelity to one's own conscience, but also, and more fundamentally, on forming one's conscience in accord with God's law. Without the latter, the former can become trivial.
What is conscience? With respect to the moral virtues, the mean or measure is conformity with right reason. The mean or measure of intellectual virtues of the speculative order is truth. The mean or measure of intellectual virtues of the practical order is prudence. These measures impact the judgment of reason on the morality of a proposed act, which is called conscience.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church echoing Gaudium Et Spes, The Pastoral Constitution On The Church In The Modern World, speaks to a moral conscience as follows.
1776 "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment.... For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God.... His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."
1777 Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking.
1783 Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings.
1792 Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one's passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.
1793 If - on the contrary - the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience.
1794 A good and pure conscience is enlightened by true faith, for charity proceeds at the same time "from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith." The more a correct conscience prevails, the more do persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and try to be guided by objective standards of moral conduct.
1798 A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. Everyone must avail himself of the means to form his conscience.
1799 Faced with a moral choice, conscience can make either a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law or, on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them.
1800 A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience.
1801 Conscience can remain in ignorance or make erroneous judgments. Such ignorance and errors are not always free of guilt.
1802 The Word of God is a light for our path. We must assimilate it in faith and prayer and put it into practice. This is how moral conscience is formed.
Autonomy would seem to be at odds with Christianity, for humans are to do God's will and obey God's law rather than to be willful and to be their own sources of what is lawful. Kant was not a relativist; he wished to formulate all moral dictums in terms of universal absolutes. Relativism, however, grew out of Kant's metaphysical skepticism, and his rejection of any heteronomous source of moral norms. So both the Kantian understanding of autonomy, which roots moral obligation in the rational nature of the human person, and a more modern notion of autonomy which is identical with relativism, makes the term an unlikely candidate for being a part of the Church's moral vision.
Dr. Janet Smith in "Rights, The Person And Conscience In The Catechism," Catholic Dossier 3:1 (1997), 29-37, addresses the Church’s understanding of conscience, showing that in some very important ways, this amounts to an advocacy of autonomy. We are not to be the source of moral norms; we are to recognize that God is the source of moral norms. God, however, wrote the first principles of practical reasoning on man's consciousness and directed man to devise laws for his governance in accord with these principles that are a part of his nature. Man, then, in being a law unto himself is not a law apart from God.
The Catechism, in fact, addresses the concern of autonomy:
2126 Atheism is often based on a false conception of human autonomy, exaggerated to the point of refusing any dependence on God. Yet, "to acknowledge God is in no way to oppose the dignity of man, since such dignity is grounded and brought to perfection in God ..." "For the Church knows full well that her message is in harmony with the most secret desires of the human heart."
In the Church's understanding, it is only when one is acting in accord with the most secret desires of the human heart that one is acting truly autonomously, and since God placed those desires there, there is no conflict in following the most secret desires of one's heart, following God, and being fully autonomous.
The Church denies that true autonomy risks putting the moral agent at odds with God; it also denies that there can be a conflict between the conscience and the Church; the Catechism states: "No opposition between individual conscience or reason on the one hand, and the moral law or the Church's teaching authority on the other, can be admitted" (no. 2039). Veritatis Splendor states that
The rightful autonomy of the practical reason means that man possesses in himself his own law, received from the Creator. Nevertheless, the autonomy of reason cannot mean that reason itself creates values and moral norms. Were this autonomy to imply a denial of the participation of the practical reason in the wisdom of the divine Creator and Lawgiver, or were it to suggest a freedom which creates moral norms, on the basis of historical contingencies or the diversity of societies and cultures, this sort of alleged autonomy would contradict the Church's teaching on the truth about man (no. 40).
