BIRTH CONTROL

Southland Times, Issue 21717, 1 June 1932, Page 5

BIRTH CONTROL

CHURCH’S STAND ANGLICAN LEADERS’ CONDEMNATION REPORT BY COMMITTEE (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright.) (Rec. 7.55 p.m.) London, May 31. The 1930 Lambeth Conference resolutions on marriage and sex are critically discussed in a report of the Lower House of Convocation of Canterbury which is being presented to the convocation this week. Referring to birth control the report notes that the firm tone of previous Lambeth Conferences has been progressively qualified since the 1908 conference. It describes all artificial means of restriction as demoralizing to character and hostile to national welfare. While welcoming the 1930 conference’s condemnation of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury and convenience, the report regrets that the statement by the majority of the bishops that other methods than abstinence may be useable in some circumstances. “We deprecate this admission and ask the house clearly to recognize what this charge involves,” states the report. “It is true we interfere with nature at every point, but birth control belongs to the moral sphere and essentially affects man’s progress. If the church is to give public direction in sex matters the ideal of Christian life as one under discipline must be upheld at all costs, and the ‘impossible standard,’ whether of the indissolubility of marriage or selfcontrol within it, is strictly maintained.” Referring to divorce, the committee regrets the inconsistency which contemplates the admission to Communion of the innocent party who has remarried under civil sanction. The committee consists of the Deans of Hereford and Chichester, the Bishops of Kingston-on-Thames and Malmesbury, Canons Kidd, Freer, Drawellstone, Heazell, Prebendaries, Briscoe and Harris and Professor Belton. The Dean of Chichester, dissenting, declares that the report shirks the fundamental problem of birth control. The limitation of a family is now assumed as a normal procedure in all educated circles, and Iresh moral theology must be worked out on the subject. The Bishops of Kingston and Malmesbury agree with the Dean of Chichester, and add that it cannot be assumed that the us.e of artificial methods is immoral in itself. The Dean of Hereford dissents with the committee’s unqualified endorsement of the indissolubility of marriage.