PLANNED PARENTHOOD PLANNiD PARENTHOOD REV. RICHARD CINDER Ohstat: John M. A. Fearns, S.T.D., Censor Librorum. Imprimatur: Francis Cardinal Spellman, D.D., Archbishop of New York, New York, June 2, 1947, Published By THE CATHOLIC INFORMATION SOCIETY 214 West 31st St., New York 1, N. Y. (opposite PENN TERMINAL) 2 D02c!dlfsd riAWDIISU rMBWlll""" "Juda therefore said to Onan his son: Go in to thy brother’s wife and marry her, that thou mayst raise seed to thy brother. “He knowing that the children should not be his, when he went to his brother’s wife, spilled his seed upon the ground, lest children should be born in his brother’s name. “And therefore the Lord slew him, be- cause he did a detestable thing.”—Genesis xxxviii, 8-10. The Lord has not changed since that day. He still detests the sin of those who spill their seed through interruption or contraception, or who frustrate its power 3 by spermicides, douches, vaginal inserts, and all the claptrap devised by the per- verted ingenuity of mankind. The New Testament echoed the teach- ing of the Old. "Let marriage be honor- able in all things, and the bed undefiled” — Hebrews xiii, 4. Four hundred years later, the great St. Augustine affirmed God’s will when he said that "Relations with one’s wife when conception is de- liberately prevented are as unlawful and impure as the conduct of Onan who was slain.” And in the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas crystallized the consensus of Christian tradition, saying that "Next to murder, by which an actually existent being is destroyed, we rank this sin by which the generation of a human being is prevented.” 'The Catholic Church comprising the majority of world Christians today, stands 4 with God in her detestation of birth pre- vention. "Any use whatsoever of matrimony,” said Pope Pius XI in 1931,” exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life, is an offence against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with guilt of a grave sin . . . "No reason, however grave, may be put forward by which anything intrinsically against nature may become conformable to nature and morally good — 'Evil is not to be done that good may come of it’ ” Cast! connuhii. Protestants About-Face Despite the fact that God’s law is clear as crystal and that it has been honored through thousands of years by devout people, the last few decades have brought 5 a complete about-face in this matter on the part of many Protestants and Jews. Episcopal and Anglican Bishops, for instance, declared at the Lambeth Con- ference in 1908 "that deliberate tampering with nascent life is repugnant to Christian morality.” In 1914, a majority of these Protestant Bishops condemned contraception as "dan- gerous, demoralizing, and sinful.” In I92O: "We utter an emphatic warn- ing against the use of unnatural means of avoidance of conception . . .” But in 193O: "If there is a good moral reason why the way of abstinence should not be followed we cannot condemn the use of scientific methods for preventing conception which are thoughtfully and conscientiously adopted.” The Protestant Episcopal Church in this country took separate action in 1934, giv- ing the green light to planned pollu- tionism. 6 The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America also decided in favor of Onan, stating that "careful and restrained use of contraceptives by married people is valid and moral” — although many Protestant groups took violent exception to the opinion, v.g. the Methodist Church South, the United Lutheran Church of America, the Presbyterian Synod at Pitts- burgh, the General Synod of the Reformed Church, etc. Breeding Themselves Out The Jews are simply breeding them- selves out of existence. Rabbi Cronbach, writing in The Social Outlook of Modern fudaism, says that "Even the Assembly of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, after a heated discussion, fore- bore to condemn birth control.” The Rabinnical Assembly of American Rabbis resolved: 7 "We maintain that proper education in contraception and birth control will not destroy, but rather enhance the spiritual values inherent in the family and will make for the advancement of human hap- piness and welfare.” "In other words,” says Dr. Thomas F. Coakley, writing in The Catholic Ob- server, "Protestants and Jews are selling out the country to Catholics. Unless Pro- testants and Jews and imbelievers cease their propaganda for Planned Parenthood, they will wake up some morning to find that Catholics have overrun the United States. This is a democracy; the group with the largest number of votes has always run the country. If Protestants and Jews de- liberately set out on a program of killing themselves off, within a few generations they must not be surprised if the United States becomes conspicuously Catholic. "The mystery about it all is that clever, 8 well-educated, far-seeing Protestants or Jews, clerical and lay, do not seem to realize that a man from Mars looking down on the earthly scene and observing the feverish activity of Planned Parent- hooders to prevent other Protestants and Jews from being born, would conclude he was witnessing a gigantic Catholic plot to exterminate Protestants and Jews!” Birth Prevention is Big Business The truth is that there are vast interests at work intent on destroying the religious convictions of the nation— in this regard, at least. The manufacture of birth-pre- ventives is an industry running into mil- lions of dollars. It’s a cold business propo- sition. Contraceptives sell at three for a dollar in practically every drug-store and many filling stations all over the land. But there is a lag between popular practice and legislation so that, mercifully, we are 9 still spared billboards and car-cards recom- mending one contraceptive over another. It’s forbidden by law— which means that the millions of dollars set aside by the average big business for promotion and advertising must be channeled under- ground