Humanae Vitae

So it’s the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, and the second most popular comment on conservative blogs after “All its predictions were right” is “Paul VI picked the worst possible time to publish it.” I don’t get it. Yes, the sexual revolution was just finding its legs, but doesn’t that make it an especially GOOD time to preach chastity? He couldn’t have done it much earlier; the pill had been widely available for less than a decade, and he himself had just entered the sixth year of his reign. He certainly couldn’t have put it off. That would have resulted in widespread use of contraception even by well-intentioned Catholics, out of simple lack of direction. And the thing about the faithful being confused by Vatican II doesn’t cut it either. Certainly, there were some who thought that the council had done away with Magisterial authority, but that means it was time to publish a corrective. Unequivocally setting out the Church’s immutable stance on a hotly disputed moral question, Humanae Vitae was just that. Forty years after its promulgation, we should recognize it for what it was: a deeply prophetic work, issued exactly when it was needed. After all, if a Pope isn’t a sign of contradiction, he isn’t doing his job.