CATHOLICS AND BIRTH CONTROL
SIR,—Not a Roman Catholic, I have to ask not your permission alone, but the courtesy of your Catholic correspondents to allow me—for I live in a country about 80 per cent Catholic all over : and 97 per cent here in the. Republic—to throw some words into this erudite debate. Not, however, on birth control, but when I read Mr. Christopher Derrick's charge, 'It seems that only in the Catholic Church are even the pagan pieties now given a home,' I wanted to ask him to come and live here, travel about, go up and down, and observe. I associate the pagan pieties with Ire- land, very much so; or rather, at one time I did; but, even then, with the old pagan Gaelic Ireland. The remnants of that Ireland remain in the language of the Gaeltacht, the west and south-west, but otherwise, of course, it is long gone, physically, and now it is dying out of the soul of the people, if it is not already dead. Dying, or being done to death—and by nothing other than the Roman Catholic Church. That is, in so far as some of the pagan pieties are concerned, and in particular that good pagan piety which held that sexual experience took precedence over celibacy, and chastity did not hold greater wisdom or truth than worship of the flesh. Mr. Derrick says the idea that sex is inherently degraded and sinful is no part of Catholic doctrine, adding that it is one of the oldest and most persistent of the heresies, which the Church has always opposed, `sometimes savagely.' Well, 1 wish the Church would begin opposing it here. I can assure Mr. Derrick that 96 per cent of the 97 per cent of Catholics in this land hold sex as sinful un- less, and until, it is sanctified by marriage. Sinful, and more or less degraded. This may or may not be the Church's doctrine—I bow to Mr. Derrick—but it is what the majority believes to be its doctrine.
Here in this Republic the Catholic Church has a 'spec'al position' which is written into the Constitu- tion. I associate the Church, therefore, as anyone could scarcely fail to do, with the banning through our Censorship Act of all sexual literature considered obscene or as advocating birth control, and ranging from the Kama Stara through the Thousand and One Nights (Dawood) to Dr. Margaret Mead and The Catcher in the Rye, as well as the work of Hank Jenson. I associate it, in education, with convent schools where small boys (or girls) have to wear trunks while they bath at night, lest sinful thoughts lead to their playing with themselves and/or their companions. I associate it with ante-natal talks where lady doctors are asked to use phrases in public lec- tures like 'mother nursing' for breast feeding, lest boys of fourteen have mammalian visions at night. I associate it with the state of the sexual gas in Ire- land as described by Edna O'Brien in The Country Girls and The Lonely Girl, both, of course, banned here, but which I hope Mr. Derrick will read, if he has not done so, as they are written by an Irish Catholic girl. I associate it, in short, with a reaction- ary, repressive, authoritarian shoddiness in educa- tional, sexual, civic, and even. God help us, religious matters, Oh, you must blame the Church, I can hear my countrymen howl! But who else is to blame? If sex is not sinful outside marriage, Mr. Derrick, why is it that Irish girls never smile at any man in the street today? Of the Irish girls, indeed, one might say they have everything except the consciousness of themselves, sexually; sexually, they are switched off. They are sisterly, loyal, and more lovable than any women I can• think of; and they are still virgin at twenty-eight or thirty. Then, when they marry— and the men anyhow marry for sex—after their first child their love is turned towards that child, and away from the man. For the rest of their lives, they do their marital duty as dutiful wives. The Church sees to it they do. Of course there are exceptions, illegiti- mate children, abortions, but I am speaking of the general pattern. Yesterday, James Joyce said we were a priest-ridden people; today, we defend our con- dition as the glory of Ireland. As one of our younger playwrights, himself a cradle Catholic, said bitterly, 'We fought the British Empire for seven generations, and went down before the Church of Rome without a struggle.'
It is a loveless desert that is being made of this country; and if the Irish people remain tolerant, kind, brave and generous, essentially democratic, it is in spite of the repression that the Church has built into their very loins. I hope Mr. Derrick will believe me when I say it is painful for me to write this; I am much of his way of thinking on sexual matters, though I do not restrict my 'all-but' Venus worship to marriage; but I cannot belieye the results of Catholic teaching, of which we haVe had forty years' experi- ence now, is greatly different in other countries, at least sexually, Where everyone believes the Church's teaching on sex is that it is sinful, what is the value of a doctrine that is either not taught by the priesthood, or taught so badly it conveys the very opposite to the faithful flock? Conveys, in fact, that the Fall and sexual intercourse (unblessed by the Church) are one and the same.
17 7'crenare Road East, Dublin 6
EWART MILNE
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