The important truth is that the teaching of
Humanae Vitae was
infallibly taught even before Humanae Vitae.

Contraception, authority and Catholic truth

By John Beaumont

    I was received into the Catholic Church on March 5, 1980. Since then I do not recall hearing a single sermon on the Catholic teaching on contraception. Now, when it comes to church going I like to move around and, in any case, there are some seven Catholic churches all within a fifteen minute drive of my home. So maybe I just missed out. Perhaps there were staunch defenses of the Catholic teaching, impassioned support for that much maligned man, Pope Paul VI, and the encyclical Humanae Vitae, going on all the time. And I just happened to miss them. I would like to think that that was the case. But I know it was not. It’s not just my experience that says so. It’s that of countless others as well. As in other areas of life I’m relying on the testimony of others as well as on my own experience. And that surely is perfectly reasonable. As the philosopher, Peter Geach, says:

[A] moment’s thought shows that a man’s observations and experience cannot get him far and that the observations and experience of mankind generally are available to him only by trust in testimony and authority (The Virtues [1977], p. 34).

    It’s only by trust in the testimony of others that I conclude that the battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815 and that the moon’s diameter is about 2,160 miles. And, as I have said, on this question of preaching the Catholic truth on birth control, all my witnesses say just about the same thing as I.

    Now, this might not matter all that much if it wasn’t for the fact that this thing is so important—the Catholic teaching on this question, that is. Try talking to a non-Catholic, whether Protestant, baptist, agnostic, or new age freak, and you’ll soon realize what I mean. Some of them even go so far as to say that they are quite attracted by the Catholic Church—if it wasn’t for the things she says about sex, that is. And when you explore this a little further, the grouse usually crystallizes on the question of contraception and how the Church is against it. In addition, readers who have witnessed the post-conciliar era in the Church will know that you cannot exactly rely on a solid defense of Catholic teaching from your fellow Catholics; and many bishops and priests are distinctly dodgy in this area. At least we are entitled to assume that they are because, as I say, they keep so quiet about it. Unlike the Holy Father, who thankfully has restated Catholic teaching on countless occasions and in numerous places. Also, though here the comparison is generally less positive, it is unlike the bulk of theologians, who of course cannot keep quiet about anything, least of all their dissent from Humanae Vitae (and most of the rest of the magisterium for that matter). An honorable exception to this, of course, is Germain Grisez. There are others, but they are not exactly thick on the ground.

    So, all in all, there is a vacuum on the preaching circuit as far as Catholic orthodoxy is concerned. I would like to fill it. Now, at this point, someone is likely to whisper something on the lines of “fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Well, all I can say is that St. Peter himself enjoins us to “always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). And the Catholic teaching on this question is part of the hope that is in me. What is more, two things have been said elsewhere which encourage me in this task. Firstly, war is too important to be left to the generals. Secondly, the mistakes made by beginners can sometimes help the experts to see that they have failed adequately to communicate some aspect of their subject and can suggest ways in which this communication might be better done (on these last two points, see the introduction to Peter Van Inwagen’s excellent article, “Genesis and Evolution,” in God, Knowledge and Mystery [1995], p. 128).

    In addition to all this, the arguments of those who dissent from the Church’s position do not seem all that strong. In fact, one of the problems that may be encountered with dissident theologians is getting them to put forward any arguments at all. A graphic example of this can be found in the transcript of the meeting which took place between Fr. Charles Curran, his academic supporters, and a delegation of Catholic bishops shortly after the publication of Humanae Vitae (see the fascinating account given by E. Michael Jones in John Cardinal Krol and the Cultural Revolution [1995], pp. 414-423).

    One other reason why I’m inclined to step in relates to the nature of what this article is intended to do. First of all, it attempts to set out a “lowest common denominator” argument for the Church’s teaching. It does not seek to look at all areas of the question, merely the fundamental principles of a sound apologia for what the Church proclaims through its magisterium. The details may be filled in from elsewhere. There is no lack of literature in this area.

