A large proportion of the parents who are addicted to Birth Control practices are sufficiently provided with worldly goods to be free from apprehension on the economic side; nevertheless, they have small families because they are disinclined to undertake the other burdens involved in bringing up a more numerous family.  A practice which tends to produce such exaggerated notions of what constitutes hardship, which leads men and women to cherish such a degree of ease, makes inevitably for inefficiency, a decline in the capacity to endure and to achieve, and for a general social decadence.

“Finally, Birth Control leads sooner or later to a decline in population....” (The case of France is instanced.) But it is essentially the moral question that alarms the Catholic women, for the statement concludes:  “The further effect of such proposed legislation will inevitably be a lowering both of public and private morals.  What the fathers of this country termed indecent and forbade the mails to carry, will, if such legislation is carried through, be legally decent.  The purveyors of sexual license and immorality will have the opportunity to send almost anything they care to write through the mails on the plea that it is sex information.  Not only the married but also the unmarried will be thus affected; the ideals of the young contaminated and lowered.  The morals of the entire nation will suffer.

“The proper attitude of Catholics... is clear.  They should watch and oppose all attempts in state legislatures and in Congress to repeal the laws which now prohibit the dissemination of information concerning Birth Control.  Such information will be spread only too rapidly despite existing laws.  To repeal these would greatly accelerate this deplorable movement.(1)”

The Catholic position has been stated in an even more extreme form by Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes of the archdiocese of New York.  In a “Christmas Pastoral” this dignitary even went to the extent of declaring that “even though some little angels in the flesh, through the physical or mental deformities of their parents, may appear to human eyes hideous, misshapen, a blot on civilized society, we must not lose sight of this Christian thought that under and within such visible malformation, lives an immortal soul to be saved and glorified for all eternity among the blessed in heaven."(2)

With the type of moral philosophy expressed in this utterance, we need not argue.  It is based upon traditional ideas that have had the practical effect of making this world a vale of tears.  Fortunately such words carry no weight with those who can bring free and keen as well as noble minds to the consideration of the matter.  To them the idealism of such an utterance appears crude and cruel.  The menace to civilization of such orthodoxy, if it be orthodoxy, lies in the fact that its powerful exponents may be fore a time successful not merely in influencing the conduct of their adherents but in checking freedom