Reports of the death of Humanae Vitae are greatly exaggerated.

an we read what Pope Fran­cis has actu­al­ly said about Humanae Vitae? Is this too hard? Come, let us go togeth­er to Amor­is Laeti­tia, that evil and hereti­cal text that is going to over­throw the Church and rain down dev­as­ta­tion, and look. Here, look you, is §80:

Nonethe­less, the con­ju­gal union is ordered to pro­cre­ation “by its very nature.” The child who is born “does not come from out­side as some­thing added on to the mutu­al love of the spous­es, but springs from the very heart of that mutu­al giv­ing, as its fruit and ful­fill­ment. He or she does not appear at the end of a process, but is present from the begin­ning of love as an essen­tial fea­ture, one that can­not be denied with­out dis­fig­ur­ing that love itself. From the out­set, love refus­es every impulse to close in on itself; it is open to a fruit­ful­ness that draws it beyond itself. Hence [Pay atten­tion, now:] no gen­i­tal act of hus­band and wife can refuse this mean­ing.

Here, look you, is §82:

The Church’s teach­ing is meant to “help cou­ples to expe­ri­ence in a com­plete, har­mo­nious and con­scious way their com­mu­nion as hus­band and wife, togeth­er with their respon­si­bil­i­ty for pro­cre­at­ing life.

Amaz­ing. It’s as though the pope is Catholic.

“We need to return to the mes­sage of the Encycli­cal Humanae Vitae of Blessed Pope Paul VI,” says Fran­cis in Amor­is Laeti­tia. And in §222, look you, he tells us that both Humanae Vitae and Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio (e’en that) “ought to be tak­en up anew, in order to counter a men­tal­i­ty that is often hos­tile to life.”

So the pope is Catholic. It’s shock­ing, I know.

But back on Jan­u­ary 19, 2015, the pope had this to say:

What I want to say about Paul VI is that it is true that open­ness to life is the con­di­tion of the sacra­ment of mat­ri­mo­ny. A man can­not give the sacra­ment to the woman, and the woman give it to him, if they are not in agree­ment on this point to be open to life. … Paul VI was not more anti­quat­ed, closed mind­ed. No, he was a prophet who with this said to watch out for the Neo-Malthu­sian­ism that is com­ing.

So it would be odd, I tell you, if the pope had put togeth­er some com­mis­sion to study whether the Church ought to do away with this part of Humanae Vitae.

On July 27, Crux pub­lished this arti­cle, by Inés San Mar­tin, debunk­ing rumors that such a com­mis­sion exists. The rumors, says the arti­cle, had their ori­gin in con­ser­v­a­tive blogs—a big shock, I know—but the truth of the mat­ter is a bit more bor­ing. San Mar­tin placed a phone call to Fr. Gil­fre­do Maren­go, the head of a group appoint­ed to study Humanae Vitae, and he said that their task is to comb through archives “to recon­struct the writ­ing process behind the encycli­cal.” “This is a his­tor­i­cal-crit­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tion work,” he told San Mar­tin. “Noth­ing else.”

Cov­er sto­ry, some might say, nod­ding sage­ly. Well, yeah: That would require a par­tic­u­lar bur­den of proof, I should think.

And yet on Mon­day, the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter pub­lished this arti­cle by Edward Pentin reviv­ing all the debunked rumors once more. “Recent devel­op­ments in Rome,” Pentin begins, “indi­cate a cam­paign is under­way to chal­lenge the encyclical’s pro­hi­bi­tion against arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion.”

Recent devel­op­ments? This has been going on since July 25, 1968. The gates of Hell will not pre­vail; no one promised the gates of Hell will not try. ’Twas ever thus. This is hard­ly news. Any­one shocked and cha­grined has been asleep.

Half way through the first syn­od on the fam­i­ly, when it was becom­ing clear that het­ero­dox agen­das were being pur­sued in heavy-hand­ed and decep­tive ways [It’s clear that this is a claim], a well-respect­ed Church fig­ure took me aside at a recep­tion with a pained expres­sion on her face. “Of course, you real­ize this is all about Humanae Vitae,” she said. “That’s what I think they’re after. That is their goal.

“A pained expres­sion”; always with the melo­dra­ma! And why are these always anony­mous sources who “took me aside” and “said to me in a stage whis­per”? And why would the very syn­od that was the pre­cur­sor to a text affirm­ing Humanae Vitae have real­ly been meant to over­throw it?

What Pentin cites here is an unnamed per­son­’s opin­ion.

[T]he recent rev­e­la­tion of a four-mem­ber stealth com­mis­sion to study the doc­u­ment — and oth­er sub­tle and less sub­tle attempts to weak­en the Church’s moral teach­ing — are mak­ing the con­cerns of the Church fig­ure at the 2014 syn­od look omi­nous­ly pre­scient.

Yes, this “stealth com­mis­sion” is so “stealth” that (return­ing to the Crux piece from two months ago) Vat­i­can Radio pub­lished an inter­view with Fr. Maren­go in which Fr. Maren­go said, “Oh, you know, I head up this group study­ing Humanae Vitae.” And it is so “stealth” that when San Mar­tin from Crux called to speak with Fr. Maren­go, he returned her call with­in ten min­utes and said, “Oh, yeah, and you know, we’re doing an his­tor­i­cal study of the process behind Paul VI writ­ing it.”

