Fruitful And Responsible Love
Address given by Karol Wojtyla, then Cardinal Archbishop of Cracow, at the international Congress held at Milan in June 1978.
1. The Tenth Anniversary
The occasion for this Congress is the tenth anniversary of the appearance of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, published by the Holy Father Paul VI on July 25, 1968.
The Centro Internazionale Studi Famiglia (C.I.S.F. International Centre for the Study of Family Life) invites us to reconsider together the key theme of the encyclical: fruitful and responsible love. We are to approach it not only as the theme of a Church document, voicing the teaching of its highest authority, but at the same time as a pastoral problem, in which the whole People of God participates in different ways. This has been clearly stressed in the third and final part of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, and at an earlier date also in Gaudium et Spes, the pastoral constitution of the Second Vatican Council. The pontifical document has distinctly developed pastoral indications, appealing respectively to public authorities and to scientists, addressing those most directly concerned, that is, Christian married couples and families and also those who are, in an indirect way, concerned with responsible parenthood: doctors and all involved in health service, and finally the pastors, priests and bishops of the whole Church in today’s world.’ [ p. 14]
To a certain extent our present meeting is also a reply to these various appeals of the Church of Paul VI, and of the Second Vatican Council. It is an answer given after ten years, and also from the perspective of those ten years themselves, during which there was developing, alongside the various voices of protest and opposition, a methodical effort to show the possibility of respecting divine law in married life, so clearly stressed by Paul VI in Humanae Vitae § 20.
What is more, this effort, undertaken on many sides, is in itself an argument taken from a broad range of experience and speaking in favour of the truth of the doctrine contained in the encyclical Humanae Vitae and of its essential soundness.
Since this truth and rightness concerns above all the problem of co‑ordinating the rhythms of conjugal love and of procreation, it is also appropriate to devote our attention at this Congress chiefly to this subject.
2. The
Encyclical Humanae
V
and the
Pastoral Constitution Gaudium
et Spes
To do so it is necessary to turn to the source itself. It is well known that the encyclical is closely connected with the pastoral constitution of Vatican II which, in the first chapter of its [ p. 15] Second Part entitled: Fostering the Nobility o f Marriage and the Family, treats among others this key subject: Harmonising Conjugal Love with Respect for Human Life (GS § 51). We also know that some problems within this field, which demanded deeper analyses and examination under all their aspects, had been handed over to a special Commission (for Problems of Population, Family and Genetics), created back in 1963 by Pope John XXIII, and enlarged by Paul VI in 1964. This Commission was of a purely consultative character; the final judgement upon the matter was to belong to the Pope himself in virtue of his own magisterial authority. That is why we cannot search in the text of the pastoral constitution for concrete solutions, while at the same time it is necessary to refer to its text, since the author of the encyclical did it himself, recalling what had been recently set forth in this regard and in a highly authoritative form by the Second Vatican Council in its pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes (HV § 7).
