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CHAPTER EIGHT

"Not merely to bring children into the world, but to have fit children whom they can rightly train must be their determination."

The position of the Church of Rome, far from being "unchanging" and always, right as it loudly maintains, has greatly altered from time to time on the subject. To-day it most loudly denounces all scientific methods which it calls "artificial" and Cardinal Bourne is reported to have definitely encouraged Roman Catholic medical practitioners to give circulation to "medical" arguments against contraception.[1] The Church however has already yielded the principle of the use of contraceptive means as is well demonstrated in the following brief account from Havelock Ellis:[2] "The question was definitely brought up for Papal judgment, in 1842, by Bishop Bouvier of Le Mans, who stated the matter very clearly, representing to the Pope (Gregory XVI) that the prevention of conception was becoming very common, and that to

    with Introduction by the Bishop of Birmingham. Pp. 203. London, 1920.

  1. ↑ See several contemporary newspaper reports, for instance the Roman Catholic Times for August, 1922.
  2. ↑ Havelock Ellis (1921) (1910) "Sex in Relation to Society." Pp. xvi, 656. Philadelphia, 1921. See p. 590.

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