By Josef Seifert, First Things - To this crisis, Pope St. John Paul II reacted most forcefully. In his Familiaris Consortio, he reconfirmed the teaching of the intrinsic evil of adultery, and of contraception, by which the unitive meaning of the conjugal act is actively and deliberately severed from the procreative one. In Evangelium Vitae, he insisted on the dignity of each human being, who is simultaneously a human person.