The general board declared: ``Most of the Protestant churches hold contraception and periodic continence to be morally right when the motives are right. The general Protestant conviction is that motives, rather than methods, form the primary moral issue, provided the methods are limited to the prevention of conception.''

An action once universally condemned by all Christian churches and forbidden by the civil law is now not only approved by the overwhelming majority of Protestant denominations, but also deemed, at certain times, to be a positive religious duty. This viewpoint has now been translated into action by the majority of people in this country. Repeated polls have disclosed that most married couples are now using contraceptives in the practice of birth control.

For all concerned with social-welfare legislation, the significance of this radical and revolutionary change in the thought and habits of the vast majority of the American people is clear, profound and far reaching. To try to oppose the general religious and moral conviction of such a majority by a legislative fiat would be to invite the same breakdown of law and order that was occasioned by the ill-starred Prohibition experiment.

This brings us to the fact that the realities we are dealing with lie not in the field of civil legislation, but in the realm of conscience and religion: They are moral judgments and matters of theological belief. Conscience and religion are concerned with private sin: The civil law is concerned with public crimes. Only confusion, failure and anarchy result when the effort is made to impose upon the civil authority the impossible task of policing private homes to preclude the possibility of sin. Among the chief victims of such an ill conceived imposition would be religion itself.