Warning that marriage, family, and gender are being “reinvented and distorted,” U.S. Catholic priests are expressing their “total acceptance” of the Church’s teaching against contraception and urging fellow clerics to join them.

This year is the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical reaffirming Catholic teaching against artificial contraception. The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy’s U.S. chapter has united in support of the landmark encyclical that defied the sexual revolution and articulated natural law.

“Since 1968, dissent from this official teaching among some theologians and non-adherence among many people have precipitated the dire predictions of the pope that promiscuity, pornography, divorce, remarriage, artificial conception and unnatural intercourse, would proliferate,” the priests explain on LifePetitions, LifeSiteNews’ petition platform for pro-life and pro-family activists. So far, their appeal has 47 signatories.

Many priests openly rebelled against Humanae Vitae when it was released. Clerical opposition to the Church’s prohibition of contraception, which festered quietly and seemed to dim during the pontificates of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, has resurged under Pope Francis. A new member of the overhauled Pontifical Academy for Life Father Maurizio Chiodi, has even used Amoris Laetitia to argue that some circumstances “require” contraception.

“Contraception has infected society with a culture of death that sees abortion not as the murder of innocent unborn, rather as a mere personal choice,” the American priests write. “We recommit ourselves to defending Humanae Vitae as it is based on the immutable Natural Moral Law and the Magisterium of the Church.”

In June, nearly 500 British priests issued a similar statement upholding Catholic doctrine against contraception, saying what it offers is “key to the healing and true development of our society.”

Full story at LifeSiteNews.