https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2013/03/21/pope-francis-say-yes-to-the-pill/feed/HotAir is the leading conservative blog for breaking news and commentary covering the Biden administration, politics, media, culture, and current elections.en-usTue, 09 Jun 2026 12:19:08 -0400<![CDATA[Of course, this pope does have a difficult mission, not just because it is always difficult to be the most prominent intermediary in the world between the terrestrial life we all know and the celestial realm in which many do not believe. He appears to have been elevated because of his pastoral success, universally conceded integrity, and irreproachably modest and outspoken advocacy of the poor, as the most ingenuous and unassailable possible messenger for the traditional Catholicism that is now, especially in its attitude toward contraception, not supported by more than a small and very doctrinaire section of the laity. The Church well knows that its views, restated by successive popes but largely dissented from even by the bishops, are a counsel of perfection. But this counsel is maintained in a way that invites scorn and incredulity as the prohibition commended as moral duty shows no recognition that sexual intercourse has, for billions of people, become a mere extension of the pleasures of heterosexual affection, because of the ease with which it can be assured not to be a procreative act. When almost any coupling with a woman of child-bearing age presented the potential for conception, the Church could plausibly counsel caution for moral as well as practical reasons. But for better or worse, the evolution of mores and the progress of paramedical science in the contraceptive age has routinized the sexual act&#8230;]]>Thu, 21 Mar 2013 20:55:01 -0400<![CDATA[Allahpundit]]>https://hotair.com/headlines/2013/03/21/pope-francis-say-yes-to-the-pill-n101054