birth control, in which the Papal birth
control commission in the beginning wanted very much to operate within
the framework of orthodox teaching. By the end five years later it was
calling for orthodox teaching to be scrapped. I don't think there was a
conspiracy there from the beginning. I think it was a question of
people changing their minds. Some of that happened during the Council
itself. So by the end of the Council in 1965 there were periti
and bishops and others who were a good deal more radical than they had
been at the beginning. I think there were people by the end of the
Council in 1965 who had a vision of what the Council should be doing
that they realized was too radical, was not going to be adopted. What
these people in effecttelling people what is going on
because it's none of their business. The tendency of the Church in
dealing with the media had been to issue formal statements and
not want to answer a lot of questions.

John XXIII had, no question about it, been a kind of media
superstar. I don't think he started out to be one but he happened to be
one. He probably discovered to his surprise at some point that that's
what he was. The media couldn't get enough of him. He was such a
refreshing figure, he was such an unusual character to be Pope, they
thought. He did so many dramatic and even unexpected things which were
very media appropriate: visiting a jail, meeting with Nikita
Krushchev's son-in-law, meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury,
walking in procession rather than being carried on his