By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Newly released documents from a member of the commission tasked with discerning whether the Church would allow the use of artificial contraception show that Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae in spite of the fact that a majority of the members were in favor of changing Church policy.
Russell Shaw of Our Sunday Visitor’s Newsweekly reports that information provided by the late Jesuit Father John C. Ford, a prominent American moral theologian, reveal that the commission charged with working on the issue of birth control was heavily biased in favor of allowing it and were not above influencing the final vote on the matter.
The new disclosures are contained in a biographical sketch of Father Ford by Germain G. Grisez, who worked with the priest in Rome during a critical period in the commission’s proceedings.
According to Grisez, Fr. Ford became involved with the Pontifical Commission on Population, Family and Birth-rate, the body tasked with discerning the birth control issue, in 1964. Dominican Father Henri de Riedmatten of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State was the secretary general of the new body.
Fr. De Riedmattan was in favor of allowing contraception and, according to Grisez, arranged meeting agendas and shaped documents – including his final report to the pope – to influence the outcome in that direction.
Fr. Ford was one of only four theologians on the commission who ultimately voted to oppose the use of artificial contraception. Archbishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow — later, Pope John Paul II — who was expected to be a solid vote against contraception, had been prevented from attending the meeting by the communist authorities in Poland.
“On the crucial question of whether every contraceptive act is wrong, the vote was 9 no, 3 yes, and 3 abstentions,” Shaw writes.
Members of the committee even went so far as to leak selected documents from the commission to the press in 1967 in an effort to pressure Pope Paul VI to allow the use of contraception, but the plan failed. In July, 1968, the pope issued Humanae Vitae which unequivocally affirms that every contraceptive act is wrong.
Shaw explains that there are two reasons why Grisez decided to release documents to the public. First, because he never undertook to keep them secret and second, because “after more than 44 years, the publication of these documents is hardly likely to harm the Church and may well benefit her.”
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
