BISHOP CAREY AND BIRTH CONTROL
[To the Editor Of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Bishop Carey's courageous protest on this subject in your issue of the 2nd instant is timely and necessary, for it cannot be too clearly stated that this much-vaunted specific for many of our human and social troubles introduces its own problems.
Where the health of the mother or the inheritance of the child is imperilled, an interference with natural law, under the guidance of competent medical advice, may some- times be necessary, but it is inevitable that this practice long continued must tend to destroy the beauty and the spirituality of one of life's most sacred contacts. To interfere with the deepest expression of love, as between married folk, by methods which will certainly create their own subconscious reactions, is to bring into life something that can only develop the purely physical side of our nature, and gradually create a sense of repulsion to an experience that otherwise is surrounded with life's greatest and most sacred mysteries. Nature has a ruthless way of insisting on obedience to her laws, and although she would appear to allow us to ignore her on occasion, there is no final escape from the results of our own actions. I say nothing about the possible peril to physical health in the interference with natural law, for that is a subject about which we at present know very little, but that certain well-known forms of neurosis are set up as the result of ignoring nature is quite certain, and this will be confirmed by medical men who are students of the subject.
During the last 20 years, as a result of the teaching of the psycho-analytical school (often mistakenly understood by the Jay reader), humanity has assumed that it can safely substitute so-called self-expression for self-control, and that the old sanctions of morality, built up through the centuries by the collective experience of mankind, are inadequate, and out of date. This viewpoint has been a. prelude more than once in the past history of the world to a temporary breakdown in civilization. There is no satisfactory alternative to self- discipline, as there is probably no alternative to the moral standards taught by Christianity, that human nature has not time and again tried with resulting failure.
The real fact. that is not sufficiently recognized is that
marriage is not only a civil contract (although it is frequently SO regarded), but a spiritual sacrament, and that the harmonies of life will sooner or later break down unless they are continued on this assumption. It is at once the richest experience and the deepest discipline of life, . and its full. fruition is only 'cached when we have learned that self-sacrifice and not self-indulgence-Ls at the heart of its being.—! am, Sir, &e.,
Previous page
