In his Tablet Interview (opposite) Cardinal Walter Kasper was asked what he would do about the present impasse over contraception in the Catholic Church. He replied simply: “I have no solution.” The impasse arises from the fact that official teaching, as laid down in the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, is now widely disregarded and its basis in natural law considered incomprehensible. Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp has sketched out an explanation of how the mistake at the heart of Humanae Vitae arose. It was, he argues, through the failure of Pope Paul VI to listen to what the wider Church was saying, especially through the majority voice of the papal birth control commission set up by John XXIII. They found that it was not possible to argue against contraception on the basis