No social effect of this teaching concerning the evil of contraception is deemed worthy of consideration. The need for population control has not yet entered Catholic hierarchical consciousness. Collegiality says we must listen to and learn from each other and that authority is best exercised when it emerges from consultation. Neither Pope nor hierarchy care how many marriages Catholic teaching on birth control has wrecked. They have not asked, nor do they care to listen.
Hierarchy are absolutely certain they are right.
Therefore the encyclical is also a calamity for the vitality of the church. Veritatis Splendor undermines the very authority it hopes to enhance. When consultation of those most intimately affected is shunned, when the result of the teaching is to place a heavy burden upon multitudes, when discussion is forbidden, when no basis for the teaching or for this kind of authority can be found in scripture, when the proclaimer insists upon his divine right to do all of this, and when the effect of this teaching on population and poverty is ignored, then respect for the proclaimer, his sources and his pulpit is not only diminished but perhaps even forfeited. The Pope has asked for blind obedience to his view of sexual ethics, while totally neglecting the experience and wisdom of those laity who alone have the grace of marriage to live lovingly and sexually. There is no basis in the New or Old Testament for declaring contraception intrinsically evil.