Several senior bishops have expressed the wish that the Synod on the Family in Rome should reaffirm Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical letter Humanae Vitae banning contraception. Any such move would widen still further the gap between teaching and practice which the synod should try to heal.The extent of the gap was highlighted, for example, in the frank and exhaustive report published by the press office of the German Bishops’ Conference on the results there of the Vatican questionnaire circulated worldwide in October 2013. The Catholic Church is not, of course, against birth control, only against birth control by artificial methods. But, according to the German report, the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” methods – with the prohibition