I am a bit surprised that John Allen's Sunday Times op-ed has not yet occasioned comment at dotCom. I found it disappointing and, at points, quite strange--I'll try to say more about why later. In the meantime, pop over to Pontifications for David Gibson's astute analysis:

The principal comment on the anniversary came in an op-ed by John Allen, National Catholic Reporter's Vatican expert, and one of the keenest and best-informed expositors of the Vatican's positions. One disagrees with John at one's peril, but in his column, "The Pope vs. the Pill," I see several problems.One is that John recounts predictions that the teaching would "collapse under its own weight," and "might well bring the "monarchical papacy" down with it. "Those forecasts," he says, "badly underestimated the capacity of the Catholic Church to resist change and to stand its ground." Yet the teaching has collapsed, one could argue, given some estimates that just 4 percent of even observant Catholic couples of child-bearing age follow the teaching.Moreover, John tends to identify the Church with the Pope and the Vatican; the Vatican has held out against changes it said were "eternal" for much longer than 40 years, only to develop those teachings as Roman views caught up with the rest of the "Church."Also, blaming a rejection of Humanae Vitae for the demographic crisis in Euope and parts of the West is akin to blaming the promotion of Humanae Vitae for AIDS and overpopulation elsewhere. It doesn't wash.

Read the rest right here. For more on the issue of European birthrates and Catholicism, check out Daniel Callahan's 2005 Commonweal article, "Depopulation Bomb" (subscribers only).

Grant Gallicho joined Commonweal as an intern and was an associate editor for the magazine until 2015. 

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