Humanae Vitae

I recently read Humanae Vitae, and I have to say I'm unconvinced. This puts me in a strange predicament. I have reached the point where I view the Church as God's authority on earth, as the authoritative interpreter of Holy Scripture, and as the pillar and ground of the truth. But this doesn't mean my mind has ceased to work.

Humanae Vitae claims that to willfully block the procreative act is contrary to natural law and is thus not permitted. However, in order to avoid pregnancy, it is perfectly fine for a couple to abstain from sex except in periods of natural female infertility. As far as I can tell, the logic seems to run like this: God created man and female for procreative purposes. The sex act is the means by which that procreation naturally occurs. To introduce something unnatural to this process for contraceptive purposes is to run contrary to the way God made things.

But I don't buy this logic. One may easily find numerous examples of when we can and should interfere with "the natural order of things". For example, if a river keeps flooding a town, it is perfectly reasonable that that town should divert the river into pools and reservoirs. Farmers are constantly fighting against the natural order of things in order to prevent arable land from reverting back to the "natural" tangle of meadows and forests. In fact, the overwhelming pattern of human existence is to interfere in the natural (and fallen!) order of things. Indeed, this is probably what it means to steward the earth.

It seems to me that man should use his mental facilities to create a more verdant, healthy, and happy world. This will necessarily involve working against the "natural disorder" and towards a more cultivated order.

I suppose, one must ask if there is a philosophy which must guide man in this quest. According to the Encyclical, to take advantage of a woman's natural cycles is to "use a faculty provided them by nature." To use a man-made contraceptive is to "obstruct the natural development of the generative process."

If we were to use this philosophy in all of our actions, we would have a very different world, indeed. By this logic, one could never, for instance, build a dam, for to do so would be to obstruct the natural development of the river. If one ponders this for a moment, one easily thinks of numerous counter-examples.

I'd also like to address a tangential point, namely some of the predictions made by the Encyclical. It says that in a world where contraceptive methods are easily accessible and accepted, men "may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires..." This is not a problem brought about by contraceptives, but rather by the fall. Can there be any question that men have always, throughout all of time, objectified and mistreated women? The Old Testament is filled with such behavior. Contraceptives neither encourage nor discourage this.

Now, I can say this: that if we were to follow the philosophy set forth in Humanae Vitae, I do think we'd have a much better world. In fact, we'd have a world in which human dwellings would have a very small ecological footprint. We'd have a world in which man never radically changed nature, but rather guided and guarded it. No big, unnatural roadways, factories, dams... No massive industrial farms raping the land and keeping animals stacked atop one another in inhumane conditions... We'd look much less like Americans and much more like Native Americans. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. But I don't think that's what the Catholic Church had in mind when it penned Humanae Vitae.