40 years

A prophet is not respected in his own
Country and when it came to Pope Paul VI, a prophet is not much
respected in his own Church.  Today is the 40th anniversary of
Humanae Vitae and sadly every prediction that Pope Paul VI made have
come true. We hear so many people today who say they have a prophetic
voice and they are almost always the same ones who have ignored the
prophetic voice of the Church.  The real prophets always
preached a message that was out-of-touch with the society, which was
why they had to preach it in the first place.  An easy general
test for false prophets is if you do not have to change anything to
conform to their message then they are a false prophet.  The
false prophets of today have the same message that the false prophets
in Ahab’s day did, that is to tell him “everything is going fine.”
 The false prophets of today see the breakdown of
marriage, family, and the treatment of women and then demand
that have more of the same that lead to the problems in the first
place.  The hubris of false prophets prevents them from being
embarrased that all the predictions they made on wide availibility of
contraception were not only incorrect, but exactly contrary to what
they said.  Every child a wanted child has turned into every
child is wanted by an abortionist.

Mary Eberstadt has written a great essay
in First Things the Vindication of Humanae Vitae which
goes through the predictions and concequences and uses secular sources
to back this up.  A real worthwhile read.

Marcel LeJeune has commented on the above
article with some good commenary.

In addition Joseph Bottum adds his own thoughts.