In fact, the exposition of Gaudium et Spes on the subject of conjugal love (§ 49) and in turn on the fruitfulness of marriage (§ 50) is even more extensive than that of the encyclical Humanae Vitae. It also seems more analytical, while the encyclical treats the subject of conjugal life in a more synthetical way. The pastoral constitution uses a more descriptive [ p. 16] method, stressing the christological and sacramental aspect of marriage and enriching the text with many parenthetical injunctions. It contains as it were the whole of christian pedagogy and ethics. The exposition of Humanae Vitae is more concise, strictly theological and systematic. It stresses the fact that conjugal love has its “origin” in “God who is Love” and Father; that “by means of the reciprocal gift of self, proper and exclusive to them, husband and wife tend towards the communion of their beings in view of mutual personal perfection, to collaborate with God in the generation and education of new lives”
Paul VI then lists the characteristics of conjugal love. “This love is first of all fully human, total, faithful and exclusive, and fruitful”. Each of these qualities is concisely described. This love is fully human, and therefore “of the senses and of the spirit at the same time”, generated and formed by man and woman not only as a “simple transport of instinct and sentiment”, but also and “principally as an act of free will”. When defining the totality of conjugal love, the author of Humanae Vitae stresses that “it is a very special form of personal friendship, in which husband and wife generously share everything, without undue reservations or selfish calculations. Whoever truly loves his marriage partner, loves not only for [ p. 17] what he receives, but for the partner’s self, rejoicing that he can enrich his partner with the gift of himself”. The fullness of conjugal love thus understood is connected with its next quality: it is “faithful and exclusive until death. Thus in fact do bride and bridegroom conceive it to be on the day when they freely and in full awareness assume the duty of the marriage bond”. And the author of Humanae Vitae adds: “A fidelity, this, which can sometimes be difficult, but is always possible (. . .) as no one can deny. (. . .) Not only is fidelity according to the nature of marriage, but it is a source of profound and lasting happiness”
Such a love, proportionate to the exclusive gift between persons to the end o f their lives, has the right to be a fruitful love. This is its fourth characteristic, which, as it were, becomes the seal of all its qualities: “This love is fecund, for it is not exhausted by the communion between husband and wife, but is destined to continue, raising up new lives”. As we read already in Gaudium et Spes § 50 “children are (. . .) the supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of their parents”.
As we see, the whole image of conjugal love, in which its chief characteristics have emerged and been systematised, points towards fruitfulness, as being the epitome of that inter‑ [ p. 18] personal communion, which Gaudium et Spes § 48 defines as the “marriage covenant”. Elsewhere Gaudium et Spes says that “the spouses, made to the image of the living God and enjoying the authentic dignity of persons (. . .) by the joys and sacrifices of their vocation and through their faithful love (. . .) become witnesses of the mystery of that love which the Lord revealed to the world by his dying and by his rising to life again” (§ 52).
3. Love and Responsibility
And thus the encyclical Humanae Vitae, referring frequently to the constitution Gaudium et Spes, is a special document, giving the teaching of the Church today on the subject of conjugal love. Before approaching the chief theme of this document, namely the problem of responsible parenthood, it is necessary to throw into still greater relief the basic dimension of the responsibility which husband and wife take upon themselves, that is, the responsibility for their love itself.2 For this love, as the specific characteristics listed in Humanae Vitae remind us, is a basic good o f marriage, as it is the basic good of human beings and of mankind. It has been revealed as such by Christ, together with its authentic source in God
“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given [ p. 19] to us” (Rm 5 :5). This good, in which husband and wife participate in a particular and characteristic way, is the basic object of their responsibility. Only those are capable of responsible love in marriage who are imbued with deep responsibility for the gift of love itself. For love is above all a gift, and that is the basic content of its first and continued experience. Although everything seems to confirm that love is a thing “of the world”, that it is born in souls and bodies as the fruit of emotional sensitivity and sensuous attraction, reaching to the hidden depths of the sexual constitution of the organism, yet through all this and as if over and above all this, love is a gift. It comes as a gift to those who are in love, allows them to discover and identify each other, then to develop until they reach the suitable point of maturity, and in turn confirm what the Second Vatican Council calls the “marriage covenant”, and what is, according to St Paul, a great sacrament in reference to Christ and to the Church (Eph 5: 32).
The responsibility for the gift of love finds its expression in an abiding consciousness of having received that gift and at the same time in discerning and appreciating the tasks which accompany the gift. Responsibility for love is not an abstract concept, but is connected with a complex of values, which precisely love allows us to experience in full. These values come to us both as a gift and as a task. A new [ p. 20] perspective on life and activity is thus opened and is to lead towards the realisation and fulfilment of these values. If they remain solely a gift, if they do not reach fulfilment, they remain at the stage of a wonderful and fascinating project. Life has to witness to its full reality. Thus responsibility for love becomes responsibility for life, in which definite values find their realisation. In this sense we may say that love engenders responsibility, that love is the special source of responsibility.
