Ecclesia Militans

Chapter IV

WHAT DOES SCIENCE SAY?

Since the onset of the Pill, Mary Calderone's sex education, and Dr. Wilkie's Right-to-Life programs, people are fully aware of the true scientific facts which make the understanding of the reproductive system universal knowledge. This was not so in the early 1900's, even among the educated. For sex was a "hush-hush" subject, and certainly not a topic of conversation. But today, even our high-schoolers are taught more about female biology than what was known by many when Pope Paul VI wrote his encyclical, Humanae Vitae-much to the destruction of young purity.

Professor Andre Hallegers of Georgetown University's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology says that, "Humanae Vitae makes no case in logic." Professor Hallegers, who served on the Papal Commission originally instituted by Pope John XXIII claims:

The Encyclical's biology is not thought through. It says that intercourse MUST be always left open to the transmission of life, then it asks us to perfect a method -Rhythm - that is closed to the transmission of life. It implies that when a woman is sterile, the marriage act is open to the transmission of life. This is not true. When there is no ovum to fertilize, the act is closed to reproduction. How to explain why intercourse that cannot possibly lead to a baby is intercourse open to the transmission of life? A scientist would say it is closed. We ask: Why is a sterile act fertile? Why is a closed act open? (Look Magazine, Dec. 10, 1968).

Roman Catholic biophysicist Dr. Thomas Hayes of the University of California, states:

Rome only gives a hearing to the male oriented picture of what intercourse all reproduction is. The sperm is only HALF a seed. If they are going to talk of the seed in terms of sperm, then they have to talk of the seed in terms of ovum too. Yet you hear no talk about spilling the seed of the ovum.  

The Encyclical condemns early withdrawal of the male; why not withdrawal of the female? That is what Rhythm amounts to.  

Rhythm is coitus interruptus, female style. It is not abstinence. That is like calling our eating habits periodic fasting; that is untruthful.... The Church has already approved tampering with the total act of reproduction in Rhythm - it should be consistent: approve all banned methods of contraception or ban them all... (Look Magazine, Dec. 10, 1968).

When Dr. Billings announced his scientific findings (1942), the hit-or-miss temperature method of Rhythm became obsolete and the ovulation method became the "sure-shot" that NFP adopted. As science progressed, man became what he thought was more "self-sufficient." Certainly man was intrigued by science, and life became easier; God can allow scientific findings to alleviate man's suffering. But God's Laws must always be man's guide and science must be subject to these Laws in order to keep God's blessing upon it. For example, the invention of movies could be used for God's glory and the Faith, as Saint Maximilian Kolbe pointed out. But it is the wrong application of this scientific invention by way of, say, pornography, which can make a movie objectionable, 'as it then breaks God's Laws against impurity and gives bad example. So it is the abuse of scientific discoveries that gets man into trouble. We can always determine what is use and what is abuse by following God's Laws in truth. Moral truth is as positive as science. Hypocrisy is not tolerated in the truth of science any more than it can be harmonized with fidelity to God. Man has no choice but to accept the truth of God and abide by that truth-or as a consequence suffer untold agony, as we shall see by viewing the fruits of Rhythm and birth control.

 

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