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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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The romance recession cannot be accepted as an issue, because the only solution that comes to mind is rolling back of progress

Fifty seven years on, and Humanae vitae looks better and better. Everyone was expecting, especially in the wake of Vatican II, that finally, finally, the Catholics would get with modern times and accept birth control (after all, the Anglicans had given in on this as far back as 1930).

Instead, Paul VI went "nuh-uh", everyone was horribly disappointed, and the teaching of the Church remained unbroken. And now, all these decades past the Sexual Revolution, we're looking at the problem "but why is nobody dating? having sex? having babies? getting married? staying married? how did this happen after all the liberty and joy we were promised?"

Humanae vitae (Latin, meaning 'Of Human Life') is an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI and dated 25 July 1968. The text was issued at a Vatican press conference on 29 July. Subtitled On the Regulation of Birth, it re-affirmed the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding married love, responsible parenthood, and the rejection of artificial contraception. In formulating his teaching he explained why he did not accept the conclusions of the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control established by his predecessor, Pope John XXIII, a commission he himself had expanded.

Mainly because of its restatement of the Church's opposition to artificial contraception, the encyclical was politically controversial. It dogmaticized a conservative interpretation of traditional Church moral teaching on the sanctity of life in the context of human intervention in fertility and the procreative and unitive nature of Catholic conjugal relations.