Sir, - Pope John XXIII removed birth control from discussion by the bishops at Vatican II and instead set up a commission to study it. The majority report of the commission recommended change. Pope Paul VI went along with the minority report. He restated the traditional position, which had been most recently stated in 1930 by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Casti Connubii. The majority report said the condemnation of birth control in that encyclical was not infallible.
When Human Vitae was issued, reservations were expressed by, among others, the Canadian, Belgium, Austrian and Scandinavian hierarchies; 17 theologians of the Catholic University of America; Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban, South Africa; 72 priests of the diocese of Baltimore, USA; 92 priests of the diocese of St Paul and Minneapolis.
The Pope and the bishops together form the Magisterium (or teaching authority) in the Church. If the bishops were not allowed to discuss the topic in council, does not that withdrawal of permission seriously undermine the credibility and authority of the crucial teaching in Humanae Vitae as purporting to be the teaching of the Church? Theologically speaking, had the Pope the right to withdraw birth control from discussion by the divinely appointed bishops? Were the bishops remiss in their duty in allowing that withdrawal? The Pope could reject the findings of the commission. He could not have rejected the conclusions of the world Hierarchy, if they had insisted on discussing the issue.
The council decree on the "Church in the Modern World" became the official teaching of the Church (Schema 13) on December 7th, 1965 after a vote of 1596 to 72 on November 15th. A significant change had occurred in marital morality in the decree. The new position had widened the possibility of Christian spouses deciding in their consciences the relative weight which they might attach on specific occasions to their obligation to use their procreative powers productively and the weight they might attach to their correlative obligation to love, cherish and console each other in what Cardinal Leger of Canada had called "the community of love". From section 51 of part 2 of that decree it is obvious that there would have been a modification on the traditional Catholic teaching in birth control if the bishops had discussed the issue in council.
The result has been that for the past 30 years the birth control issue has become a grave crisis of authority in the Church as well as a sexual crisis, to the serious detriment of the Church as a whole. - Yours, etc.,
Rev Michael Keane, Orwell Park Rise, Wellington Lane, Dublin 6W.