The Pope and Married Life
Pronouncements on the intimate details of marital relations would seem better left to persons with personal experience of such processes. That is sufficient reason why the Pope, if he feels it necessary to deal with the subject at all, would be wise • to refrain from going beyond generalities. However it may com- mend itself to Roman Catholics, his allocution of last Sunday, on birth-control, sterilisation, " the safe period," and, above all, on the alleged duty to let a pregnant mother die rather than sacrifice an unborn child whose birth will mean her death, will be received by non-Catholics with emotions varying between distaste and repugnance. The Church of England and almost all, if not all, Christian bodies other than Catholics, in this country at any rate, have regarded the proper and prudent spacing of children, and the use of contraceptives for that pur- pose, as completely right and Christian. Differences on these points are no doubt possible, but it is necessary to distinguish sharply between specifically Roman Catholic doctrine and Christian doctrine. As to the dictum that if it is a choice between the mother's life and the unborn child's the mother's must be sacrificed, to describe it, with the Dean of St. Paul's, as " in- human " is to exercise rigorous verbal restraint. The effects of the death of a mother, who is, or should be, the mainstay of every family, are completely disregarded ; so is the fact that a mother, in spite of difficulties about one particular birth, may well bear healthy children in the future. Is that potentiality to be sacrificed too ?
Previous page