    Finally, I most definitely make no claims to originality. None at all. The arguments which follow owe much to one English philosopher, John Finnis, and two American philosophers and theologians, Germain Grisez and John Ford, S.J. Any errors of interpretation are attributable entirely to me. It should be said, however, that the arguments themselves are for the most part perfectly straightforward. The problem has been that they have often not been set out, either at all or in a readily available form, and that on many occasions arguments of much less force have been used. So, to work then.

    As implied above, there would seem to be a difference in the approach to be adopted towards one’s fellow Catholics from that to be used in respect of those outside the fold. After all, it might be said, Catholics accept the authority of the Church. If only that were so. One of the results of the cultural revolution which has swept through the western world in the last thirty or so years has been the eroding of any notion of authority. This has had an inevitable effect on people’s attitudes towards all institutions and the Catholic Church has not been immune from this. Nevertheless, there remains at least a remnant of the distinctively Catholic attitude towards authority, especially in the breasts of those loyal and long suffering Catholics who have witnessed the disorder around them and managed to keep their faith. Many others also have been content to follow the pope and have kept their heads above the waves that threatened to engulf them. Like all of us frail human beings, Catholics of this kind are not immune to the prompting of self-interest, but what may be termed the “argument from authority” may still be effective, as we shall see, provided it is expressed in the correct way.

    When it comes to non-Catholics, no “argument from authority,” however well put, will work. One must look for a reasoned defense of the Catholic teaching on contraception. The present writer has provided just such a defense in a previous article (see “Why Pseudosex leads to Homosex,” Culture Wars, Vol. 16, No. 2, January 1997, pp. 23-28).

    The arguments put forward in this article, then, are directed towards those who claim to be within the Catholic fold. They give expression to what has been referred to as an argument from authority. The problem has been that frequently this form of argument has been put in the wrong way and in a weakened form. It has been assumed that in arguing for the traditional position one should stick to the latest statement of that teaching, namely Humanae Vitae. And so proponents of the teaching simply rely on Pope Paul VI’s re-statement of the traditional position in that encyclical. But, it may be asked, “What is wrong with that?” What the encyclical teaches is clearly not merely the personal view or the private opinion of the pope. Obviously, all this is true and, what is more, the encyclical is expressed in pretty solemn terms. One can go on to add that on the authority of such statements the traditional approach is rather that expressed by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical, Humani Generis, in 1950, in which the pope said this:

Nor is it to be supposed that a position advanced in an Encyclical does not, ipso facto, claim assent. In writing them, it is true, the Popes do not exercise their teaching authority to the full, but such statements come under the day-to-day teaching of the Church, which is covered by the promise, “He who listens to you, listens to me” (Luke 10:16). For the most part the positions advanced, the duties inculcated, by these Encyclical letters are already bound up, under some other title, with the general body of Catholic teaching. And when the Roman Pontiffs go out of their way to pronounce on some subject which has hitherto been controverted, it must be clear to everybody that, in the mind and intentions of the Pontiffs concerned, this subject can no longer be regarded as a matter of free debate among theologians (para 20).

And certainly not, it might be added, a matter of free debate among lay people.

    To those who demand authority from something not pre-conciliar (some people seem to think that the Catholic Church was not founded until the Second Vatican Council) one might add that that Council’s Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, re-affirmed what Catholics already believed in these words:

The offering of [a] religious allegiance of mind and will is owed in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; it must be offered in such a way, that his supreme magisterium receives respectful acknowledgment. The result should be a sincere adherence to the judgments which he has delivered, that complies with his manifest meaning and intention (para 25).

