At Apostles for Life Retreat on 27 September 2003

Dr Deirdre Little, MBBS DRANZCOG FACRRM

Shared on a personal, a spiritual and a professional level her wealth of experience and insights into

Humanae Vitae……………35 years on

We thank Deirdre most sincerely yet again for the generous, sincere and inspirational contribution to the educational work of Apostles for Life and allowing us to print her talk.

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The Chronicle of the 2Oth Century makes only brief reference to the new papal letter HUMANAE VITAE (of Human Life). Other areas of human life are taking the headlines. In these weeks:

• “The Age” reports “The Invasion of Czechoslovakia” - thousands of soviet troops, fighting to turn the Prague Spring of Freedom into a Moscow Winter of Oppression. And while Czech citizens climb onto Soviet tanks to argue with the men inside, Soviet Newsagency Tass reports “Czechs are showing gratitude for the timely arrival of Soviet Troops.”

• Print media in USA and Britain are pre-occupied with the opening of the Love Rock Musical, “Hair”, a celebration - the papers of the day tell us - of free for all sex, hashish, and hatred of authority

• All the while in Russia, home typewriters punch out secret copies of Solzhenitsyn’s novels. Banned in the Soviet Union, they are smuggled out for the world to read.

Into this time of human history, this point of civilization, and among these pictures of humanity, comes another image of man, Humanae Vitae, to remind us in Whose image and likeness we are made. As Pope Paul VI says, this letter responds to the recent evolution of society, and to the new world questions, which we cannot ignore:

• the manner of considering the person of woman

• the altered value given to conjugal love in marriage

• Man’s domination of natural forces and of his own total being

To these questions A REPLY HAD COME

- not just the reply of Paul VI - Giovanni Battista Montini

- certainly not the reply of the pontifical commission

- from the very pillar and household of faith (Tim 3:15)

- from the Church which Jesus had said He would build on Peter,

came the reply of the Author of Life.

The Answer? One must recognize insurmountable limits; respect, integrity and dignity require limits, and as Paul VI says ...this reply was not given just to the faithful, but was the response of the Vicar of Christ to world opinion. The same week, dwarfed by the “POPE BANS PILL” cry, archaeologists report that the bones found in the crypt of St Peter’s, deep beneath the altar, are those of St. Peter himself. This news was ignored. Except perhaps by those who remembered that in the 12th Century, the bones of King David had been rediscovered deep beneath the site of the upper room, where the Altar of the Last Supper had once stood, and the New Covenant began.

The protection of full human life and dignity is far more than “POPE BANS PILL”. Humanae Vitae lights the way of the Natural Law when other lights have dimmed or drowned. A sign of contradiction among 20th century signs, it offered us hope. Though counter-cultural and unpopular, criticized and overlooked, we will see its sign in the 21st century and beyond.

It has been said that most people these days have never heard a decent argument against contraception. Thirty-five years on, most Catholics have never heard a decent argument supporting Humanae Vitae.

I was 13 years old when Pope Paul VI, inspired by the Holy Spirit, issued the teaching Humanae Vitae (of Human Life) celebrated on 25 July last. My memories of that time are memories of the controversy - the headlines and the discussions. At the end of the following year, 1969, in the convent school that I attended, and in many other Catholic schools in the western world, formal religious education virtually ceased. It was replaced with debate-style classroom discussions on social issues, the opinion of dominant personalities uppermost. Names like Athanatius and Aquinas were not heard again. Instead of the teachings of the Church, we discussed the lyrics of Bob Dylan, Lennon-McCartney and Mick Jagger. And so it happened that, in the late 60’s and early 70’s, in a school (such as mine was) of the Dominican order, whose founder had placed great emphasis on scholarship and theological formation, the great minds of Holy Mother Church, and her own teaching treasure-house remained on the shelf. The sleeves of L.P. records had replaced them. Influential personalities became the new educators.

