Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State of His Holiness, called for the rediscovery of Humanae Vitae, Pope St. Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical letter on the regulation of birth.
The encyclical “stresses the need to respect the dignity of the person when morally evaluating methods of birth regulation,” Cardinal Parolin said during an October 16 address at the Rome campus of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. “This is a choice that should be shared by the spouses, becoming a common heritage and a way of life for them.”
In his address, entitled “The Dignity and Beauty of Procreation in the Church’s Magisterium,” Cardinal Parolin criticized the “so-called culture of separation,” in which “procreation has increasingly become reproduction, detaching itself not only from conjugal love but also from the sexual act.”