Friends, I think that as a result of the current Scandal even you can better understand what Sheila and I have endured for 50 years of defending Humanae Vitae: 50 years of significant rejection! Immediately after Humanae Vitae, I wrote about the need to counter the efforts to rationalize, in the worst sense of that word, the acceptance of contraception. I advocated that adequate Catholic theology would help “the [contraception-accepting] couple to realize that their solution of one evil to counteract another tends to provide the rationalization for adultery, fornication and every other violation of the sexual order of creation as well as just about every sin imaginable” (Covenant, Christ and Contraception, Alba House, 1970, p. 126). At about the same time, Michael F. Valente’s book was published. He took dissent to its logical limits and proclaimed a doctrine of subjectivity in which he accepted even bestiality.
I wrote in 1971 in Theological Studies that the principles of dissent against Catholic teaching regarding marital contraception were also principles of dissent against every other aspect of sexual morality. No one ever criticized me in public, but the book and the article did little or nothing to stop or slow the dissenter’s bandwagon. In 1977 the Catholic Theological Society of America published a book that also accepted a truly radical subjectivity. I can still remember that they would leave any teaching about adultery to the sociologists. This was the horrible situation in the Church when St. John Paul II began his papacy in 1978 and made the support of Humanae Vitae the principal teaching effort of the first ten years of his pontificate.
My point is this: It was public knowledge among the theologically educated that the acceptance of unnatural forms of birth control was at least implicitly an acceptance of sodomy and bestiality and anything imaginable provided the parties were mutually agreed and were of legal age. Even ten years of teaching by St. John Paul II seemed to have little effect.
Now, thanks to the outrageous pride and sins of some of those with same-sex orientation, the cancer in the Church is being recognized and steps are being taken to heal it with the radiation of the truth as well as by the surgery of public exposure. Yes, surgery sometimes can be very smelly, and the same is true at present within the Church.
Hang in there, my friends. Keep praying for authentic renewal within the Church from top to bottom and for the conversion of sinners, as our Lady of Fatima asked us to pray, including those in high places. This is a wonderful time in the Church. We cannot pray too much for the cleansing to be authentic and thorough.
John F. Kippley