Policy And Paradox

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31769, 28 August 1968, Page 16

Policy And Paradox

Pope Paul’s route from the, airport into the Colombian capital, Bogota, and back again for a tumultuous farewell from the faithful, took him within sight of a centre and past a factory producing contraceptive pills. The paradox is poignant: the rigidity of Church teaching in a country with one of the highest birth rates in the world, a 3.5 per cent population increase a year; and a Government committed to family planning, through public clinics, for millions living on the border-line of poverty. The Church may require obedience to the encyclical banning birth control, as a matter of ecclesiastical discipline; it may not interfere with a Government whose policy, as a matter of grim necessity, runs counter to Church dogma. Pope Paul may reflect, too. that seven priests were suspended in Santiago (Chile) when they took part in a cathedral sit-in opposing the encyclical and asserted that the Church was “ too concerned with the rich ”, If the first papal visit to Latin America did nothing else, it will have permitted the Pontiff to glimpse the realities of overcrowding and poverty, and to contrast the demand for - humble submission to traditional Church teaching with the plight of illiterate millions sorely in need of the relief and guidance that President Restrepo is giving in Colombia.