to lobbyists, pressure groups, quacks, and misguided reformers. We can safely say that the sale of birth-preventives is as lucrative as say, whiskey sales. Some idea of the money at work behind the scenes can be obtained, then, by gauging the volume of whiskey ads. Another factor in this debauching of American morality is the pressure of modern advertising. The luxuries of the rich are tomorrow the necessities of the poor. We are taught, and it is drilled into us on every side, in every magazine, in every newspaper, that one simply cannot exist without a radio (preferably with a drop-record phonograph attachment), a 10 car, a telephone, the latest Bendix washer, an electric sweeper, toaster, percolator, mangle, and vacuum cleaner. These things give us our vaunted "American standard of living.” Economic Royalists at WorU But these things are also expensive, and where is the money going to come from? Well, the more sales, the more profits the companies make and the more money they can afford to pay their labor. They want us to buy their commodities. But do they put more money in the pay envelopes ? No — instead they lay out more money for advertising and send over a check to the local planned-pollutionism clinic. Actually, we don’t need all of these gadgets. Fifty years ago, no one had an automobile, or a radio, or a washing-ma- chine, mangle, sweeper, etc. And the people managed to get along. They were 11 happier, too, with their babies on their lap rather than on their conscience. Ten years from now I dare say that half the country will wonder how it ever man- aged to get along without that good old television set standing in the corner. Advertising, too, has taken a peculiar slant. Notice the pictures as you leaf through your next copy of The Saturday Evening Post or Life. If a car is advertised, there is a picture of mother sitting at the wheel with one child beside her; or the car is parked in front of a big house — on the lawn beside it, a little girl playing, not with her brothers and sisters, but with a much less expensive St. Bernard dog. The insurance ads picture a mother with two children looking anxiously into the future. Our magazine writers make lofty men- tion of ''The large families of the middle classes.” The father of ten or twelve 12 children is looked on with something akin to benign amusement; he is compared with a jack-rabbit or a guinea pig. Misguided Social Workers The social workers go to the poor or the immigrants and tell them to leave having children to the rich, who can afford them. "Better no children at all than children with decayed teeth or with tonsils which you can’t afford to have out,” they say. And these rich people who can afford children — how many do they have? God told us to increase and multiply, but our selfishness grows in proportion as our love of God wanes; so that many a modern mother living on martinis and cheese-popcorn and looking more like an animated toothpick than a matron, is con- cerned rather with her figure than with her conscience and so is delighted to hear a physician assure her that "another child 13 would be fatal.” There is too often in- sincerity on the one side and a lack of generosity on the other. God does not tell mothers how many children they are to have. He simply for- bids tampering with the functions of nature. There is such a thing as spacing of children and family limitation within the frame of God’s law. It is done through continence, restraint, self control. But is a large family to be dreaded? Don’t we too often and too easily make that assumption ? What mother would part with any of her children at any price? And isn’t the mother of four children twice as well off as the mother of two?— and only half as well off as the mother of eight? John James Audubon, the beloved American naturalist, was his mother’s twentieth child. Schubert was a fourteenth child. Burbank a thirteenth. And had the planned pollutionists existed before this. 14 there would have been no Beethoven — for he was the last in a family of twelve! This is still a land of opportunity. Our country achieved greatness because her citizens knew how to hustle, to go out and get what they wanted — a virtue never learned by the pampered children of small families. No mother need fear that in bearing many children she will be sending illiterate paupers into the world. Give them a chance — these unborn — and they’ll dig out an education for themselves, and a job, and affluence — if that be viewed as an element of success, and your declining years will be spent in honor before God and men. Your children will live to bless your generous self-sacrifice in allowing them an opportunity to gain not just a college education or a good income, but far more important, the blessed vision of God for all eternity. 15 TURn THIS DOUin Have you a soul? Is there a God? Was Jesus the Messi^? Are the Gospels dependable? What did Jesus claim? Did Jesus establish a church? What are Sacraments? Is confession necessary? . You -wiQ find the answer to these and many other questions of vital importance to your personal happi- ness in the following pamphlets by Father Ginder: 1. Standard Equipment 2. Our Better Half 3. Who Made It? 4. What's God Like? 5. Direction for Use 6. It's the Gospel Truth 7. He Was God 8. Advance Information 9. God's Signature 10. Within the Sacred Circle 1 1 . Thou Art the Rock 12. Carrier of the Keys 13. In Search of Truth 14. Bridging the Chasm 15. The Facts Behind the Resurrection 16. Makes Sense, Doesn't It? 17. You Need ThisI 18. Hell on Earth 19. Paradise Regained 20. Why Go Hungry? 21. The Golden Chain 22. Mary, the Mother of Jesus To know the reasons for your Catholic neighbors’ beliefs and practices, send for these interesting pamphlets today. Five cents each or one dollar postpaid for the entire series. Address; CATHOLIC INFORMATION SOCIETY 214 WEST 3l*t STREET • NEW YORK I, N, Y. * NEVER DESTROY GOOD PRINT. Pass If from Person to Person. Thanks!