BIRTH-CONTROL “ENDORSEMENT”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31330, 29 March 1967, Page 14

BIRTH-CONTROL “ENDORSEMENT”

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright)

VATICAN CITY, March 28.

Pope Paul gave a carefully-qualified endorsement today to Government measures of population control, without indicating any relaxation in the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to mechanical means of birth control, the Associated Press reported.

Writing in the fifth encyclical of his reign, he said in a section on population growth “The temptation is great to check the demographic increase by radical measures “Public authorities can intervene, within the limit of their competence, by favouring the availability of appropriate information and by adopting suitable measures, provided that these be in conformity with the moral law and that they respect the rightful freedom of married couples,” the Pope said Development Problems The encyclical was entitled “Populorum Progresio” (On the Development of Peoples), from its first words. In the section on demography, the Pope said“It is true that too frequently an accelerated demographic increase adds its own difficulties to the problems of development: the size of the population increases more rapidly than available resources, and things are found

to have reached apparently an impasse. “From that moment, the temptation is great to check the demographic increase by means of radical measures. “Inalienable Right” “Where the inalienable right to marriage and procreation is lacking, human dignity has ceased to exist. “Finally, it is tor the par ents to decide, with full knowledge of the matter, on the number of their children, taking into account their responsibilities toward God, themselves, the children they have already wrought into the world, and the community to which they belong. “In all this they must follow the demands of their own conscience enlightened by God’s law authentically interpreted, and sustained by confidence in Him.”