General Audience with Pope Francis
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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) May 11, 2023: The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in the Roman Catholic Church took place during my years of undergraduate studies (1962-1966). It was called by Pope John XXIII, but the task of officially promulgating Vatican II's historic documents fell to his successor, Pope Paul VI.
Now, in 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his own historic encyclical Humanae Vitae, re-affirming the church's official opposition to the use of artificial contraception by married couples - an opposition that has not yet been officially reversed and is not likely to be reversed by the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis, as I have indicated in my OEN article "Pope Francis on Evil and Satan" (dated March 24, 2019):
More recently, I have discussed Pope Francis in my OEN article "Pope Francis on Catholic Liturgical Formation" (dated July 4, 2022):
The church's dubious teaching on contraception is explored by the lay American Catholic philosopher John T. Noonan, Jr., in his classic study Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists, 2nd ed. (1986; 1st ed., 1965), which includes his reflections on Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical in an appendix (pp. 535-554). No doubt the deserved resistance to the moral teaching of Pope Paul VI's 1968 infamous encyclical colored the contemporary reception by practicing Catholics in the United States and elsewhere throughout the world of Vatican II's various wide-ranging teachings.
For a recent discussion of Pope Paul VI's 1968 infamous encyclical, see the lay American Catholic theologians Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler's article "Conservative defense of Humanae Vitae is not just about contraception" (dated February 6, 2023) at the National Catholic Reporter website:
In it, the authors quote Pope Francis as saying that the church has "'called to form consciences, not to replace them'" in paragraph 37 in his 2016 post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia [Latin for The Joy of Love]: On Love in the Family that is available in English and other languages at the Vatican's website. This is a crucial moral principle.
I highlight Salzman and Lawler's NCR article in my OEN article "Pope Francis on the Joy of Love" (dated February 8, 2023):
In any event, I consider Vatican II to be an important event in my lifetime. It represents a watershed moment in the history of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church. But its official documents are still being interpreted and still forming the practices of practicing Catholics today.
New English translations of six key documents of Vatican II can be found in the 2012 book Vatican II: The Essential Texts, edited by Norman Tanner, S.J. (Image Books/ Random House). In it, one introductory essay is Pope Benedict XVI's Address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005 (pp. 3-13), in which he sets forth what he refers to as two contrary hermeneutics regarding interpretations of Vatican II's documents: (1) the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture, and (2) the hermeneutic of reform (p. 4). According to him, only the hermeneutic of reform is the proper way to interpret the texts of Vatican II.
For discussion of Pope Benedict XVI's dubious legacy, see Matthew Fox's 2011 book The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved (Sterling Ethos).
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