Why Humane Vitae is Still Right

After half a century, how has the teaching of Pope Paul VI on marriage and birth control, presented in his encyclical Humanae Vitae (On Human Life), held up? Very well, says philosopher Janet Smith and her colleagues in Why Humanae Vitae Is Still Right.  A sequel to Smith’s classic Why Humanae Vitae Was Right, this new volume shows how the ethical, theological, spiritual, and sociological case for Paul VI’s controversial document remains strong—indeed, how it’s in some ways even stronger today, following Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and in light of the problems caused by the sexual revolution.

In addition to essays by Dr. Smith herself, the book features contributions by other renowned experts and scholars such as Mary Eberstadt (author of the best-selling Adam and Eve after the Pill), Therese Scarpelli Corey, Michael Waldstein, Christopher West, Obianuju Ekeocha (author of the best-selling Target Africa), Maria Fedoryka, Deborah Savage, Derek Doroski, Angela LaFranchi, William Newton, Joseph Atkinson, Michele M. Schumacher, and Peter Colosi, among others.

Why Humanae Vitae Is Still Right includes the Krakow Document composed under the supervision of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla (later, Pope John Paul II), which provided research by moral theologians and other experts that helped to shape what became John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.