    Nevertheless, all this having been said, the average Catholic’s attitude to the authority of the Church has been so ground down by the pressures of the prevailing liberalism today that what has been said so far may not necessarily cut ice. In addition, bear in mind that the malaise in catechetics since the Council has resulted in a situation where it is pretty unlikely that Catholics who have grown up during this period will be well versed in the binding force of papal encyclicals. “It’s still not infallible” may well be the response. And to be fair, whilst, as stated earlier, the teaching set out in Humanae Vitae is expressed in a solemn form, an encyclical is not infallible of itself unless it contains words implying this. It has been said on occasions that this might perhaps be the case, but I know of only one serious attempt to argue this with any rigor (that of Fr. Ermengildo Lio). The overwhelming consensus of opinion has been that ex cathedra infallibility is not involved in the case of Humanae Vitae.

    Now, because the focus of attention has been directed at the encyclical, the opponents of the traditional teaching have been able to sow seeds of doubt regarding that teaching, something in which they were assisted by the delay in publishing Humanae Vitae and the incessant campaign against it by the liberal media.

    In addition, it is something of a truism that there is really no limit to the evasions that human beings are capable of when their own subjective interests are threatened. How much more is this so in the case of a force of such strength as human sexuality?

    In the face of the accepted fact that in Humanae Vitae Pope Paul VI proposed no ex cathedra definition, the supporters of the encyclical have stated, quite truthfully of course, that its teachings are nevertheless authoritative and binding, relying on the statement from Lumen Gentium cited earlier. The dissenters response to that, however, has been that at the end of the day Paul VI’s pronouncement is non-definitive and therefore there is the possibility of dissent from what is non-infallible teaching.

    To put all of this on a more formal basis, the mode of analysis involved is best expressed by the English lawyer and philosopher, John Finnis:

Many people have used the following argument:

    First premise: Where a teaching of the Church is not infallibly proposed, dissent or departure from it may under certain conditions be acceptable.
    Second premise: But Humanae Vitae does not infallibly define any teaching.
    Conclusion: Therefore it may under certain conditions be acceptable to dissent or depart from the teachings proposed in Humanae Vitae.

    (“Conscience, Infallibility and Contraception,” The Month, December 1978, p. 411).

    This type of reasoning was even to be found in statements of a number of national episcopal conferences at the time of the publication of Humanae Vitae. Even so, it is false. Irrespective of whether in fact the premises are true, the conclusion does not follow from them.

    What has been missed here, and in so many commentaries at the time of the publication of Humanae Vitae and since, is one simple fact. This is that a non-definitive pronouncement may contain a re-affirmation of teaching which, even if never defined, was already infallibly proposed by the ordinary magisterium of the Church. In other words, it may be argued with great force that the Church’s central teaching on contraception has been taught infallibly and is therefore certainly true, quite separately and apart from the question whether the encyclical, Humanae Vitae, defined anything in an infallible manner.

    The important truth, then, is that the teaching in Humanae Vitae was infallibly taught even before Humanae Vitae. It was taught by a definitive and infallible course of teaching by the ordinary magisterium. That this is the case Finnis goes on to show in the article referred to above. His article is merely a summary of the definitive analysis of the question by Ford and Grisez (see “Contraception and the Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium” (1978) 39 Theological Studies 258). What follows simply re-states the main lines of these analyses. For answers to subsidiary objections to this line of approach, readers are directed towards the original texts, especially to the more detailed one by Ford and Grisez.

    Finnis begins by setting out the Church’s teaching on the infallibility of the ordinary magisterium. As it happens, this was stated by Vatican II itself in Lumen Gentium in the very same paragraph as cited earlier:

Although the bishops individually do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim the teaching of Christ infallibly, even when they are dispersed throughout the world, provided that they remain in communion with each other and with the Successor of Peter and that in authoritatively teaching on a matter of faith and morals they agree in one judgment as that to be held definitively (para 25).

    In view of the refusal by many contemporary liberal Catholics to take seriously any statements of the Church before Vatican II, it may be accounted providential that the Council itself deals with this question in such precise terms.

