The relentless daily toll of death and disorientation is given somber recognition by life in an inner-city rectory. These assaults of a violent time afflict the human spirit to the breaking point, making despair, suicide, and depression all too familiar intrusions into the sturdiest and most devout household. There will be no radical change in the culture of death until the teaching of Humanae Vitae is accepted and proclaimed. Couples of every race, culture and ethnic subdivision have grown accustomed to the pill. Children are perceived, subliminally and even explicitly, as a threat to well-being.
Easy contraception means easy grace.
Not until daily pastoral practice in every Catholic parish identifies the sterility of contraception with the afflictions of the family can the Church serve as an effective witness to racial reconciliation and renewal. Janet Smith and others have studied theological argumentation in Humanae Vitae and the decades that have followed that prophetic document. I was somewhat surprised to discover that their chastity-based program totally rejects contraceptives. Once again, the interaction of grassroots activism and authentic ecumenism struck me as more than the working of human imagination. The secular incredulity that greets the Catholic perspective on contraception shows the distance that must be traveled between principle and practice, black and white, life and death.