While reading through Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae, I found one thing that seemed to nicely sum up everything that the Pope is trying to say and I thought this picture, which I found on a website for Christians in New Zealand, could pretty much replace his whole vitae. Only, of course, if there was an added line that said, "Don't use birth control." Pope Paul VI's 11 paragraph, aptly titled "Observing the Natural Law", basically states that the act of procreation, or, as the rest of us call it, sex, is "noble and worthy" even if it does not result in conception as long as it was an unforeseeable result. It states that, however, it is not okay to have sex if you know that it will not result in conception because then man has deviated from God's plan. Now, the argument that the Pope is making here seems to be a little bit out of touch with society today and, from my point of view, may have some pretty serious consequences. First, the Pope's claim seems to be more than a little out of touch with society. The Pope's ability to twist the act of sex to fit his ideology is the perfect example of social construction, but he's presenting it as "natural law". Either knowingly or not, the Pope is attempting to construct sex as something that God created only as a way to procreate. The Pope is pretending to construct the act of sex as "natural law" through logos, but really the Pope is using pathos. The Pope is clearly playing on the fears of his followers that if they do not view sex as he has constructed it for them then they are going against God's plan for them and we all know that that leads to. No, not an unhappy life, but hell.
Perhaps even more interestingly, is the fact that the Pope does not mention once in this paragraph birth control, but is clearly lobbying against it. In the same paragraph that the Pope is constructing sex to be something that God planned to be for procreational purposes only, he is also constructing birth control to be something that is going against God's plan. The Pope is very clever in his wording in this chapter because before he started to construct birth control as something negative, he made sure to not isolate his followers by saying that having "fun" sex is okay as long as you don't know that it's just for "fun". The Pope seems to be rejecting how society has changed through his words, but at the same time succumbing to how society has changed. Really what the Pope would have liked to say here was that you can't have sex if you may not get a child out of it, so therefore birth control, and homosexual sex, and pre-marital sex is sinful and will land you in hell. However, the Pope has learned how important social construction is and how he can simply twist the discourse of certain objects, i.e. birth control, and practices, i.e. homosexual and pre-marital sex, to be something to suit his needs. The Pope is by no means stupid and words his discourse in this paragraph extremely well and if you don't look closely you can't see how he is attempting to put the reader in the subject position of a would be sinner and construct for them how they can adjust their body practices and the objects that they use in those body practices to stay in a life without sin; in a life that goes according to God's plan.
Hey Megan! I enjoyed reading your article about birth control and how the Pope intertwines his opinion carefully through his words. I liked how your linked his findings to being the subject position of a sinner and how this uses pathos to scare people into conforming to his will. When I read this section I never thought of it as being a sin but just unlawful. I would add how due to changes throughout the course of life, many new technologies and health advancements have played a part on how people view birth control and religion. Reality has helped shape and guide the new views of birth control and religion along with science and technology.
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