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Pay close attention to your life and your teaching. Persevere in these things, because if you do so, you will save both yourself, and those who listen to you. 1 Timothy 4:16 Dear fellow catechists, How do you feel when you read headlines like these? "Purge" at Vatican Doctrine Office Are We Still "One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic"? Parish Displays Banner for "Pride Month" Divorce - Remarriage: the New Normal? Doctrine Chief Sees "Well-Defined Attack on Doctrine" USCCB Fires Doctrine Chief Humanae Vitae to be Revisited, Revised Vatican Spokesman: No Comment Church Should Apologize on Sex, Gender Last Rites for Voluntary...

Catholic teaching prohibiting the use of contraception is unchangeable, Oklahoma City’s archbishop wrote in a recent article. Using contraception, such as the pill or the condom, to purposefully block the creation of a new life is “sinful,” he added.  Writing about the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), Archbishop Paul Coakley said in a March 28 article that contraception is harmful to both marriage and the individual person. “To separate these two [unitive and procreative purposes of the conjugal act] prevents the intimate expression of conjugal love from realizing its divinely intended purpose. To engage in sexual activity...

Author Mary Eberstadt told students at the University of Notre Dame Tuesday that a 50-year-old document on contraception is critical to understanding the state of contemporary culture. Eberstadt, a senior researcher at the Faith and Reason Institute, spoke at Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture, explaining that the prophetic message of Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae has become a reality.“Contraceptive technology, as Paul VI foresaw, opens a Pandora’s box of mischief in which the stronger have the advantage,” Eberstadt told Notre Dame students March 20.“For some while now, it’s been apparent that the sexual revolution that began...

Cardinal Walter Kasper, who spearheaded Communion for the “remarried,” is now arguing that Pope Francis’ refusal to affirm Humanae Vitae’s central teaching in Amoris laetitia may signal his tacit approval of contraception.  In a move predicted by critics of Amoris laetitia, the German theologian suggested that because the Pope’s sprawling 2016 apostolic exhortation on the “joy of love” does not explicitly mention the Church’s proscription of contraception, it may, in fact, be allowed. Italian journalist and veteran Vatican-watcher Sandro Magister writes that Kasper adroitly inserts this argument into his new book on Amoris laetitia, which has been recently published in...

The siege on Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae” has racked up two new assaults in recent days. But also an energetic counterattack. The first and more authoritative assault bears the signature of Cardinal Walter Kasper. In a booklet released contemporaneously in German and in Italy he exalts the “paradigm shift” inaugurated by Pope Francis with the exhortation “Amoris Laetitia.” A paradigm shift - Kasper writes - that does not limit itself to allowing communion for the divorced and remarried, but “concerns moral theology in general and thus has effects on many analogous situations,” including none other than recourse to...

ROME, March 8, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — The Pope has no power to change or relax the Church’s ban on artificial contraception, just as he can never allow women to be ordained, Cardinal Gerhard Müller said on Wednesday. The former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith was speaking at a book launch at the Lateran University in Rome. The launch was hosted by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute and was attended by key Vatican figures. His remarks on the infallibility of Humanae Vitae’s teaching were supported by comments made at the same event by Professor Livio...

The age-old use of proportionalism came to the fore at a recent Vatican conference on Pope Paul VI’s 50-year-old encyclical and the apostolic exhortation ‘Amoris Laetitia.’ Father Maurizio Chiodi, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, recently gave a speech at the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome defending the use of contraception. Father Chiodi’s address, entitled “Rereading Humanae Vitae in the Light of Amoris Laetitia,” was given at a conference dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the publication of Humanae Vitae (The Regulation of Birth). Does this portend a doctrinal push similar to what we’ve seen on the matter...

An Instrumentum laboris (working paper) was prepared for the XIV Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops and published on June 23, 2015. It covers a range of topics germane to the Synod’s theme of the family. Paragraph 137 addresses a key document of the modern Magisterium, Humanae Vitae, in a way that both calls the force of that teaching into question and proposes a method of moral discernment that is decidedly not Catholic. This approach to discernment contradicts what has hitherto been taught by the Magisterium of the Church about moral norms, conscience, and moral judgment, by suggesting that...

ROME, January 31, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – “What the Church teaches about contraception is not a matter of free discussion among theologians,” Pope John Paul II said in 1987. “Teaching the contrary is tantamount to inducing the moral conscience of spouses into error.” These are the words of Pope John Paul II, in an address delivered at a study meeting on responsible procreation, translated into English for the first time this week by LifeSiteNews. In the message, the saintly pontiff also warned against “many” who think that “Christian teaching, although true, is nonetheless unfeasible, at least in some circumstances.” He said...

