Sorry, I am up to my alligators in my day job right now and don’t have time for a two hour proof of this headline. Go read Ann HERE and of course the encyclical HERE.
The principle question in Paragraph #3 is as follows:
Granted the conditions of life today and taking into account the relevance of married love to the harmony and mutual fidelity of husband and wife, would it not be right to review the moral norms in force till now, especially when it is felt that these can be observed only with the gravest difficulty, sometimes only by heroic effort? Moreover, if one were to apply here the so called principle of totality, could it not be accepted that the intention to have a less prolific but more rationally planned family might transform an action which renders natural processes infertile into a licit and provident control of birth? Could it not be admitted, in other words, that procreative finality applies to the totality of married life rather than to each single act? A further question is whether, because people are more conscious today of their responsibilities, the time has not come when the transmission of life should be regulated by their intelligence and will rather than through the specific rhythms of their own bodies.
The principle answer comes in PP#11-12:
The fact is, as experience shows, that new life is not the result of each and every act of sexual intercourse. God has wisely ordered laws of nature and the incidence of fertility in such a way that successive births are already naturally spaced through the inherent operation of these laws. The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act. The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason.
Keep in mind, this paragraph, most certainly written by Cardinal Ottaviani after he had torn out and burned whatever wretched text had first appeared in this spot, is already a weakening of perennial Church teaching, because it places the Unitive aspect on the same plane as the Generative aspect. This is false. The Generative aspect is clearly superior to the Unitive. That’s a post for another day.
Now over to onepeterfive:
QUESTION POSED TO FRANCIS: Half a century after Paul VI’s encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” can the Church take up again the topic of birth control? Your confrere, Cardinal [Carlo Maria] Martini [the late Archbishop of Milan] believed it was now time. [NB – Martini is believed to have been the leader of the St. Gallen Mafia; SS]
FRANCIS ANSWERS: It all depends on how the text of “Humanae Vitae” is interpreted. Paul VI himself, towards the end, recommended to confessors much mercy and attention to concrete situations. But his genius was prophetic, as he had the courage to go against the majority, to defend moral discipline, to apply a cultural brake, to oppose present and future neo-Malthusianism. The object is not to change the doctrine, but it is a matter of going into the issue in depth and to ensure that the pastoral ministry takes into account the situations of each person and what that person can do. This will also be discussed on the path to the Synod.
Steve Skojec continues:
He says Paul VI recommended “mercy” and “attention to concrete situations.” Our Amoris Laetitia secret decoder ring tells us that means, “If you follow your conscience, you can do whatever you like.”
He says “the object is not to change the doctrine”. Our Amoris Laetitia secret decoder ring tells us that means, “We don’t need to change the doctrine when we can do an end-run around it.”
He says the Church needs to “ensure that the pastoral ministry takes into account the situations of each person and what that person can do.” Our Amoris Laetitia secret decoder ring tells us that means, “if a doctrine is too hard, we’ll make an exception to it by means of ‘pastoral care’ and ‘personal discernment’.”
He says that Paul VI “had the courage to go against the majority” and “to defend moral discipline”. Our Amoris Laetitia secret decoder ring tells us that means, “If the majority wants to uphold the doctrine of the Church, we have the courage to pursue our agenda anyway and ensure they don’t prevail by rigging the process.”
Professor de Mattei has his own thoughts about courage when it comes to this new commission on Humanae Vitae: “Will there be any priest or theologian faced with this program of the ‘reinterpretation’ of Humane Vitae, [who] have the courage to utter the word ‘heresy’?”
We echo his question. They’re coming for Humanae Vitae and its proscriptions against contraception, and they’re not going to stop until they get what they want. If you’re a cardinal, bishop, or priest and wish you had spoken up sooner when they steamrolled their program through at the synods, and then again through the iron-fisted implementation of AL, you’re being given another chance.
Don’t mess it up this time. The faithful are counting on you.
As we have seen time and time again, the tactic will not be to scuttle the doctrine, but rather to hold it up as an unattainable ideal, such that it must be slathered in FrancisFalseMercy so that we can accompany and discern the concrete situations of persons pastorally. Dear bishops, it’s the bottom of the ninth, two out bases loaded and here comes the 0-2 pitch.
Now please scroll back up and click on that Ann Barnhardt link, because what she explains is the trajectory of widespread acceptance of contraception, and why it leads inexorably, by actual logic and reason, to the worship of murder, fornication and sodomy. That’s how we got here. That’s why Roe. That’s why Obergefell. That’s why porn chic. That’s why Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Ariana Grande.