The dignity of the human person lies in his ability to understand that the good he is to do freely is indeed a good for him. For a human to do good out of fear or coercion is not to do good in a human and meritorious way. Human dignity lies in the ability to do what is good, freely. He is to make the good his own good. He is to personally appropriate what is good. Man is to form his conscience to be so in accord with the good that when he is acting out of obedience to the good he is actually acting in accord with the good that he dictates to himself. Veritatis Splendor states:
"The acting Subject personally assimilates the truth contained in the law. He appropriates this truth of his being and makes it his own by his acts and the corresponding virtues." (no. 52)
Such a cooperation between God and the human person, leads Veritatis Splendor to suggest that we ought to speak neither of autonomy or heteronomy but of a participated theonomy -- man is not under God's law but participates in God's law. (no. 41)
What is ultimately good for the human person is a proper relationship with God. Man is to worship God freely. Thus the Church places such an enormous emphasis on the importance of conscience because conscience is properly allied not with radical autonomy but with the freedom to worship. In letter on the eve of the Madrid Conference on European Security and Cooperation, (Sept. 1, 1980), Pope John Paul II stated:
... freedom of conscience and of religion ... is a primary and inalienable right of the human person; what is more, insofar as it touches the innermost sphere of the spirit, one can even say that it upholds the justification, deeply rooted in each individual, of all other liberties. Of course, such freedom can only be exercised in accordance with ethical principles …
Some theologians, however, in the wake of Humanae Vitae invented what might be called a "conscience clause"; it is a clause that invokes freedom of conscience to enable Catholics to act in opposition to Church teaching. Such individuals evidently existed in John Henry Cardinal Newman's day, too, for he tells of those who
When [they] advocate the rights of conscience, they in no sense mean the rights of the creature; but the right of thinking, speaking, writing, and acting, according to their judgment or their humor, without any thought of God at all.
Such a view conflicts greatly with what conscience is. As Newman stated: "Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives."
Rather than being free from Church and papal guidance, the conscience greatly needs such guidance. Newman observes,
The sense of right and wrong, which is the first element in religion, is so delicate, so fitful, so easily puzzled, obscured, perverted, so subtle in its argumentative methods, so impressible by education, so biased by pride and passion, so unsteady in its course, that, in the struggle for existence amid the various exercises and triumphs of the human intellect, this sense is at once the highest of all teachers, yet the least luminous; and the Church, the Pope, the hierarchy are, in the divine purpose, the supply of an urgent demand.
Dr. Smith observes that many theologians seem to have decided that the Church and the Pope are an obstacle to freedom of conscience; they so loathe blind obedience that they are much more comfortable with blind disobedience. For several decades now, in many seminaries, seminarians have been taught not to trouble the consciences of the faithful about contraception; the "faithful" should be left free to follow their consciences on this issue. Textbooks used in many Catholic high schools generally feature this clause after perfunctorily noting the Catholic condemnation of contraception. Smith observes that it is fascinating that the "conscience clause" never appears in the sections on racism, or genocide, or social justice. These texts do not say that if your conscience tells you it's morally permissible to be a racist, then you are permitted to be a racist. It only appears in the sections on contraception.
Newman does not allow the conscience to have free play. He states:
If in a particular case, [the conscience] is to be taken as a sacred and sovereign monitor, its dictate, in order to prevail against the voice of the Pope, must follow upon serious thought, prayer, and all available means of arriving at a right judgment on the matter in question. Unless a man is able to say to himself, as in the Presence of God, that he must not, and dare not, act upon the Papal injunction, he is bound to obey it, and would commit a great sin in disobeying it."
What Newman is saying here is that if the conscience of a Catholic goes against the Church, the Catholic should presume that the Church is right and he is wrong. We must all follow our consciences, the conscience must always reign supreme, but a Catholic conscience should be formed by the Church.
Newman would undoubtedly loathe the temporizing and laxity that goes under the name of following one's own conscience in our day, as he loathed it in his. He had a keen sense of how self-indulgent we are and how adept we are at finding rationalizations that enable us to convince ourselves that we are following God's will when we have not even made any attempt to discover what God's will is. In his homily "The Testimony of Conscience" he depicts the thoughts of the true man of conscience in this way:
I sacrifice to Thee this cherished wish, this lust, this weakness, this scheme, this opinion: make me what Thou wouldest have me; I bargain for nothing; I make no terms; I seek for no previous information whither Thou are taking me; I will be what Thou wilt make me, and all that Thou wilt make me. I say not, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest, for I am weak; but I give myself to Thee, to lead any whither. I will follow Thee in the dark, only begging Thee to give me strength according to my day. Try me, O Lord, and see, the ground of my heart; prove me, and examine my thoughts; look well if there be any way of wickedness in me; search each dark recess with Thy own bright light, and lead me in the way everlasting.
