CALLED BEFORE SUPERIORS

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30681, 22 February 1965, