Humane Vitae: The Real Sexual Revolution

Forty years ago on this past Friday, Humane Vitae (On Human Life), was released by Pope Paul VI. The timing was in the midst of a human crisis. In the midst of the 20th century, we had begun to lose touch with what it means to be a human person. Personhood became a subject that was widely debated and people started to preach the gospel of free will. A "New Pelagianism" was rising in the West and men and women were deciding for themselves that they had no need of a Church to tell them what to do nor some far distant God.

In his meek and courageous way, Paul VI decided to address a greatly debated issue that had been on the minds of scholars and the faithful for some time. In the 1960s, there were rumors flying in the seminaries and in parish churches throughout the western world that the Pope would speak out about certain "changes" the Church would declare, becoming a more democratic and understanding Church that is in touch with modern man. It is interesting to note that there were a commission of bishops that were assign to discuss the subject of artificial contraception at the Second Vatican Council. The Pope found out that this commission was packed with many dissenting bishops and they were planning on making a recommendation that artificial contraception could be used by couples. Paul VI would not have this misguided recommendation be, so he decided he would address this issue himself as the "Supreme Teacher" on faith and morals. This is where his masterpiece on human sexuality first was defended.

There are many today who thinks the teachings of the Church on sexuality are too demanding and too rigid. But it is these same people who look away from the Cross of Christ. It is not that the Catholic Church preaches suffering and hardship of life. The Church recognized that you cannot live life without suffering and hardship. The Church recognizes that suffering is there, but because of the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ, there is a reason for our suffering and pain! There is a reason to choose the harder road, the path less traveled.

That reason is freedom! John Paul II, takes on this questions of sexual ethics and freedom in his great work of Wednesday Audiences now called The Theology of the Body. John Paul II builds upon the foundation set by his predecessor and calls people back out of the darkness of selfishness into the light of self gift. The Law of the Gift became the foundational point to his Theology of the Body. The Law of the Gift is merely that all human people find who they fully are by giving themselves to another, and more particularly giving themselves to the "Other"

During his 26+ year pontificate, John Paul II started to ignite the hearts of young believers in the Church with the message of chastity and true love! Human Vitae is the battle cry of the young in the Church of the John Paul II Generation. Vocations are starting to make a positive swing, more people than ever are traveling to the Holy Father, and young marriages are taking the courageous commitment to live according to the Church and natural law! The time that we live in is full of hope. There is a generation among us that knows the pain of not knowing Christ and desires to find Him and make Him known to all those that they walk with.

Read more about Humane Vitae here:

Hound of Heaven

"I fled Him!" The opening lines of Francis Thompson's famous poem, The Hound of Heaven, is a fitting way to start speaking of a world pursuing joy. The paradox of fleeing something (or in this case Someone) is the very energy needed to pursue something. This act of fleeing is the story of my life.

I often know what is right and run the other way. I flee! I do not desire the pain and suffering that come with the adventure. This is a common mindset of the modern mind. We desire adventure and danger, even heroism, but the suffering that comes with such a life, we would like to disregard all together. So we flee! We run into the darkness, but at least no one will find us out. We parade in our miseries and find comfort in our ambiguity.

And yet, in all our fleeing, we find that we have no more strength to keep up the fight no longer, and in fact who we have been running from and where we started seem to be exactly where we should have fled to right away. And so we find that life is a journey, sought by living questions and pursuing truth. We will not be disappointed in this adventure. It is here that we will find T.S. Eliot's words to be true:

We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.