A cloud over Christendom
Sir: I must agree with your editorial of 2 August in finding the Bishop of Leeds's defence of the encyclical unconvincing.
I sympathise with the Pope's view of artificial birth control as unnatural, which it certainly is, but I cannot find any evidence of this scruple in at least one other of his judgments. At a time when many people, Christians and non- Christians, were seriously disturbed by the un- natural predicament of a man bearing another's heart in his body, the Pope hastened to com- mend the operation. There are many un- pleasantly unnatural practices which would appear more worthy of the Pope's condemna- tion; factory farming and artificial insemina- tion spring immediately to mind. To be consistent and carry his argument to its logical conclusion one should condemn as unnatural the use of chemical fertilisers, the saving of life by artificial drugs, the use of hearing-aids and spectacles, the cooking of food, the wear- ing of clothes and the taking of baths.
The real reason for the singling out of birth control for such particular commination is that it involves sex, and sex, being .a flagrantly en- joyable activity, is suspect to a certain section of the religiously-minded. The Puritan concept that anything enjoyable can't be quite right, and must be paid for, has always been wide- spread. The Thirty-Nine Articles put it in _a nutshell 'that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.' I am reminded of a woman of my acquaintance who, becoming rather vocal in the process of childbirth, was told sternly by the midwife (unmarried) that she must expect to suffer for the sins of the flesh. In other words, no sweets without castor oil. With this attitude parenthood is not in fact hallowed and uplifted but degraded into a penance.
The view that sex-for-pleasure puts us on the same level as the animals is founded on a strange misconception. In the animal kingdom mating is strictly for reproduction, and only in man do we find the physical union capable of being transformed into a spiritual and mental one which enhances and strengthens the relationship between husband and wife. If only a potential conception makes intercourse licit we must once again follow the argument to its logical conclusion. Subtracting the length of the human gestation period and the time re- quired for recovery from childbirth we are left with a yearly 'mating season' of four to six weeks. You can't get much nearer to the animals than that.
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