Many of you have smiled and agreed with my answer that the difference between having sex five minutes before the wedding and five minutes after is only ten minutes. A few have objected that the teaching of the Church has to be upheld in any case. I do know and respect the teaching of the Church, but I also keep abreast of Catholic opinion, and this is what the auxiliary Catholic bishop of Sydney, Australia, Geoffrey Robinson, says on the matter of the Church’s teaching of sex in his just-published book, “Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church”, The Columba Press, Dublin 2007:

p. 166: “In July 1968 Pope Paul VI published an encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae in which he said that all artificial forms of birth regulation are morally wrong. This document marked a watershed in the teaching of the papacy for, leaving aside all questions of right and wrong, it is simple fact that over a period of time very large numbers of Catholic people made conscience decisions to reject the teaching of that encyclical. For most of these people their decisions fulfilled all the requirements of conscience that I have spoken about. The rejection eventually became a flood involving many moderate and even some rather conservative Catholics. Many of these people then began to say to themselves, ‘If the pope is wrong on this question, how can I be sure that he is right on other questions?’ The change has been profound and it is unlikely that the church will ever fully return to the situation that existed before this document was published.”

257. “Many Catholic bishops express a real uneasiness about the present teaching of their church on the subject of divorce and remarriage.

297. “There must be an open acknowledgement of the fact that the rejection of much the church did in the second millennium has considerable justification.

This is said by a Catholic bishop, recently, and in writing. I only quote. I suppose the bishop’s book has the bishop’s approval. At least one bishop’s.