Humanae vitae, Blessed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical reaffirming the Church’s defense of the sanctity of human life, was promulgated fifty years ago this year. It was dated July 25, 1968. When July rolls around later this year I shall have some things to say, God willing, about the encyclical’s content. What I’m talking about here is some of the aftermath of the document’s promulgation.Only some. I’m going for a broad picture and in as few words as possible. I shall not deal, for instance, with the epic fight of Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle to preserve doctrinal orthodoxy at the Catholic University...

Published as received. The author of the letter is an ecclesiastic with advanced specialized scholarly training, and one who has held significant teaching posts in Italy and abroad, but who also dedicates time and energy to pastoral care.He is the same one whose letter www.chiesa published in January of 2016, on the deterioration in the “quality” of sacramental confessions, a deterioration that does not appear unrelated to the impact on many of the faithful of certain remarks of Pope Francis emphasized by the media.In this new letter he highlights the baselessness of the arguments recently adopted - mainly in a...

The Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences tweeted yesterday without comment a New York Times article about people using birth control to stop having children because of "climate change" fear.  The alarmist New York Times article said some people are “acutely aware that having a child is one of the costliest actions they can take environmentally” and are therefore using artificial contraception to prevent that from happening.

An official of the Holy See’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has admitted in an interview that a papal commission exists to carry out an historical review of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, according to Kathpress, the official news agency of the Catholic bishops of Germany. Kathpress reports that it received confirmation of the existence of the papal commission from Msgr. Alejandro Cifres, who has long overseen the archives of the CDF and is currently the dicastery’s Chief of Office. “It is not certain whether or not a reinterpretation of the ‘pill encyclical’ (Humanae Vitae) is coming...

Aborting Humanae Vitae: How Can the Church Deal with the Bergoglian Quantum Leap? The conventional wisdom is that “this disastrous papacy” lies on a continuum of post-Vatican II ecclesial decline on which Francis represents but the lowest point yet reached.  This is true, but only superficially.  If we look more deeply into the phenomenon that Antonio Socci has dubbed Bergoglianism, we see an actual break with the continuum, a quantum leap into the chaotic realm of the mind of one badly formed Jesuit, fascinated by his own disordered thinking. An analogy to atomic physics struck me as helpful in assessing...

Goodbye, “Humanae Vitae.” Half a century later, the encyclical against artificial methods of birth control that marked the most dramatic moment of the pontificate of Paul VI, rejected by entire episcopates, contested by countless theologians, disobeyed by myriads of faithful, is now giving way to a radical reinterpretation, to a “paradigm shift” undoubtedly desired and encouraged by Pope Francis himself. Paradox would have it that Paul VI should be the pope whom Jorge Mario Bergoglio admires and praises the most. And precisely - his own words - for the “prophetic brilliance” with which he wrote that encyclical and for his...

A prominent Austrian Catholic philosopher has issued a forceful rebuttal to the call of a new member of the Pontifical Academy for Life to allow contraception in some circumstances. Professor Josef Seifert, co-founder of the International Academy of Philosophy (IAP) and a former member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has said the positions of Fr. Maurizio Chiodi, delivered on Dec. 14, 2017 during a public lecture at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, contain “disastrous general philosophical errors that have been magisterially and forcefully rejected by Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor.” As LifeSite reported on Monday, the...

I am going to risk a prediction: 2018 will be the year we see an end to the fighting over Amoris Laetitia.This might seem rather presumptuous, given that just this week five bishops have underscored the Church’s traditional teaching on the reception of Communion by the divorced and remarried. The bishops’ statement is a positive delight to read for its clarity of thought and expression – especially after some of the tortured sophistries we have had to endure of late.The document unflinchingly reminds us that some things are just wrong, and no amount of personal reflection or mitigating circumstances can...

The “Fruits” of Contraception Msgr. Charles Pope • November 30, 2017 • In our culture’s current self-examination on sexual harassment and sexual abuse, we would also do well to ponder how the “contraceptive mentality” has contributed to the many sexually related problems of the day. This view insists that there is no necessary connection between sex and having children; it separates what God has joined. This has led to a whirlwind of confusion about the nature and purpose of sexual intimacy as well as about marriage and family. Many treat sex lightly and frivolously; they falsely think that sex...

Pontifical Gregorian University Hosts Series of Talks to Take New Look at Humanae Vitae Organizers say the aim is to take a new and broad look at the encyclical “in the context of a time of change” and because difficulties have become “more complex.” Edward Pentin The Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome is hosting a series of talks from October until May aimed at considering the “transformations, needs and hopes” of the family 50 years after Humanae Vitae.

All of which amounts to a concern that the commission is being used as a cover: to look at the scientific and historical character of the document, but with the ultimate goal of presenting the Pope with enough information for the encyclical’s dissenters to say: “Times have changed — Humanae Vitae needs to be interpreted in the light of conscience, according to the complexity of people’s lives today.” Before his death on Sept. 6, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra had privately expressed similar grave concerns about the commission. Like others, he believed the opening of the archives was a ploy to obtain...