Rhythm

The Pope frowns on all forms of contraception because they prevent the birth of children, prime purpose of Roman Catholic matrimony. A thoroughgoing realist, the Pope at the same time knows that many loving Catholics who fear to have children defy his pontifical frown. Therefore he decided that it is morally right and proper for Catholic couples to utilize the wife's monthly rhythm of sterility and fertility as a natural method of contraception.

The Pope gave permission to do so in his 1930 Encyclical on Marriage, Casti Connubii. Said he: "Nor are those considered as acting against nature who in their married life use their right in the proper manner, although on account of natural reasons of time or of certain defects, new life cannot be brought forth."

But not until last week did an influential body of U. S. Catholic doctors dare to discuss the subject boldly and receptively. The group was Chicago's Cosmas & Damian Associates, guild of physicians and surgeons. Five hundred of them had scholarly Father John A. O'Brien of the University of Illinois on hand to give them ecclesiastical approbation and Dr. Arthur George Miller, a leading U. S. investi- gator of the fertility-sterility rhythm, to give them practical instruction.

This system of natural contraception is based on research by Professor Kyusaku Ogino of Niigata, Japan and Professor Hermann Knaus of Graz, Austria. They observed that a woman is fertile only seven or eight days of her month and will rarely conceive outside that span. Professors Ogino and Knaus say, although not all investigators agree with them, that the fertile week always ends twelve days before menstruation begins. To love morally, canonically and practically a Catholic couple need practice continence only during the fertile week.

Chief U. S. propagandist of the Ogino-Knaus system is Dr. Leo John Latz, 31, of Loyola University. He organized the Latz Foundation to publish The Rhythm, "with Ecclesiastical Approbation," has in three years sold 60,000 copies at 75-c- and $1.

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