Family planning

I refer to your front page item of June 6 headed "Boost for natural family planning research." in which it is reported: "He said the most modern method of natural Family planning involved a combination of four different indicators of ovulation and a sixmonth programme of education for a couple (my italics)...
"The latest combination of family planning involved: Temperature rhythm , ..; sensation of 'middle pain' . . .; visual change in cervical mucus . . .; palpable change in cervical mucus . . .
"This combination of indicators could make natural family planning as effective as the intra-uterine device (IUD) or the pill."
I would not dispute this, but does not the author perhaps forget that the Church has mission to teach all nations, not. merely the sophisticates of our Western civilisation?
Imagine for a moment that you are a Catholic mission doctor, working in a remote part of Africa in the forefront of the Church's advance in the developing world. How would you advise your patients to plan their families?
I lived with this problem for 14 years. As it so happens. I accept the Church's teaching on birth control, as expressed in Humanae Vitae. But then I am a privileged sophisticate of the West.
May I suggest that, accepting the latest advances in medical knowledge relating to "natural family planning," the Church's teaching on birth control has a practical application to:
1. Couples well versed in the teaching of the Catholic Church.
2. Couples with a certain amount of education (note that
ii is suggested that American couples benefit from a six months' programme of education).
3. Catholics who are encouraged to adhere to the Church's teaching with help derived from the sacraments.
It is well known that certain individual Catholic doctors have been able to school relatively small numbers of unsophisticated people in the effective use of the "safe period". But the developing world is not relatively small.
I refrain from joining the debate with reference to the aocalled population explosion. I base my concern simply on the poor couple in the developing world who seek help in planning — or better spacing — their And I base my concern on the large numbers of Catholic doctors and nurses who are .working with these developing peoples, and whose duty it is to render practical advice and assistance to their patients in the course of bearing witness to the teaching of the Church.
The Church is all things to all men, but it seems to me that she falls down badly on the existing interpretation of her teaching on birth control; for here, she is clearly all things to only some men.
The vast majority of men — the poor, unsophisticated mass of mankind, the voiceless of the developing world, where is their spokesman?
Where is the understanding Mother who sees to the problems ()fail her children and seeks to help each one (Dr) R. A. Moffett, MB, BS, MRCGP 2 Iveston Lane, Iveston, Leadgate, Consett,
Co Durham.