In 1968, Pope Paul VI issued his Papal Encyclical Humanae Vitae, which definitively affirmed the Church of Christ's clear and consistent teaching condemning any external act which makes the sexual acts of man and woman infertile, or contraception. The definition given for contraception is an important one, because it distinguishes between human acts and acts of nature. For example, a human act is to remove the penis before ejaculation, thus possible preventing conception, or receiving medication designed to prevent conception. This is different from engaging in the sexual act while the woman is infertile due to the natural cycle of her body. What causes the infertility in the first case is a human act (and therefore wrong), but what causes the infertility in the second case is a natural act (and therefore not wrong).
In the late 1950s, work began on a synthetic hormone that would eliminate ovulation from a woman's cycle, thus render her infertile during the time she was on the hormone. Part of this work was begun by a Catholic, John Rock, who believed his work was within traditional Catholic teaching, which condemned contraception. The development of this chemical means of preventing conception was hailed by many, as a result caught the eye of Bl. John XXIII. To this end, he formed a commission to study the question of marriage, the family, and population. During the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI revised the mission of the commission (Pontifical Commission on Population, Family, and Birth-rate) to include contraception. However, what is notable is that in his address to the expanded commission, he referred to Pius XII's rejection of a forerunner of the Pill, not Pius XI, who taught that all acts that render the marital act infertile are always intrinsically evil).
During the meeting of the commission, its composition changed a few times. With the changing of the composition, so too did the attitudes of the commission. According to Fr. John Ford, S.J, an eminent moral theologian who was a member of the commission as a theological expert, as the attitudes of the commission changed, so to did the questions they were trying to answer. Dr. Germain Grisez, himself an eminent moral theologian and an assistant of Fr. Ford's during the commission, recalls that at first, the commission centered around the question of whether or not the Church's teaching on contraception could be changed (Fr. Ford and Dr. Grisez held that it could not). Once a majority of the commission held that it could, they went about debating whether or not it should. Eventually, all but 4 of the members of the commission accepted the idea that the Church should reverse its teaching on contraception. Despite this majority, there was minority. However, the materials presented to the Commission's President, Cardinal Ottaviani, were extremely biased. All the counterarguments the minority raised were whitewashed and all but left out. Thus, what the Cardinal received was a heavily one-sided report. Paul VI himself had publicly voiced his displeasure with where the Commission was heading (this was after a number of the majority's documents were leaked to the press), so the Cardinal wanted him to be presented with a more balanced report.
It can be safe to say that the Holy Father found the arguments of the minority more convincing than the arguments of majority. In addition, to that, the Holy Father was hard-pressed on a long, long precedent: since Apostolic times, acts that rendered the conjugal act infertile were always and everywhere condemned. More recently, Pius XI in Casti conubii had clearly taught that all human acts that render sex infertile are always intrinsically evil, and Pius XII had rejected a forerunner of the Pill under the same idea.
I was drawn to this whole saga by a post over at CatholicCutlure.org, where Dr. Mirius provides some sources the give an interesting outline on what actually took place.
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