Some personal views by public people from 1983 VICTORIA GILLICK

AT THE moment contraception is almost like a civil right to some people. It has become part of their daily lives. Saying it is wrong is like trying to convince people that drinking tea is morally bad. For most people the argument was lost when procreation was separated from sexuality.
Eventually the tide will turn against the anti-life mentality of contraception and abortion because of economic necessity.
You cannot provide the services you want for the elderly unless you have an up and coming generation.
LORD DEVLIN
IT WOULD be outdated now to deny the assistance of the law to all who live in sin. The rule should not be abolished, but it should be restated. There is nothing outmoded about discountenancing the sexual intercourse of children. Since intercourse with a girl under sixteen is for a boy a crime, it surely must be accepted that for a girl it is still contrary to public policy.
SIR LENNOX BERKELEY
I HAVE always teund that music comes in a certain form to one and I don't think you can choose any particular thing to bring it about. There is certailik something there — one can't say what — which induces religious feeling sometimes.
Of course, it works the other way around — if you have the technique that can be used in a religious sense.
MERVYN STOCKWOOD
IT IS T the Intellectual level that the Church should be engaged. Political crusades are helpful and spiritual renewal is essential, but we must convince those who fill our schools and universities of the truth of the Gospel.
It is possible that Almighty God has given the world a Pope with so many accomplishments and abilities of brain that he may be qualified to point the way forward?
MARY KENNY
HALF OF the Irish are under 25 (one of the attractive spin-offs of not having a birth-controlorientated society is that you continue to have lots of young people) and there is a feeling of stimulus, of challange, of debate and liveliness in the social atmosphere of Ireland today.
But Imre is the dark side of modernity, too; a frightening increase in crime; a materialism only equalled by philistinism; far less law and order; an unattractive cynicism; and for me, the wholesale destruction of the city of Dublin.
MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE
YOU HA VE the extreme leftists who want us to disarm in order that we may be completely at the mercy Of the Eastern Block. We don't therefore say we can't possibly recommend this or that peace-making resolution because it being supported by a lot of people who see it only as a splendid opportunity for us to be wiped off the face of the earth.
PIERS PAUL READ
A QUESTION a Catholic should ask himself is what he would bc — but for the Grace of God. If the answer is that he would be little different — a bachelor school-teacher rather than a school-teaching monk — then he has made little use of the Grace of God. The truly charismatic priest is not one whose face tells us that there, but for the grace of God, goes a scout-master, but there, but for the Grace of God, goes a gangster, a sadist or a pimp.
RICHARD CONDON
I HA VE no sense of God. No sense of sin. Sin is the perpetuation of injustice against yourself
I can still say "Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem melon." I'm surprised to hear you don't say that any more. What appeals to me in the Church Ls service.
People like Mother Teresa are laying their health on the line to serve. Of course you can't have all the people serving there have to he administrators.
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER
I SPEND most of my life desperately trying to strain the truth through the very course mesh of journalism. I try to give some vague idea of something that relates to the verities, to the ultimate truth, about the world. People would accuse me of being obsessed by religion and writing endless tracts.
My enemies would say I try to tread some kind of religious line. It is jolly hard, because you are dealing with a medium which is entertainment more than anything else. If you do touch on serious matters, it is extraordinary how people do respond.
LORD LONGFORD
IN THESE later years of the twentieth century we admire strength or what we take to be strength. Humility is not much referred to outside religious circles. But the time has come to strike a new balance between the two:— between humility and strength.