Human Life International e-Newsletterfor Priests, Deacons, and Seminarians
Volume 01, Number 14 | Thursday, June 19, 2008
Father Phillip W. De Vous is a priest of the Diocese of Covington, KY. He the pastor of Divine Mercy Parish in Bellevue, KY and of St. Bernard Parish in Dayton, KY. He may be contacted at 859-261-6172 or at fr.pdevous@gmail.com
Meaning Vs. Sexual Nihilism
By Father Phillip W. De Vous
The summer of "love". 1968. The hippy movement. Flower power. Free love. Anti-war protest. Love without responsibility. These were the vacuous slogans and "movements" that gave pseudo-mystical, pseudo-intellectual cover for a culture wide hedonistic holiday from reality. It would be at least another decade before we would come to know the full cost of this holiday, which racked up a considerable cultural, civilizational, moral, political, psychological, religious, and spiritual tab we are still paying to this day. It was in this environment and to these chaotic times that Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae, igniting a firestorm of debate and protest, whose embers are still smoldering in our midst forty years after its promulgation.
Why? Pope Paul VI had the courage, and we must say, the grace of state of the Petrine Office, to stand athwart the forces of cultural and civilizational chaos and say a clear "no" to the sexual, and thus, personal nihilism that ruled the day, then and now. The crux of his firm response to the forces of sexual and personal nihilism, was to remind the world that sexuality and its expression are more than a recreational activity and more than a self-constructed act of "personal realization", but marital, conjugal sexuality has a profound meaning rooted in the very structure of the human person. Whereas the forces of the world, spurred on by the diabolic, working through the weakness of the flesh were intent on using sexuality and its expression as a force for personal, and thus, societal dissolution, the Pope reminded us that sexuality is part of our Heavenly Father's plan of love and redemption of the human race.
To speak words of meaning and purpose in times that exalt meaninglessness and purposelessness is no small task in any age, but to speak of humility in accepting the truth of God's plan in times where even the very notion of God is being rejected takes tremendous courage and prophetic vision. For forty years, the forces of sexual nihilism have reigned supreme in our society; we have run the experiment of what love and sexuality removed from responsibility and grace looks like: millions aborted, families destroyed, women exploited, the destruction of morality - the list could go on! Behind all of this, nagging at the conscience is the stubborn refusal of Pope Paul VI to cave and capitulate to the forces that have devastated us. Indeed, with Pope Paul VI we had and have a true "voice crying out in the desert" of personal nihilism.
Humanae Vitae reminds us that the structure of even the most intimate acts of the human person are infused with meaning and are a pathway to communion with the God who is love. Indeed, this truth about the dignity and meaning of the human person and his acts is truly "Good News" in a desert of meaninglessness. Furthermore, it teaches us that we do not have to create meaning and reality, but rather accept it and thus discover our true selves as God has created us. Admittedly, it was the challenge of the "sexual revolution" which spurred Paul VI to delve deeply into this controversial question. His clear-sightedness and tenacity in proclaiming the truth, beauty, goodness, and meaning of human sexuality provided a spiritually fertile charter for answering many of the convoluted questions of our day.
We see the full development of Humanae Vitae's vision in the work of his papal successor, Pope John Paul II, in his magisterial Theology of the Body. This work of Paul VI's successor is the definitive theological response to the challenges posed by the forces of personal nihilism embodied in the sexual revolution - a work made possible only because of Paul VI's fidelity to the Truth. As the prominent Catholic intellectual George Weigel has said of the Theology of the Body: "It's a time bomb waiting to explode and shed great light in the life of the Church." An explosion of grace, truth, meaning, and communion! Indeed it is, but we must not forget, Humanae Vitae lit the fuse.
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