This is all “stealth.” But “the com­mis­sion was nev­er for­mal­ly announced,” Pentin says. That’s prob­a­bly because the Vat­i­can did not feel a need to, since its purpose—to recon­struct the writ­ing process behind Humanae Vitae—was of doc­u­men­tary inter­est, to a few schol­ars per­haps but not to the wide, wide world. But then, as always hap­pens, the rumors and the hyper­ven­ti­la­tion start­ed, and so the Vat­i­can said, “Okay, here’s what’s going on, folks.”

Pentin con­cedes all this, cit­ing Fr. Maren­go and Arch­bish­op Vin­cen­zio Pagalia. “But,” he con­tin­ues (for there is always a “but”): “the mere exis­tence of such a com­mis­sion has left many sus­pi­cious and ask­ing: Why make all the effort to deep­en and study some­thing that will not fun­da­men­tal­ly change?”

Oh. There is noth­ing to this, but sus­pi­cious peo­ple are sus­pi­cious. So it’s all sus­pi­cious. Why study some­thing that’s not going to change: Is that a seri­ous ques­tion? Should we not study the Bible, then? It’s not going to change; no need to study it! Is that what we’re say­ing here? Because that’s real­ly odd. Some­thing of val­ue may be learned by study­ing what this com­mis­sion is study­ing, that can deep­en our appre­ci­a­tion for Humanae Vitae: Is that not a work of poten­tial val­ue for the Church? Why are we not cel­e­brat­ing this, rather than run­ning around with our heads on fire with sus­pi­cion and pan­ic?

More Pentin:

Also viewed as sus­pect is the unprece­dent­ed lev­el of access giv­en to the com­mis­sion mem­bers. Accord­ing to the mem­o­ran­dum, the Pope has giv­en the schol­ars per­mis­sion to view the rel­e­vant his­tor­i­cal archives not only of the Sec­re­tari­at of State, but also the Vat­i­can Secret Archives and that of the Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith.

Good heav­ens, this is what schol­ars do. They look through “rel­e­vant his­tor­i­cal archives.” Our eye­brows should not arch in sus­pi­cion at this rev­e­la­tion; our mouths should open in a yawn of bore­dom. Schol­ars are behav­ing like schol­ars; the Church has gone over the edge.

More Pentin:

All of which amounts to a con­cern that the com­mis­sion is being used as a cov­er: to look at the sci­en­tif­ic and his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter of the doc­u­ment, but with the ulti­mate goal of pre­sent­ing the Pope with enough infor­ma­tion for the encyclical’s dis­senters to say: “Times have changed—Humanae Vitae needs to be inter­pret­ed in the light of con­science, accord­ing to the com­plex­i­ty of people’s lives today.

So there’s no evi­dence, but there’s “con­cern” that it’s all a “cov­er.” Based on any­thing con­crete? No, but there’s “con­cern.” So noth­ing con­crete? No. No. Well, you know, before his death Car­di­nal Caf­fara “pri­vate­ly expressed sim­i­lar grave con­cerns.” Oh, so the evi­dence for the con­cern is some­one else’s “pri­vate­ly expressed” con­cern.

I tell you, dear read­er, this method of rea­son­ing con­cerns me. Nev­er­the­less, Pentin sees rea­son for con­cern in the attempts over the last four years to “mar­gin­al­ize” St. John Paul II by “ignor­ing his teach­ings.”

Real­ly? Is this why Pope Fran­cis can­on­ized him? Is this why he cites Famil­iaris Con­sor­tio to death in Amor­is Laeti­tia? Is this why the pope said that we need to study FC afresh “in order to counter a men­tal­i­ty that is hos­tile to life”? Because we’re ignor­ing John Paul II?

Here’s a sub­ject for a study: Doc­u­ment all the cita­tions of John Paul II in the writ­ings of Pope Fran­cis. Take as much time as you need, for you will be busy. Ignor­ing John Paul II? Please! You know who Pope Fran­cis is ignor­ing? Boni­face IV, that’s who. I demand answers. Why are we ignor­ing Pope Celes­tine III? Con­cerned peo­ple want to know.

In the rest of the arti­cle, Pentin becomes smit­ten with the kind of “con­nect-the-dots exer­cis­es” San Mar­tin at Crux lam­basts. “So what is like­ly to hap­pen?” Pentin con­cludes.

The com­mis­sion will have no author­i­ty to enact changes, [Of course it won’t. And Fr. Maren­go has already said this is not its pur­pose any­way.] and, already, there are reports of divi­sions among them that will weak­en its pur­pose. [Beg­ging the ques­tion.] But some car­di­nals, bish­ops and the­olo­gians, as well as ele­ments of the media, will use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to try to per­suade Fran­cis to mod­i­fy Humanae Vitae using the strate­gies out­lined above as well as oth­ers.

If I recall cor­rect­ly, there was sim­i­lar pres­sure on Paul VI in the months lead­ing up to Humanae Vitae. A study of the process of putting that encycli­cal togeth­er will, at least in part, be a study of how he resist­ed those pressures—with the help of the Holy Spir­it who guides the Church into all truth and pro­tects it from error.

This is all much ado about noth­ing. That’s the nice way to put it.