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The most recent issue of Angelus, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, focuses on the of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, with an about an American physician and philosopher who wrote presciently about the medical and societal dangers of contraception: Dr. Herbert Ratner.

“History,” observes the article’s author, Michael Aquilina, “has borne witness to the consequences of widespread contraception — in the demographic winter, in the epidemic of divorce and sexually transmitted infections, and in the confusion of the sexes about the purpose of sex. All of this Ratner predicted long ago.”

Throughout the 1960s, and for decades beyond, when doctors, academics — and even some priests — were quick to endorse new contraceptive technologies, Dr. Ratner was a faithful champion of the Church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality. He spoke of “abortion, of sterilization, of the IUD and the Pill” as “chemical warfare against the women of the world, and the tools of social engineers to whom women are expendable” — a pronouncement that history has tragically confirmed through the ensuing half-century.

Dr. Ratner was also a friend of 91����. He lectured on campus in the late 1970s and was the Commencement Speaker in 1990, at which time he received the College’s highest honor, the Saint Thomas Aquinas Medallion, for his “extraordinary dedication to God and His Holy Catholic Church.” Additionally, Dr. Ratner had two articles published in the College’s scholarly journal, The Aquinas Review — The Physician: A Normative Artist (1995) and William Harvey, M.D.: Modern or Ancient Scientist? (1996) — the latter of which was especially admired by the College’s founding president, Dr. Ronald P. McArthur.

Notes 91���� tutor Dr. Brian T. Kelly, “Dr. Ratner was also a minor but important figure in the great books movement.” As Mr. Aquilina describes in his , “Ratner caught the attention of Robert Maynard Hutchins, the president of the University of Chicago. With the philosopher Mortimer Adler, Hutchins was launching an educational experiment — a liberal arts curriculum centered on Socratic dialogue and the ‘Great Books’ of Western civilization. Ratner, though very young, joined them as a senior colleague. He was keen to apply the wisdom found in the classics to the problems of modern medicine and rising questions in the natural sciences.”

Underappreciated in his own time, Dr. Ratner was a courageous and faithful defender of the Church and its teachings. He passed way in 1997 at the age the age of 90. May his soul, and those of all the faithful departed, rest in peace.