WASHINGTON-Forty years ago, the Vatican slammed the door on the hopes of the vast majority of Catholics and confirmed a complete prohibition on modern methods of contraception. Today, the rupture that Humanae Vitae caused between the Vatican and lay Catholics remains unhealed. That papal encyclical, which enshrined the teaching against contraception, radically altered my church, with the vast majority of Catholics now ignoring it. The hierarchy is now forced to defend a teaching that was judged indefensible then and has only become more so with the arrival of new issues, such as preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS.

(Jon O’Brien is president of Catholics for Choice.)