A stitch in time
Sir: I have long been an admirer of Charles Moore's contributions to your magazine and have reason to be grateful for his abili- ty to expose our tendency to choose the path of expediency when morality demands a more difficult course.
Nevertheless, his views on the Papal Encyclical of 1968, Humanae Vitae (Anoth- er voice, 10 July), however thought-provok- ing, overlook one 'vital' consequence of the position adopted by the Roman Catholic Church on contraception. For their unyielding stand on this issue has helped to undermine the whole concept of parental responsibility, so that now the streets of Rio teem with unwanted children, and here in Kenya those of us who consider it irre- sponsible to have more children than we can afford to feed and educate suffer a con- stant drain on our resources to support the progeny of the sexually, incontinent who
contribute so faithfully to Kenya's unenvi- able record average of 8.5 children per fam- ily, and who seem to have no sense of `rhythm' once the band stops playing.
I well remember, in my younger days in the City, a colleague hesitantly asking for a modest increase in his salary to help him meet the cost of an extra mouth to feed being told to 'tie a knot in it'. Despite the crudity of the rebuff it brought home to the putative father the importance of self-suffi- ciency, which Humanae Vitae does not.
R. A. Massie-Blomfield The Headmaster, Cavina School, P 0 Box 43090, Nairobi
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