inside america

Let Beauty Prevail
(to be truly free)
With the recent flare up in the controversy over contraception, we should  revisit  Humanae Vitae, in which Pope Paul VI faced off against the budding birth-control culture with a potent weapon: the Truth of the human person–a truth accessible to the most simple among us.

by lorenzo albacete

In 1968, in the midst of the controversy over his encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI travelled to Bogota, Colombia–the first visit by a Pope to Latin America. A friend of mine invited me to accompany him to see the Pope with tickets from the pastor of a parish where we would be staying as guests. At that time, I was working as a scientist and the possibility of being called to be a priest had just barely surfaced in my heart. I thought the experience of being close to a Pope whom I admired immensely would help me sort out the emerging vocational conflict in my heart and mind. And so, I went to Bogota.
The condemnation of artificial contraception in Humanae Vitae had affected many of my priest friends. Preaching and advising their congregations to give priority to their consciences over the teaching of the encyclical, they had been suspended from all or part of their priestly duties. Some were evicted from their parishes. A period of public controversies followed, with demonstrations, sit-ins, teach-ins, etc.
For my part, I had not given much serious thought to the issue of contraception. I was thinking of marriage, but assumed we’d figure it all out when it became a personal issue. Frankly, I had expected the Pope to adjust the teaching of the Church on contraception “in light of” the many changes in society and in the world that were occurring then, as he himself acknowledges in the first paragraphs of the encyclical.
When I read the entire document, my views began to change. Oh, there were parts of it that in my presumptuous scientific prejudices I considered to be anachronistic, but these were more than overcome by something else: the document was beautiful! The teaching of the Church on contraception was beautiful–very beautiful. Its view of the human person is more exalted than in any other declaration of human dignity and rights.
This is what I confirmed in Bogota. On the afternoon before the Pope arrived, I was reading the local newspapers welcoming the Pope as a champion of human rights in Vietnam and Soviet-invaded Czechoslovakia, asking him to do the same for Latin America.
At that moment, a lady, obviously one of those poor in need of “liberation,” came into the rectory living room and asked me to hear her confession. I explained that I wasn’t a priest, only a friend of the pastor, who was in fact about to arrive and would no doubt hear her confession. The lady sat down to wait, silently looking at the pictures of the Pope in the papers I was setting aside.
After a while, she looked at me and said she was thrilled because she might be able to see the Pope. “He loves the poor and we love him,” she said. I asked whether she was not at least a bit disappointed that the Pope had condemned contraception. She got very agitated and said, “No, no, no. You must understand! He doesn’t want only the rich to have children!”
I have been thinking about this woman of Bogota now that the controversy over contraception has flared up again. I urge you to read Humanae Vitae. Consider its view of human rights. See how beautiful it is. Think of Jesus and Mary... and let Beauty prevail.