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(Interview with Bill West of Perspective: Sydney, October 1993)

1. We recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of Pope Paul's encyclical on contraception, Humanae Vitae. Many people have claimed that it has proved prophetic, especially in terms of the consequences of people not following the Church's teachings. Do you have any insights into this question?

- One of the main points that Paul VI made was that artificial contraception is opposed to true conjugal love and the good of the husband and wife. It seems to me that this has been borne out over these 25 years. It cannot be a matter of indifference that marriage breakdowns are on the increase. A cause for this needs to be sought. No couple planning to marry want their marriage to break down. But they would do well to read "Humanae Vitae", and to consider the reasons it gives why contraception tends to undermine mutual respect and love between the spouses.

2. One of the common reasons used for promoting artificial contraception is the apparent overpopulation and poverty in Third world countries. As someone who has spent many years working in Africa, do you feel that the people there consider large families a burden?

- No; just the contrary, even though they obviously have to work harder and perhaps live in a materially less comfortable position, in order to maintain such a family. Africans have a strong sense that children are the first blessing and richness of married life. In the West we are losing that sense. If people do not reflect deeply in family values, they can easily absorb the consumer mentality that material things matter most for one's standard of life. Africans tend to put human values - the value of the child, the unique value of each existence - first. It is true that families in the Third World, being larger, tend to be "poorer" than those in the West; but they also tend to be happier. This points out alternatives and suggests options. Which is preferable: "larger, poorer and happier", or "smaller, richer and less happy"? Each couple must make their choice; one's human values are certainly put to the test in the choosing.

3. Through your work on the Roman Rota you see many cases of marriage breakdown. What are some of the common causes of problems in marriage and how can they be avoided?

- There can be many causes. Simple unreadiness to forgive - to learn to make up and forget - is perhaps the worst enemy of marital happiness and fidelity. People have to understand that the person they are marrying is someone (like themselves) with defects; and to be prepared to live with those defects: to love their partner with his or her defects. If they are not prrepared to do that when they marry, it is not a real person that they want to marry - because every real person has defects.

Practically all the cases I have had to deal with have a history of pre-marital sexual relations. This too seems to be a main factor threatening eventual breakdown. There is rather sad logic behind the point. If a couple do not show respect for each other before marriage - respecting the fact that they are not yet husband and wife - then it becomes so much harder to find and maintain that respect over the years of the married life together. Pre-marital chastity provides the framework in which love can grow. It is in itself a sign and guarantee of love, and gives it a special quality that powerfully helps it to endure.

4. The traditional view in the Church has been that marriage is essentially for procreation, but a more recent 'personalist' view is that it is essentially for the expression of human love. What is your own view?

- To say that marriage exists just for the "expression" of human love is perhaps not quite adequate. I think that it exists in most people's mind for the fulfilment of the promise of happiness that human love offers. As I view it, marriage is designed precisely for that; and equally for having children, as the fruit of that love. In my understanding, a true personalist view of marriage sees it as designed both for procreation and for the 'good of the spouses'. In fact one finds this expressed as official Church teaching in the New Catechism (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1660). I have written at length on this subject in Communio, vol 19 (1992), pp. 278-304.

5. The Church approves of the use of natural family planning for those whose marriage situation requires it, but it has been claimed that in many instances this method is being promoted as the ideal for everybody. Do you think this is the right line to take?

- To my mind, married love remains frustrated, in what should be the normal pattern of its growth, if it does not issue in this natural fruit. The new Catechism, having said that "married love tends naturally to be fruitful", adds: "A child is not something external added to the mutual love of husband and wife, but stems from the very heart of their reciprocal self-gift, of which it is the fruit and fulfilment" (no. 2366). Material possessions, or an easy life together, do not fulfil the aspirations of married love (love is ready for sacrifice and grows through it), nor are they a condition for its maintenance and growth. Children normally are.

That is why family limitation is not very properly described as a right, and is wrongly thought of as a privilege. It is basically a privation. It is meant for exceptional cases, for those couples who are obliged by serious reasons - by some powerful and over-riding factor - to deprive them­selves of the fulfilling joy and the enriching value of children. A couple who, in the absence of such an over-riding factor, choose not to have more children, are starving their conjugal love of its natural fruit and probably stunting its growth. They are lessening their mutual preparedness for sacrifice, and almost certainly undermining the mutual esteem that can bind them together.

This is not to question the value of natural family planning for those whose marriage situation is such that they really need it. But it does seem to me that any presentation of it as an "ideal", or even as a normal thing for couples, tends to obstruct the natural growth of marital love and to set up obstacles to generosity, to the basis for mutual esteem, and to married happiness.

6. You have written extensively on the questions of freedom and conscience. How do you see the relationship between the teaching authority of the Pope and the need for individuals to follow their own conscience?

- Two main principles should be borne in mind in moral teaching about conscience. The first is that one must follow one's conscience (whenever it commands or forbids; not just when it 'permits'), because it is the proximate norm of morality. However, since conscience is not an infallible guide, then a second principle has to be added: one must form one's conscience, otherwise it may be leading one astray in its judgments. Just as one does not absoutely trust one's watch, for it may be giving the wrong time, and one checks it against some more reliable timepice, so conscience must be formed according to some more trustworthy criterion of truth. For a Catholic, that trustworthy criterion lies in Revelation (Scripture and Tradition) and in the Magisterium (the teaching of the Pope and of the Bishops in union with him). It is elementary to a Catholic mind, to see the Church's Magisterium in this way: as a service to people, helping them to know the Mind of Christ regarding what we need to do and to avoid in order to reach the goal he has established for us.

7. A lot of publicity has been given to the Church's new Catechism. How is it being received in Europe and what do you see as its role in the Church?

- It is selling like wildfire in Europe; already several million copies in French, Italian, Spanish and German alone. It is clear that people want to have an authoritative reference source, to know what exactly is the official teaching of the Church on major matters of faith and moral conduct. In itself, it provides that source. It is very complete, and easy to read - by anybody from adolescence up. It is not a pre-adolescence catechism, but is rather meant to be a source book for other simpler catechisms, mainly for children, to be produced on local levels.

8. Since the Second Vatican Council there has been a great deal of discussion about the proper role of lay people in the Church. What is your own view?

- To live their christian life in the world (rather than just within an ecclesiastical framework). In other words, to sanctify their work - job or profession - their family and social life, their participation in public affairs, etc. This is their role clearly spelled out in the different Vatican II Constitutions.

9. One of the biggest concerns of all Christians is the question of social justice. How can ordinary lay people, who spend most of their lives working in a secular job and raising a family, contribute to the creation of a more just society?

- Precisely by living justice themselves: being scrupulously honest in their own work, being just towards other people, avoiding gossip and negative criticism, fostering tolerance and understanding.

10. While in Australia you spoke to a gathering of lawyers in Sydney. What was your main message to them?

- The service aspect of the legal profession: how law is meant to be at the service of human rights: of their definition, defence and vindication. The legal profession is in a special way at service of justice; it seeks to defend individual and inter-personal rights, and in doing so serves to bring about and maintain the common good. This however is not always the case with the law today, because of the rapid undermining and loss of the sense of what is really due - or not due - to persons; because of the tendency in some legislatures to introduce "rights" which do not correspond to what is truly human and due to each one. If the lawyer has not a clear idea of the common good and equally of the extent and limits of personal rights, he may therefore find himself in the position of defending "rights", beyond the measure of justice. Then of course he would not be following the true norm or justice, which is "to each his due", but would rather be acting individualistically or allowing his client to be individualistic, with harm to others and to the whole of social living.