The central value, upon which other values in love depend, is the value of the human person. It is to the human person that basic responsibility refers. The texts of the Second Vatican Council affirm many times that love in general, and conjugal love in particular, consists in the gift of one person to another, a gift that embraces the human being as a whole, soul and body. Such a gift presupposes that the person as such has a unique value for the other person, which expresses itself in a particular responsibility for that value, precisely because of its degree and because of its intensity, so to speak. And through a responsibility thus conceived there is formed the essential structure of marriage, a bond at once spiritual and moral. This bond embraces and penetrates all that constitutes its psycho‑physical wealth and that already issues from the masculinity and femininity of the persons united in wedlock, as their specific [ p. 21] psycho‑physical endowment. This is connected with a whole scale of manifold values, every one of which enters in its own way into this basic responsibility of husband and wife. Responsibility for love is also responsibility for the person with all that is proper to him or her. Responsibility for love thus conceived becomes of itself the source o f development o f this love, both in its main current uniting the two persons indissolubly, and in the various details and situations engendered by the masculine and feminine individualities, with all that is noble and beautiful in them, but also with all that is difficult, contrasting, and sometimes tragic.
As we have mentioned before, the pastoral constitution in its descriptive manner enumerates perhaps more elements which show and explain precisely this dimension of love and responsibility for love
“The biblical Word of God several times urges the betrothed and the married to nourish and develop their wedlock by pure conjugal love and undivided affection. Many people of our own age also highly regard true love between husband and wife as it manifests itself in a variety of ways, depending on the worthy customs of various peoples and times. This love is an eminently human one since it is directed from one person to another through an affection of the will. It involves the good of [ p. 22] the whole person. Therefore it can enrich the expressions of the body and mind with a unique dignity, ennobling these expressions as special ingredients and signs of the friendship distinctive of marriage. This love the Lord has judged worthy of special gifts, healing, perfecting, and exalting gifts of grace and charity. Such love, merging the human with the divine, leads husband and wife to a free and mutual gift of themselves, a gift proving itself by gentle affection and by deed. Such love pervades the whole of their lives. Indeed, by its generous activity it grows better and grows greater. Therefore it far excels mere erotic inclination, which, selfishly pursued, soon enough fades wretchedly away” (§ 49).
4. Responsible Parenthood
It seems that it is impossible to understand the responsible parenthood, of which Paul VI speaks in such a masterly fashion in his encyclical Humanae Vitae, in any other way than only by closely connecting responsible parenthood with responsibility for conjugal love. As an isolated ethical norm the principle of responsible parenthood is both right and convincing, although in an abstract way. The indispensable lifegiving power, necessary for a principle that should form the life of concrete individuals, flows from love, from responsible [ p. 23] love, understood and lived in a way which we have tried to sketch above.
And that is why the author of Humanae Vitae bases his detailed exposition of responsible parenthood upon the theological character of love, and also upon the premise of the integral vision of man, which becomes fully valid precisely in love and through love. If love signifies this particular responsibility of one person for another person in the reciprocal relation of man and woman, from this responsibility there will also develop, as a matter of course, parenthood in its responsible form.
Parenthood belongs to the nature of this specific love which is conjugal love: it constitutes its essential feature, it forms this love in the sphere of purpose and intention, and signs it finally with the seal of particular fulfilment. Conjugal love is fulfilled by parenthood. Responsibility for this love from the beginning to the end is at the same time responsibility also for parenthood. The one participates in the other, and they both constitute each other. Parenthood is a gift that comes to people, to man and to woman, together with love, that creates a perspective of love in the dimension of a reciprocal life‑long self‑giving, and that is the condition of gradual realisation of that perspective through life and action. Parenthood, the gift, is therefore at the same time a rich task whose receiving and successive fulfilling [ p. 24] is synonymous with receiving a gift: a gift, moreover, which the persons themselves become for each other in marriage: the woman for the man, the man for the woman. Their reciprocal offering to each other of what they are as man and woman reaches its full sense through parenthood, through the fact that as husband and wife they become father and mother. And this is precisely the dimension and sense of the responsibility that essentially corresponds to this gift.
