No Humane Vihtae

WI either Paul VI took the advice of his advisors, or a more progressive guy got to be elected Pope or maybe John XXIII lived longer.

How much difference would it make to society in Latin American, North America and Europe?
 
What happens instead?

I doubt John XXIII would have allowed birth control, BTW. But the real question is, will we see a different decision, if so, what kind of decision (e.g. the Vatican make distinctions between types of contraception or not), or just no decision (most of the time popes try not to touch difficult issues unless they have to).

I doubt it would make a big difference in sexual mores. The fact is that millions of Catholics today love the Church and refuse to listen to a word it says on sex. The transition would be easier, with a couiple (million) fewer unhappy marriages, ruined healthy and guilt-racked young people, but in the big picture of history that doesn't tend to matter.

It would make the campaign against AIDS much, much, much easier. These things are hard to quantify, but a few hundred thousand fewer deaths in Africa and Latin America are not too improbable without people being told that the virus slips through nonexistent pores in condoms or that they're going to hell if they listen to health workers.

The biggest change could well come in terms of the political and social influence of the Catholic Church. With Humanae Vitae, the unerring Catholic instinct to identify the tide of history and staunchly oppose it once again came to the fore. At a time when, conditioned by the horrors of WWII and the high tide of Christian democracy (before it became a trademark only), its credibility was at an all-time high, Paul gave the church its Prohibition moment. From Humanae Vitae onwards, people all over the Western world (and soon enough the developing world) would associate Catholic teaching with 'banning the pill' and assume it could be safely disregarded (at every Catholic youth gathering today, the waste includes thousands of used condoms - which is rather like finding empty whisky bottles in the wastebasket after Milli Görüs retreats).

Imagine a world where the Catholic Church retains a concrete political authority among the faithful similar to that enjoyed by the Moral Majority. A world where Conservative politicians didn't enjoy the luxury of assuming that whenever the pope disagreed with them, they could safely ignore it because everyone does. A world where Catholic criticism of capitalist economics *matters* to the minds of millions.

Things Get Interesting.
 
Good thread. Humanae Vitae [HV] is a very complex document, and there are many ways a no-HV Catholicism would pan out.

There are a lot of subtexts to HV. I'm certain Pope Paul knew that the liberalization of contraception use would lead to the Church's tacit acceptance of homosexuality. Think about it -- what's the ultimate difference between sterilized heterosexuality and homosexual sex? Nothing -- both disjunct procreation from sexual expression. Many conservative Catholics blame the rejection of HV on society's growing acceptance of gay people, same-sex unions etc. In their view, pretty much every aspect of the "sexual revolution" can be blamed on the separation of procreation and sex. I think that the 60's merely opened discussion on sexuality, and did not "invent" pre-marital sex, contraception, abortion, divorce, gay sex et al. It's just that society refused to tackle these questions head-on until relatively recently.

I wonder how a loosening of restrictions on contraception would affect the priesthood. I have the suspicion that it would probably hasten optional celibacy for priests. Some conservative Catholics fear that optional celibacy would lead to married priests using contraception and getting civil divorces (some also think that the rejection of HV has spurred the growing divorce rate.) I'm not sure where to go on this point -- maybe the liberalization of contraception would heighten awareness of the complexity of marriage and the possibility that the unitive aspect of marriage can benefit the community? No-HV might complicate the view that celibacy is a special state of existence because of the absence of unitive and procreative aspects.

As for politics -- I think that the secularization of the developed world would proceed apace even with the removal of contraceptive restrictions. 95+% of developed world Catholics use contraception. I think that a post-industrialized world that emphasizes personal autonomy over a communal/familial focus creates more damage for all organized religions. It's likely that no-HV would merely endorse post-Christian post-modernism and accelerate the irrelevance of the Church in world affairs. It's arguable however that the profound Catholic rejection of HV has accelerated this decline anyway.
 
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Catholic countries would be smaller in population BUT more progressive and productive than in OTL.

Excuse me, but what does have to do one thing with another?

Poor, agricole societies (catholic or not) tend to have lots of children not because of moral issues but for economic ones? You do not have one more child but a couple more of hands to work.

The only ones that would take into account moral considerations are the rich catholic countries whose population has not followed the HV.
 
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