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Posted on 09/13/2017 4:34:40 PM PDT by marshmallow
COMMENTARY: Recent developments in Rome indicate a campaign is underway to challenge the encyclical’s prohibition against artificial contraception.
VATICAN CITY — Half way through the first synod on the family, when it was becoming clear that heterodox agendas were being pursued in heavy-handed and deceptive ways, a well-respected Church figure took me aside at a reception with a pained expression on her face.
“Of course, you realize this is all about Humanae Vitae,” she said. “That’s what I think they’re after. That is their goal.”
What she meant was that the many dissenters of Blessed Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical wanted the Church’s ban on artificial contraception — which Humanae Vitae (The Regulation of Birth) reaffirmed — softened and ultimately undermined.
At the time, her prediction seemed plausible, but too speculative. The synod participants didn’t seem too exercised by the issue, and Humanae Vitae was largely left alone, at least directly. German-speaking prelates, who took a leading role in the controversies during both synods on the family, even spoke warmly of the encyclical at a closing press conference of the second synod.
But as the Church prepares to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae in 2018, the recent revelation of a four-member stealth commission to study the document — and other subtle and less subtle attempts to weaken the Church’s moral teaching — are making the concerns of the Church figure at the 2014 synod look ominously prescient.
In his encyclical, Paul VI re-affirmed the Church’s prohibition of artificial contraception, approved natural family-planning methods, and upheld the Church’s teaching on conjugal love and responsible parenthood.
It caused a sensation when published: In the wake of the sexual revolution — when much of the world had accepted birth control — and after a five-year study by a pontifical commission that appeared..........
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
Might as well make the Democrat Party the official Catholic Church.
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