What makes these words so moving and disturbing is not only what they demand of us but the fact that one need not know much about Newman to know that when he spoke these words, he meant them and that indeed, he lived them. As Newman well knew, being faithful to one's true conscience can never lead one away from Truth, for it is God who speaks to the conscience and God who guides the Church. Newman followed his conscience and, predictably, it led him into the Church, and towards Church teaching not away from it.
Let us now turn to Humanae Vitae and see what it says in regard to its universal applicability to mankind. We have to look no further than Pope Paul VI’s opening address.
Encyclical Letter on the Regulation of Birth July 25, 1968, To the venerable patriarchs, archbishops and bishops and other local ordinaries in peace and communion with the Apostolic See; to priests, the faithful and to all men of goodwill.
Here it is clearly seen that Humanae Vitae was not just intended for Catholics but for all humanity.
In regard to the competency of the Church’s teaching Magisterium Humanae Vitae says the following in relation to the advent of new questions involving the regulation of birth.
Such questions required from the teaching authority of the Church a new and deeper reflection upon the principles of moral teaching on marriage: a teaching founded on the natural law, illuminated and enriched by divine revelation.
From this statement Humanae Vitae is given its moral grounding in the natural law which is part of the eternal law given to us by a loving God, written on the hearts of men.
There is a principle or "rightful autonomy," not radical autonomy, at the heart of the moral life concerning man as the personal subject of his actions. The moral law has its origin in God and always finds its source in Him: at the same time, by virtue of natural reason, which derives from Divine Wisdom, it is a properly human law. The natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided - no Kantian ambiguities here where all choices are equal. This law is called natural not because it refers to the nature of irrational things but because the reason which promulgates it is proper to human nature. We are commanded to respect the natural order and forbidden to disturb it. This is why sins against nature cry out to heaven for vengeance (Genesis 18:20-21) as they are sins against the very Author of nature. God cares for man not from without through the laws of physical nature, but from within through reason, which, by its natural knowledge of God’s eternal law, is consequently able to show man the right direction to take in his free actions. This participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is the natural law which involves universality in that it is inscribed in the rational nature of the person, and makes itself felt to all beings endowed with reason.
Note the reference to "all beings", not just Catholics.
Humanae Vitae now turns to the competency of the Church as final authority for the natural moral law.
No believer will wish to deny that the teaching authority of the Church is competent to interpret even the natural moral law. It is, in fact, indisputable, as our predecessors have many times declared, that Jesus Christ, when communicating to Peter and to the Apostles His divine authority and sending them to teach all nations His commandments, constituted them as guardians and authentic interpreters of all the moral law, not only, that is, of the law of the Gospel, but also of the natural law, which is also an expression of the will of God, the faithful fulfillment of which is equally necessary for salvation.
In a section entitled "Doctrinal Principles" a total vision of man is given in regard to his supernatural and eternal vocation regarding the aspects of conjugal love. Humanae Vitae is clear that this is not just for the baptized.
Conjugal love reveals its true nature and nobility when it is considered in its supreme origin, God, who is love, "the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named". Marriage is not, then, the effect of chance or the product of evolution of unconscious natural forces; it is the wise institution of the Creator to realize in mankind His design of love. By means of the reciprocal personal gift of self, proper and exclusive to them, husband and wife tend towards the communication of their beings in view of mutual personal perfection, to collaborate with God in the generation and education of new lives.
For baptized persons, moreover, marriage invests the dignity of a sacramental sign of grace, inasmuch as it represents the union of Christ and of the Church.
