The Pope & the Pill

Sir: Despite Pope Paul [Aug. 9], many of us will continue to do as we have done in the past: take the pill, go to Mass and receive the sacraments, because we live by our consciences, which tell us that the law of charity, affecting our relations with our husbands, children and society as a whole, is more binding than an encyclical filled with unrealistic opinions.

MRS. R. LAMBERT

Arlington Heights, Ill.

Sir: As a Catholic mother, wife, lover, therapist, chauffeur, social worker, comforter, healer, organizer, charity worker, cook, gardener, laundress, carpenter, secretary, messenger, nurse, artist, interior decorator, landscaper and homemaker, rhythm has wrought me babies, frustration, anger, frigidity, sorrow, incompatibility, bitchery, unhappiness, disillusionment, dissatisfaction, discontent, bitterness, instability and more babies.

To the Pill I can accredit harmony, communication, fulfillment, satisfaction, happiness, stability, understanding, acceptance, relaxation, achievement, compatibility, courage, love, peace and Christ.

ROSEMARY E. DALTON

Livonia, Mich.

Sir: According to Pope Paul's latest encyclical, sexual intercourse may only take place when procreation is the object of such intercourse. What then is the position of a woman who marries when past the age of childbearing? Are the parties to such a marriage to forgo sexual intercourse? In which case the marriage will remain forever unconsummated.

DOUGLASS B. MARSHALL

Barcelona

Sir: Paul VI's reasoning goes deeper than the surface problems of sexuality and birth control. He bespeaks man as a spiritual as well as a material being. He upholds continence as a possible virtue whereas his every critic (including, sadly, many Catholic priests) at least implicitly regards continence as an impossible virtue to modern man. To deny the possibility of continence (in any human field) is to profess the democratically fatal doctrine that man is a determined being, not a free one—a doctrine at the base of too many political, social and economic practices already eating away at the foundations of human liberty.

DOUGLAS J. MURPHEY

Roslyn Estates, N.Y.

Sir: On Aug. 22 the Pope will come to Colombia. Of course we will show him the best of this city, but we should take him to the horrid places where people try to survive, like animals, in an incredible misery, full of sickness, without any education and without any hope for a better tomorrow. We should introduce him to family fathers who earn $1 daily with which to provide the needs of a family of twelve. The government, not the church, makes an effort to solve this situation; but every day it is bigger, and it grows in a proportion that prevents solution.

The Pope says there's a way for birth control. Yes, let's tell the Pope to talk about fertile periods with an illiterate woman and talk about abstinence with a drunken and brutal man who keeps his woman like a slave.