Sin

No sooner had the reports of the Sixth International Birth Control Conference been printed (TIME, Apr. 6) and circulated, than the great opponent of this movement uttered unalterably stern and solemn condemnation. The

Roman Catholic Church suffers no compromise on this question. America, Jesuit weekly, printed an article which concluded: "So it is that notice is served upon America that the 'detestable thing' for which God slew Onan is to be worked for on political grounds. . . . The activity of these propagandists upon so-called scientific and humanitarian grounds seems loudly to call for a more active defense of civic integrity and personal purity against these Shavian-Wellsian-Sanger ian-Onanists who work to defile the temple of the Holy Ghost." The Commonweal, organ of the Calvert Society, replied to Margaret Sanger's opinions by disputing her premises. Other Catholic periodicals of less importance gently rebuked or soundly execrated her. But it was left for Patrick Cardinal Hayes, Arch bishop of New York, in his pastoral letter, last Sunday, to mark out the impassable barrier between birth con trol and the law of his Church. "Latterly, into the public eye has been thrust an open propaganda that shocks the moral sense of every true follower of Christ. Christian sentiment against it has found expression in the law of the land forbidding the dissemination of the knowledge of its practices. Yet the downright perversion of human cooperation with the Creator in the propagation of the human family is openly advocated and defended. . . .

"By such sin fell empires, states and nations. Religion shudders at the wild orgy of atheism and immorality the situation forebodes.

"Mark you, also, that birth control is heralded as a benedicton to the poor, because, forsooth, the poor have too many children and are largely responsible for defectives. Never was there cast upon the humble homes of our people a more offensive insult. Children are welcomed among the poor and the humble as angels and are treasured as jewels. . . .

"Nor are our numble poor, generally speaking, the breeders of defectives. Imbeciles and deformed are as likely to be born of the learned and the affluent. . . . Defectives, moreover, whether physical or mental, have immortal souls, redeemed by the blood of Christ and destined to share with the sound and the whole the vision of God for all eternity. . . .

"I know that our good people will bear with me for referring to this un clean thing. But it teaches the importance of our organized Catholic Charities to combat the forces of evil that would exploit the bodies and ruin the souls of the children of God. . . ."