    However, for the sake of completeness, and because there are others who claim to be Catholics, namely the so-called traditionalists, who refuse to take seriously any statements of the Church made after Vatican II, it should be added that the teaching in Lumen Gentium is not in substance new. As Ford and Grisez put it:

Christians have always believed that the apostles and their successors in proclaiming the doctrine of Christ, although dispersed throughout the world and centuries, enjoy an unfailing charism of truth (op. cit., p. 276).

    To return to Lumen Gentium, it will be seen that paragraph 25 lays down four conditions which must be satisfied before the ordinary magisterium (which refers to the bishops “dispersed throughout the world”) may be said to teach infallibly. I propose to examine these four conditions in turn.

1.    The bishops must be in communion with each other and with the pope.

    This first condition was clearly satisfied in the case of the teaching on contraception. The evolution of this part of the text of Lumen Gentium shows that this condition does not insist that the bishops act in a strictly collegial manner, in the sense of formally acting together as a single body. In their day-to-day teaching they do not act like that. What is envisaged is that they be bishops in the Catholic Church. The following beautiful passage from St. Irenaeus makes clear what is required:

The Church, although scattered throughout the whole world, diligently guards the faith as if she lived in one house; and similarly she believes these truths, just as if she had one mind and one heart, and she harmoniously preaches and teaches and hands on these truths as if she possessed one mouth (Against Heresies 1, 10, 2).

2.    The bishops must be teaching authoritatively on a matter of faith and morals.

    What this means is that the bishops must be teaching in their official capacity, not merely expressing their views as personal opinions or as private theologians.

    The phrase “faith and morals” when used in Vatican II documents means “matters of faith and matters of morals.” At this point it is sometimes claimed that according to paragraph 25 of Lumen Gentium infallibility can only be claimed for that part of the Church’s teaching which is based on revelation and then further claimed that this would exclude teaching on contraception. However, it is important to note that in fact paragraph 25 has a footnote attached to it, which refers, inter alia, to a passage from St. Robert Bellarmine and, in particular, to his statement that the infallibility of the teaching of “the bishops as a whole” extends both to “things absolutely necessary (for salvation)” and to “other matters which the Church proposes to us to be believed or to be done, whether expressly included in the Scriptures or not.”

    The passage from Bellarmine, although it is taken from a reference in a schema of Vatican I which was revised but never finalized (the Constitution De Ecclesia Christi), has thereby a status which it would not have in its own right, because it is cited by Vatican II as stating a teaching comparable to its own.

    The fact that infallibility is not limited here to points divinely revealed and proposed for acceptance with the assent of divine faith, means that the ordinary magisterium can teach infallibly moral questions about which revelation says nothing, either expressly or impliedly.

    In addition to these authorities, one might refer to another document of Vatican II, the Decree on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae) which explains that there is “sacred and certain” doctrine of the Church in moral matters, since:

The Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that truth which is Christ Himself, and at the same time to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origin in human nature itself (para 14).

    If a further authority were needed, appeal may be made to Humanae Vitae itself, where Pope Paul VI stated:

It is in fact indisputable, as Our Predecessors have many times declared, that Jesus Christ, when he communicated his divine powers to Peter and the other apostles and set them to teach all nations his commandments, constituted them as the authentic guardians and interpreters of the whole moral law, not only, that is, of the law of the gospel but also of the natural law, the reason being that the natural law declares the will of God, and its faithful observance is necessary for man’s eternal salvation (para 4).

    The present pope has given a number of analyses of the scriptural evidence and concluded that the moral norm prohibiting contraception “belongs not only to the natural moral law, but also to the moral order revealed by God” (General Audience, July 18, 1984).

    Before leaving this second condition, it is important to note that there is nothing in the documentation which requires one to restrict the scope of “morals” as used by Vatican II to exclude specific moral norms, such as that on contraception.

    Therefore the second condition for an infallible teaching of the ordinary magisterium is certainly fulfilled in relation to the teaching on contraception.

3.    The bishops dispersed throughout the world must agree in one judgment.

    In other words, the ordinary magisterium must be universal if its judgment is to be infallible.

