Released
in 1968, at the height of the hippie revolution with its optimistic
doctrines of “free love” and emancipation from tradition and authority,
Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae was widely dismissed as the proverbial killjoy at the greatest party the world had yet seen: the sexual revolution.
Blessed
Paul VI’s four “prophesies” about what would happen if contraception
became normalized – from an increase in marital infidelity to
totalitarian implementations of forced birth control by governments –
are certainly bleak. However, it is worth drawing attention to another
set of predictions contained in Humanae Vitae, ones that get far less attention than they deserve.
Speaking
of married couples who opt for self-control and periodic continence,
rather than contraception, in order to plan their family, the pope wrote
that . . .
