Cahill and Wilkinson say, "Humanae Vitae re-emphasised a traditional sexual morality based on isolated acts, which are regarded either as being 'ordered to nature' or 'against nature', rather than a sexual morality based on relationality. Such was the intensity of the division it caused that it has led to a dangerous and damaging situation, whereby the Catholic Church effectively lacks an accepted sexual morality, with many negative consequences (p. 59)."

And, "After the refusal of many members of the Catholic community to 'receive' the contraception message of the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, the Catholic Church was left without a community-accepted sexual morality at a time of rapidly changing sexual mores because the Church was no longer credible in matters concerning sexuality and human relationships (p. 97)."