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Humane Vitae, the so-called birth control encyclical promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1968, was taken out of mothballs for the occasion. Most young Catholics consider birth control a settled matter: they use it in good conscience. What they don’t know is that the decision to ban what was then called ‘artificial’ contraception was made over and against the majority report of the Pope’s own commission. That group saw birth control pills as logical, better, a technological extension of responsible efforts to plan families. That the pope went with a minority report in issuing the teaching against contraception shows how easily history could have gone the other way. More recent pitched battles over abortion, as well as present and future ones over same-sex love and marriage, are similarly configured; good Catholics are all over the ethical map.