In 1972, 6th form (year 12) at Santa Sabina College, whose red brick cloisters were immortalized in the TV mini-series “Brides of Christ”, was presented with a summarized version of “Humanae Vitae” - together with the advice that this was a matter for our individual consciences to decide. There was no specific teaching on the content of the letter, on its spirituality or its beauty. Its wisdom was not revealed. Its inspiration - the Holy Spirit - was not acknowledged. This response was mirrored in Catholic Education facilities all over the country. The impression most of us retained was that this teaching was, in some peculiar way, far removed from Australia, an impediment, perhaps a thorn, in a really happy marriage. It was a “Vatican thing”, we thought, (knowing nothing of the concept of the Magisterium) deriving from the bureaucracy of the Church. Although most of us came from Catholic families, their influence was somehow dwarfed by a strange new convergence of the secular mores of the time, with the forces at work within Catholic Secondary Education. This alliance, this unfortunate congruence, I have chosen to mention because it is a major factor that has influenced the receptivity of two and possibly even a third generation of Catholics to Church teaching. And not just to Humanae Vitae.

There has always been dissent, and there will be until Christ comes again, but whether young people and married couples have learned affection or disdain for Church teaching is a matter of concern to us and to them. The decisions they make at this time of their lives, and in this context, will affect their future happiness. It may affect their children’s happiness. The future well-being of the family, the legacy we bequeath to future generations, will depend on whether we, in the time that is given us, respond with love, disregard or contempt to the breath of the Holy Spirit.

What grounds do we have for making these sweeping statements?

Some 15 years ago - 1988 - I decided to stop prescribing the pill and other contraceptives. The situation was a 15-year-old girl and her mother, together in my surgery, requesting the pill. The young girl had a boyfriend. This was the next step for her. I tried human reasoning to slow down these steps - “consequences”, “side effects” - but don’t know if I succeeded because I never saw her again. She would be 30 now. In the end, I probably gave her that script. I may not have had much impact on her but she certainly changed me. It was after that, that I tracked down a copy of Humanae Vitae and read it fully for the first time.

Various elements came together. Clinical observations I had made began to link up. Statistics came to life. For example: It became easier to understand why so many adolescents become depressed at what should be a happy and precious time in their lives. Some obsessions, and even stalkings, began to add up. I had long noticed from my medical practice that the frequency of intercourse decreased in marriages after sterilization. A pattern evident within 4 to 5 years, and cracks then start to show up in a lot of these marriages. Not only are some of these marriages gradually released from sex but, as Archbishop Hickey put it recently, their sexual union is released from their marriage. Not only is marital trust undermined by mutual knowledge that self may have been placed first, but God’s own plan that “two become one flesh” has been negated. For contracepting couples, their union has been compromised, and suffers the intrusion of third parties, i.e. pharmaceutical companies, devices etc.

“The Record” in Perth recently quoted Prof Christopher West who claimed that Catholics who use contraception have about the same divorce rate as the rest of the community while those Catholics who use Natural Family Planning have a divorce rate that is practically non-existent. But most Catholics trundle along, oblivious to this, following the trail of modern man.

The Story of Balaam and his Donkey

Cardinal Oddi, in a talk to catechists as Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, likened this habit we have to the story of Balaam and his donkey. The story is in the Book of Numbers, Chapter 22:

Balaam was a type of medicine man, and he used to sell his services to curse or bless people according as he was hired. So the people of Moab hired Balaam to curse the Israelites with whom they were at war. Balaam set out on his donkey, to curse the Israelites, but he had not traveled very far when the donkey refused to go any further. Balaam could not figure out why the donkey would not advance. But the donkey knew why. An angel of God was standing in the middle of the road with a drawn sword in his hand. The donkey turned off the road into the open country. Balaam then struck the donkey to turn her back onto the road. But the angel kept reappearing. Balaam couldn’t see the angel, and he beat the donkey to move. The donkey decided that it was better to take a beating than to cross the angel, so she refused to advance. Balaam beat him more.

Finally, the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth to speak to Balaam: “Am I not your donkey? And have I not been your mount all your life? Have I not been trustworthy?” And Balaam too, was allowed to see the angel. “And he bowed his head,” we are told, “and threw himself on his face.”

We may all have something to learn from that donkey, which is so obstinately unwilling to carry Balaam along a path which God has blocked. We need to keep our eye on His Angel, made known to us through the Church and our Pope - and help others to recognize its presence. If we speak up and describe what we see - the beauty, the eternal wisdom, the grace and strength and protection of Humanae Vitae, it may begin to take shape in the mind’s eye of other people.

Cutting loose from the contraceptive undertow is helped by seeing:

• the moral and social contradictions of contraception

• the hand of God offering the grace of the sheltering Sacrament of Marriage. ready to help us break free of the bondage of the contraceptive culture.

• the word and mind of God in the teachings of the Church.

