Excerpt from Our Dumb Century by Scott Dikkers & The Staff of The Onion, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"This prideful 'rhythm method' is a blasphemy before God," Leo XIII declared to a crowd of as yet non-American-emigrant Italians at St. Peter's Basilica. "Those who would count the days He created against the ripeness of their good wives are indulging in the darkest brand of sorcery."

The reactions of lay civilization have been varied, as most prominent Americans are expected to seek the counsel of their bishops and priests for clarification of the edict.

The denounced "rhythm method," according to physician Hobart McGreely of Pittsburgh, is "the way by which a lady, having an intuitive grasp still elusive to medicinal science of the ebb and flow of nature, can divine when she is most conducive to the conception of young, and may choose to refrain from the painful process of copulation, in essence avoiding her dutiful role as a mother."

"Childbearing women have a responsibility to the Lord on High," added noted Chicago priest Father Willard Portkin. "In this advanced age of modern medicine, most mothers need only give birth to two or three still-born children before enjoying the fruits of living progeny. And now-a-days many of the gentler sex are enjoying full recuperation and survival of the birthing miracle. There is therefore no excuse for women-vessels to engage in trickery of God's plan for their fertility."