[utahagen]

“...wasn’t the world [in 1968] excited at the prospect of the Church taking an enlightened view of contraception (the bishops were for it!) then, the pope issued Humana Vitae?”

Exactly what I have been thinking.

[Oratam]

I was a college freshman in a survey of Christianity course when the professor, fairly giddy, recalled those heady days. (As a visual aid, be aware that a classmate of mine said this professor reminded her of H.R. Puffenstuff.)

He was far from giddy when he described the disappointment he and his colleagues felt when the pope issued that famous encyclical.

I didn't have a D.D. from Yale or a Ph.D. from Brown (and still don't) but I knew better than this silly department head.

(To his credit, he knew the Soviet Union and its satellite states would fall. He credited the little "babushkas" with the keeping the light of faith burning.)