“. . . While not making the other purposes of matrimony of less account, the true practice of conjugal love and the whole meaning of the family life which results from it, have this aim: that the couple be ready with stout hearts to co‑operate with the love of the Creator and the Saviour who through them will enlarge and enrich his own family day by day” (GS § 50).
Thus, following the same logic which is the logic of human conscience and christian faith as well, we accept the responsibility for parenthood as one of the elements, or rather as the constituting element o f responsibility for love, for its conjugal shape and sense. We read further in the pastoral constitution: “Parents should regard as their proper mission the task of transmitting human life and educating those to whom it has been transmitted. [p. 25] They should realise that they are thereby co‑operators with the love of God the Creator, and are, so to speak, the interpreters of that love. Thus they will fulfil their task with human and christian responsibility. With docile reverence towards God, they will come to the right decision by common counsel and effort. They will thoughtfully take into account both their own welfare and that of their children, those already born and those which may be foreseen. For this accounting they will reckon with both the material and spiritual conditions of the times as well as of their state in life. Finally, they will consult the interests of the family group, of temporal society, and of the Church herself. The parents themselves should ultimately make this judgement, in the sight of God” (GS § 50).
In this way, beginning with the concept of responsibility for parenthood ‑ that specific shape and sense that are proper to conjugal love ‑ we approach the concrete problem which is given the name of “responsible parenthood”. It is indispensable, both for the theoretical considerations of science and teaching and also for the practical application, to preserve in this matter a consistent point o f view, for only such consistency permits us to understand rightly, to pose and to resolve the problem. It is a matter of consistency of perspective and of plan as well: responsibility for [ p. 26] parenthood is engendered through conjugal love, understood and experienced in a responsible way, that is, according to all its interior truth, in the fullness of the sense and meaning of that love. Thus understood and experienced, responsibility for parenthood allows the husband and wife to pose the problem of responsible parenthood correctly in their thinking, their appraisal and their judgement, and also to solve that problem correctly in their life and concrete behaviour. If this correctness reaches the sphere of the so‑called methods of birth control, even here the husband and wife will not forego what constitutes the authentic measure of responsibility for love, and therefore both the essential value of the person, and the dignity of parenthood connected with it. Speaking more plainly: they will not have recourse to contraception, which is essentially opposed to love and parenthood!
This is the aim and the demand of the Church as set forth in the encyclical Humanae Vitae, while in the pastoral constitution we read as follows: “In their manner of acting spouses should be aware that they cannot proceed arbitrarily. They must always be governed according to a conscience dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be submissive towards the Church’s teaching office, which authentically interprets that law in the light of the Gospel. That divine law reveals [ p. 27] and protects the integral meaning of conjugal love, and impels it towards a truly human fulfilment” (GS § 50).
5. An Upright Conscience
The contemporary teaching of the Church about responsible parenthood refers, as we see, to the divine law, to the authentic sense of conjugal love, to the integral vision of man. Through all this it endeavours to appeal to the conscience of man, to that point in which everything finally converges, and from which issue judgements upon action, and even actions themselves in their conscious and voluntary shape. The pivot of the whole matter is the conscience. It is self‑evident that in all other fields of human morality conscience is also in the final analysis the decisive factor, and the value of human deeds depends upon it directly, but in this chapter o f morality conscience becomes the crucial point in a particular fashion. We are here in the sphere of a type of action and co‑operation, in which two people, a man and a woman, remain totally alone with each other, thrown upon what they are, not only in their physical masculinity and femininity, but also in their interior experiencing of each other, in that experience which of its nature is of an intimate character, hidden from the world and from the judgement of others. In such a situation [p. 28] one’s own conscience seems particularly decisive: an upright and mature conscience, a conscience both human and christian will indicate here and now the proper measure of responsibility. “The parents themselves should ultimately make this judgement, in the sight of God”, we read in Gaudium et Spes § 50. Responsibility for love and responsibility for parenthood may finally be reduced to the many judgements of conscience of the husband and wife, to the decisions in which a whole scale of values is correctly or wrongly voiced, and also to a whole scale of duties, contained in each such act. Each act of this kind reveals it and verifies it, fortifies or weakens it, founds or destroys it.
