DANGEROUS SPORTS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29101, 13 January 1960, Page 4

DANGEROUS SPORTS

“Catholics Should Not Participate"

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) ROME, Januapr 11 A .call to Roman Catholics to keep away from "dangerous sports” will be discussed at this month’s Synod of the Roman Diocese, organisers said lasi night. Its agenda will include an appeal to the faithful not to follow, and especially not to practice, sports "which rashly expose life, and the sanity of oneself and others, to serious dangers.” The synod, the first in 500 years, will open in Rome on January 24. Though the sports were nol named, several have come under heavy fire recently from Catholic Church writers for exposing participants to mortal peril. Writing in the Mercati “Ecclesiastical Dictionary,” a Dominican, Father Reginaldo Francisco, said Catholics should not indulge in sports "which bring one voluntarily close to death, like aerobatics, car racing and certain alpine contests, and those which necessarily cause impairment like certain forms ot modem wrestling, and, as some contend, boxing.” Another Italian priest, Don Diacomo Perico, writing in the review "Aggiornamenti Social!,” called not for an outright condemnation of sports like boxing, which might incur the displeasure of the sporting public, but for "an energetic and vast campaign on public opinion, which would stress the very grave physical and mental harm caused when men were sacrificed for spectacle in the interests of selfish enterprise.”