Committee-al Infallibility

Committee Infallibility, com'on, we all remember when that doctrine was declared, don't we?
By, uhm.... well, by some committee, I guess.
The Irish Time on Humanae Vitae, 40 years on...
The more I read of Paul VI and his brave decision, the more I thank God for him.The Holy Spirit must have been working overtime for that much abused man.
At the root of much of the dissent was the very simple fact that a commission set up by Pope John XXIII in 1963 to address the issue of the use of artificial means of contraception had recommended, by a significant majority, that they be allowed.
Pope John's commission was made up of six lay people, who were asked to address birth control issues. Shortly after he became pope in 1963, Paul VI expanded the commission to 72, including 16 theologians, 13 doctors or people with medical experience, and five women. It had an executive of nine bishops and seven cardinals.
Its report in 1966 concluded that the use of artificial means of contraception was not intrinsically evil and that Catholic couples should be allowed to decide for themselves whether to use them or not.
One member of the commission, an American Jesuit theologian Fr John Ford, prepared a minority report, signed also by three other theologians on the commission. It said that the church should not and could not change its teaching on the issue, which banned the use of artificial means of contraception.
This intervention, and a response to it by the majority on the commission, was leaked to the media, which led Catholics to expect the Pope would accept the advice of the majority on the commission. But he did not do so.
Referring to this in the encyclical, he said "the conclusions arrived at by the commission could not be considered by us as definitive and absolutely certain, dispensing us from the duty of examining personally this serious question. This was all the more necessary because, within the commission itself, there was not complete agreement concerning the moral norms to be proposed, and especially because certain approaches and criteria for a solution to this question had emerged which were at variance with the moral doctrine on marriage constantly taught by the magisterium of the church".
In fact, of the 72 people on the commission, all were in agreement that the use of artificial means of contraception should be allowed except six of its members - the four theologians who signed Fr Ford's minority report (including Fr Ford), the commission president Cardinal Ottaviani and the papal theologian on the commission Bishop Colombo.
(Incidentally, did you catch that?
The writer's words, the writer's thinking: they had "doctors and theologians and women." Kinda like, "musicians and singers.")

You remember in the Bible, where God said, Thou art Commission, and on this Rock I will build my Church... not.
I wonder what became of Fr Ford. How did he fit in with the other Jesuits of the part 40 years, one wonders.