Archbishop of Philadelphia
Chairman, Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth
3211 Fourth Street, NE
Washington, D.C. 20017-1194
Your Excellency:
Thank you for calling the Church's attention to National Marriage Week USA and World Marriage Day, as well as the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's beautiful confirmation of Church teaching on marriage/family/sexuality, Humanae Vitae. As you undoubtedly know, last Thursday, February 1, marked the passing of the great lay scholar, Professor Germain Grisez, who worked tirelessly in defense of Humane Vitae:
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"Rev. John C. Ford, S.J., a very
able moral theologian who had worked on marriage questions,....was asked by Pope Paul VI to serve on
the Pontifical Commission for Population, Family, and Birthrate—the
so-called birth control commission. Grisez helped Ford with that work
from the spring of 1965 until early July 1966....In July 1968, Pope Paul VI finally reaffirmed the constant and very
firm teaching of the Catholic Church regarding contraception,
sterilization, and abortion in his encyclical, Humanae vitae....[Several years later, Ford and Grisez demonstrated] that
the Church’s day-to-day catechesis over many centuries had already infallibly affirmed that choosing to contracept is always gravely wrong. The article appeared in the June 1978 issue of Theological Studies: 'Contraception and the Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium' (About Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus).
Sincerely,
P.S. In his The Way of the Lord Jesus, Volume 3, Difficult Moral Questions, I also found Professor Grisez's response to the following question to be powerful and "on the money":
| "87: | How far may Catholic hospitals cooperate with providers of immoral services?" |
