John Paul insists that Catholics must shun contraception
As sunlight streamed through abstract stained-glass windows in the Vatican's ultramodern audience hall, Pope John Paul II told 7,000 pilgrims last week that the practice and attitude of contraception were "harmful to man's interior spiritual culture." Roman Catholic couples, said he, must make a true spiritual evaluation of their sexual relations and express "mature availability to fatherhood and motherhood."
The talk was the 14th in an extraordinary series of discourses this year on birth control at the Pope's weekly general audiences. The aim: to underscore...