Paul VI and the Nuns Raped in the Congo. What the Pope Never Said

First Francis and then Fr. Lombardi have restated for the umpteenth time that pope Montini permitted those nuns to take birth control pills. But that’s false. Here is how that urban legend was born. And what the true status of the question is

by Sandro Magister




ROME, February 24, 2016 – In the pyrotechnic press conference on the return flight from Mexico to Rome, among his other remarks Pope Francis pulled out again the story that “Paul VI - the great! - in a difficult situation, in Africa, allowed the nuns to use contraception for cases of violence.”

And he added that “avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil, and in certain cases, as in those that I mentioned of the blessed Paul VI, [that] was clear”:

Two days later, Fr. Federico Lombardi also pulled out the same story, in an interview with Vatican Radio conducted with the intention of straightening out what had gotten tangled in the statements of the pope presented in the media, which at the go-ahead for contraceptives had already chanted victory:

“The contraceptive or the condom, in cases of particular emergency and gravity, can also be a serious object of discernment of conscience. This is what the pope is saying. [. . .] The example that [Francis] gave of Paul VI and the authorization to use the pill for religious women who were at the gravest continual risk of violence on the part of rebels in the Congo, at the time of the tragedies of the war in the Congo, makes it clear that it was no normal situation in which this was taken into consideration.”

Now, that Paul VI explicitly gave this permission is not evident at all. No one has ever been able to cite a single word of his in this regard.

Yet this urban legend has been kept alive for decades, and sure enough even Francis and his spokesman have fallen for it.

To reconstruct how this story came about, one must go back not to the pontificate of Paul VI, but to that of his predecessor, John XXIII.

It was 1961, and the question of whether it were licit for nuns in danger of being raped to have recourse to contraception, in a situation of war like the one raging in the Congo at the time, was submitted to three authoritative moral theologians:

- Pietro Palazzini, secretary of the sacred congregation of the council, later made a cardinal;
- Francesco Hürth, a Jesuit, professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University;
- Ferdinando Lambruschini, professor at the Pontifical Lateran University, later archbishop of Perugia.

The three together formulated their respective views in an article for the Opus Dei journal “Studi Cattolici,” number 27, 1961, pp. 62-72, under the title: “A woman asks: how should violence be rejected? Morality exemplified. A debate.”

All three were in favor of admitting the liceity of that act, albeit with different arguments. And this favorable view not only passed unharmed through the anything-but-lax scrutiny of the Holy Office, but it became common doctrine among Catholic moralists of every school.

In 1968 Paul VI published the encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” which condemned as intrinsically evil “any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.”

And in 1997 this condemnation would enter, with the same words, into the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

But even after “Humanae Vitae” the liceity of the actions of the Congolese nuns continued to be peacefully admitted, without Paul VI and his successors saying anything.

In 1993, in fact, during the reign of John Paul II, the question came into the spotlight again, this time on account of war not in the Congo, but in Bosnia.

That year the moral theologian who made himself the authoritative spokesman of the common doctrine in favor of liceity was the Jesuit Giacomo Perico, with an article in the magazine “La Civiltà Cattolica,” printed with the imprimatur of the Vatican authorities, entitled: “Rape, abortion, and contraception.”

There are those who maintain that this act is an “exception” to which others could be added, evaluated case by case, thereby invalidating the qualification of “intrinsically evil” - and therefore without any exception - applied to contraception by “Humanae Vitae.”

And there are those who maintain that the act of the Congolese or Bosnian nuns is an act of legitimate defense against the effects of an act of violence that has nothing to do with the free and voluntary conjugal act from which procreation is meant to be excluded, on which and only on which falls the condemnation - without exceptions of any kind - of “Humanae Vitae.”

The scholar who has most deftly reconstructed the clash between these two currents is Martin Rhonheimer, professor of ethics and political philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, in the volume "Ethics of Procreation and the Defense of Human Life,” The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, 2010, at pages 133-150, which in turn reproduce a previous essay published in 1995 in “La Scuola Cattolica,” the magazine of the theological faculty of Milan, and in 2007 in "Josephinum Journal of Theology":

> The Use of Contraceptives Under Threat of Rape: An Exception?

In Rhonheimer’s judgment the second thesis is the one more faithful to the magisterium of the Church, while the first, typically casuistic and “proportionalistic,” offers support to the criticisms of “Veritatis Splendor,” the encyclical of John Paul II on moral theology.

But curiously, it is precisely this first thesis that seems to get the nod - with the presumed support of Paul VI - both from Pope Francis, during the in-flight press conference of February 17, and even more from Fr. Lombardi in the interview on the 19th with Vatican Radio.

Both one and the other, in fact, distinguish between abortion, an absolute evil that does not admit any exception whatsoever, and contraception, which instead - they say - “is not an absolute evil,” but “a lesser evil” and can therefore be allowed in “cases of emergency or particular situations.”

Fr. Lombardi cites as another of these admitted cases the use of condoms in situations of the risk of contagion, taken under consideration by Benedict XVI in the 2010 book-interview “Light of the World.”

But the point is that he reduces this as well to an exceptional case. Ignoring the note of clarification - of an entirely different character - that the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, giving voice to Pope Benedict, released on December 22, 2010 concerning the controversy that exploded following publication of that book.

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The press conference with Pope Francis on the return flight from Mexico to Rome:

> Conferenza stampa del Santo Padre, 17 febbraio 2016

The interview with Fr. Federico Lombardi on Vatican Radio, February 19, 2016:

> P. Lombardi commenta i temi affrontati dal papa con i giornalisti

The note from the congregation for the doctrine of the faith of December 22, 2011, concerning the controversy over the use of condoms following the publication of the book-interview of Benedict XVI “Light of the World”:

> Note on the banalization of sexuality

The final salvos of that controversy, with references to all its previous moments:

> Professor Rhonheimer Writes. And the Holy Office Agrees (22.12.2010)

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The preceding commentary was originally posted, in Italian only, on the blog “Settimo Cielo”:

> Paolo VI e le suore violentate in Congo. Ciò che quel papa non disse mai

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Among the voices critical of the words of Pope Francis relative to the presumed “permission” given by Paul VI are those of Christian Brugger in the “National Catholic Register”:

> Pope Francis and Contraception: A Troubling Scenario

Of Janet E. Smith in “The Catholic World Report”:

> Contraception, Congo Nuns, Choosing Lesser Evil, and Conflict of Commandments

And of the canonist Edward Peters on his blog, “In the Light of the Law”:

> Misunderstanding the (alleged) "Congo contraception" case

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English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.

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For more news and commentary, see the blog that Sandro Magister maintains, available only in Italian:

> SETTIMO CIELO



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24.2.2016 

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