    It is important not to take this condition literally. It may be said to require moral rather than mathematical unanimity. What it does not require is that mathematically every single bishop must teach in this way for the condition to be fulfilled. That this is so can be easily demonstrated by referring once more to some words of St. Robert Bellarmine:

When we say “The Church cannot err”, we understand this to apply to the faithful as a whole and to the bishops as a whole, so that the sense of the proposition, the Church cannot err, is this: that what all the faithful hold as of faith, necessarily is true and of faith, and similarly what all the bishops teach as pertaining to faith, necessarily is true and of faith.

    The footnote to paragraph 25 of Lumen Gentium refers again to De Ecclesia Christi, in which Bellarmine’s phrase “as a whole” is used. Now, just as it would be ridiculous to hold that the phrase “the faithful as a whole” means absolutely everyone of the faithful at any one moment, so it would be ridiculous to hold that unless there were some moment at which every single one of the bishops taught the same doctrine, there could be no infallible teaching of the ordinary magisterium through the bishops dispersed throughout the world.

    The same footnote also refers to a passage from Vatican I’s Constitution, Dei Filius, which states that the “ordinary and universal magisterium” determines an object of faith when it proposes something for belief even without defining it. Here Finnis cites the example given by Bishop Martin of Paderborn when he was explaining to the assembled fathers at Vatican I what was the intention of that passage. Martin gave as his example the fact that all Catholic bishops believed in Christ’s divinity before the Council of Nicea and therefore this dogma was taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium of the Church even before it was defined by that Council. Yet, as everyone knew, there was not one hundred percent unanimity among the Catholic bishops about this doctrine at the time to which Martin of Paderborn was referring.

    Another point to note about this third condition is that if it has been met for some period in the past, it is not nullified by any lack of a consensus today. In other words, what is once infallibly proposed must always subsequently be accepted with an absolute assurance of its truth.

    Finnis himself summarizes these central issues relating to this third condition of Lumen Gentium:

It is important to bear in mind that if at any one period of time the conditions for an infallible teaching are all fulfilled, then that teaching can be recognised then and at all subsequent times as certainly true. And it follows, as a matter of elementary logic, that its truth and certainty can in no way be affected by the fact that at some later period some, even a considerable number, of Catholic bishops fall away from this teaching, or fail to recognise that it was once infallibly taught.

    So we should be on the lookout, not for a universal consensus lasting indefinitely, but for the relevant sort of universality of teaching at some particular period. In relation to contraception you might consider the 60 years 1900 to 1960. Indeed you could take many other periods and find sufficient evidence to the same effect (Finnis, op. cit., p. 414).

    That the last statement is certainly true and that the continuous period of universality of teaching would be a long one can be shown by looking at the most important historical study of this whole subject, that of John T. Noonan. The latter shows graphically the consistency of the Catholic teaching on this question:

The propositions constituting a condemnation of contraception are, it will be seen, recurrent. Since the first clear mention of contraception by a Christian theologian, when a harsh third-century moralist accused a pope of encouraging it, the articulated judgment has been the same. In the world of the late Empire known to St. Jerome and St. Augustine, in the Ostrogothic Arles of Bishop Caesarius and the Suevian Braga of Bishop Martin, in the Paris of St. Albert and St. Thomas, in the Renaissance Rome of Sixtus V and the Renaissance Milan of St. Charles Borromeo, in the Naples of St. Alphonsus Liguori and the Liege of Charles Billuart, in the Philadelphia of Bishop Kenrick, and in the Bombay of Cardinal Gracias, the teachers of the Church have taught without hesitation or variation that certain acts preventing procreation are gravely sinful. No Catholic theologian has ever taught, “Contraception is a good act”. The teaching on contraception is clear and apparently fixed for ever (Noonan, Contraception [1964], p. 6).

    Criticisms have been made of some of Noonan’s historical analysis, but no one has tried to contest the accuracy of this statement. Incidentally, some readers may be aware that John Noonan himself actually hoped for a change in the Church’s teaching on this subject and believed that it could be changed. However, Noonan himself simply fails to make any reference to the possibility of the Church’s existing teaching being infallible under the ordinary magisterium as restated by Lumen Gentium.

