Q. Can you tell me to whom I could send a large collection of books that I have acquired over the years? — J.P., via e-mail.
A. We will ask our readers for suggestions.
Q. Why doesn’t EWTN show Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ during Lent? I found it to be an excellent reminder of how much Jesus did for us. — A.B., Washington.
A. Have you contacted EWTN about this? That would be the best way to find out.
Q. During Holy Week this year, I heard two terms I had never heard before: Spy Wednesday and Maundy Thursday. Can you tell me what these mean? — C.C., Pennsylvania.
A. Spy Wednesday probably comes from the tradition that at this time Judas was “spying” or watching the movements of Jesus so that he could let Christ’s enemies know the best time and place to arrest Him. It could also be taken from the Passion account which refers to Judas as the “betrayer.”
Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin for the new commandment of love that Jesus gave the apostles at the Last Supper, which He exemplified by washing their feet. Other Christians, particularly those in the Anglican Communion, use this term for Holy Thursday.
Q. I realize that people should follow Humanae Vitae on birth control because it is official Church teaching — regardless of whether the teaching is fallible or infallible — but is it or is it not infallible? — E.G., Florida.
A. Within weeks of the promulgation of Humanae Vitae in July 1968, Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle of Washington, D.C., published a 40-page booklet entitled Sex in Marriage: Love-Giving and Life-Giving, which to this day provides some of the best answers to objections to Pope Paul VI’s controversial encyclical on human life. On the question of infallibility, the booklet said:
“You have to make a distinction between the form in which the teaching is presented and the teaching itself. It is clear that Humanae Vitae is not itself a formally infallible document. However, the opposition of the Catholic Church to contraception is an unbroken tradition going back to the very beginning of Christianity. Pope Paul refers to the Church’s teaching on contraception as firmissa doctrina ecclesiae — ‘the firmly solid teaching of the Church.’ Similarly strong expressions were used by Pius XI and Pius XII in their condemnation of contraception.
“All this — the unbroken tradition condemning contraception and the very strong language used by Popes in their statements on the subject — points to the conclusion that this point of Catholic teaching might eventually be infallibly defined. As a matter of fact, many of the theologians who discussed this question between 1930 and 1960 judged that the Catholic Church’s position on this moral question is part of her infallible teaching” (pp. 4-5).
On September 17, 1983, Pope John Paul II reinforced the unbroken tradition when he told a group of priests that “contraception is to be judged objectively so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that, in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God.”
In his 1995 encyclical on the Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae), John Paul went so far as to link contraception with abortion, saying that they are “fruits of the same tree.” He said that “the close connection that exists in mentality between the practice of contraception and that of abortion is becoming increasingly obvious. It is being demonstrated in an alarming way by the development of chemical products, intrauterine devices, and vaccines which, distributed with the same ease as contraceptives, really act as abortifacients in the very early stages of the development of the life of the new human being” (n. 13).
Two years later, the Pontifical Council for the Family issued a reference document (Vade Mecum) for priests hearing the Confessions of those engaged in contraceptive behavior. Among other things was this unequivocal statement:
“The Church has always taught the intrinsic evil of contraception, that is, of every marital act intentionally rendered unfruitful. This teaching is to be held as definitive and irreformable. Contraception is gravely opposed to marital chastity; it is contrary to the good of the transmission of life (the procreative aspect of matrimony) and to the reciprocal self-giving of the spouses (the unitive aspect of matrimony); it harms true love and denies the sovereign role of God in the transmission of life” (n. 2.4).
In Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), the council fathers said that “although individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they can nevertheless proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly. This is so, even when they are dispersed around the world, provided that while maintaining the bond of unity among themselves and with Peter’s successor, and while teaching authentically on a matter of faith or morals, they concur in a single viewpoint as the one which must be held conclusively” (n. 25).
In a lengthy analysis of this paragraph, moral theologians John C. Ford, SJ, and Germain Grisez concluded (cf. The Teaching of Humanae Vitae: A Defense, p. 171):
“We think the facts show as clearly as anyone could reasonably demand that the conditions articulated by Vatican II for infallibility in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium of the bishops dispersed throughout the world have been met in the case of the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception. At least until 1962, Catholic bishops in communion with one another and with the Pope agreed in and authoritatively proposed one judgment to be held definitively on the morality of contraception:
“Acts of this kind are objectively, intrinsically, and gravely evil. Since this teaching has been proposed infallibly, the controversy since 1963 takes nothing away from its objectively certain truth. It is not the received Catholic teaching on contraception which needs to be rethought. It is the assumption that this teaching could be abandoned as false which needs to be rethought.”
In summary, while one can dispute whether the encyclical Humanae Vitae is formally infallible in itself, there is no room for reasonably arguing that the Church’s teaching on the evil of contraception is not infallible.
Q. Regarding your recent reply about capital punishment, my question concerns the person sent to prison for murder, who then murders someone in prison. Who shares the guilt? — J.P.H., Pennsylvania.
A. Only the person who committed the murder in prison is guilty. If you are implying that this person would not have been able to kill someone else if he had been executed, you are correct, and there might be some shared guilt, for example, for those in the judicial system who, for no good reason, turn loose on society dangerous criminals who kill again. But we don’t think that those opposed to the death penalty share guilt with a convicted felon who commits additional crimes while incarcerated.
Pope John Paul said in Evangelium Vitae (n. 56) that there could be “very rare” cases where execution of the offender was necessary to keep him from doing further harm.
Could your example be one of those cases? Perhaps, but maybe the additional murder could have been prevented if the man were put in solitary confinement. In any case, while there may be those “very rare” situations where the death penalty could be justified, the Church’s general principle is to oppose capital punishment unless there is no other way to defend society effectively against the unjust aggressor.
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