CRIME AND SIN SIR,—It is a pity that just when
we were learning to know the difference between a crime and a sin— and to show that we knew it--fresh confusion has been created in the public mind by the suggestion that the time might have come when we should learn to look upon adultery as a crime.
The Wolfenden Report's findings on adult homo- sexuality, the new approach to betting and gaming, the Church's own pamphlet on suicide all pointed towards a clearer understanding of the fact that some activities which, under certain circumstances (per- haps under all circumstances), might be sin need not necessarily be treated as crimes. All looked forward to an age in which men should be free to keep their own conscience and not have it kept for them by the police force, an age, in fact, when responsibility for the stability of society was more genuinely shared.
In such an age crime—that is, activity against which public opinion agrees that forcible measures should be taken—would be the responsibility of the nation to define. Sin's definition, being that of an offence against God regardless of public opinion, would alone lie within the province of the Church.
In creating a society where this distinction is clearly understood the Americans have an enormous advan- tage over us (which is perhaps why there is in that country less sense of guilt attached to criminal activity as such). Each State—or in a minority of cases the Union itself—decides what is criminal. What is sinful for their respective adherents is left to the churches to sort out.
While the Church of England vainly tries to act as the conscience of the nation (vainly, for did not the Archbishop himself say that he would like to see prostitution treated as criminal 'but public opinion would not agree with me'?)—while this is the case and the Established clergy, many . of them against their will, are looked upon as a species of religious civil servant, for so long must 1, for one, regard the New World as in this respect more enlightened than the Old.—Yours faithfully, NICK EARLE S. Bowl ph's Vestry, Aldgate, EC3
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