Humanae Vitae and the Brave New World

[ralfyman]

Humanae Vitae and the Brave New World | Church Life Journal | University of Notre Dame

 

[gpmj12]

That was a long read but very on point. It does strike me though that we have unwittingly contributed to the cultural identity of a man and woman by trying to dictate what a man should be and what a woman should be. A woman being courageous doesn’t mean she’s masculine and a man being gentle doesn’t mean he’s feminine.

I like his distinction of being master or minister depending on thwarting nature as opposed to working with nature.

In the words of the encyclical, “to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator” (HV §13). Those whose abstinence in the fertile period reflects their refusal to claim mastery over the sources of life by technologically blocking conception, come to the use of the infertile period bearing witness to human dignity, first and foremost the human dignity of children, bearing witness that they are not products but gifts of which we are not the makers but the ministers.