As a teenager who was raised Roman Catholic, I found the Humanae Vitae very interesting. Specifically, I liked paragraph nine, Married Love. The Pope puts what the church values in and what is expected of marriage very eloquently. “It is a love which is total—that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything…” I think that this quote embodies what it means to be in true love. True love starts out as a friendship and slowly turns into something more. When you have found love that is truly meant to be, you should be more than willing to share everything, in fact, it should be natural to do so. Another quote I really liked from this paragraph is “husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment”. This quote embodies what marriage should be. Married people really should complete each other, and be one person. The wording of this is almost romantic in my opinion. While there are certainly things in the Catholic Church that I don’t necessarily agree with, I believe that this paragraph about what marriage is and should be is near perfect. One thing that could be discussed, which isn’t directly, is the element of trust. The paragraph talks about being faithful and being together until death, but does not touch on how to do that. It does state that “this fidelity of husband and wife sometimes presents difficulties”, and talks about how it is honorable and meritorious to be married, however, nowhere does it say anything about aspects of that. In my opinion, being able to trust one another is right up there with becoming one soul and sharing everything in importance. Without trust, a relationship of any kind is nothing. If I could change one small thing about this section of Humanae Vitae, without changing the principles of the Catholic Church (which once again, I do not necessarily support) or causing great controversy, it would be that trust, as one of the most important parts of marriage, is an important and necessary element of what married love is.
I'm glad that alothough you were raised Roman Catholic, you were able to determine whether or not you necessarily believed in everything that they taught once you grew older. Even though my parents were never married, I do agree with what the Pope has to say about married love. I also like that you pointed out that the Pope doesn't talk about how to go about practicing what he preaches because I thought the same thing when I was reading Humanae Vitae. It seems as though he is doing a lot of "telling" rather than "teaching".
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