    It is evident, then, that the third condition laid down in Lumen Gentium is satisfied in relation to the Catholic teaching on contraception. In fact, it is so obvious that this condition is fulfilled, it is hardly necessary to supply supporting arguments. As Finnis puts it:

At virtually any period in the whole history of the Church, and especially during the last 750 years, and above all in the last century up to 1962, you could approach any Catholic bishop anywhere in the world with a well-grounded confidence that he would, if asked, assert that it was the teaching of the Church that any and all acts intended to prevent an act of sexual intercourse having the procreative effect (if any) which that act would otherwise have had are gravely sinful; and that he would not permit any priest in his diocese to preach otherwise, or to teach otherwise in his seminaries or schools (Finnis, op. cit., p. 414).

    The last part of this quotation certainly spells out how things have changed in respect of the “pastoral” approach of some bishops are concerned. How many times in the last twenty years have long-suffering Catholics in so many dioceses tried unsuccessfully to overturn an invitation to some dissident theologian to lecture on moral questions, an invitation which in some cases was made by the bishop himself? The quotation also draws attention to the fact that clearly some preaching was done on this subject and that the present writer did indeed miss out on this if only by not at that time being a member of the Church!

4.    The bishops must agree in proposing that one judgment “to be held definitively.”

    Obviously, the word “definitively” here does not refer to a solemn definition, for the simple reason that Lumen Gentium is referring here to ordinary teaching. Again the footnote to paragraph 25 helps us. The passage referred to in Vatican I’s De Ecclesia Christi explains that the word “definitively” concerns “all those points which in matters of faith and morals are held or to be handed on as undoubted.” In other words, as Finnis puts it:

The word “definitively” here has nothing to do with the manner in which a teaching is proposed. It simply concerns the finality with which, according to the bishops, this teaching is to be accepted (op. cit., p. 415).

    This means that the point in question is not being proposed as merely probable, but as certain. It is not something optional, but something which the bishops are obliged to teach and Catholics are obliged to accept. And this is how the Catholic teaching on contraception has always been proposed.

    I conclude, therefore, that all four conditions contained in paragraph 25 of Lumen Gentium are clearly satisfied in relation to the teaching of the Church on contraception. What is more, there has been no serious attempt made to show that this is not so. On the question at hand there has been one judgment, at least until 1962. It includes many bishops, certain eastern fathers and the constant consensus of Catholic theologians. Furthermore, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it has been taught by Rome and by individual bishops and groups of bishops. And when that teaching was summed up and reaffirmed by Pius XI (in Casti Connubii, AAS 22 [1930]) and by Pius XII (see, in particular, his “Address to Midwives,” AAS 43 [1951]), the bishops readily accepted the teaching and promoted it with vigor in their dioceses. What is more, the canon law of the universal Church from the thirteenth century up to the revisions in 1917, included the canon Si aliquis, which stated as follows:

If anyone for the sake of fulfilling sexual desire or with premeditated hatred does something to a man or to a woman, or gives something to drink, so that he cannot generate, or she cannot conceive, or offspring be born, let it be held as homicide (Corpus Juris Canonici, Decret. Greg. IX, lib. V, tit.12, c.5).

    This canon, which clearly deals with the case of oral contraceptives, was placed in a book on crimes, and nothing is classed as a crime unless it is considered as a grave sin.