We don’t need to be abject, apologetic, too retiring about this or whingeing. This is our Catholic heritage. We have the truth. We have the promise: “Behold I am with you all through the days that are coming even to the end of the world” and the injunction to Peter: “Feed my lambs; feed my sheep.” We have the rock, and it won’t be intimidated by the gates of hell. It won’t change its mind because it reflects God’s mind. It wasn’t founded by some mere person, or built on a disagreement around some splinter group. His promise was sound, and has stood firm.

For Catholics, we have the Bible within the Church and this is scriptural: The Church is, and should be, according to the Bible, the pillar and household of faith (1 Tim 3:15). The Church set the Bible; the Church discerned which books were, and were not, the inspired word of God. The Bible is accepted from Her Hand. Which Church? Our Church, the Church founded on Peter, and in the hands of the direct successor at the time.

“Over the Bible stands the Church.” The Church and the Book always say the same thing.

According to Protestant faith, over the Church stands the Book, but individuals may interpret the Book how they like - and arrive at opposite conclusions; and so you have conflicting views of equal status, and hence division and re-division, reformists and re-reformists, and a thousand splinter churches, and somehow that lack of confidence in leadership. That do-it-yourself style of church has affected us.

Why am I mentioning this? Up until 1930, all Christian churches taught that contraception was wrong. In that year the Anglican Church broke with Christian tradition, and changed their teaching - a complete turn-about. On the last day of 1930, Pius XI restated the Catholic teaching always held. No equivocation, no about-face, and the encyclical “Casti Connubii” was released.

“In view of our office, we are not free to dissemble or to keep silent...(had said Pope St. Siricius in 385 AD) ...the Church is divine in institution, and the Holy Spirit dwells in her,” and through the same office PiusXI could write in Casti Connubii (and in very strong language): “Since, therefore, openly departing from uninterrupted Christian tradition, some recently have judged it possible solemnly to declare another doctrine regarding this question, the Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, RAISES HER VOICE in token of her divine ambassadorship, and through our mouth proclaims anew: any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offence against the law of god and of nature, and those who indulge in such, are branded with the guilt of a grave sin....”

The novelist Evelyn Waugh once said, “The Church has vast boundaries to defend and each

generation finds itself called to service on a different front.” Pope Pius XI marshalled His words. He warned that worse was to come, and 35 years after the release of Humanae Vitae, the boundaries we are called to defend are those placed around life itself: married life, family life, and tiny human life - assailed from without, attacked from within; where this boundary is breached men develop cold hearts and cold reason. We forget who we are, how we have come to be, and why we are.

Pius XI said, “Men are begotten not for the earth and for time, but for heaven and eternity.” He cared deeply, desperately, about the loss of grace. In defending the boundary placed around marriage, Humanae Vitae is not only defending the life it promises, and the lives it contains, it is defending the veil, the canopy of grace which shields and strengthens a marriage. The effect of the loss of grace on Marriage is an unseen peril of our times. We can’t see grace; we no longer talk about it. When did any of us last hear a sermon on grace? Yet both teachings on marriage took great pains to point it out.

There were more rousing words from Pius XI as the threat he saw to human well-being needed more than a caution or a subtle damping down: “as history testifies, the prosperity of the state…… and the temporal happiness of its citizens cannot remain safe and sound, where the foundation on which they are established, the moral order, is weakened …… and the very fountainhead from which the state draws its life - wedlock and the family - is obstructed.” It’s strong language, it’s 30’s language, and it might seem out of place today when we approve of our consciences approving everything - but time itself is the witness and proof Pope Pius XI calls on. There’s a current Powderfinger song that says, “Modern man absolves himself.”

Pius XI’s projection is raised again by Paul VI. In Humanae Vitae he invites us to “care to reflect” on the consequences of artificial birth control. He speaks of the “wide and easy road” opened up and its direction towards marital infidelity “and the general lowering of morality.” How can this be? How will this come about? Modern man of the late 20th century asked lots of questions, challenged for proofs. Today also. Casti Connubii didn’t need restating. The time-honoured teaching of the Church - at one time of all the churches - was clear. God could have just said, “This is so. So be it”, and ignored the temperament of modern man. But He did not. The Holy Spirit is in the Church and the Holy Spirit gave more explanation, said how these things would come about.

