Half a century later : re-reading Humanae vitae in the light of Gaudium et Spes and Amoris Laetitia

Abstract

On 25 July 1968, Paul VI issued the encyclical Humanae vitae (HV) on “a proper regulation of births”. With this encyclical, he hoped to be able to officially settle a debate that had already been going on for several years in the Roman Catholic Church over whether Church teaching on birth control was definitively fixed or whether it was open to change and further development. In 1930, Pius XI in Casti connubii (CC) had in no uncertain terms condemned the intentional frustration of the fertility of the “conjugal act” as a “grave sin”, stating, “the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.” [extract]