text: "The Church" is the PEOPLE OF GOD, 99% lay people, the majority of whom rejected papal teaching forbidding "artificial" birth control and practice it as a "natural" method of family planning.  Bishops are free to offer their humble opinions on sexual matters, while respecting the movement of the Spirit among the laity whose experience grounds their moral decisions in family matters. Bishops are not free to demand exemptions to civil laws serving the common good based on their personal moral views, which are based not on their experience but on past papal decrees - and which somehow always seem to be punishing women.