“The #MeToo movement, emotional wreckage, sexual disease and date rape are the realities we’ve inherited from the sexual revolution. Paul VI would not be surprised,” said Archbishop Charles Chaput in a speech Wednesday.
“The Church in Humanae Vitae identified and rejected sexual exploitation of women years before that message entered the cultural mainstream,” said Chaput.
The Archbishop of Philadelphia spoke April 4 on the need to heal the wounds in human sexuality and marriage by embracing God’s vision for love and marriage. He was delivering the opening keynote for a symposium at the Catholic University of America celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Humanae vitae.
The April 4-6 conference gathers scholars from across the US in Washington, D.C., to discuss the encyclical, from the philosophical underpinnings of the Church’s teaching on contraception to pastoral initiatives with natural family planning.
Chaput pointed out how prescient was Blessed Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on the regulation of birth in its predictions of the societal effects of widespread use of contraception.
Humanae vitae predicted that the pill would contribute to increased objectification of women and conjugal infidelity.
The encyclical also accurately predicted and warned that governments would implement birth control as a form of population control (ten years before China introduced its One Child Policy).
Bl. Paul VI expressed concern that contraception would “mislead human beings into thinking they had unlimited dominion over their own bodies, relentlessly turning the human person into the object of his or her own intrusive power,” said Chaput.
“Much of the moral conflict, broken family life, social unraveling, and gender confusion that seems so common today stems – directly or more subtly – from our disordered attitudes toward creation, and our appetite to master, reshape and even deform nature to our wills. We want the freedom to decide what reality is. And we insist on the power to make it so,” he said.
“Each of his [Paul VI’s] warnings has come true, in ways more tragic than he could imagine,” said Chaput.
He argued firmly against the popular narrative that Christian sexual morality is repressive, pointing out an irony that “beneath all of today’s enlightened talk about liberating human sexual behavior is a contempt for the weakness and inefficiency of the flesh.”
It is contraception that “presupposes that a woman’s body should work like a man’s in order for a woman to flourish and be free,” with its treatment of “her fertility and biological rhythms are problems and weaknesses; in effect, a disease that needs to be managed,” said Chaput.
“And yet it’s the Church – not the pharmaceutical industry with its profits and manufactured infertility, or the doctors who deal with the pill’s collateral health damage, or the abortion industry that cashes in lavishly on the failures of contraception, but the Church – that gets criticized as abnormal and intrusive. Nothing speaks more nakedly to the doublethink we now accept as the rhythm of our daily lives,” he said.
Full story at Catholic News Agency.
I don’t think the facts that led up to the “metoo” movement arose from the sexual revolution. The ability to TALK about it did. There never was an Ozzie and Harriet world, we just put one on TV.
That world existed as a model of sorts (a very muddled model). Even if never realized, surely certain elements of it are admirable: wife and husbands respecting one another and staying loyal for life, kids respecting parents, parents putting kids first etc.
How little the Left learns, once sex becomes and end to itself we get sexual anarchy. We have removed shame from our lexicon so not to offend, we deserve what we have gotten
I am not old enough (67) to know intimately/personally the sexual attitudes that dominated before the pill but I have read quite a bit about sexual attitudes subsequent to the pill’s introduction and widespread dissemination, and watched the inevitable cultural deterioration with great sadness. The Ozzie and Harriet world existed to a certain degree as Hollywood at the time respected that world as mainstream. Otherwise the viewers at that time could not have related to this “put on.” Anonymous, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Verbum sapientiae, wise words.
The Church wanted to preserve the natural sexual life but was hijacked by feminism in its endless pursuit of quick sexual pleasures.
Gratias,
I don’t think the feminist were looking for quick sexual pleasure: Rather, I think they wanted to be “free” like men. Men, of course, went along with this because they’re always in pursuit of quick sexual pleasure.
In this regard, feminism did not serve women because men got exactly what they wanted.
Yes. But now that women have bought the lies that they have to work outside the home and raise the children and take care of the home and look sexy all the time and be willing to do things in the bedroom that hookers refuse to do, feminism seems like a great thing because it tells them that they should be making more money and that they have power over themselves.
Both of which are true but they have to use their power to get out of the consequences of falling for the lies.
You are not empowered if you have to kill your own baby because you couldn’t say no to sex.
I like the phrase “natural family” this does not include same sex attraction as normal. I also would have preferred “birth prevention” not birth control. God Bless the Archbishop.
As Fulton Sheen said, Birth Control
is neither about “birth” nor “control.”
As for an Ozzie & Harriet world,
the real world has changed remarkably
since that time and NOT for the better.
Check the social statistics.
In my opinion, the ‘me too’ movement is long over due. I believe most men treat women properly, never subjecting them to improper sexual advances or abuse of commercial power. However, a percent of men HAVE abused women, often with no consequences. “Me too’ simply says no longer.
While feminism may appear to be about sexual ‘freedom’ I believe it is more importantly about the freedom of women to pursue all secular professions if so qualified. Further feminism seeks to obliterate the gender pay gap. Apparently many women receive significantly less salary for identical work.
The days of Ozzie and Harriet are gone, probably forever.
I think the Church’s efforts in this area were not initially hijacked by the feminists. It was the good old male chauvinists who promoted the sexual revolution. Remember Playboy? Penthouse? and Hustler? These publications had wide media coverage and circulation and encouraged the treatment of women and sex objects designed for the pleasure of men.
BRAVO to Abp. Charles Chaput’s beautiful speech! Our Church needs to work strongly with all Catholics, to teach and preach Christ’s truths, especially regarding the holy Sacrament of Matrimony! Wish the Pope would make Abp. Chaput a Cardinal!!!
God bless the good Archbishop! Let us pray that he be made a Cardinal of our Church, as previous archbishops of Philadelphia have. He is most deserving.
God bless you, Archbishop Chaput, for speaking the truth. Like some of your French ancestors you know the proverb “To understand all is to forgive all”, but to be forgiven we must first understand what we have done wrong, and for that we need the Holy Spirit to convict us and give us the grace to have sorrow for that sin and to ask for that forgiveness. May God give us all that understanding and that grace.
The point I was trying to make (and not very well), is that sometimes even though we understand why someone committed the sin or crime they did, we do sometimes have to chastise or be chastised or it will be done again and again.