By John Norton

Looking back at a troubled period in the Church

"There is no doubt that to many, [the Church's prohibition on contraception] will appear not merely difficult but even impossible to observe."

So acknowledged Pope Paul VI four decades ago in his pivotal encyclical Humanae Vitae ("Of Human Life"), regarding marital love and regulating births.

And he found to his dismay, it was also a teaching that many found impossible to accept. (Which may explain why Pope Paul did not write another encyclical in the final 10 years before he died.)

Part of the problem was that many Catholics had already made up their minds, or assumed that the outcome of Pope Paul's deliberations would be that the Church would bless the Pill, chemical contraception, because it did not involve any physical barriers between the spouses in conjugal relations. After all, the pope's own commission had recommended as much. Unfortunately, after the commission's report was leaked to the public, 15 months passed before Humanae Vitae and its contrary position was published.

Another factor was the chaos caused by the rapid, organized dissent of some of the Church's prominent U.S. theologians. As most Catholics were first hearing about the pope's document, they were also hearing that scores of theologians -- while pledging fidelity to the Church's teaching authority in general -- were casting doubt on how binding the document really was. And similar statements were coming from some prelates, including even a cardinal in Europe who warned of the danger of a "second Galileo affair," referring to the 17th-century Church's initial unwillingness to accept new astronomical findings.

What confusion. Even Our Sunday Visitor seemed caught up in it. This week I went back and read through a number of old OSV issues from 1968. In July that year, my predecessor printed the entire text of Humanae Vitae, and then over the next several months published competing commentaries as if we were a little unsure what our editorial line ought to be.

We did make repeated pleas for charity and unity. We predicted, accurately, that divisions over the encyclical had the potential to develop lasting poles in the Church.

In an OSV column that September, Russell Shaw, who is now an OSV contributing editor, made an urgent appeal for immediate educational efforts so that the encyclical had a chance of being accepted and implemented. He noted the only reason most Catholics probably had been able to give to why contraception is wrong is "because the Church says it's so."

By 1968, that was no longer a good enough reason. And it certainly won't fly with our contemporaries.

We need those educational efforts today, too.