The Ethics and Psychology of Neomalthusian Birth-Control

Extract

[This paper was read to a group of members of the Guild of St. Luke, St. Cosmas, and St. Damian in London in 1923, and was first published in The Catholic Medical Guardian, the quarterly journal of the Guild (Vol. II, No. 5, January, 1924). We are indebted to the Editor of that journal and to Father Vincent McNabb for permission to reprint the article. Its publication is timely in view of the declaration of a majority of the members of the Lambeth Conference to the effect that where the moral obligation of birth prevention exists, it is open to the parties concerned to employ any method to prevent conception, provided such method be in accord with Christian principles. Father Vincent McNabb’s paper, written seven years ago, is an adequate answer to the Lambeth pronouncement.'—Editor.]

We have deliberately used the phrase, ‘NeoMalthusian Birth-Control,’ because the simple phrase ‘Birth-Control’ is likely to mislead. It is not accurate to say that the Church condemns birth-control. What the Church condemns, or rather what the Church has no power to allow, is not birth-control, but birth-control by sinful methods. The Church has always had a most efficient method of birth-control, by conjugal and virginal chastity. She has never urged what Neo-Malthusians say she has urged : ‘reckless propagation.’ Indeed, her normal action seems everywhere to have resulted, not in such an increase of population as this island has seen since the Industrial revolution, but in a steady maintenance of a high level of population largely dwelling on the land.