Papal guidance derided 40 years ago. Now we face a demographic winter

ON July 25, 1968 — 40 years ago yesterday — Pope Paul’s Humanae Vitae appeared amid howls of derision because the pill had freed everybody from ‘sexual slavery. Henceforth, sex could be made sterile.

Pope Paul refused to bend with the times, at which point all hell broke loose. He truly became the sign of contradiction. Since the 1960s revolution in ideas and behaviour, birth rates and marriage rates have tumbled in affluent Europe and North America, while divorce rates, cohabitation rates and the number of births outside marriage have climbed. A whole generation has grown up under divorce, widespread contraception, fatherless households, abortion on demand and all the other modern ‘emancipatory’ fallout. The breakdown of the family, even the consensus deficit about its very meaning, has had ripple effects on all social structures.

The affluent society that does not welcome babies — a burden, not a blessing — is going to have to learn to welcome immigrants to maintain its economic vigour and its commitment to the health and welfare of its aging population, and to fill the empty places left by the affluent “demographic winter” — a childless Europe.