2018 happens to be the 50th anniversary of the publication of Pope Paul VI’s papal encyclical Humanae Vitae on 29 July 1968. This significant milestone has been somewhat disregarded because of more pressing news in the Church this year. Yet its importance remains. Indeed, some theologians have linked the widespread rebellion against the Church’s ban on artificial contraception in Humanae Vitae to all the later troubles the Church has subsequently endured.
As a way of properly commemorating the 50th anniversary, the Hildebrand Project has reissued a slim book of barely 100 pages, written by the theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand in 1968, only a few months after the publication of the encyclical itself. Titled The Encyclical Humanae Vitae: A Sign of Contradiction, and with a new foreword by Catholic scholar Professor Tracey Rowland, it is a highly courageous book to have brought out in the aftermath of Pope Paul’s own reaffirmation of the Church’s constant teaching, but a very necessary one.
