The Archives

Newsweek reported that Dr. John Rock, a Catholic, had developed a new form of birth control: a pill that did not harm the woman taking it. He hoped this would make it morally-acceptable to the Church. Newsweek wrote, “Not since the Copernicans suggested in the sixteenth century that the sun was the center of the planetary system has the Roman Catholic Church found itself on such a perilous collision with a new body of knowledge.” However, the Catholic Church is to this day governed by Pope Paul VI’S 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae prohibiting the use of artificial contraception.