SIR,—Your correspondent Joanna Moore writes : `To say that there
are "considerable pockets of undernourishment" is surely a masterly under- statement when more than a thousand million people in the world are in fact undernourished.' Is it not the case, however, that prominent Catholic economists like Colin Clark will challenge the truth of this statement and state that the extent of under- nourishment in the world today is greatly exag- gerated? In other words, there are disagreements about the basic facts of the situation and it is important that people should know about this.
I agree with your correspondent that the problem of birth control is an individual one which cannot be viewed in terms of aggregates. Thus personal choice would still have to be made even if there were no problem of general world poverty, but that is precisely where moral principles—and not just Catholic ones—should be regarded as most relevant.—Yours faithfully,
SILVAN JONES
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