Humanae Vitae is a document of love and concern

- a gentle but firm teaching of reasons, explanations and encouragement. Like a parent pointing out why we cross busy streets at the lights, and with the lights, Humanae Vitae is a method for security and happiness.

In section 17 of Humanae Vitae “Upright men (people seeking truth) can better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the church is based if they care to reflect on” and gives us other aspects, more explanation. People, especially youth, need encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, rather than offering them an easy means to elude its observance.

Then, still in section 17, Humanae Vitae warns of the possibility that a husband may become so used to contraceptive practices that he no longer cares so much for his wife’s physical and psychological equilibrium. He may come to take her for granted and no longer consider her with so much respect as his beloved companion.

The Holy Spirit has appealed to our powers of reasoning, to our understanding of human psychology.

Next, the Holy Spirit alerts us to our knowledge of history. It warns us that contraception could become a government tool favoured, or worse still imposed, for whatever reason. Some people may be favoured, “community problems” solved, by eugenics. It had happened before. (We remember it happened 25 years before Humanae Vitae and in a Christian country). Those who don’t go along with the recommendations of public authorities may be persecuted, or faced with the consequences of social disadvantage; others may succumb to government pressure, handing over to them this area of their lives, i.e. we may abdicate responsibility.

And finally, the Spirit reminds us that the generation of new life is of the sacred. There are

insurmountable limits here and they’re not defined by us. If we cross these limits we’ve broken in, trespassing where we should not have ventured, damaging the works of art which Someone Else has created - cold and dead to the wonder and awe in God’s Presence.

Re-reading this section of Humanae Vitae where God, through the Church, remonstrates with us - laying out the human and societal consequences of contraception, we realize two things: all those consequences have happened, some more than others, some horrendously. To avoid each prediction, the Holy Spirit is encouraging us in the Gifts of our Confirmation to see the truth:

• Wisdom: recognize the wide-easy-road syndrome, which goes hand-in-hand with the end-

justifies-the-means ethic.

• Understanding: see how this can undermine your marriage and damage your relationship

when you take each other for granted.

• Right Judgement: choose, discerns how lack of restraint of one partner for the other may

disturb an individual’s physical and psychological equilibrium.

• Courage: Be “upright men”. Look at the solid grounds the Church has; make up your own mind, then EN-COURAGE faithfulness to the moral law.

• Knowledge: Our intellect is blest with the ability to know and to learn. Look into history if you’ve forgotten the evil we’re capable of.

• Reverence: Don’t trample on the sacred. This place where you would stand is Holy Ground

Take off your shoes, nothing profane here.

• Wonder and awe in God’s Presence: Once Fear of the Lord - there are limits. “Here I am. Come no nearer,” He had said to Moses, and Moses covered his face before the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.

Obedience, too, is asked of us. Don’t take your souls, minds and bodies to that place. Leave your devices and hormone pills out of your bodies and out of your marriages. The consequences of not seeking this truth with an upright heart, of not “reflecting well” are no longer predictions but statistics.

The sociological developments have been widely documented, all in one generation 40 - 50 years:

• cohabitation prior to marriage;

• marriage failure, especially in that group which chose to cohabit before marriage;

• abortion rate increased exponentially since mid 70’s;

• teenage pregnancy rate of 7.5/1000 in 1979 rose to 62.3/1000 in 1997;

• infertility rate is climbing;

• increased rates of physically abused children;

• increased evidence of sexually abused children;

• youth suicide increasing;

• depression - plethora of anti-depressants on the market - they are useful and necessary; I’m not knocking them, but we have a societal problem here;

• China’s one-child policy;

• Nelson Mandela imprisoned doctors who won’t implement family planning policies like termination of pregnancy.

The fact that the Pope predicted serious disintegration in these areas does not prove that the pill and other artificial birth controls are the culprits. But who’s ever seen a study on it?

I know from 25 years clinical experience that when a couple request sterilization, serious problems will likely start to show in that marriage in about 4 to 5 years. I know from observed experience over those 25 years that when a woman goes on the pill her joie de vivre, and particularly her interest in her husband, her libido, will start to approximate the flatness of her hormone levels. Yet, it is known that marriage failure rates in couples using natural family planning is exceedingly small - vastly below that of the rest of the population. And there are some wildcards. Sperm counts all over the western world are dropping - in one generation. Why? No one knows - but it’s interesting.

