Church Attitudes
ARECENT 'Fund for the Republic' project was to set Norman St. John-Stevas to write a report on the subject of birth control; and it has now been published in America. It is full of interest, but Birth Control and Public Policy is an inapposite title; Mr. St. John-Stevas in fact tends to concentrate on Birth Control and Church Policy, a very different matter. He dis- cusses in some detail the attitudes of the various Churches today, and the recent changes which have taken place in some of them—notably the Anglicans, who have switched from belief that contraception represents a threat to both Church and State (which they held formally as late as the I920s) to the unanimous decision of the 1958 Lambeth Conference that family plan- ning 'in such ways as are mutually accept- able to husband and wife in Christian con- science, is a right and important factor in Christian family life.' But it is questionable whether these Church attitudes. fixed or flexible, have the importance with which the author appears to credit them, to judge by the space he devotes to them.
Not that he is unaware that social rather than doctrinal changes may be responsible for changed attitudes to contraception : but those which he cites—the growing fear of global or local over-population, and the growing know- ledge of the 'safe period'—are not really the important ones. It was the Second World War, with the need which arose out of it to conserve manpower by limiting the incidence of venereal disease, that provided the know- ledge which people have since extensively used to prevent conception. Only a tiny fraction of the people who in this country have become accustomed to use birth control methods either know or care what their Church's attitude is; birth control has developed here independently of doctrinal considerations.
This is not true, of course, in Roman Catholic countries, where governments reinforce the Church's edicts by banning the distribution and sale of contraceptives. But it is hard to believe that the position in the United States is dis- similar from the position here—even in those States which officially refuse to countenance birth control. An investigation into the subject of how far the members of the various Churches actually practise their Church's teach- ing would, admittedly, present difficulties; but it would be of more service than this survey.
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