by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
(May 22, 2008) Cherie Blair, wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair, is referring to herself as a “good Catholic girl” even while defending a revelation in her newly published memoirs that she uses contraception.
“People seem to be quite shocked that perhaps a Catholic girl even uses contraception,” she said last week on a morning talk show.
“But it is really an important thing for women. One of the reasons women’s lives have changed is that they have been able to control their fertility, it is an important issue,” she added.
In her autobiography entitled, Speaking for Myself, Blair describes how the birth of her fourth child, Leo, which followed a visit to the Queen’s Balmoral Scottish residence in 1999, was the result of leaving her “contraceptive equipment” at home. She did so because during the same weekend visit the prior year, she had been horrified to discover that her toiletry bag had been unpacked.
Our of “sheer embarrassment,” she decided to leave her contraception behind the following year.
“As usual up there, it had been bitterly cold, and what with one thing and another . . .”
Leo was born nine months later.
Blair’s remarks came shortly after Pope Benedict XVI spoke in strong defense of the 1968 Papal encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which forbids Catholics from using artificial birth control.
Her husband, Tony Blair, made headlines at Christmas, 2007, when he was received into the Catholic Church by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. He had been attending Mass for years with Cherie and their four children, all of whom were raised Catholic and attended parochial schools. He was also known to attend Mass alone before his conversion, and occasionally took communion until the late Cardinal Basil Hume told him to stop because it was causing scandal.
Church authorities in England chose not to comment on the matter. According to LifeSiteNews, the press secretary of Cherie Blair’s bishop, Cormac Cardinal Murphy O’Connor did not return their calls and the spokesman for the Bishops of England and Wales declined to comment, saying it would not be “appropriate.”
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