Humanae Vitae and the End of the Devotional Papacy

 As mentioned in the previous installment, the papacy during the time from 1860 to 1960 was a carefully managed play where Popes had theoretically great power, but that power was very limited in the wider world.  Within the Church, this power was viewed to be supreme, and the papacy came to be viewed as less in terms of governance and more in terms of devotional spirituality.  Yet behind this wall of devotion, Popes attempt to manipulate the levers of power as best they could.

With a diminution in temporal power, the Popes attempted to increase their centralized power within the Church.  It was within this timeframe that the Pope began to claim (if you believe Eamon Duffy, then out of nowhere) the right to centralize episcopal appointments entirely within Rome within the Latin Church.  Every step of the way was now guided by Rome.  There was a genuine fear (sometimes with ample reason) that, without meaningful temporal power, there was little to stop a rogue Bishop from doing what he wanted.  So an arrangement that was once understood (No Bishop can reign in his sea with the opposition of the Roman Pontiff) was transformed into a far more interventionist practice where the Holy See chose the Bishops as an extra step to help ensure their loyalty.

If you're expecting me to say this system was bad and an utter failure, I think that's a bit harsh.  For better or worse, the Church navigated some very trying times (including two world wars), and she managed to survive.  Her missionary impulse was rekindled in the early to mid 20th century, especially in Africa.  The Church's general separation from the European powers probably helped her to continue to grow and thrive, even after the decolonization movements in the mid 20th century.  What I want to do instead is look at this not in terms of success and failure, but in strengths and weakness.

One area of particular weakness is the papacy had developed a serious Oz complex.  Once you got past the majesty and mystique of the thundering voice and peaked behind the curtain, the pope was a lot weaker than advertised.  While everyone expected bishops to just do whatever the pope said, what would happen if they didn't?  It was something that was impossible to the modern mind, since over a century of devotional teaching had ruled out such a possibility, despite the very obvious fact this happened again and again throughout Church history.  If modern man had outgrown the superstitions of ancient religion, the modern Churchman, through the current understanding of hierarchical power, had overcome the divisions of the past.

Or did it?

At this point we are going to address the 800 lb gorilla in every traditionalist polemic, the Second Vatican Council.  I do so only because I am forced to. For our purposes, the Second Vatican Council (whatever your thoughts on it) was a time of immense change in the Church, and with that immense change came an expansion of possibilities within the minds of its thinkers and rulers.  It is in this context I want you to understand the significance of July 25th, 1968, the authoring of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae.

As everyone knows (for reasons that will be spelled out later), Humanae Vitae was an encyclical that reiterated previous denunciations of artificial contraception.  There was a widespread belief (in tune with the expanded possibilities of the times) the Catholic Church would follow the lead of the Anglicans and other Protestants in softening their opposition to birth control. In some more radical circles, it was believed the Church could approve birth control.  Paul VI emphatically rejected this, and made a bold case for the blessing of children, even seeming to grant the idea that the Earth had a population problem.

To say the encyclical was controversial is an understatement.  Yet, to any student of history, this was not the first time that the laity or even Bishops had not received Church teaching.  (If anything, encyclicals of Popes to Bishops throughout history can be summarized as "Would you please remember to implement X or Y, which we have magnanimously committed to your pastoral care on numerous occasions?")  What made this dissent different was it occurred after a century of the Devotional Papacy, where the spiritual importance of the papacy had never been higher, and their practical authority never lower.  To draw from that great thinker Gorilla Monsoon, we were about to see what happens when the unstoppable force met the immoveable object.

Dissent from Humanae Vitae was immediate and widespread.  While much attention is paid to the Winnepeg Statement, bishops conferences all across Europe ignored or outright resisted Paul VI's encyclical.  Within 2 years, it was clear not only that Paul VI had many detractors... he had few allies among the episcopate who was going to enforce his will.  Sixty years of carefully appointing loyalists to episcopal sees meant nothing.  Not only were they opposing the pope, it became pretty clear there was very little Paul VI could do about it.  Was he going to excommunicate entire episcopal bodies?  Contraception was popular among the laity in the West.  Faced with this immense weakness, the Pope sank into a general melancholy for the remainder of his pontificate.  Once everyone realized it was possible to dissent from the Pope, that dissent went into overdrive.  The Pope lamented his weak governance, but I think we should be realistic in that there was very little he could have done.  The options on the table were catastrophic, so he did what could be reasonably expected:  he did nothing.  That doing nothing includes not admitting defeat.  The gates of hell didn't prevail, the Church remained true to her doctrinal fidelity, but at what cost?  Her very understanding of how authority works was shattered?  What replaced it?

What replaced it could be generally described as anarchy.