Pope says anti-life culture “intimidated” by natural fertility regulation

Vatican City, Jan 29, 2004 / 22:00 pm

In a message made public today, Pope John Paul told the participants at a meeting in Rome on the theme “Natural Fertility Regulation and the Culture of Life,” that they are studying “very current matters, very interesting for the development of the relationship between science and faith.” 

The Pontiff noted that the Church has always promoted “the culture of responsible procreation and has promoted the awareness and diffusion of the so-called ‘natural’ methods of fertility regulation.”

There is a mentality today, said the Pope, that “on the one hand appears intimidated in the face of responsible procreation and, on the other hand, would like to dominate and manipulate life,” the latter as the result of “a certain propaganda.”

What must be developed, he said, is “a capillary educational and formative work with regards to married couples, engaged couples, young people in general, and social and pastoral workers to adequately illustrate all the aspects of natural fertility regulation.”

“It is clear,” he stated, “that when one speaks of ‘natural’ regulation, we are not referring only to respecting biological rhythms. It is a question of responding to the truth about the human person in their intimate unity of spirit, psyche and body, a unity that can never be merely reduced to an overall question of biological mechanisms.”

“Only in the context of the spouses’ reciprocal love, total and without reserve, can the moment of generating life, to which the future of mankind is tied, be lived in all its dignity.”