|
At the 1930 Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Communion changed its long-standing position of opposing artificial birth control by allowing for contraception in limited circumstances. All other mainline Protestant denominations have since removed prohibitions against artificial contraception.
In a partial reaction, Pope Pius XI wrote the encyclical Casti Connubii ("On Christian Marriage") in 1930, reaffirming the Catholic Church's belief in various traditional Christian teachings on marriage and sexuality, including the prohibition of artificial contraception even within marriage.
With the appearance of chemical oral contraceptives in the early 1960s, some voices in the Church argued for a reconsideration of these positions. In 1963 Pope John XXIII established a commission of theologians to study questions of birth control. After John's death in 1963, Pope Paul VI added laymen to this commission. The commission produced a report in 1966, stating that artificial birth control was not intrinsically evil and that Catholic couples should be allowed to decide for themselves about the methods to be employed. Two members of the commission produced a minority report stating that the Church should not and could not change its long-standing teaching. Even though intended for the Pope only, the commission's reports were leaked to the press in 1967, raising public expectations of liberalization. However, Paul VI explicitly rejected the majority's recommendations and issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which explicitly stated that “each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life.”
The final language of the encyclical was heavily influenced by the Bishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyła, who would later become Pope John Paul II. Bishop Wojtyła had earlier defended the traditional Church position from a philosophical standpoint in his 1960 book Love and Responsibility.
As reported in George Weigel's biography of John Paul II, Wojtyła had in fact been named by Paul VI to the commission to study the question. However, the communist authorities in Poland would not permit him to travel to Rome to take part in the key meeting of June 1966 in which the majority decision of the commission was made.
After he became Pope in 1978, John Paul II gave a series of lectures entitled Theology of the Body, which further developed themes in Humanae Vitae and Love and Responsibility.
|
