In Poughkeepsie, N.Y.,, in 1952, a Roman Catholic hospital presented seven Protestant physicians with an ultimatum to quit the Planned Parenthood Federation or to resign from the hospital staff.
Three agreed, but four declined and were suspended.
After a flood of protests, they were reinstated at the beginning of 1953.
The peace of the community was badly disturbed, and people across the nation, reading of the incident, felt uneasy.

In New York City in 1958, the city's Commissioner of Hospitals refused to permit a physician to provide a Protestant mother with a contraceptive device.
He thereby precipitated a bitter controversy involving Protestants, Jews and Roman Catholics that continued for two months, until the city's Board of Hospitals lifted the ban on birth-control therapy.

A year later in Albany, N.Y., a Roman Catholic hospital barred an orthopedic surgeon because of his connection with the Planned Parenthood Association.
Immediately, the religious groups of the city were embroiled in an angry dispute over the alleged invasion of a man's right to freedom of religious belief and conscience.

These incidents, typical of many others, dramatize the distressing fact that no controversy during the last several decades has caused more tension, rancor and strife among religious groups in this country than the birth-control issue.
It has flared up periodically on the front pages of newspapers in communities divided over birth-prevention regulations in municipal hospitals and health and family-welfare agencies.
It has erupted on the national level in the matter of including birth-control information and material in foreign aid to underdeveloped countries.
Where it is not actually erupting, it rumbles and smolders in sullen resentment like a volcano, ready to explode at any moment.

The time has come for citizens of all faiths to unite in an effort to remove this divisive and nettlesome issue from the political and social life of our nation.

The first step toward the goal is the establishment of a new atmosphere of mutual good will and friendly communication on other than the polemical level.
Instead of emotional recrimination, loaded phrases and sloganeering, we need a dispassionate study of the facts, a better understanding of the opposite viewpoint and a more serious effort to extend the areas of agreement until a solution is reached.

"All too frequently", points out James O'Gara, managing editor of Commonweal, "Catholics run roughshod over Protestant sensibilities in this matter, by failure to consider the reasoning behind the Protestant position and, particularly, by their jibes at the fact that Protestant opinion on birth control has changed in recent decades".
All too often our language is unduly harsh.

The second step is to recognize the substantial agreement -- frequently blurred by emotionalism and inaccurate newspaper reporting -- already existing between Catholics and Non-Catholics concerning the over-all objectives of family planning.
Instead of Catholics' being obliged or even encouraged to beget the greatest possible number of offspring, as many Non-Catholics imagine, the ideal of responsible parenthood is stressed.
Family planning is encouraged, so that parents will be able to provide properly for their offspring.

Pope Pius 12, declared in 1951 that it is possible to be exempt from the normal obligation of parenthood for a long time and even for the whole duration of married life, if there are serious reasons, such as those often mentioned in the so-called medical, eugenic, economic and social "indications".
This means that such factors as the health of the parents, particularly the mother, their ability to provide their children with the necessities of life, the degree of population density of a country and the shortage of housing facilities may legitimately be taken into consideration in determining the number of offspring.

These are substantially the same factors considered by Non-Catholics in family planning.
The laws of many states permit birth control only for medical reasons.
The Roman Catholic Church, however, sanctions a much more liberal policy on family planning.

Catholics, Protestants and Jews are in agreement over the objectives of family planning, but disagree over the methods to be used.
The Roman Catholic Church sanctions only abstention or the rhythm method, also known as the use of the infertile or safe period.
The Church considers this to be the method provided by nature and its divine Author: It involves no frustration of nature's laws, but simply an intelligent and disciplined use of them.
With the exception of the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Catholic Churches, most churches make no moral distinction between rhythm and mechanical or chemical contraceptives, allowing the couple free choice.

There is a difference in theological belief where there seems little chance of agreement.
The grounds for the Church's position are Scriptural (Old Testament), the teachings of the fathers and doctors of the early Church, the unbroken tradition of nineteen centuries, the decisions of the highest ecclesiastical authority and the natural law.
The latter plays a prominent role in Roman Catholic theology and is considered decisive, entirely apart from Scripture, in determining the ethical character of birth-prevention methods.

The Roman Catholic natural-law tradition regards as self-evident that the primary objective purpose of the conjugal act is procreation and that the fostering of the mutual love of the spouses is the secondary and subjective end.
This conclusion is based on two propositions: that man by the use of his reason can ascertain God's purpose in the universe and that God makes known His purpose by certain "given" physical arrangements.

Thus, man can readily deduce that the primary objective end of the conjugal act is procreation, the propagation of the race.
Moreover, man may not supplant or frustrate the physical arrangements established by God, who through the law of rhythm has provided a natural method for the control of conception.
Believing that God is the Author of this law and of all laws of nature, Roman Catholics believe that they are obliged to obey those laws, not frustrate or mock them.