    Finally, if all of this evidence be not enough, let me reveal my hidden weapon, one last expert witness to clinch the point in issue. Eyebrows may be raised when I say that this happens to be none other than Hans Küng. Yet, so it is. And what stronger witness could one possibly have than one who espouses the progressivist agenda on so many topics. In his study of the question of infallibility, Küng discusses the matter presently under consideration in some detail. He sums up as follows:

[T]he moral inadmissibility of contraception has been taught as a matter of course and even emphatically by all bishops everywhere in the world, in moral unity, unanimously, for centuries and then—against opposition—in the present century up to the Council (and the confusions which arose in this connection) as Catholic moral teaching to be observed on pain of eternal damnation: it is therefore to be understood in the light of the ordinary magisterium of pope and bishops as a factually infallible truth of morals, even though it has not been defined as such (Küng, Infallibility? An Enquiry [1971], p. 48).

    Much that is contained in Küng’s book has been subjected to devastating criticism, but on this particular question there is no doubt that what he writes is true.

    Are there any objections which can be leveled against the argument for the traditional teaching which we have put forward? Some points have been made, but these have either been answered in the course of setting out the argument, or are of minimal weight (and, as stated earlier, can be pursued in the voluminous literature). However, one more substantial objection remains to be dealt with. It is best expressed by Ford and Grisez:

Catholic teaching on contraception might have been a development from more basic Christian teachings. How can one be sure that the controversy within the Church since 1963 does not portend a further development which might safeguard the same goods which Christians have always prized, while permitting particular contraceptive acts within the context of a marriage on the whole open to responsible parenthood? (op. cit., p. 291).

    In this context it is often claimed that the Church condemned the taking of interest (usury) just as severely as contraception, but that the Church now approves of it. And so, or so the argument goes, the Church could also change its teaching on the morality of contraception.

    The answer to this can be summed up very quickly. First of all, the teaching on usury never met the conditions for the infallible exercise of the ordinary magisterium. Secondly, what was condemned by the Church was not the taking of interest as such, but the charging of interest on loans to the poor and the greed and avarice of usurers. As a result the actual moral teaching on the taking of interest that was proposed infallibly by the ordinary magisterium has not in fact changed. In the same way the Catholic teaching on the central issue of contraception has been constant and universal. What may have changed are the arguments given to support the traditional teaching and the social and cultural conditions in which the faithful live.

    On the question of development of doctrine generally, it should be emphasized that only certain developments can be accounted genuine ones and the teaching on contraception does not appear to be open to such development:

The problem of development of doctrine is a complex one. We do not wish to deny there has been genuine development on many subjects, including marital morality. We do not claim genuine development must be limited to the mere explication of consequences already entailed by truths always believed. However, we do maintain that no genuine development in the Church’s teaching, once it has been infallibly proposed, can contradict what was previously proposed, properly understood in the sense in which it was proposed. If the Church infallibly proposed a teaching at one time and later proposed a contradictory teaching as an authentic development of its basic doctrine, then the Church’s teaching would lose its meaning (Ford and Grisez, op. cit., p. 293).

Finally, it may be useful to add one subsidiary argument to that relating to the infallibility of the ordinary magisterium, especially as this relates to the point just made. This is summarized in the document put forward by those theologians on Pope Paul VI’s Birth Control Commission who regarded the received teaching as unchangeable:

Whatever may be the possibility of a more perfect formulation of the teaching or perhaps of its genuine development, there is no possibility that the teaching itself is other than substantially true. It is true because the Catholic Church, instituted by Christ to show men the sure road to eternal life, could not err so atrociously through all the centuries of its history. The Church cannot substantially err in teaching a very serious doctrine of faith or morals through all the centuries—even through one century—a doctrine consistently and insistently proposed as one necessarily to be followed in order to attain eternal salvation. . . .

    If the Church could err as atrociously as this, the authority of the ordinary magisterium in moral matters would be stultified; and the faithful henceforth could have no confidence in moral teaching handed down by the magisterium, especially in sexual questions (cited in Ford and Grisez, op. cit., pp. 302-303).

This argument, which concentrates upon the binding force of the tradition of Catholic teaching on contraception, does have considerable force. However, it lacks the strength of the argument which we have just considered in detail. This is because the latter goes further and explains the reason why the tradition is binding, namely that a teaching is involved here which is divinely guaranteed by the ordinary magisterium.

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