During his homily at
Blessed Pope Paul VI's beatification, Pope Francis
remarked, "When we look to this great Pope, this courageous
Christian, this tireless apostle, we cannot but say in the
sight of God a word as simple as it is heartfelt and
important: Thanks! Thank you for your humble and prophetic
witness of love for Christ and His Church!" (Pope Francis,
Homily of the Closing Mass of the Extraordinary Synod and
Beatification of Pope Paul VI, Oct. 19, 2014)
Was Pope Paul VI a prophet for our time? While as Christians
we know that the Lord Jesus was the final and definitive
prophet - since He was God Himself - the Lord continues to
commission holy men and women to proclaim revealed truths
down the ages. We know from the prophetic tradition of the
Old Testament that many times the Lord will ask an individual
to call a people to conversion when they have lost their way.
Other times, prophets are sent to proclaim a cautionary word
before human persons stray from the path to holiness. Far
from predicting the future like a fortuneteller, those who
are truly prophetic point to God's wisdom at a time when it
is especially needed. A recurring theme that they share is
that when human persons attempt to take the place of God or
usurp power that is properly His, unintended consequences
will often follow. This is the age-old effect of original sin
and the cause of actual sin.
Prophets are often misunderstood. They can be ostracized.
Pope Francis said this about Pope Paul VI: "
before
the advent of a secularized and hostile society, he could
hold fast, with farsightedness and wisdom - and at times
alone - to the helm of the barque of Peter, while never
losing his joy and trust in the Lord." As
I wrote in my last column, Blessed Pope Paul VI
courageously
proclaimed the nature of marriage at a time of great cultural
change. He upheld the Church's longstanding teaching that
a husband and wife should remain open to life when many
proponents of the sexual revolution were advocating for sex
divorced from its natural consequences.
In addition to noting the changing attitudes about sex,
Blessed Pope Paul VI took care to outline in his encyclical
the many emerging goods and realities of the changing
culture. These included the incorporation of women in the
workforce and recognition of their gifts. He also articulated
with great clarity that these goods must be sought in accord
with God's design for sexuality, not in spite of it. For this
reason, the use of artificial contraception cannot accompany
the marital act. To use it would be to say, "Lord, I want to
use the gift of human sexuality, but not in the way that you
designed it." Why would we change the nature of something
that God took such care to design?
The pontiff articulated that a husband and wife are called to
"responsible parenthood," which means that they should be
generous in welcoming children when they are able, but if
illness, financial strain or another grave circumstance would
make it imprudent to expand their family, they may have
recourse to the natural periods of infertility in a woman's
cycle - as God designed her. Far from being "natural birth
control," Natural Family Planning, or Fertility Awareness,
invites a couple to find other ways to express intimacy and
increases opportunities for communication and shared
discernment of God's will for their family. They remain
cooperators in God's creative work instead of taking the
reins from Him. As Pope Francis has said, "God loves
surprising us!"
Though many people in our culture, and even members of the
Church, bemoan this teaching as being "outdated," countless
couples who use Natural Family Planning testify to the
bountiful effects that it has on their marriage and their
family life including better communication, increased
attentiveness to their spouses' emotional needs, and an
increase in their generosity. We also know that many forms of
artificial contraception have been harmful to women - some of
the more widespread forms have been classified as
carcinogenic. The Church has never been "behind the times"
when it comes to its teaching on contraception. Conversely,
she continues to proclaim that following God's plan for us is
our surest path to happiness.
In "Humane Vitae," Blessed Pope Paul VI predicted that
an acceptance of contraception would introduce unintended,
harmful consequences into the culture: the sterilization of
populations by governmental authorities; the objectification
of women; the lowering of moral standards, especially for the
young; and an increase in marital infidelity leading to the
weakening of marriages. Many scoffed at his warnings, unable
to see how the choices of individual couples would produce
societal harms.
46 years later, we see how right he was. There are many
countries throughout the world in which women are sterilized,
and family size is regulated by governments; freedom to
determine their family size has been taken from men and
women. Moreover, the objectification of women in our society
should be immediately recognizable. The plague of sexual
assault on college campuses, the epidemic of pornography,
human trafficking, and the hypersexualization of women and
girls in the media is alarming, and in fact, destructive of
human dignity and worth.
Furthermore, young people have difficulty discerning good and
evil in a relativistic culture in which they are told that
the only sin is not to tolerate someone else's idea of what
is good. Their freedom to stand for enduring, objective moral
truths is being weakened. Lastly, the bishops at the
Extraordinary Synod noted that the weakening of marriage is
taking place at a rapid pace. People no longer see a
connection between sexual union and procreation or
procreation and marriage. We live in a culture in which
people construct the family that they desire, at the time
they want it and in the manner of their choosing. Paul VI's
prophetic call to the faithful to embrace the Church's
teaching on the design of human sexuality and procreation is
perhaps more necessary now than at the time he so
courageously proclaimed it.
Surely, Blessed Pope Paul VI knew well the words of Christ
that "a prophet is not accepted in his own home" (Lk 4:24).
At the close of the beatification Mass, Pope Francis shared
Blessed Pope Paul VI's notes from the end of Vatican II:
"Perhaps the Lord has called me and preserved me for this
service not because I am particularly fit for it, or so that
I can govern and rescue the Church from her present
difficulties, but so that I can suffer something for the
Church and in that way it will be clear that He, and no
other, is her guide and savior." Let us thank Blessed Pope
Paul VI for courageously pointing us to Christ in all that we
do, and let us fervently seek his intercession to be faithful
to Christ and the Church as he was!