Word: controlling
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Birth Control. The church's hostility to contraception draws from, among other things, the Old Testament command to "be fruitful and multiply" and the need to justify marriage to early Christians in the face of attacks by otherworldly heretics. But contraception did not become a serious issue until the 20th century, when improved techniques-and laxer morals-led to widespread use of birth control devices. By 1930 the Anglican Church hierarchy at the Lambeth Conference reluctantly accepted birth control. Reacting to this, Pope Pius XI issued his encyclical Casti Conubii (On Chaste Marriage), declaring that "the conjugal...
...successor Pius XII in 1951 approved the "rhythm method" of birth control. Pius XII also stated that "medical, eugenic, economic and social" motives could justify couples in limiting the size of their families. Nine years later the approval for marketing birth control pills raised the hope that such biochemical controls would be regarded as "natural" by the church. Pope John XXIII appointed a special commission to examine the matter. Its confidential, but later leaked, majority report to Paul VI in 1966 warned against avoiding childbearing for selfish reasons. Going beyond Pius XII's position, however, the report called...
...level." To exclude the possibility of children, he argued, limits the relationship to the pursuit of sensual pleasure. John Paul unequivocally endorsed Humanae Vitae during his U.S. trip. Opinion polls in recent years have repeatedly shown that a vast number of American Catholic couples simply do not regard birth control as sinful. Whether the Pope's stand will affect them or the practice of confession of it depends on what steps are taken by U.S. bishops and priests...
...American context, the fierce dispute over abortion now concerns whether traditional Jewish and Christian teaching should be incorporated into secular law. Catholics themselves are divided. Many Catholic Congressmen oppose abortion personally but want no constitutional amendment to control it. But for John Paul, activism is essential on human rights. "If a person's right to life is violated at the moment in which he is first conceived in his mother's womb," he has said, "an indirect blow is struck also at the whole of the moral order." He urged the cheering crowd in Washington to "demand that...
...cherished laboratories. A picturesque swearer who hired assistants whom George Bernard Shaw called "sensitive, cheerful and profane; liars, braggarts and hustlers." A would-be tycoon so crotchety and bullheaded that he could give little credit to the ideas of others; so inept in business matters that he lost control of the immensely profitable companies he founded. An incurable show-off and self-promoter who circulated so many myths about his personality and accomplishments that 48 years after his death historians are still struggling to separate legend from fact...