John Jansen, contributor to the Catholic Dads blog has a great post on this, the anniversary of the release of Humanae Vitae

I first read Humanae Vitae ten years ago, during my sophomore year in college. I was prompted to do so because at the time, I had issues with the Church’s teaching against contraception. I had always been strongly against abortion, but I also believed that birth control could be helpful to the pro-life movement’s goal of eradicating abortion.

(That, and I gullibly believed that “overpopulation” was a problem. Thanks be to God, I soon thereafter discovered that this hand-wringing, gloom-and-doom nonsense was just that. I also had yet to discover G. K. Chesterston, who, in characteristic wit, managed in one sentence to expose the insanity of the Chicken Littles who seriously believe that “overpopulation” is somehow causing the sky to fall: “The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him whether he is the surplus population, or if he is not, how he knows he is not.”)

Read the rest!