The publication of Paul VI’s encyclical banning the use of artificial birth control was a pivotal moment in this journal’s history. The stand taken against it by the then editor has reverberated ever since When I joined The Tablet in 1967 as assistant editor to Tom Burns, I could not have guessed that we were about to face fierce storms. In 1968, the Prague Spring would be crushed beneath the tracks of Soviet tanks; social unrest in Western Europe would traumatise Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope; and in July that year, the release of Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirming the ban on contraception would usher in what Cardinal Heenan, the then Archbishop of Westminster, called “the greatest shock since the Reformation”. The crisis would mark a decisi