Pope Paul VI was prophetic forty years ago when he issued the singularly most “controversial” but strikingly beautiful encyclical ever promulgated by the hand of a pope, Humanae vitae. This small document, which consists of merely thirty-one paragraphs, bears a great treasure that we absolutely have to understand and communicate to our world for the spiritual benefit of many—namely, the truth about contraception. The truth is that contraception divides the unitive from the procreative dimensions of the marital act, it divides husband from wife, and ultimately, it divides couples from God. “What God has joined, men must not divide,” said our Lord (Mt 19:5), and we are all, in some way, defenders of that truth.

Two sides of the same coin
The two dimensions of the marital act, union and procreation, can be likened to the two sides of a coin. Each side of a coin bears some image or information that is intrinsic to the value of the coin. For example, a Kennedy Half Dollar shows me an image of the 35th US president on one side and the words “Half Dollar” on the other to make me know its worth. Its real value comes from being a whole unit of money, not damaged or defaced.

Now, if I were to take that same coin, set it on edge and cut right down the middle of the sandwich, in between the two faces, not only would I do great violence to the coin, I would also destroy its intrinsic value. Cutting the fifty cent piece in half would not leave me with two smaller coins worth twenty-five cents each. It would leave me with two damaged pieces of metal, each worth exactly nothing!

Analogously, if a two-sided coin can be a unit of economic value, a two-dimensional human act, the marital act, can have deep meaning for the vast majority of the human race. Furthermore, if it’s actually a crime to deface a country’s money, it has to be a spiritual crime (i.e., sin) to destroy something much more valuable like the sacred conjugal act.

The integrity of the marital act
The “marital act” is more beautiful and valuable in its two dimensions than money, and the Catholic Church seems to be the only one reminding the world about this important truth. Combining unitive pleasure and procreative power, the marriage act binds spouses together in love and gives them the privilege of co-creating (i.e., pro-creating) new and precious little lives with God. Very few other acts that human beings perform have as much transcendent meaning—or potential to change the world!

Humanae vitae reminds us that God intends the two dimensions of the act always to remain together; one dimension divorced from the other inevitably leads to selfishness or irresponsibility or even to the abuse of power in human relationships. When Humanae vitae says that “each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life,” (n. 11) it means that we must never deliberately sterilize or destroy the integrity of any conjugal act. Rather, we cooperate with the natural cycles of fertility as a sign of reverence for this act and thus provide a counter force to the hedonistic tendency of our contemporaries to make it into a banal form of entertainment.

What happens when we separate “what God has joined”?
Pope Paul VI told us exactly what would happen if we sundered the two dimensions of the marital act. These are the famous “Humanae vitae prophecies” found in paragraph 17 of the encyclical, and they are four. He said that contraception would bring:

It’s not hard to see that eliminating the possibility of childbearing through contraception and sterilization results in infidelity, immorality and loss of respect for women. The other side of the coin is the modern biotechnical horrors like cloning and in vitro fertilization which separate the production of babies from the marital act. One dimension of the marital act without the other leads to aberrations, which lead to moral and social problems.

What can we do to change the culture?
The answer to this question is simple, but not easy. The most fundamental area of culture change is the human heart. We must believe what the Church teaches because it is divine truth—and we must become witnesses to this teaching! Above all, we have to make sure that our marriages are contraception and sterilization free. No Catholic may say that this teaching is optional, and, yes, it still remains a grave sin for anyone to use contraceptives. The Church believes that we can change the culture one family at a time when we change our own hearts and marriages. Simply put, non-contracepting couples are an antidote to the sicknesses of our modern world because they are “counter-cultural” in all the best ways. They do not divide what God has joined, and, as a consequence, they also reap the benefits of better marriages, deeper meaning in their lives and larger, happier families.

Humanae vitae was right after all!

Used with permission of Legatus Magazine, July, 2008.