Wise Parenthood (15th edition)/Chapter 2

"All turns on what we say is included under divine law. If it is de jure divino, then there is no power to modify it; but if any portion is not, then there is power."

DOES divine law condemn scientific methods of controlling conception?

It does not.

And Christ never condemned parental control and voluntary parenthood.

The Churches, long after His words were spoken, concocted various views of the matter by combining the Pauline attitude toward sex with various Old Testament verses. But no Church, not even the Roman Catholic, has ever yet had a permanent, a logical, or a racially ennobling code of teaching on the subject. The pressure of public opinion is continually forcing the Churches in this, as in other matters, to shift their ground. Alas! While they endeavour to instruct and legislate, they do not lead.

The Memorandum of the Bishops of the ​Anglican Catholic Church, the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, the pronouncement in congress of the main body of Christian Nonconformists, and the Jewish Church, have all very similarly condemned what they call "artificial" methods. The Roman Catholic Church in particular is the most unyielding in its total condemnation of the use of scientific aid in controlling the production of children, although it—like the other Churches—concedes the principle of the justifiability of control in some circumstances. To concede the principle, even while condemning the best methods of effecting such control, is to deny the uses of intellectual progress. The stricter members of the Churches obey their edicts; or, with uneasy or unhappy consciences, disobey because they must, or because their training and intelligence teach them that they should make use of what scientific knowledge is available for their help. Hence numbers of Roman Catholics defy the priests or conceal from them the fact that they use methods of control. An interesting example of a particularly self-reliant and brave Roman Catholic who not only privately but openly defied his priest and publicly advocated birth control is reported in his own words in the Birth Control News for April, 1927, vol. v, No. 12. Some priests permit methods and themselves deny the authority of the Church, all of which indicates the nation's hunger for ​intelligent help on lines suited to modern conditions.

The wisdom of the Churches is ancient and pre-scientific: humanity to-day is modern and lives under increasingly "artificial" conditions: only the divinely-given everlasting truths are eternal, and on these the Churches must base their authority. Are any such divine laws given to the Churches about the Control of Conception?

I answer—None.

The Churches, old and wise, gave suitable advice on sex matters in the early days, and now, confusing their own ancient wisdom with the very word of God, they give to-day similar advice, which is no longer wise.

In respect of the control of conception and general guidance concerning sex unions, the so-called Christian ethic (which incidentally goes back to Genesis for its origin, see page 411 of the First Report of the Birth Rate Commission), has for long neglected some of the highest potentialities of marriage. By chaining it to a low individualism, ignorant or forgetful that "they twain shall be one flesh," and that the married pair is not merely a couple of individuals, whose individual souls may achieve perdition or salvation, the greater truth has been hidden. I maintain that a married couple is a welded pair, a higher unit, whose existence and potentialities on this planet depend largely ​upon the physical condition of the material body of each of the pair, and of its interplay and exchanges, which are jeopardised without the knowledge how best to control the production of children.

The insistence sometimes made in the name of Christian "morality," that the act of physical union should take place only for the procreation of children, ignores profound physical and religious truths.

On physiological, moral, and religious grounds, therefore, I advocate the restrained sacramental and rhythmic performance of the marriage rites of physical union, throughout the whole married life, as an act of supreme value in itself, separate and distinct from its value as a basis for the procreation of children.

That being so, some knowledge of scientific methods of controlling conception becomes not only useful but of the highest—even of religious—significance.

Consider what is entailed in calling forth into existence new souls, each immortal, as all Churches maintain. This is surely one of the profoundest and most essential ways in which the Church can meet and guide humanity. Could any more exalted and more wonderful opportunity be given to the Churches than to see that the souls thus started upon their journeys, endowed with immortal power to serve or disserve God, should be brought ​forth in love and at such times as will give them every opportunity for complete human equipment?

The Churches, however, offer to serious and inquiring parents who can rear no more children only the alternatives of total and enforced abstinence, and the so-called "natural" method of consciously timing what should be a spontaneous natural impulse of love to those periods supposed to be "safe." Both these methods I condemn for general use, although they may suit some individual needs. Both thwart what is a high and God-given impulse, and in my opinion consequently both these practices are at times essentially immoral, almost as immoral as forcing sickly and unwanted children upon an unwilling mother and an overburdened world.

Marriage is a great and profound thing, and has a deep spiritual and physical significance apart from and in addition to being the basis of parenthood. And both these practices, allowed as the only means of birth control by the Churches, strike at the roots of the perfect marriage. The common folk who disobey and disregard this advice of the Churches, however wrong they are in their methods, are right in their deep instinct to obey God's ordinance that the twain shall be one flesh. There is, for this aspect of the subject, "A New Gospel."

The divine law on this great subject has not ​yet been pronounced finally. The Churches have hitherto based their standard of social morality concerning it on human pronouncements. That being so, religious people should welcome the human understanding of those who to-day most seriously study the question in order to help forward the race in its material journey through space. Science, in reverent hands, may to-day on such a theme more nearly reach divine law than the Churches have yet done.

That this is being felt, even among the leaders of the Church, may be gathered from such writings as those of the Dean of St. Paul's, and the published statement by the Bishop of Birmingham (The Times, April 8, 1919) where he said: "Morally, as well as eugenically, it was right for people in certain circumstances to use harmless means to control the birth-rate. . . . It was immoral to avoid having children from selfish motives, but it was surely also immoral to have child after child under circumstances which, humanly speaking, were such as to render the proper upbringing of such children impossible."