The message of Humanae vitae from the perspective of the fifty years since the publishing of the encyclical

Abstract

The author of this article explores the understanding of the message of the encyclical Humanae vitae based on three crucial points. The first one concerns the concept of human person. Unlike the evolutionary approach wherein the human being is thought under the aspect of its biological facticity, human person is viewed here as a “unitotality”, an indissolubly whole of the body and the soul whereby the human body has not only a function but also reveals a deeper meaning. The second point is the nature of the conjugal act. It exhibits the reciprocal gift of a man and a woman in their totality as persons. Due to this totality the two meanings contained in the conjugal act, namely the meaning of loving personal unity and the meaning of procreativeness should not be consciously separated. The matter is hereby not a bond between two things or biological facts but a bond between meanings. The objection of the naturalistic fallacy is also here unjustified. Finally the third point is the theological dimension which highlights that the double meaning of the conjugal act comes from God the Creator and as innate into the human nature and the nature of human love and as such should be respected. The contemporary controversy concentrates the question either the sexuality-conjugality-procreation nexus concerns every single conjugal act or if it might concern the marital life as a whole whereas the married couple can make some single sexual acts consciously unfruitful.