Campaign against contraception

From MICHAEL WILSON in Rome
The Catholic Church's opposition to contraception, sterilisation ahd abortion and its intention to promote a world campaign against them during the 1974 World Population Year, is emphasised in a Holy See document circulated to world hierarchies and Vatican diplomatic representatives.
The document is based on recommendations made by the first meeting in 1973 of the Vatican's Committee for the Family as synthesised by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Jean Villot.
Written in French, the document formulates no new views but reiterates Pope Paul's anticontraception stand in the encyclical Humanae Vitae and the Church's constant opposition to sterilisation and abortion.
A prelate on the Family Committee told me: "This paper was not written as a Papal directive but as an informative circular, not so Much to remind the hierarchies and representatives of the unchanging attitude Of the Church but to encourage them to use every effort to make these views known as widely and publicly as possible during the World Population Year."
Although the document was apparently made public for the first time in Europe earlier this week in London, it was sent to all the bishops and the representatives last autumn and was published in full in the United States and Canada early in January this year.
It had been the Family Committee which had suggested last year to Cardinal Villot that the 1974 Population Year could prove an ideal platform for the Holy See to "reiterate and re-emphasise" not to promote any new teaching — her fundamental attitudes regarding procreation, respect for life and the right to life, the prelate said.
The document quotes extensively from Pope Paul's Humanae Vitae encyclical of 1968, in which he reiterated the Holy See's ban on artificial contraception, mainly aimed at the use of "thc pill".