DEFENDING THE FAITH - HUMANAE VITAE AT 50

Blessed Paul VI may have smelled the smoke of Satan in the Church, but dressed in
both the fur mozzetta and the cloak clearly also felt the chill of a Godless world.

Our Order is committed to the work of Tuitio Fidei, defending the Faith we have received from our Fathers in the modern world. We are committed to uphold the Faith and to defend the Magisterium and the deposit of Faith protected by Our Holy Father Pope Francis.

In our time the Faith is attacked on numerous levels, the sanctity of Marriage between man and woman, sexual morality and the rise of pornography, and worse of all, as it underlines all the other evils, the attacks upon the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrifice of the Mass.  Even in the Church there are calls, even from cardinals, particularly in some European countries, sowing confusion and dissent, bringing scandal to the laity, and blurring the distinction between right and wrong - calls for communion for those in adulterous and bigamous relationships (so-called 'second marriage'); calls for Holy Communion for mixed marriages, to give the sacred species to those who have not demonstrated a clear understanding of the sacraments nor expressed a desire to be in a perfect state of grace; calls for the blessing of unnatural unions, homosexual 'couples'; calls for a female clergy against the teaching of Christ, confirmed again in our time by Saint John-Paul II; and latterly, as this 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae approaches, calls for a softening of the Church's perennial teaching on sexual morality and the sanctity of life - contraception and abortion. 

For these very things our holy Patron Saint John the Baptist, whose Birth we celebrate today, was beheaded - the Church's first champion and patron saint of Holy Christian marriage and of chastity.

So we can be proud in Britain of these 500 clergy of our lands who have signed a letter defending the Church's teaching as expressed magisterially by Blessed Pope Paul VI in his Encyclical, but also in our beloved Order take it as a challenge to us personally to join the fight.

A good report in the Catholic Herald, giving the signatories, may be read HERE.  The full text is given below.

We may be proud too that nearly all the Chaplains of our Order have added their signatures.  But it is for us the laity to defend the Faith, not to rely upon the priests : their role is to teach us, not to fight beside us, any more now than in the galleys of our forebears.  So, let us take up our weapons - our hearts and our rosaries, but also our brains and our voices, and make the Church's teaching known in our world and our workplace.

Our Lady of Philermo, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Blessed Paul VI, pray for us.

Text of the Letter of the British Clergy

In 1968 Pope Paul VI issued a re-affirmation of central aspects of the Church’s traditional teaching on human sexuality. The encyclical Humanae Vitae affirmed, in harmony with the Church’s traditional teaching, the purity and beauty of the spousal act, always open to procreation and always unitive.

Humanae Vitae predicted that if artificial contraception became widespread and commonly accepted by society then we would lose our proper understanding of marriage, the family, the dignity of the child and of women and even a proper appreciation of our bodies and the gift of male and female. The Holy Father warned that governments would begin to utilise coercive methods to control what is most private and intimate.

At the time of the publication of Humanae Vitae many rejected its message and its warnings. Many found the teaching that the use of contraception was in all cases ‘absolutely excluded’ and ‘intrinsically wrong’ difficult to accept and challenging to proclaim. Fifty years later so much has unfolded in our society that has been to the detriment of human life and love. Many have come to appreciate again the wisdom of the Church’s teaching.

As priests we desire to affirm on this 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae the noble vision of procreative love as the Catholic Church has always taught and understood it. We believe a proper ‘human ecology’, a rediscovery of the way of nature and respect for human dignity is essential for the future of our people, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. We propose discovering anew the message of Humanae Vitae, not only in fidelity to the Gospel, but as a key to the healing and true development of our society.