Little wonder Paul VI got it right, when every other Church got it wrong, when we consider Who his Chief Advisor was. But there is one particular prediction of the Church - 35 years later - that I would rather spend time with this morning: that the physical equilibrium of the woman would no longer be cared for, once anticeptive practices were grown used to.

I hope I don’t offend anyone here when I draw attention to the fact that even Seventh Day Adventists who pride themselves on attending to physical well-being (since our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit) have no teaching on artificial birth control. I was invited to talk at a workshop in their Australasian Conference last year - and a quick hands-up showed they mostly had hormone chips implanted. This prediction of the Church that a woman’s well-being would be subordinated to the process of contraception in an anticeptive culture has been well proven in medical studies. And I will look at some of these now in relation to the Pill, Implanon or the Barrier method.

The Pill

• 20 years after the pill was released one large study (Vessey 1983) compared 6,800 women who had given birth and were now on the pill, with 3,154 who had given birth and were now using another form of contraceptive (IUD). The overall incidence of cervical cancer was 75% higher in the pill group.

• Lancet 1988 reported a study of 47,000 women, which looked at their cervical cancer rates. The researchers found that after more than 10 years of usage of the pill the incidence of cancer of the cervix is more than 4 times that in “never users”.

• In 1992, the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology published a 10-year study of 6,600 women on the pill, removing confounding factors, proved early cervical cell changes (which were potentially pre-cancerous) are increased on Oral Contraceptive pill usage.

• A study, published in the Lancet in 1994, suggested that one form of cancer of the cervix, adenocarcinoma, was increased nearly two-fold in women who had only used the pill for 1-6 months. Overall ever-users of the pill are 30% more likely to develop cancer of the cervix than those who had never used the pill. The oral contraceptive pill interacts with Human Papilloma virus and the immune-controlled repair mechanism is inhibited.

The next point is one dear to my heart because I’ve seen it so tragically –

Early age pill use and breast cancer.

(With thanks to John Wilks B.Pharm. M.P.S. for kind permission to use this graph, from figures presented in “Contraception” 1993, P.244 Buston and Coker.)

In the Journal of National Cancer Institute 1989, it stated “..for women starting oral contraceptive use before 20 years of age there is a 480% higher risk of contracting breast cancer compared to never-users.

Those most at risk are the long-term pill users who started at a young age, and have delayed their childbearing. They tend to have larger tumours which grow 2 x times faster, the worst prognosis. Those studies which don’t show a link between the pill and breast cancer are those not collecting and analysing age-specific data. Yet we’ve known for at least six years that we need to. The blind spot! Physical equilbrium is compromised grossly. Universities, the pharmaceutical industry, researchers, Family Planning Associations, major Churches, Health Care providers accept it, hiding behind those studies which were blind in their initial design. Just as Paul VI predicted - we have grown used to it! We’ve stopped questioning it! We’re indifferent!

Implanon

The latest word - “Etonogestrel”: 3 years in situ of a 40mm rod. 47% of users had a drug related adverse event such as acne, weight gain, breast pain, decreased libido, depression, 17% bleeding irregularities, 7% headache. Ovulation begins again at 30 months, so it may well have an abortifacient action in those last 6 months of use. No pregnancies in 53,000 women. It was trialled in 3th world countries. Why? - No litigation there. 3 years of symptoms! A well person made unwell deliberately! Is this marital love? Is it really caring or real indifference? We’ll have to wait to see what else lies in store for Implanon rods when, and if, the studies are done, and if they haven’t fallen out on the carpet.

Barrier Methods.

In the Journal of the American Medical Association 1989, it was reported that women who use Barrier Methods up to 1 month before conception have 2-4 times greater risk of developing pre-eclampsia.

Barrier methods prevent uterine exposure to sperm and seminal fluid. This prevents the female immune system from developing tolerance to male sperm antigens. The female immune system initially regards the husband’s sperm as “foreign” and so best chewed up. This reaction gradually subsides. But if Barrier methods have been used up to the time when she falls pregnant her body may mount an immune response to the invading placenta which originates from the conceptus (it’s 1/2 male) leading to pre- eclamptic toxaemia (high blood pressure during pregnancy) and perhaps early onset of labour.

This was published in 1989 in a leading world medical journal JAMA and who’s ever heard of it? Its not complicated. Preventative medicine is all the rage, but only if were talking about cholesterol. Condoms have been marketed and advertised to death in the last 10 years. Knowledge, reason and right judgement are gone. We’ve become used to wearing the blindfold. We don’t look at the facts! We don’t ask the questions! We don’t care!

