FORMER CATHOLIC LAW ON ABORTION

RE Mr. C. H. Morris's request for comment (July 3(i). The reviewer in the Daily Telegraph (July 22) of Mr. St. John-Stevas's book travesties the Church's teaching on abortion, but one can see where he went astray.
For reasons based partly on Aristotle and partly on Leviticus; it was commonly thought that the soul was not infused into the male foetus until 40 days after conception and 80 in the case of females. Hence termination after those periods was regarded as even more seriously wrong than before.
Dr. J. G. Westerman, the reviewer, jumps to the extraordinary conclusion that, -therefore, abortion before what was believed to be the ensoulment of the foetus, was from the 12th century until 1869. permitted!
One might as well argue that. because the law regards some degrees of murder as worse than others, therefore those other murders are allowed by the law. If so, the law would be an ass.
In any case, it is obvious that abortion is worse than contraception. The Church would
Missing link
QINANTHROPUS is the last remaining "missing link" on which evolutionists rely as evidence in support of their claim that man is of great antiquity and evolved from some kind of ape. Corning from a priest in Fr. Russell's position, statements that Pekin Man is important evidence for the study of man's origin. (Carl-M.1C HERALD, July 18) and that the great majority of competent anthropologists accept this, must carry great weight, if They are allowed to go unchallenged.
Catholics who know no better are being misled, and information on which they may well form different conclusions is being withheld from them.
A. E. Slater Southwold, Suffolk.
Trade Union Mass
IAM pleased to inform you that all arrangements have now been made for the Mass and Reception for Catholic Delegates attending this year's Trades Union Congress. The Mass will be held on Sunday, September 5, at: The Sacred Heart Church, Talbot Road, 131ackpool.
I have also been fortunate in getting the Rev. Peter Knott, S.J., to preach the sermon. Fr. Knott is the first industrial chaplain to be appointed, and is working. with the London C. of E. Chaplaincy, from London Airport Heathrow. E. McKie, Hon. National Secretary, Federation of Associations of Catholic Trade Unionists Bromley, Kent.
have been straining at a camel and swallowing an elephant to condemn the one and permit the other.
A request on my part to the Editor of !the Daily Telegraph. sent on the day the unfortunate review was published, to rectify this grave misrepresentation of the Church's teaching has to date received pr ivete acknowledgement. In case the Daily Telegraph may be prevented from removing this slur from the Church's escutcheon, perhaps you, Sir, now in view of Mr. Morris's hewilderment, might permit me to do so through the hospitality of your columns?
(Fr.) L. E. Whatmore Hailsharn. Sussex.
THE silly season is upon us,
and. though a quiet walk down Wimpole Street last Friday afternoon showed no less than three psychiatrists busy topping up their car radiators with distilled water in view of a lung week-end in the country, Mr. C. B. Morris writes to you quoting some startling views about Catholic teaching on. abortion with a demand for instant refute!. The facts are there for anyone who wants to consult such an article as that by Fr. G. Dolan, Si., in the Catholic Dictionary of Theology, vol. 1. As Fr. Dolan is probably far too busy to reply just now, may I cite the essentials?
The early Church held that the child in (item is already a person and has personal rights (Council of Neo-Caesaraea, in 314). In the Middle Ages, and under the influence of Aristotle a distinction was made between abortion of the animated foetus (which was held to be homicide) and that of the not-yet-animated foetus. which was not. Thus Innocent Ill in 1211 . Sixtus V excommunicated all who practised abortion (1588), irrespective of opinions about animation. Absolution from this excommunication was reserved to the Pope himself.
Gregory XIV later decided that the action of Sixtus was not reducing the scale of the abuse and, while still condemning all abortion, allowed that others beside himself might absolve from the sin of abortion before the time of animation. Gradually Catholic thenlogical opinion came to discard the Aristotelian distinction between the animate and the inanimate foetus.
What happened in 1869 was that Pius IX in revising the list of excommunications reserved to the Pope quietly suppressed all mention of different categories of abortion. Thus a distinction which had been used by canonists to reduce the penalty—though not the sin—of abortion was discarded for good.
J. H. Crehan, Si. London. W.I.