Hence conjugal love requires in husband and wife an awareness of their mission of "responsible parenthood," which today is rightly much insisted upon, and which also must be exactly understood. Consequently it is to be considered under different aspects which are legitimate and connect with one another. In relation to the biological processes, responsible parenthood means the knowledge and respect of their functions; human intellect discovers in the power of giving life biological laws which are part of the human person.
In relation to the tendencies of instinct and passion, responsible parenthood means that necessary dominion which reason and will must exercise over them.
In relation to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised, either by the deliberate and generous decision to raise a numerous family, or by the decision, made for grave motives and with due respect for the moral law, to avoid for the time being, or even for an indeterminate period, a new birth.
Responsible parenthood also and above all implies a more profound relationship to the objective moral order established by God, of which a right conscience is the faithful interpreter. The responsible exercise of parenthood implies, therefore, that husband and wife recognize fully their own duties towards God, towards themselves, towards the family and towards society, in a correct hierarchy of values.
God has wisely disposed natural laws and rhythms of fecundity which, of themselves, cause a separation in the succession of births. Nonetheless the Church, calling men back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by their constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act (quilibet matrimonii usus) must remain open to the transmission of life.
The following section of Humanae Vitae has been prophetic regarding the consequences of ignoring its teaching by mankind.
Upright men can even better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men -- especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point -- have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer his respected and beloved companion.
Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon would thus be placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies. Who could blame a government for applying to the solution of the problems of the community those means acknowledged to be licit for married couples in the solution of a family problem? Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be more efficacious? In such a way men, wishing to avoid individual, family, or social difficulties encountered in the observance of the divine law, would reach the point of placing at the mercy of the intervention of public authorities the most personal and most reserved sector of conjugal intimacy.
Consequently, if the mission of generating life is not to be exposed to the arbitrary will of men, one must necessarily recognize insurmountable limits to the possibility of man's domination over his own body and its functions; limits which no man, whether a private individual or one invested with authority, may licitly surpass. And such limits cannot be determined otherwise than by the respect due to the integrity of the human organism and its functions, according to the principles recalled earlier, and also according to the correct understanding of the "principle of totality" illustrated by our predecessor Pope Pius XII.
A look at the world around us, out-of-control divorce and sexually transmitted disease rates, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, especially teen pregnancies, the abortion of entire generations, the inability of countries to reproduce themselves, promiscuity seen as totally acceptable by being encouraged via bankrupt sex-ed programs promoting the well documented lie of "safe sex", the promotion of sexual perversion as alternative lifestyles resulting in the complete destruction of the family as the foundational unit of society is testimony to the ignorance of Humanae Vitae.
Nowhere is the intent of the universality of Humanae Vitae any clearer than in the following passage.
In defending conjugal morals in their integral wholeness, the Church knows that she contributes toward the establishment of a truly human civilization; she engages man not to abdicate from his own responsibility in order to rely on technical means; by that very fact she defends the dignity of man and wife.
The final appeal of Humanae Vitae, like its opening address, is to all mankind.
Venerable brothers, most beloved sons, and all men of good will, great indeed is the work of education, of progress and of love to which we call you, upon the foundation of the Church's teaching, of which the successor of Peter is, together with his brothers in the episcopate, the depositary and interpreter. Truly a great work, as we are deeply convinced, both for the world and for the Church, since man cannot find true happiness -- towards which he aspires with all his being -- other than in respect of the laws written by God in his very nature, laws which he must observe with intelligence and love.
A formed conscience in accord with the natural law is the message of the truth of Humanae Vitae. The natural law as an extension of the eternal law written on the hearts of mankind demands a clear interpreter with technology changing at a pace so rapid that moral concerns are subordinate to achieving anything theoretically possible in a scientific sense, e.g., the cloning of human beings. If this interpretation is left to each individual or group in society with a vested interested in the aforementioned scientific achievement, totally devoid of any moral concerns, then as a society, the common good will have given way to anarchy. Who or what will be a better moral interpreter of the natural law if not the Church founded by a God Who gave it to mankind?