Protestant Birth Control

"Birth control is nearing the status of a recognized procedure in preventive and curative medicine. Knowledge of contraceptives is also widely disseminated and the question of their use has become one of great social importance. . . . There is general agreement also that sex union between husbands and wives as an expression of mutual affection, without relation to procreation, is right. This is recognized by the Scriptures, by all branches of the Christian Church, by social and medical science, and by the good sense and idealism of mankind."

So reads a majority report issued last week by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America.* So does U. S. Protestantism disagree with Pope Pius XI and some Church of England bishops on the subject of Birth Control.

As revealed last fortnight by Bishop Albert Augustus David of Liverpool (TIME, March 16), a number of Anglican Bishops at last year's Lambeth Conference were privily agreed that the sexual relationship "even in marriage must be regarded as a regrettable necessity. . . . Except where children are desired, married persons should remain celibate after marriage, as before." In this recommendation of abstinence, three of the 28 members of the Federal Council's Committee on Marriage and the Home concurred: Mrs. Robert Elliott Speer, president of the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Associations; Mrs. Orrin R. Judd, president of the Council of Women for Home Missions; and Dr. Howard Chandler Robbins of General Theological Seminary, Manhattan.

Bishop Auxiliary John J. Dunn of New York and Archbishop Michael Joseph Curley of Baltimore promptly replied for Catholicism to the Protestants' report. Archbishop Curley called it a "confession of moral bankruptcy." Bishop Dunn quoted His Holiness, Pope Pius XI: "Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose, sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and in- trinsically vicious. . . . No reason, however grave, may be put forward by which anything against nature may become conformable to nature and morally good." (TIME, Jan. 19.)

The Federal Council's committee divided on the question of how Birth Control should be practiced, whether by the use of contraceptives or by abstinence. On this subject, apart from the Catholic viewpoint, Christian opinion is not united. The "Scriptures and the ecumenical councils of the Christian Church are silent." Even the medical profession is not unanimous. "Guidance should be sought from the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life," said the Federal Councillors. But, "whatever the final conclusion may be," the Councillors were "strongly of the opinion that the Church should not seek to impose its point of view as to the use of contraceptives upon the public by legislation or any other form of coercion; and especially should not seek to prohibit physicians from imparting such information to those who in the judgment of the medical profession are entitled to receive it." While the majority held that abstinence in marriage cannot be relied upon, they also pointed out that there is an element of uncertainty in all contraceptive methods. They particularly warned the public against "advertised nostrums, which are beginning to appear in thinly disguised forms in reputable periodicals, and so-called 'bootlegged' devices at drug stores. . . ."

Twenty-two of the 28 members of the Federal Council's committee--including Mrs. John Davison Rockefeller Jr., Dr. John Abner Marquis, onetime (1916) Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, President Albert William Heaven of Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, and George Woodward Wickersham--approved the use of contraceptives.

Dr. Frederick Hermann Knubel, president of the United Lutheran Church in America, suspected the motives of those who had brought Birth Control up for discussion. He connected it with a period "notorious for looseness in sexual morality."

Same day as the U. S. Protestant report appeared, the Congregation of the Holy Office in Vatican City issued a decree condemning the tendency to instruct the youth of both sexes regarding the phenomenon of procreation.

*Composed of 27 Protestant denominations (representing between 22,000,000 and 23,000,000 Protestants) of which 25 hold full membership. The Protestant Episcopal Church has "cooperative" membership. The United Lutheran Church in America has "consultative" membership. Delegates of the former vote at annual meetings; the latter do not.

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