It is nearly 50 years since Pope Paul VI released the most controversial papal document of modern times, and the dust has still refused to settle. The current state of play looks something like this.

To many, Humanae Vitae has long since been a dead letter – so widely rejected by Catholics that it will simply disappear from view in the same way that Pope Pius IX’s condemnation of “progress, liberalism and modern civilisation” in the unlamented “Syllabus of Errors” has. To others, acceptance of its teaching, that the use of contraceptives is in all cases “absolutely excluded” and “intrinsically wrong”, is the acid test of Catholicism.