It's hard to imagine a less auspicious time for the reception of a papal encyclical reaffirming the Church's classic teaching on the morally appropriate means of family planning than the summer of 1968. Now, 40 years after it was issued, Pope Paul VI's letter, Humanae Vitae, may finally be getting the hearing it deserves.

Why? Because the developed world is in demographic crisis from decades of plummeting birth rates. Because younger women have figured out a truth that eluded their mothers in the Sixties: the sexual revolution-made possible in part by easily available contraception-is great for predatory men, and not-so-great for women. And because John Paul II's "theology of the body" has set the Church's teaching in an engaging, humanistic framework.

The Catholic "Lite Brigade" will doubtless make this anniversary year the occasion to celebrate two generations of theological dissent; wiser souls will ponder the wreckage caused by the sexual revolution, especially to women, and think again.