And that is why everything contained in the constitution Gaudium et Spes, in the encyclical Humanae Vitae, and in their wake in a whole series of other pronouncements: pastoral letters, instructions, exhortations, and further still in publications, books, pamphlets, in courses, conferences and lectures ‑ everything contained in them and transmitting the teaching of the Church’ is finally aimed at forming an upright and mature conscience in husband and wife.
The meaning of parenthood, and in particular of responsible parenthood, is above all ethical. Human conscience is at its centre. At its centre is man, with the grave authority of his conscience and of the value attached to it, [ p. 29] which basically determines him. We must endeavour to do all that is possible not to allow the deep ethical sense of responsible parenthood to become alienated. The encyclical Humanae Vitae (after the constitution Gaudium et Spes) repeats many times that parenthood belongs, so to speak, to the substance of conjugal love. True conjugal love possesses the characteristic and privilege of fertility. The Church renders justice, through the words of the Pope and of the Council, to those married couples who generously accept the responsibility for numerous children. The Church however takes under consideration various conditions and circumstances: “If, then, there are serious motives to space out births, which derive from the physical or psychological conditions of husband and wife, or from external conditions, the Church teaches that it is then licit to take into account the natural rhythms immanent in the generative functions, for the use of marriage in the infecund periods only, and in this way to regulate birth without offending the moral principles which have been recalled earlier” (HV § 16).
The meaning, attributed to responsible parenthood by Paul VI, in accordance with the Second Vatican Council and the whole tradition of christian teaching of faith and morality, is essentially ethical. In virtue of this, and with great insistence, Paul VI strictly [ p. 30] distinguishes between this form of “birth control” which the Church can recognise as compatible with the divine law, and that which is commonly called “contraception”, and what in the pontifical document is defined as “artificial birth control”. In the first case the husband and wife avail themselves in a correct fashion of a certain peculiar property given to them by nature; in the second, they obstruct the natural course of processes, connected with the transmission of life. It is true nonetheless, that in both cases husband and wife, by mutual and explicit consent, wish to avoid the transmission of life and want to be sure that a child will not be conceived. “It is true that in the one and the other case the married couple are concordant in the positive will of avoiding children for plausible reasons, seeking the certainty that offspring will not arrive; but it is also true that in the former case only are they able to renounce the use of marriage in fecund periods when, for just motives, procreation is not desirable while making use of it during infecund periods to manifest their affection and to safeguard their mutual fidelity. By so doing, they give proof of a truly and integrally honest love” (HV § 16).
The author of the encyclical is conscious of the psychological difficulties, and perhaps even intellectual ones which the standpoint of the Church may meet. That is why those who take [ p. 31] up this standpoint must have a clear understanding not only of the decisions themselves but of all the reasons on which these decisions are based. In practice especially they must not allow the morality of the action to be confused with the technique of the action, the principle to be confused with the method. One of the fundamental errors in the interpretation of Humanae Vitae proceeds precisely from this confusion. The modern “technical” mentality wants to see above all a “technique” (and manipulation) also in the case where two people, a man and a woman, as husband and wife, must face each other in the whole truth o f their mutual gift, guided by their upright and mature conscience. The Church wants to save the true sense of love for them, and the mature dignity of behaviour proper to persons. That is also the true reason of continence, which constitutes an indispensable condition not only of responsible parenthood, but also of responsibility for conjugal love itself.’
