Lessons from Humanae Vitae on Priestly Formation

Humanae Vitae speaks eloquently about the role of priests in proclaiming the truth about human sexuality and inspiring their flocks to live up to this grand vision:

And now, beloved sons, you who are priests, you who in virtue of your sacred office act as counselors and spiritual leaders both of individual men and women and of families—We turn to you filled with great confidence. For it is your principal duty…to spell out clearly and completely the Church’s teaching on marriage. In the performance of your ministry you must be the first to give an example of that sincere obedience, inward as well as outward, which is due to the magisterium of the Church. Humanae Vitae §28

Seminarians, our future priests, will have an indispensable role both in making the Catholic Church’s teaching about human sexuality known and in inspiring the Christian faithful with the beauty of the Catholic Church’s vision for human love. It is clear, therefore, that seminarians need to be taught with absolute clarity what kinds of actions the Catholic Church condemns in the area of human sexuality in order to hand this on to the faithful. Yet clarity of teaching about what actions are forbidden is not itself enough to change our culture. The Catholic Church’s teaching about the prohibitions of various sexual sins (pornography, premarital sex, artificial contraception, etc.)must be offered to the faithful in the broader context of communicating the Catholic Church’s fundamentally positive vision of human sexuality. Only in this way will the Catholic Church’s teaching be spelled out clearly and completely in the way Humanae Vitae calls for.

It is one of the most widespread and pernicious lies of our modern age that the Catholic Church is the enemy of love. The Catholic Church is indeed the enemy of a false and diminished sense of “love” that ultimately leads to the dehumanization and use of other human persons. The sexual faculty is only used responsibly when its use respects the order of nature and the dignity of the human person. God, in His wisdom, established the order of nature in which the marital act has an innate procreative meaning. God also created man and woman in his own image and likeness giving us all a personal dignity that requires nothing less than a response of love—a willing of the authentic good of the other. The personal order that God has established in creating us in His image and likeness and calling us to share in His own life and happiness requires us to respond to other persons in authentic love rather than mere use—sexual or otherwise.

The marital embrace is truly unitive of spouses when it is open to life; and the generation of new life is only truly and fully human when it comes from a specific act of love between spouses. The very bedrock and foundation of the teaching of Humanae Vitae is the inseparable connection willed by the Creator between the procreative and unitive meanings of the marital act. Because of this inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative meanings of the marital act, contraceptive marital relations do not unite the spouses in love the way that God intended. The Catholic Church’s teaching serves love and authentic fruitful spousal union in this love.

All too often, members of our secular society mistakenly understand the Catholic Church’s vision of human sexuality to be merely one long list of no’s that are inimical to human love. While it is absolutely necessary that we have the courage to proclaim the truth of God’s plan for man and woman, with all the prohibitions it includes, it is even more vital to explain these no’s in the context of the Catholic Church’s fundamentally positive vision of human sexuality. This is what makes sense of the no’s, and offers a vision capable of inspiring the faithful to take the steps needed to concretely transform their lives. Pope Saint John Paul II’s beautiful teaching in Love and Responsibility, Familiaris Consortio, and The Theology of the Body makes it abundantly clear that the Catholic Church’s authentic vision for human sexuality is first and fundamentally a big yes to authentic love and self-gift.

In advancing the Church’s teaching found in Humanae Vitae, the work of the foreseeable future will be to offer the completeness of the Catholic Church’s positive vision for married love. It is only by living according to this vision that spouses can experience the fullness of joy that comes from the complete and irrevocable mutual gift of the whole person in life-long and life-giving love. It is in the service of this big yes to love that the many no’s to whatever is incompatible with this love make sense. And it is only with the grandeur of this big yes to authentic love before our eyes that we have the strength to say no to whatever threatens to destroy the authentic love we all desire so desperately.

With eyes on this vision, the faithful, by God’s grace, will desire to grow in the self-possession and self-mastery of chastity which is required for self-gift in love. We can only truly find ourselves by giving ourselves in love, but we cannot give what we do not possess. This is why we must gain control over our passions through the beautiful virtue of chastity. Chastity allows us to fully possess ourselves and prepares us to discover the true meaning of life in making a gift of ourselves in love.

Seminarians, then, ought to be offered the completeness of the Catholic Church’s fundamentally positive vision for human sexuality in such a way that enables them to enthusiastically share this vison with the faithful, and support them on the narrow and beautiful road to Christian perfection. Thanks be to God, it has been my experience that this is precisely what seminarians are looking for.