I think you better post a link to a reliable source for the full story, which is somewhat different than your digest of the story. I also think the title of your thread should relate more closely to the content of your post.
George Weigel talked about it.
Courage to be Catholic pp. 67-70
“But the explosion of bureaucracy in the Church after Vatican II, and dramatic changes in the way bishops understood their office, made it ever more difficult to maintain doctrinal cohesion and eccliastical discipline – problems exacerbated by what often seemed to be uncertain papal leadership during the fifteen - year pontificate of Pope Paul VI. And so it was that, when the sexual revolution hit the Catholic Church with the force of a hurricane, the Church was intellectually, organizationally, and spiritually ill-prepared for the blow”.
“The results are now obvious, in the crisis of clergy sexual abuse and its magnification by incompetent or malfeasant episcopal leadership. “The Sixties” did not “cause” the crisis, which is primarily the Church’s responsibility. In the late 1960’s, however, a culture of dissent took root in the Catholic Church in the United States, unmistakably influenced by the spirit of the times. In that culture of dissent, “fidelity” too on a new meaning – or, perhaps better, “fidelity” lost its true, ecclesial meaning. At precisely the same time, the crisis of clergy sexual abuse gathered such critical mass that it spilled over into the next two decades. The timing was not accidental. Neither was the relationship between clergy sexual abuse and the culture of dissent.”
The “Truce of 1968”
“Public dissent from Humanae Vitae began even before the official text of the encyclical was made available. It was led, not by dissapointed laity, but by priests, religious, and theologians, some of them men and women of considerable influence. One focal point of the dissent was the Archdiocese of Washington. Priests of the archdiocese joined the public dissent against the encyclical (which was intense at the Washington-based Catholic University of America) and, after several warnings, nineteen Washington priests were disciplined by the local archbishop, Cardinal Patrick O’ Boyle; the penalties imposed by Cardinal O’ Boyle varied from priests to priest, but included suspension from the active ministry in several cases. The priests involved took their case to public and appealed to the authorities in Rome.”
“In April 1971, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy issued a document on ‘The Washington Case’, which drastically minimized the nature of the dissent involved and ‘urgently’ recommended that Cardinal O’ Boyle lift the sanctions against those Washington priests who would agree to the ‘findings’ of the Congregation’s report. Those findings did not include earlier the obligation to repudiate previous dissent or the obligation to make an explicit affirmation of the moral truths taught by Humanae Vitae. O’Boyle removed the sanctions he had imposed on those among the original nineteen who still remained priests ( a number had abandoned their ministry in the interim three years).”
“According to the recollections of some who were present, every one involved understood that Pope Paul VI wanted the ‘Washington Case’ settled without a public retraction from the dissidents, because the Pope feared that insisting on such retraction would lead to schism – a formal split in the church of Washington, and perhaps beyond. The Pope, evidently, was willing for a time to tolerate dissent on an issue on which he made a solemn, authoritative statement, hoping that the day would come when, in a calmer cultural and ecclesiastical atmosphere, the truth of that teaching could be appreciated. The mechanism agreed upon to time for that to happen was the ‘Truce of 1968’”.
“THEOLOGIANS, PRIESTS, AND NUNS WHO PUBLICLY DISSENTED FROM HUMANAE VITAE – WHO SAID THAT THE CHURCH’S TEACHING ABOUT THE MORALLY APPROPRIATE WAY TO REGULATE BIRTHS WAS FALSE --WERE ENCOURAGED BY THE TRUCE OF 1968 TO CONTINUE, EVEN AMPLIFLY, THEIR DISSENT.”
The culture of dissent in the Church was BORN!
ISTM that one of his difficulties was that he had to compete with John XXIII - or rather, with the popular idea of him. I think he has been much maligned 
This patience is surely what a Christian bishop - most of all one in his position - should show. ##