“Humanae Vitae” and the Principle of Totality

I am using the English translation of “Humanae Vitae” made by Marc Calegari, S.J. and published by Ignatius Press. San Francisco, 1978. Sometimes the slightest of variations have been made, but more for stylistic than doctrinal reasons. Of course no translation satisfies, which is why I put the original and the English side by side.

Thus my colleague Burtchaell James T. C.S.C. writing in The National Catholic Reporter on May 8, 1987 on the occasion of the appearance of Respect for Life, about to invoke the principle of totality against the teaching of the instruction, recalls his dissent from “Humanae Vitae” on the same ground. “According to the ethical model followed by Humanae Vitae, one must assign moral value to methods of contraception within the isolated event of coitus, rather than the full sequence and story of love and childbearing throughout the course of a marriage. The pope parts company with his advisory commission, which reported, ‘The morality of sexual acts between married people takes its meaning first of all and specifically from the ordering of their actions in a fruitful married life, that is, one which is practiced with responsible, generous and prudent parenthood. It does not then depend on the direct fecundity of each and every particular act.’” (p. 21)

Thus my colleague Burtchaell James T. C.S.C. writing in The National Catholic Reporter on May 8, 1987 on the occasion of the appearance of Respect for Life, With respect to the Instruction's arguing that (in Father Burtchaell's paraphrase) “sexual union is damaged when it involves a generative act that does not involve the marital embrace,” Father Burtchaell writes, “Here, I suspect, some good principles might be getting a careless application. The generative act is being viewed as an isolated event, separate from the sequence of sexual union that the married couple have enacted all along. And we are not given a principle adequate to discern when technology is assisting and when it is intruding.” (p. 21) With regard to that last specific point, since the technology could be carried on years after the spouses are dead it could not be said either to assist or intrude into their generative act. And the same is true of the present. It is not their act.

O'Donovan as quoted by Burtchaell in the article cited. The application of this line of thinking to the problems of the instruction is also made by O'Donovan. Speaking of IVH and AIH, O'Donovan writes, “There are distinct acts of choice, which may involve persons other than the couple, in any form of aided conception, including those forms of which [Catholic official opinion (sic)] approves. Whether they are independent acts of choice is precisely the question which requires moral insight. If they are indeed independent (and not subordinate to the couple's quest for fruitfulness in their sexual embrace), then they are certainly offensive. But that point cannot be settled simply by asserting they are distinct. The question remains: Is there a moral unity which holds together what happens in the hospital and what happens at home in bed? Can these procedures be understood appropriately as the couple's search for help within their sexual union (the total life-union of their bodies, that is, not a single sexual act)? And I have to confess that I do not see why not.”

O'Donovan's curious suggestion that taking acts singly is somehow pornographic seems to invoke a principle used in legal quarrels over pornography. Episodes in a story must be considered in the light of the role they play in the whole. The novelist will, of course, write of immoral acts and as a rule his treatment of them will be judged in terms of the role they play in the overall story. Doubtless it is when sexual misbehavior, say, or simply sexual activity, is so described as to appeal to the reader's prurience that the episode asserts itself independently of the whole novel. That would be an artistic flaw. A form of the principle of totality is involved in saying that such a novel can have sufficient redeeming merit to save it from such civic condemnation as is still possible. Of course the principle of totality in this second sense is very different from that which would apply to the artistic unity of the novel.

“Science and technology are valuable resources for man when placed at his service and when they promote his integral development for the benefit of all; but they cannot of themselves show the meaning of existence and of human progress.”— Introduction, n. 2.

“Science and technology are valuable resources for man when placed at his service and when they promote his integral development for the benefit of all; but they cannot of themselves show the meaning of existence and of human progress.”—, p. 21. Burtchaell goes on to invoke the instruction's insistence that human sex is unlike animal sex “and its biological aspects must be viewed in the light of its human aspect.”

When Aristotle seeks to establish what makes a man good, he seeks the function the well performance of which makes a man good. The person is denominated good because he acts well; when acting well is grounded in character he will be called a good person in a more profound sense. He can be counted on to perform singular acts of a given moral kind.

A candidate for the United States Senate from Maryland invoked the principle of totality (not by name) in just this fashion in an interview in the Washington Post on Nov. 3, 1988. His antics at beach parties having come to the attention of the electorate. Mr. Robb said that he liked to have a little fun from time to time, but he did not want voters to think his infidelity detracted from his love for his wife and daughters.

In our previous meeting I developed this point further. See, “Fundamental Option,” Persona: Verita e Morale. Citta Nuova Editrice, Roma, 1987, pp. 427–434.