On Fornication

> Said Britain's Bishop of London, Dr. Geoffrey Francis Fisher: "There is concern about the landslide in sexual morality. . . ."

> Said the Rev. Donald Selby Wright over BBC: "It is the fruit of a blasphemy of real love--lust."

> Said Physician Charles Hill, also over BBC: "Piccadilly Circus and its equivalent in other large cities is a disgrace and we know it."

>Said the London Midland & Scottish Railway, which had just barred its train platform at Preston, Lancashire, to all except passengers: "The station has been used by young girls to pick up men. They have made an absolute nuisance of themselves."

This mounting chorus of concern over wartime moral conditions in Britain was swelled last week by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. In a stern joint statement they said: "Since the outbreak of the war there has been a large increase in venereal disease [120%], both among the civilian population and ... in the forces. This brings ruin and unhappiness to thousands of homes and has become a grave danger to the health of the nation.

"The problem is moral as well as medical. The chief cause of the spread of the disease is fornication or, as it is sometimes now called, promiscuity. On this the teaching of Christianity has always been clear and uncompromising. It fully recognizes that the right use of sex contributes to the happiness as well as to the life of human beings, but it demands that it should be treated with reverence and respect as the means God has ordained for the creation of His children. It therefore condemns fornication as a sin for it misuses for momentary pleasure what was intended both as an expression of abiding love and for the creation of new life. . . . We therefore call upon all who claim to be followers of Christ to take their stand against this sin.

"In loyalty to their Master they must bear their witness against practices, amusements and conversations that assume fornication is natural . . . must be loyal to the Christian standard--namely, all sexual intercourse except between man and wife is sin.

"But while we condemn the sin we understand how great are the temptations to which many are now subject. . . . God will give help to those who pray to Him, and to those who have yielded to temptation He offers pardon if they are truly penitent."

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