An Irishman’s Diary on the long shadow of ‘Humanae Vitae’

The Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, swept into the room full of journalists with an air of quiet triumph. Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul's encyclical rejecting artificial birth control, had just been published in Rome and – although the full text was not yet available in Dublin – the archbishop had arranged what was to be one of the most extraordinary press conferences I had ever attended, at which the encyclical was presented to the Irish media.