Feast of Saint James, Apostle

Lectionary: 605

We hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us.

Fifty years ago today the Vatican issued the encyclical of Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae​. It might have been called "a treasure in earthen vessels"; a title to fit the document, the doctrine and its subject, the gift of life. 

The controversy no longer rages in Catholic chanceries, parishes and classrooms, but neither has it gone away. Since that time many Catholics have chosen to ignore the teaching; two generations of Catholic children have grown up largely ignorant of it; and some married couples, a select few, choose to live by its rigorous discipline.

The third group describes a marital vision of great sensitivity and practical awareness. Husband and wife together pay attention to, and assume responsibility for, the natural, reproductive cycles of her body. They are aware of the subtle changes of temperature and mood throughout each cycle, and not only during certain phases. These cyclic changes affect and may be honored in both of them; and, as their children enter puberty, their sons and daughters also practice deeper awareness of our cyclic rhythms.

Though the human body, like all organisms, is never entirely predictable, a married couple who practice "Natural Family Planning" decide as a couple when to have a child. Disciplined by the practice of prayerful conversation, realizing that God the Father is always a third partner in their marriage, and alert to the guidance of God's Holy Spirit, they fulfill their vow to receive children as God chooses give them children. Their first concern is not their own desire to have children; they neither "make babies" nor prohibit their conception. They recognize God as the giver of life and make themselves available as prospective parents.

Immersed as I have been in spiritual conversations these past fifty years, I have been struck by the revulsion many people feel toward the word, control. "He's a very controlling person!" is not high praise. Nor is, "She's a control freak." And yet many of the same people assiduously practice birth control with multiple layers of "child-proof" systems. 

They practice these methods relentlessly and encourage others to do so. Many children, arriving at adolescence, are immediately initiated into controlling their body, lest something natural occur. Eventually the culture at large forgets that sexuality concerns reproduction, not one's personal satisfaction, amusement or aerobic exercise.    

I knew a woman who raised goats. Someone asked her when her newest young goat would give milk. She explained that the kid would  have to mature, be impregnated, give birth after a few months of gestation, and begin suckling her young before she would produce goat's milk. "Oh," said the woman, "I didn't think of that." Americans drink billions of gallons of milk every year and rarely think of the sexual processes that produce milk; be they of cows, goats or women.

The United States recently threatened Uruguay with cutting off military aid for encouraging their mothers to breast feed their children. If there is money to be made, American business prefers baby formula to mothers' milk. The world of economics, eager to "subdue and have dominion​" over the human body as well as the Earth, promises freedom from every constraint, and dismisses the encyclical as irrelevant. But the consequences for ignoring its invitation to earthly life are painful and inexorable. There are natural forces around and within us beyond our reckoning. 

Humanae Vitae remains as a voice in the wilderness, a distant, fading reminder that the human being is a creature of earth, subject to its cycles and blessed by its fertility.