We may or may not see a medical turn-around on these issues. Whether we do or not, we have a truth given us many times, and 35 years ago in the language of modern man. Under that truth, there is blessing on our marriages, a protection from certain physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual ills, and there is shelter from the mindset of contraception: the hormone pills with the morning muesli, the devices and the surgical destruction, the Implanon rods - dead effective.

Humanae Vitae re-unites men and women with their dignity, and with each other - with their wholeness. Yet it is this teaching which comes under so much fire as being out of touch, lacking compassion, not pastoral. Dr William E May, an ethicist in the US - a moral theologian - reminds us that the slogan of contraception and abortion is “No unwanted child ought ever to be born”, while the teaching of the Church is “no person ought to be unwanted.” Vastly different! Such a difference exists between contraception and natural family planning. The former is anti-procreative - not open to children. As Paul VI said, contracepting couples “mean to make sure” none will be born.

My first child was born on the l5th anniversary of Humanae Vitae. I see that now as a little touch from God. I was actually at an obstetric conference when I went into labour, but didn’t know then how much of my work in the future would be bound up with this teaching.

Shortly after that 15th Anniversary in 1983 John Paul II said, “Contraception is to be judged so profoundly unlawful as never to be for any reason justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognise God as God.”

To avoid procreation by use of “natural dispositions” does not impede natural processes or harm them. It is not a defiant “NO!” and it keeps truth and commitment in the marital embrace. Abstinence itself can become a sign and expression of caring for the well-being of each other, for their equilibrium, which the contracepting society has jettisoned. Vows at the altar, fidelity, permanence, and openness to children have been bled from marriages.

And as in the last 35 years, while the pillar and household of Faith has been busy, so has the Father of Lies: spreading the myth that the Catholic Church teaches that couples must have as many children as physically possible. Like his line from the garden: “Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” Of course not! The Church recognises the just need to avoid pregnancy.

Through the Church’s encouragement, the Billings Method has developed in Australia - and has since spread all over the world. It is one of two approved methods for use in China - 99% method-effectiveness in the latest WHO study of over 20,000 women. Users are free to apply the method or not on any given day. But those are the figures. In this area too, the Father of Lies has been active.

Where to in the future?

In more recent years the “Theology of the Body” has captured people’s hearts and idealism. It speaks of the nuptial significance of the body - sexuality as God intended it. The Catholic Record in Perth recently referred to it as a sexual counter-revolution. Just as God’s love is free, total, unconditional, faithful and fruitful, human love - with God’s grace - can approach this. Married love can reflect it - if we call on God’s grace and open ourselves to it. I think it was Pius XI who said, that unless we do this, the “grace of matrimony will remain, for the most part, an unused talent hidden in the field.” John Paul II is urging us to call on that grace, to remember who we were created to be, right back in the beginning. When we have found the truer meaning of our sexuality, we will become “gift” for our spouses, and cease to “grasp” (to quote Timothy West from Naked Without Shame).

We may well be beaten for seeing that Angel across our path, and for promoting its discovery, but as Pope Paul VI said, “Let us persevere.” Rather than “run the Angel”, or be discouraged, our response could be to encourage - to open our mouths, explain, describe, begin a discourse - to have the words, and give other people the words, that could unveil the Angel, not just for those who have never seen it, but also for those who have forgotten what it looks like, and for all those taught that the Angel doesn’t really exist. We could help others see God’s plan and hear it and believe in it. The Vatican Secretary of State issued a letter which found its way to “The Times” on September 4 1968, encouraging the faithful - that’s us - to be “apostles of the teaching of Holy Mother Church and be able to find the convincing language which will ensure its acceptance.”

We can all help bring Humanae Vitae off the shelf, out of disdain, and out of the too-hard-basket, restore grace to our marriages, and restore marriage to our families.

I would like very much to thank John Wilks B.Pharm. M.P.S. for his meticulously thorough collection of references to medical research in this field , in A Consumer’s Guide to the Pill and Other Drugs

Bibliography

1. Chronicle of the 20th Century, coordinated by Jacques Legrand

2. The Papal Encyclicals in their Historical Context, edited by Anne Freemantle, with quotations by Gustav Weigel S.J.

3. Collation of Medical References from John Wilks: A Consumer’s Guide to the Pill and Other Drugs