This is making the rounds on St. Blogs. I cannot tell you how good this article is ... The Vindication of Humanae Vitae ... its a long read but it is well worth the effort.

“He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh,” the Psalmist promises, specifically in a passage about enjoying vindication over one’s adversaries. If that is so, then the racket on this fortieth anniversary must be prodigious. Four decades later, not only have the document’s signature predictions been ratified in empirical force, but they have been ratified as few predictions ever are: in ways its authors could not possibly have foreseen, including by information that did not exist when the document was written, by scholars and others with no interest whatever in its teaching, and indeed even inadvertently, and in more ways than one, by many proud public adversaries of the Church.

Those four items being

The encyclical warned of four resulting trends: a general lowering of moral standards throughout society; a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; and the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments.

I don't want to spoil it by copying here all the choice quotes. Go read it ...

Then ask yourself why we still have groups calling for the Church to change her teaching.

---From a different article marking the 40 year anniversary---

When “Humanae Vitae” came out in July 1968 I thought I better read a copy of it. So I went up to my Newman Club chaplain at the University of Minnesota and I asked him where I could find a copy of “Humanae Vitae.” And his comment to me was, “What do you want to read that kind of trash for?”

This irritated me. It was not his role to make an editorial comment to me. He was a priest, a Catholic priest. He ought to at least be sharing what the Church was saying, and not be so afraid of it.

Indeed .... after all, Paul VI was right about its consequences. The cause should be considered.