Although I might be alone, I will be celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the papal encyclical on contraception, Humanae vitae, this July 25th. I believe it is the one document that stands as a beacon of light against the disintegrating attitudes and effects of the culture of death. It is not that the encyclical represents any new teaching; like most Church documents, it is never politically correct but always eternally correct. Rather, Humanae vitae is the antidote to the blindness and negativity of the culture of death that has entered our world like a plague.

Here is a case in point. A friend recently emailed me a portion of a conversation he tried to have with a family member on the subject. Unfortunately, the conversation ended before it started: “We have no common ground here (contraception) at all,” said the family member curtly, “You’re the enemy, we're not going to talk about this and the stupid Church's hierarchy.” This attempted dialogue of a believer with a non-believer reveals the pagan world’s blind, unreflected faith in birth control. The subject of contraception generated not only a blank wall of rejection, but it also degenerated, without provocation, into a one-sided name-calling, recrimination and unsolicited attacks on another person’s religion.

Conversations like this happen because pills, sterilizations and barriers have simply become a sort of religious fixture in our society. Contraception is a modern idol, accepted as a part of our cultural landscape as readily as we accept McDonald’s or Burger King in the landscape of downtown USA. These institutions are just there. We do not need to imagine them; they market themselves to us; they are ubiquitous; they are the default consumption habit of our society; everybody indulges in them except a few health fanatics! Similarly, the almost religious doctrine of baby-avoidance has so deeply infiltrated the thinking of our society that no family is left untouched by its ideas or the culture that is generated by contraception.

The whining refrain of why the Church doesn’t just “get with the times and change its teaching” continually crashes down on the Church like a hailstorm on a tin roof, and is as annoying too. It is the mantra of every secular news commentator and dissenter in our own Church, and faithful Catholics are often hard-pressed to find an answer to this recurring taunt, almost embarrassed at having to defend this teaching. But when all is said and done, it is the Church that should be on the offensive in pressing for an answer to a more urgent and relevant question.

When presented with the “birth control challenge,” faithful pro-lifers must learn not to be intimidated but rather to turn the tables on the questioners and see if there is some reason why people are so adamant about this practice. One may say: “Okay, I’m glad you recognize that the Church thinks birth control is a bad thing. But before I give you a full explanation, tell me, why do you think birth control is a good thing?” This is a simple, honest question but it is by no means a comfortable question; it is a reverse challenge to a modern infallible dogma. The adherents of contraception always respond in one of three ways:

“The world is overpopulated” is one of those undigested bits of prejudice that does not hold water any more; modern economists are now increasingly more concerned about a “baby bust” than a baby boom. There is now not one of the 47 nations in Europe that is replacing its population. Some nations are even paying people to have more children, and with little success. The same trends can be seen in all but a handful of nations in Africa and Latin America, and the real macro-economic question today is “What future do these countries have if they have no children?” The false compassion for starving children in the Third World also tends to blame children for the poverty of underdeveloped societies and masks a deeper, racist, reaction to the births of poor children. It is a latent feeling that if those people keep breeding they will somehow come and take away our good life.

The “more contraception, less abortion” argument is perhaps the easiest to answer but the most pernicious to treat because its adherents adamantly refuse to accept the reality that the people who run the abortion industry are the same ones who run the contraception industry—and they make a killing off both. The prevalence of contraception in a culture only leads to more abortion, not less, because it creates a culture of promiscuity which ripens a society to accept the idea of killing children as problems and “unwanted.” The more illicit unions, the more the need for abortion: it’s that simple. If contraception was supposed to reduce the need for abortion shouldn’t we wonder why the US still has 1.3 million abortions? The fact of the matter is that more than half of the women who have abortions nowadays do so because their contraception has failed them; abortion has become the default back-up to failed contraception.

The lifestyle argument is all about people’s perceived need for a designer family that suits the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Contraception is the perfect foundation for a secular-materialistic culture because it purports to control fertility and therefore to control the circumstances of life. “Be fruitful and multiply!” –the first command to the human race—is not seen as a binding directive because the secular world has taught them to become gatekeepers of life at the expense of their natural vocation to be stewards of it. The justifications for not having children range from the seemingly generous ones about wanting to afford college educations for the kids they have to the crass reasons about just not wanting another kid because you don’t feel like getting pregnant again.

All of these arguments derive from the insidious “contraceptive mentality” that the Church so carefully warns us about in Humanae vitae. This mentality turns the child into a commodity to be considered according to the quality of life that he adds as opposed to a gift that has value in itself. The Church challenges and corrects this child-negative mindset with her own magnificent vision of marital love. The document describes a complete vision of marital love as “human, total, faithful and exclusive” and reminds us that this love is also fertile “for it is not exhausted by the communion between husband and wife, but is destined to continue, raising up new lives. ‘Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the begetting and educating of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of their parents.’” (n.9, quoting Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes, 50)

In the end, there may not be much celebration of Humanae vitae’s fortieth anniversary, but those of us who love life will appreciate its wisdom for a faith-challenged generation. The Catholic prohibition of any means to deliberately render the marital act sterile goes against our culture’s default mindset of baby-avoidance, but the teaching itself is not sterile! Those who follow the wisdom of Humanae vitae and remain “open to life,” keeping their marriages free from the blindness and degradation of contraception, will be the ones who transform not only their own families but also the entire culture in which we live.

Used with permission, American Life League, Celebrate Life magazine, July/August, 2008.