1 March 1984
To the priests participating in a seminar on “Responsible Parenthood”
On the morning of Thursday, 1 March the Pope spoke to the priests participating in a seminar on “Responsible parenthood: scientific philosophical and theological foundation”, which began on 28 February at the Faculty of Medicine of the Catholic University. The Holy Father addressed them as follows:
Dearest Priests!
1. I am happy to welcome you in this special audience which allows me to express to you the deep affection which I have for you: sharers with me in the one priesthood of Christ, and at the same time to show you the great esteem in which I hold the pastoral work to which you dedicate your best energies.
You carry out your apostolate in a particular way at the service of the family, rightly convinced that every help offered to this fundamental cell of human society develops a multiplied effectiveness being refracted on the different components of the family nucleus as well as perpetuating itself in time, thanks to the educational work which passes from parents to children, and through these, to the children’s children.
I wish to confirm you in this conviction and to encourage you to continue in the work undertaken, in which there cannot be lacking the blessing of God, the prime author of the family community and, “when the designated time had come” (Gal 4:4) its provident redeemer.
Responsible ministry
2. This meeting takes place on the occasion of your participation in the Congress which the “Centre of studies and research on the natural regulation of fertility” of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and the “Institute of studies on marriage and the family” of the Lateran Pontifical University have opportunely promoted on the important theme of responsible parenthood. On this occasion, I would like to say something on the subject from an especially pastoral point of view.
In the recent celebration of the Jubilee for priests I admonished: “Let us open our eyes ever more widely – the glance of the soul – to understand better what it means to forgive sins and to reconcile human consciences with the infinitely Holy God, with the God of Truth and of Love” (Homily of 24 February 1984, no. 4). To reconcile the human conscience with the God of Truth and of Love: this is your ministry, always, but in a wholly special way when you place your priesthood at the service of married couples.
During these days you have wanted to discover and to study in depth the scientific, philosophical and theological foundations of responsible parenthood; more precisely, of the teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae and of the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, with the aim of reconciling the human consciences of married couples with the God of Truth and of Love. When, in fact, is the human conscience “reconciled”, when is it deeply at peace? When it is in the truth. And the two documents cited above, in fidelity to the Church’s tradition, have taught the truth of conjugal love, inasmuch as it is a communion of persons.
What does it mean “to reconcile the conscience of married couples with the truth of their conjugal love”? When Christ’s contemporaries asked him if it were lawful for the husband to divorce his wife, he replied by referring “to the beginning”, that is, to the Creator’s original plan for marriage. You too, who as priests act in the name of Christ, must show married couples that what is taught by the Church on responsible parenthood is none other than that original plan which the Creator imprinted in the humanity, of the man and woman who marry, and which the Redeemer came to re-establish. The moral norm taught by Humanae Vitae and Familiaris Consortio is the defence of the entire truth of conjugal love, since it expresses the absolutely necessary demands of this love.
Be sure of this: when your teaching is faithful to the Church’s Magisterium, you do not teach something that the man and woman cannot understand. Even the man and woman of today. In fact, this teaching which you make resound to their ears is already written in their heart. The man and woman must be helped to read profoundly this “writing in the heart”. And does not the fact that during these three days of study you have wished to discover the reasons of the Church’s Magisterium, perhaps mean that you wish to have clearer the paths by which to lead married couples to the profound truth about themselves and their conjugal love?
Fidelity to the God of Truth and Love
3. To reconcile the human conscience of married couples with the God of Truth and of Love: the human conscience of married couples is truly reconciled when they have discovered and welcomed the truth about their conjugal love. Indeed, as St. Augustine writes: “The life of bliss is joy in the truth. For this is love of you who are the Truth” (Confessions 10, 23, 33, CSFL, 33/1, 252).
You know very well that frequently fidelity on the part of priests – let’s say, rather, on the part of the Church – to this truth and to the consequent moral laws, I mean those taught by Humanae Vitae and Familiaris Consortio, must often be paid for at a high price. One is often laughed at, accused of lack of understanding, and of severity, and of other things besides. It is the fate of every witness to the truth, as we well know. Let’s hear another passage from St. Augustine: “But why does the truth generate hatred?” the Holy Doctor asks himself. “In reality,” he answers, “the love of truth is such that those who love a different object pretend that the object of their love is the truth: and since they detest being deceived, they detest being convinced that they are deceiving themselves. Thus they hate the truth: for love of what they believe to be the truth. They love it when it shines, they hate it when it reproves” (Confessions 10, 23, 34, Ed. Cit., 253).
With simple and humble firmness, be faithful to the Church’s Magisterium on a point of such decisive importance for man’s destiny.
Putting truth into practice
4. There exists a real difficulty to the reconciliation of the human consciences of married couples with the God of Truth and of Love: it is of quite another kind from the one just indicated.
Reconciliation does not occur if the married couples can merely perceive the truth of their conjugal love: it is necessary that by their freedom they make the truth effective and put it into practice. The real difficulty is that the heart of man and woman is prey to concupiscence: and concupiscence urges freedom not to consent to the authentic demands of conjugal love. It would be a very serious error to conclude from this that the Church’s teaching in this matter is in itself only an “ideal” which must then be adapted, proportioned, graduated to the so-called concrete possibilities of man: according to a “balancing of the various goods in question”. But what are the “concrete possibilities of man”? And of which man are we speaking? Of the man dominated by lust or of the man redeemed by Christ? Because this is the matter in question: the reality of Christ’s redemption.
Christ has redeemed us! This means: he has given us the possibility of realizing the entire truth of our being, he has liberated our freedom from the domination of lust. And if the redeemed man still sins, this is not due to an imperfection of Christ’s redemptive act, but to man’s will not to avail himself of the grace which flows from that act. God’s command is of course proportioned to man’s capabilities: but to the capabilities of the man to whom the Holy Spirit has been given; of the man who, though he has fallen into sin, can always obtain pardon and enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The reconciliation of the human conscience of the married couple with the God of Truth and of Love is effected through the remission of sins through the humble recognition that we are not up to standard, so to speak, when measured against the Truth and its demands, and not through the proud reduction of the Truth and its demands to what we decide is true and good. Our freedom consists in being servants of the Truth. As we read in the Liturgy of the Hours yesterday: “Your better servant is not he who claims to hear from you what he wants to hear, but rather he who wills what he has heard from you” (St. Augustine, Confessions, 10, 26, 37, Ed. cit., 255)
Our pastoral charity toward married couples consists in being always available to offer them the pardon of sins through the Sacrament of Penance, not in diminishing in their eyes the greatness and dignity of their conjugal love.
Helping married couples
5. “Let us open our eyes ever more widely – the glance of the soul – to understand better what it means to forgive sins and to reconcile human consciences with the infinitely Holy God, with the God of Truth and of Love”.
Married couples need this more profound glance of our priestly soul, the entire Church needs it. So that married couples, so that the whole Church may praise the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Church is amazed and never satiated in the contemplation of that Love and that Truth with which you reconcile the human conscience of married couples.
In invoking upon your ministry the strengthening outpouring of copious gifts of wisdom and charity, with all my heart I impart to you my Apostolic Blessing.
John Paul II