One of the essential factors of this love, whose irreplaceable teacher is Christ himself, is the capacity of exacting and accepting such demands, without which love could not be itself. The concern for such an authentic shape of human love has dictated also these requirements, which Paul VI has formulated in the encyclical Humanae Vitae in accordance with the tradition of Catholic teaching. Do we not [ p. 32] feel this concern, for instance, in the following fragment?
“It is (. . .) to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti‑conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion” (HV § 17).
6. A Common Concern
We all, present here today, have gathered in the name of the same concern which has dictated to the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council their words on the promotion of the dignity of marriage and the family, and to Paul VI the encyclical Humanae Vitae, while paying no regard to the voices of protest and opposition, easily foreseen. On this tenth anniversary of the appearance of that document, re‑reading it in the context of the constitution Gaudium et Spes, we find the following words, which seem singularly pertinent: “Redeeming the present time, and distinguishing eternal realities from their changing expressions, Christians should actively promote the values of marriage and the family, both by the example of their own lives and by co‑operation [ p. 33] with other men of good will. Thus when difficulties arise, Christians will provide, on behalf of family life, those necessities and helps which are suitably modern. To this end, the christian instincts of the faithful, the upright moral consciences of men, and the wisdom and experience of persons versed in the sacred sciences will have much to contribute” (GS § 52).
The cause which has called us together is worthy of common concern, and also worthy of our highest effort and engagement. Marriage and the family are invariably at the root of all the affairs of man and society. Although in itself it is, one might say, a most private concern, an affair of two persons, of husband and wife, and of the smallest social group, which they form together with their children, yet the fate o f nations and continents, o f humanity and o f the Church depends upon it. Probably among the persons present here there are some for whom the problem of an ethical birth control is important because of a high birth rate in their country; but there are also those who, quite to the contrary, are worried by the process of a declining or demographical endangering of their own nation. It is selfevident that the great political and economical processes possess their true foundation, both their starting point and their goal, in every married couple and in every family. If the Second Vatican Council stresses the need of [ p. 34] fostering their dignity, it points thus to the basic method and direction of solutions in this field. This method and direction must not be first of all quantitative, but essentially qualitative, for these matters are very deeply inserted into the meaning of human life: they speak of the very value of man and also constitute it.
All this is and should be the object o f great concern, and of concern in common. In the name of this concern we have gathered here. May the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, through the intercession of his Mother, the spiritual Mother of all people, accompany our discussion. May our meeting, the meeting of people of good will, of the best will, participate in that “christian sense”, and in that “upright conscience”, that “wisdom and experience” of which the Council document speaks.
These gifts of the Holy Spirit, these attributes of the intellect, of the will and of the heart are indispensable in this work, whose aim is “fostering the dignity of marriage and of the family” [ p. 35]
NOTES
1 Cf. Humanae Vitae § 23ff. See also Gaudium et Spes § 2.
2 The author of this lecture has developed these problems in his work: K. Wojtyla, Milosc i odpowiedzialnosc. Studium etyczne, Krakow, Znak 1962; Italian translation: Amore a responsabilita, Roma, Marietti 1968.
‘ P. Chauchard, Amour et contraception, Mame 1967. Under the same title Chauchard delivered a lecture during the session on “Specialistic Aspects of the Problem of Contraception”, organised by the Family Institute of the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Krak6w on February 7‑8, 1976.
4 Cf., e.g., the comments on Humanae Vitae, published in Notificationes 1‑4 (1969) edited by the Metropolitan Curia of Krakow; Italian translation: “Introduzione all’enciclica Humanae Vitae” da `Notificationes’ a Curia Metropolitana Cracoviensi A.D. 1969, Januaris‑Aprilis N. 1‑4.
See also the letter of the Episcopate of Poland addressed to priests on preparing the faithful for the Sacrament of Marriage and on pastoral theology of the family, February 12, 1969.
6 Cf. Humanae Vitae § 9, 10; also Gaudium et Spes § 50.