It still doesn't scan.

In his article in this issue [pp. 14-18] expounding the strengths of Humanae vitae, Paul Murray writes with a certain authority not available to the author of the encyclical. He is emphatically not a celibate. He and his wife have lived and taught the regimen, natural family planning, that he proposes as the way to achieve the ideals of married love set forth by Paul VI. Thus he can write about sex with knowledgeable passion, and that's a large plus. Another is his irenic tone, a welcome contrast to the prosecutorial approach so often in play on this topic.

On matters of substance, Murray is right that Humanae vitae shows real appreciation for the goodness of marital sexual communion. Both Pauls are right in contending that the most-used methods of birth control make sinning against chastity easier (in a way that NFP does not); and that widespread unchastity has corrosive effects, spiritual and social. And they are right to condemn the "contraceptive ethic," if by that is meant a hedonistically inspired rejection of the deep and truly natural connection between making love and making babies.

On other points, we are not persuaded. First, has the spread of contraception fostered disrespect for women, as Pope Paul said it would? Maybe so, in individual cases. But, though the cause of women's rights still has a long way to go, not least in the Catholic church, the global reality is that more women today claim the respect due to them, and more men support their claim, than was the case when Paul wrote.

More centrally, we reject the absolute moral distinction our author makes between NFP and "artificial" contraception. When the rhythm method was the Catholic way to space births, there may have been a reason of sorts for saying that intercourse using the method was "open to the transmission of life"--the same reason the method was called "Roman roulette." It was a gamble--for many, a very serious one--and the odds weren't great. Today, proponents of NFP, because of medical and technological advances, claim for it an effectiveness rivaling that of other means. Like those other methods, NFP is meant to be, and is, a means of preventing the transmission of life. How can that reality be passed over? At another level, how can this tenuous philosophical distinction be an intellectually responsible guide for consciences, a litmus test for church appointments, a fixed criterion for setting Vatican policies on population issues?

We don't find answers in Paul Murray's text, but there may be a subtext--if not in his mind, then in long-held Catholic attitudes toward sex. NFP requires continuing sacrifice. Exacting the price of suffering for the joy of sex is an old habit of ours. But even romantics know that sex and suffering are already linked; this wild animal drive brings pain enough without any need to up the ante. The church teaches restraint: how and why to say No. It should also ask us to say Yes when Yes is the right answer.