Let it be granted then that the theological differences in this area between Protestants and Roman Catholics appear to be irreconcilable.
But people differ in their religious beliefs on scores of doctrines, without taking up arms against those who disagree with them.
Why is it so different in regard to birth control?
It is because each side has sought to implement its distinctive theological belief through legislation and thus indirectly force its belief, or at least the practical consequences thereof, upon others.

It is always a temptation for a religious organization, especially a powerful or dominant one, to impose through the clenched fist of the law its creedal viewpoint upon others.
Both Roman Catholics and Protestants have succumbed to this temptation in the past.

Consider what happened during World War 1,, when the Protestant churches united to push the Prohibition law through Congress.
Many of them sincerely believe that the use of liquor in any form or in any degree is intrinsically evil and sinful.
With over four million American men away at war, Protestants forced their distinctive theological belief upon the general public.
With the return of our soldiers, it soon became apparent that the belief was not shared by the great majority of citizens.
The attempt to enforce that belief ushered in a reign of bootleggers, racketeers, hijackers and gangsters that led to a breakdown of law unparalleled in our history.
The so-called "noble experiment" came to an inglorious end.

That tumultuous, painful and costly experience shows clearly that a law expressing a moral judgment cannot be enforced when it has little correspondence with the general view of society.
That experience holds a lesson for us all in regard to birth control today.

Up to the turn of the century, contraception was condemned by all Christian churches as immoral, unnatural and contrary to divine law.
This was generally reflected in the civil laws of Christian countries.
Today, the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches stand virtually alone in holding that conviction.
The various Lambeth Conferences, expressing the Anglican viewpoint, mirror the gradual change that has taken place among Protestants generally.

In 1920, the Lambeth Conference repeated its 1908 condemnation of contraception and issued "an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave dangers -- physical, moral, and religious -- thereby incurred, and against the evils which the extension of such use threaten the race".
Denouncing the view that the sexual union is an end in itself, the Conference declared: "We steadfastly uphold what must always be regarded as the governing considerations of Christian marriage.
One is the primary purpose for which marriage exists, namely, the continuance of the race through the gift and heritage of children;
the other is the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control".
The Conference called for a vigorous campaign against the open or secret sale of contraceptives.

In 1930, the Lambeth Conference again affirmed the primary purpose of marriage to be the procreation of children, but conceded that, in certain limited circumstances, contraception might be morally legitimate.

In 1958, the Conference endorsed birth control as the responsibility laid by God on parents everywhere.

Many other Protestant denominations preceded the Anglicans in such action.
In March, 1931, 22 out of 28 members of a committee of the Federal Council of Churches ratified artificial methods of birth control.
"As to the necessity", the committee declared, "for some form of effective control of the size of the family and the spacing of children, and consequently of control of conception, there can be no question.
There is general agreement also that sex union between husbands and wives as an expression of mutual affection without relation to procreation is right".

Since then, many Protestant denominations have made separate pronouncements, in which they not only approved birth control, but declared it at times to be a religious duty.
What determines the morality, they state, is not the means used, but the motive In general, the means (excluding abortion) that prove most effective are considered the most ethical.

This development is reflected in the action taken in February, 1961, by the general board of the National Council of Churches, the largest Protestant organization in the Aj.
The board approved and commended the use of birth-control devices as a part of Christian responsibility in family planning.
It called for opposition to laws and institutional practices restricting the information or availability of contraceptives.

The general board declared: "Most of the Protestant churches hold contraception and periodic continence to be morally right when the motives are right.
The general Protestant conviction is that motives, rather than methods, form the primary moral issue, provided the methods are limited to the prevention of conception".

An action once universally condemned by all Christian churches and forbidden by the civil law is now not only approved by the overwhelming majority of Protestant denominations, but also deemed, at certain times, to be a positive religious duty.
This viewpoint has now been translated into action by the majority of people in this country.
Repeated polls have disclosed that most married couples are now using contraceptives in the practice of birth control.

For all concerned with social-welfare legislation, the significance of this radical and revolutionary change in the thought and habits of the vast majority of the American people is clear, profound and far-reaching.
To try to oppose the general religious and moral conviction of such a majority by a legislative fiat would be to invite the same breakdown of law and order that was occasioned by the ill-starred Prohibition experiment.

This brings us to the fact that the realities we are dealing with lie not in the field of civil legislation, but in the realm of conscience and religion: They are moral judgments and matters of theological belief.
Conscience and religion are concerned with private sin: The civil law is concerned with public crimes.
Only confusion, failure and anarchy result when the effort is made to impose upon the civil authority the impossible task of policing private homes to preclude the possibility of sin.
Among the chief victims of such an ill-conceived imposition would be religion itself.