For some Catholics it must have felt like a flashback to 1968. Last week, 149 academics issued a statement publicly challenging Church teaching on contraception.
The statement, issued by an organisation called the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, heralds a 20,000-word report rejecting the arguments of Blessed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, which upheld the Church’s prohibition. It also asks the Vatican to form a new commission to reopen the discussion on contraception.
Almost immediately, about 600 other scholars fired back, issuing a counter-statement rejecting the Wijngaards Institute’s arguments and upholding Humanae Vitae.
Nearly 50 years on, the encyclical remains a matter of great controversy. But things have changed since 1968, in such a way that the Wijngaards statement may demonstrate the weakness of their position, as much as its strength.
It’s true that opposition to Humanae Vitae – and the long tradition of Catholic teaching which it represents – remains the norm, both within and outside the Church. Indeed, the pressure from international bodies to bend the Church to their will helps to explain the urgency with which the counter-statement was issued.
The United Nations’ Interagency Task Force on Religion and Development, which is currently examining “sexual and reproductive health challenges in the developing world”, invited the institute to present its statement, in conjunction with two other reports launched by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and the UN Population Fund.
Professor Chad C Pecknold, one of the signatories, says: “I think it matters that the Wijngaards statement was being made to the UN – and the UN has been pushing contraception, sterilisation and abortion as Malthusian means of population control”.
The scholars, Pecknold adds, wanted to make clear, to the UN and others, that the Wijngaards statement “does not represent the Catholic Church’s teaching, nor the scholarly consensus among experts in the field.”
And that is one major difference from 1968: supporters of the Church’s teaching are more confident about defending it. Dr Janet E Smith, one of Humanae Vitae’s most prominent champions, once said that when the encyclical was released it “felt like a bomb” had been dropped on the Catholic Church.
As soon as the text was issued, 20 professors from the Catholic University of America issued a “Statement of Dissent”. It was eventually signed by more than 600 Catholic scholars.
One figure who upheld the teaching was Cardinal O’Boyle of Washington DC, who wrote a pastoral letter affirming Humanae Vitae. When he read it out at Mass in St Matthew’s Cathedral, 200 people staged a walkout. Fifty-two priests publicly defied O’Boyle.
Those were extraordinary times. Today, the opposition to Church teaching is more sedate. The Wijngaards Institute was established in 1983 and is currently based in a small office in Rickmansworth, Greater London, above a shop, according to the organisation’s website. Its listed aims and priorities focus on the Church teachings which fascinate and infuriate so many critics, with Catholicism’s teaching on contraception remaining the main priority.
But the whole campaign feels somewhat dated, say critics. As Dr Janet Smith wrote at catholicworldreport.com that the Wijngaards statement was “stale, regurgitated stuff that is rather pungent for its agedness. It shows absolutely no knowledge of the brilliant, biblically rooted defence of Humanae Vitae by St John Paul II in his Theology of the Body. It is like someone found a time capsule with a bunch of theologians in it who have no knowledge of what has happened in the last 30 years.”
It isn’t just that the arguments have developed: they have also filtered through to the laity. Younger practising Catholics are much more receptive to Humanae Vitae; and so are younger scholars. To quote Dr Smith again, “Thirty years ago it was very difficult for a faithful Catholic theologians to get position in a most every Catholic college and universities. Fidelity is no longer a black mark. Almost every place is more open to faithful scholars and some places have radically reformed.”
The Catholic University of America presents a microcosm of this change. It was, in 1968, the epicentre of American dissent, the place where theologians made their stand against the Catholic tradition. It is a neat irony that last week’s statement in defence of Humanae Vitae was launched during a press conference at that very same university, and presented on its website with support from the president and many senior scholars.
In 1968, you could find more than 600 Catholic academics to sign a statement against Humanae Vitae, while supporters felt besieged. Today, over 600 will support the encyclical, and far fewer can be found to oppose it.
Statistics can be misleading; but in this case, they reflect a bigger story – about the growing confidence of Catholic orthodoxy.
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