ROME has spoken,” runs an ancient proverb of the Roman Catholic Church.
“The case is closed.” No longer true. Last week Pope Paul VI formally
promulgated his encyclical on birth control, which condemns all methods
of contraception, except rhythm, as against the will of God. The
pronouncement caused perhaps the most serious outburst of dissent the
Catholic Church has experienced in centuries. Innumerable Catholics
made clear that they would refuse to heed the words of a reigning
Pontiff. Theologians defied his authority to insist that the encyclical
was not binding on married Catholics who have good reasons to practice
birth control—and it was obvious that millions will continue to do so. Thus, instead of solving a troubling question of personal morality for
Catholics, Paul has, in fact, brought into the open a much more
profound question: Where and what is authority in the church?
Ironically, the Pope, who has worried so much about the spread of
dissension within Catholicism, has really created the conditions for
further revolt. After the encyclical was published, most of the enthusiasm for it came
from Roman Catholic bishops, who are bound by special ties of loyalty
to the Pope. Prompted by an urgent request from Rome for moral
support,* the hierarchy of the U.S. issued a collective statement that
called on “our priests and people to receive with sincerity what he has
taught, to study it carefully, and to form their consciences in its
light.” At least a few prelates were openly disappointed. Franziskus
Cardinal Knig of Vienna, who had tried to keep the Pope from issuing
the encyclical, said that “it does not solve on its own the problem for
the individual human being.” The hierarchy of the Dutch church issued a
commentary pointedly advising Catholics that such factors as mutual
love and social circumstances should also be considered in guiding
conscience on the morality of birth control. Ecumenical Disaster. Protestant and secular opinion on the encyclical
was almost wholly disapproving. In Geneva, Secretary Eugene Carson
Blake of the World Council of Churches declared: “It is disappointing
that the initiative taken in 1963 to re-examine the traditional Roman
Catholic position on family planning seems to have ended up
approximately where it began.” At the worldwide Lambeth Conference of
Anglican bishops, the Rt. Rev. I. R. Moorman of Ripon, a Church of
England observer at Vatican II, called the encyclical “ecumenically, a
disaster for Christianity.”
