THE review by Terry Oberg (CL 27/2/05) of Jack Dominion’s latest book opposing the Church’s position on artificial birth control deserves a response.
Both gentlemen seek to put their judgment against the teaching and wisdom of the centuries.
Firstly, Jack Dominion cannot be a “committed” Catholic as the reviewer states, or he would not devote his energies to supporting a practice that underpins and promotes abortion, and is itself frequently abortifacient, and is injurious of the welfare of men, women and the family.
Whilst the argument against artificial contraception from the point of natural law may be difficult to understand, it is also true that there has been virtually no effort on the part of most bishops of Australia to enunciate it, nor little if any encouragement for priests to teach it to their parishioners. Many priests have themselves rejected it.
There has in effect been a conspiracy of silence on the teaching, giving people no guidance, whilst in society at large, the legacy of the “sexual revolution” introduced by the contraceptive pill has taken a deadly toll.
The creation of a division between marital relations and the chance of procreation has sundered the protection that women and their unborn children could once expect from men and society.
Responsibility for children within and outside of marriage has suffered extensively with many children living in single parent homes, or with confused parentage from numerous de facto relationships. Abortion is accepted as the solution to ‘unwanted pregnancies’, and men excluded from protecting their offspring.
In Humanae Vitae 17, Pope Paul VI prophetically warned that “man, growing used to the employment or anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman, and no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment’.
The Church does not direct married couples as to how many children they should have, but as the “guardian and faithful interpreter of all the moral law’ (HV 4), she directs us as to what is our ultimate good, and the plan of God for marriage.
DR DONNA PURCELL
Toowoomba, Qld
