Educational Resource
The Sermon That Cardinal Spellman Never Gave by Msgr. George A. Kelly (1978)
The Sermon That Cardinal Spellman Never Gave by Rev. Msgr. George A. Kelly in International Review of Natural Family Planning, Volume II, Number 1, Spring 1978
On Sunday, January 10, 1965, at 2 P.M. Francis Cardinal Spellman was scheduled to preside and give the sermon at Catholic Family Day service; in Saint Patrick's Cathedral, New York City. The occasion was the annual celebration of the golden wedding anniversary of married couples in the Archdiocese of New York. There were more than 500 that year, who with their relatives, friends, and interested spectators brought 10,000 people into the cathedral and around the neighboring plazas and streets. Catholic Family Day by 1965 had become an emotionally packed day for hundreds and hundreds of Catholic families. An interesting side-note to the event is the fact that most of the celebrating couples year after year were Italian.
In ecclesiastical terms January 1965 was the fiftieth year of Cardinal Spell man's ordination to the priesthood. He was scheduled to give this sermon after a long and arduous tour of military bases in Vietnam, where he was following his customary practice of celebrating Christmas and New Year's with soldiers under his pastoral care. January 1965 was also the time of bitter controversy within the Church over contraception. The encyclical Humanae Vitae was still three years away. Pope Paul VI on June 23, 1964, had told the Catholic people of the world that traditional norms on contraception were still in force. He had returned to the subject again on October 19, 1964, to reaffirm those norms, had no doubt about them even though some Catholic theologians were beginning to say the opposite. Some European Catholic bishops during the Second Vatican Council were promoting a change in doctrine. These unorthodox Catholic views received wide coverage in the secular press. Catholics were becoming unsettled.
Rev. Msgr. George A. Kelly is director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Catholic Doctrine, St. John's University, New York, and author of a forthcoming book on the uncertainty within the Catholic Church.