Birth Control: A Statement of Christian Doctrine against the Neo-MalthusiansSutherland, Halliday
Religion
Birth Control: A Statement of Christian Doctrine against the Neo-Malthusians
Sutherland, Halliday
Birth control; Malthusianism
"Take the clergy. They are the officers of a Church that has made
marriage a source of revenue and of social control; they preach from a
sacred book that bids the chosen people of God 'multiply and replenish
the earth'; they know that large families generally tend to preserve
clerical influence and authority; and they claim that every baby is a
new soul presented to God and, therefore, for His honour and glory, the
greatest possible number of souls should be produced." [111]
That feeble attempt to poison the atmosphere was naturally ignored by
intelligent people; and more than once Lambeth has ruled that artificial
birth control is sin. Unfortunately, within the Church of England, in spite
of the Lambeth ruling, there is still discussion as to whether artificial
birth control is or is not sin, the Bishops, as a whole, making a loyal
effort to uphold Christian teaching against a campaign waged by Malthusians
in order to obtain religious sanction for their evil propaganda. Although
many Malthusians are rationalists, they are well aware that without some
religious sanction their policy could never emerge from the dim underworld
of unmentioned and unrespected things, and could never be advocated
openly in the light of day. To this end birth control is camouflaged by
pseudo-poetic and pseudo-religious phraseology, and the Anglican Church is
asked to alter her teaching. Birth controllers realise that it is useless
to ask this of the Catholic Church, a Rock in their path, but "as regards
the Church of England, which makes no claim to infallibility, the case is
different, and discussion is possible." [112]
Let us consider, firstly, the teaching of the Church of England on this
matter. At the Lambeth Conference of 1908 the Bishops affirmed "that
deliberate tampering with nascent life is repugnant to Christian morality."
In 1914 a Committee of Bishops issued a Memorandum [113] in which
artificial birth control is condemned as "dangerous, demoralising, and
sinful." The memorandum was approved by a large majority of the Diocesan
Bishops, although in the opinion of Dean Inge "this is emphatically a
matter in which every man and woman must judge for themselves, and must
refrain from judging others." [114] The Bishops also held that in some
marriages it may be desirable, on grounds of prudence or of health, to
limit the number of children. In these circumstances they advised the
practice of self-restraint; and, as regards a limited use of marriage, they
added the following statement:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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