The Pope's Speech (Cont'd)

The Pope's speech to midwives on the Roman Catholic code of morality in matters of sex and childbirth (TIME, Nov. 12) contained nothing essentially new. But one statement in it set off a blast of Protestant indignation in England. The sentence: "To save the mother's life is a very noble aim, but the direct killing of the baby as a means to that end is not lawful."

One thing that bothered a lot of everyday Britons: under socialized medicine, many non-Catholics are registered patients of Catholic doctors. Would they be forced, willy-nilly, to accept some stringent application of Catholic medical practice? Labor M.P. Reginald W. Sorensen, a Free Christian Church minister, rose in the House of Commons last week to ask the health ministry to issue "some guidance" on the subject to local health authorities, and to mothers.

In Birmingham, Father Alphonsus Bonnar reassured non-Catholic mothers. Catholic doctors, he said "would put an issue like that fairly and squarely to the patient and/or the responsible relatives. They would be told quite clearly that the doctor was not prepared to carry out the wishes of the patient or relatives, but that there were plenty of other members of the medical profession available if necessary."*

But many clergymen objected that Roman Catholic morality on this subject seemed to be no morality at all. At his diocesan conference, the Right Rev. Alfred E. Morris, Anglican Bishop of Monmouth, said that the choice should be made by the mother herself, "not in the agony of childbirth, but calmly and deliberately, as soon as pregnancy has been established ... A woman has an absolute right to say that, if her own life or that of her unborn child must be sacrificed, she chooses to die that the child may live."

Said Anglican Dean Walter R. Matthews of St. Paul's Cathedral, London: "The Pope's teaching would be regarded by most normal people as inhuman ... It seems to me that the death of the mother means the loss of a valuable personality and is certain to cause pain and misery. On the other hand, no one knows whether the child will live. One eventuality is certain, the other problematic." In a front-page editorial, the weekly Church of England Newspaper called the doctrine "inhuman, callous and cruel."

The Vatican asked its critics to read the controversial sentence again. The Pope, said a Vatican spokesman, had not told Catholics to prize the life of the child above that of its mother, or to sacrifice the mother's life if necessary to save the child. On the contrary, said the spokesman, the Pope had meant to emphasize that an unborn child's life is equally as precious as that of its mother, and must not be deliberately sacrificed when the mother is in danger.

* Not necessarily a universal Catholic view. According to Marriage, Morals and Medical Ethics (P. J. Kenedy; $3.50), published this month by two U.S. Catholics, Dr. Frederick L. Good and the Rev. Otis F. Kelly, a Catholic physician "who [refers] patients to other physicians for such things as therapeutic abortion . . . gives scandal to a serious degree both to the patient and to the physician to whom he refers the patient, since he gives other human beings the opportunity to do the wrong which he knows he cannot in conscience do himself. This is true regardless of whether either is a Catholic, since the natural divine moral law is binding upon all."

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