The Publication of Humanae Vitae
July 25, 1968
Every so often, the Roman Pontiff will remind the world that the passage of time does not turn something bad into something good.
And no moral wrong has needed more such reminding than the use of contraceptives—or at least no moral wrong in the last century or so. Before about 1920, the leaders of every Christian denomination denounced the use of contraceptives. John Wesley said their use was “evidence of vile affections.” Martin Luther (you Lutherans will not be surprised to hear) had considerably more damning words, calling the use of contraceptives “far more atrocious than incest or adultery.” So, too, John Calvin.
And it wasn’t just churchmen. Before about 1920, nearly everyone on the planet regarded contraception as a bad thing. The presidents of Amherst, Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth spoke out against it. The Republican Party was against it. Democrats were against it. Even Charles Darwin—Charles Darwin!—saw the use of contraceptives as patently wrong.
But in 1930, the Anglican Communion became the first Christian denomination (or for that matter, the first of any faith tradition) to approve the use of contraceptives. In the ensuing decades, nearly all Protestant denominations followed suit.
Pope Pius XI reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s opposition to the use of contraceptives in his 1930 encyclical, Casti Connubii. Thirty years later, the FDA approved the Pill, and by 1968, Catholic hierarchs around the world fully expected to join their Protestant counterparts in announcing that a moral wrong had become a moral right. But on July 25, 1968, Pope Paul VI released Humanae Vitae, reaffirming, without equivocation, that the use of contraceptives remained, as always, an evil act.
J. Douglas Johnson is the executive editor of Touchstone and the executive director of the Fellowship of St. James.
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