Today is the 53rd anniversary of Humanae Vitae, the Church’s official response to the invention of the birth control pill. It gave a personalist touch to her constant unbroken 2000 yr. teaching on the moral status of contraception; which had been confirmed 38 yrs. earlier in Pius XI’s Casti Connubii.

It was the most important document of modern times because it had the potential to stave off the moral tsunami ‘the pill’ would unleash, of a revolution against God and human nature popularly called “the sexual revolution.” Because Humanae Vitae was largely ignored, this revolution inevitably evolved into a culture of death: causing massive death to preborn children by demanding legalized abortion; to the family by massive (no-fault) divorce, and to the nation and world by causing a serious depopulation implosion.

Contraception separates in people’s minds the morally inseparable link between sex and babies and between sex and marriage. Before ‘the pill’, marriage, sex and babies were understood to be three dimensions of one reality. In our contraception age they are seen instead as three separate realities with no essential linkage. This delinking inevitably created a premarital sex culture that would demand abortion, leading to one of three human beings God creates being murdered before birth. And of course this prenatal murder culture that cheapened human life would inspire a euthanasia movement, which will eventually became involuntary. De-linking sex from babies further led to the rationalization of sodomy and the marriage-mocking “same-sex marriage.”

As the Left continues to break down the family and the nation into a despotic existence by its hell-bent attempt to usurp power and replace God, we can all point to ‘the pill’ as the forbidden fruit of modern times that caused the death of the West, and just imagine what life would be like had the world listened to the Church and adhered to God’s law by heeding to the message of Humanae Vitae.