The Attack on Humanae Vitae and the Leftist Groups Behind It Today

John Podesta and the "Catholic Spring"

With the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae (HV) coming up, we'll no doubt see many articles reflecting the history of the birth control wars. I read one this morning
describing what was happening in 2012 under the Obama administration. (Here's another.) These reflect not only the impact of the collapse in morality spurred by the 1960s revolution, but more recent Democrat strategies to further undermine morality by manipulating Catholics.

Two generations after HV the smoldering wreckage was being fanned into flames by liberals on the hill using Catholic front groups and the complicit mainstream media who share their agenda. 

In 2012 John Podesta responded to an email from Sandy Newman of left-wing, pro-abortion Voices for Progress who inquired how to deep-six the bishops' opposition to the contraceptive mandate. She asked Podesta how they could create an enlightened "Catholic Spring...in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic church. Is contraceptive coverage an issue around which that could happen." Podesta wrote back:

We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good [which closed its offices in 2010] to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise, Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up.

In other words, in addition to the Catholic front groups created for the sole purpose of undermining Catholic doctrine, he advised Newman work to manipulate the masses to stir up clamor for change at the grass roots level. To that end, within a few days of the email exchange, articles and TV appearances popped up in the complicit mainstream media including Bobby Kennedy's daughter, Kathleen Townsend, appearing on C-Span to challenge the bishops' opposition to the contraceptive mandate in Obamacare. Coincidence?

I was in college when HV was released. All hell was breaking loose. I walked down the street from Trinity College to Catholic University to see what it was all about and heard Fr. antagonist-in-chief Charlie Curran rail against it. I remember clearly the confusion and chaos he helped foment. His impact (God help him!) can be seen in the embrace of contraception today by the majority of Catholics, and beyond that, the growth of contraception's offspring: abortion, same-sex immorality, test-tube babies, human cloning, etc.

Once the marital act (What a quaint term, eh?) is separated from its natural end, the creation of a baby anything is possible if it gives pleasure or fulfills a desire. Hence all is justified to allow union without babies or to get babies without union. 

One side says, "Sex is for pleasure." If that pleasure comes from fornication, a menage à trois, adultery, homosexual activity, self-abuse, pederasty, bestiality, etc. -- hey! it's all the same. "If it feels good, do it!" On the other hand if one wants a baby, do whatever it takes to get one -- even if there's no pleasure, in fact no feeling involved at all: in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, donor sperm and eggs, donor embryos, Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), three-parent mitochondrial replacement, selective reduction, etc. No need to turn to romance in the bedroom to get what you want; visit the lab instead.

We've reaped cultural chaos just as Pope Paul VI predicted when, in HV, he invited "upright men" to "reflect upon the consequences of embracing artificial birth control":

...how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men -- especially the young who are so vulnerable on this point -- have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance.. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion. 

Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon would thus be placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies... Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their people, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be most efficacious?

Pope Paul VI was a prophet. Unlike the false prophets of the left with their Chicken Little scenarios of a world dying of over-population, Europe is literally killing itself through mass immigration of Muslims to replace their empty cradles. Like the changelings of folk lore, the impact on the "family of man" of these replacement "children" is not a pretty one.

During this 50th anniversary year of HV, let us pray that our bishops will finally preach the good news, a message that is liberating and life saving (especially eternal life saving). I'm reminded of a phone call from one of my NFP clients years ago. She and her fiance took our class a few months before their wedding. At the time she was employed by the liberal magazine Sojourners. About a decade later she called one morning as I was getting ready to go to school where I was teaching fourth grade. Our conversation, of necessity, was brief and personally humbling to me. She called to thank me and said, "I was on my way to hell, and NFP changed my life." If only more of our bishops would realize that Church teaching doesn't require an apology, but a rejoicing affirmation!

Please, bishops, preach the good news of Humanae Vitae!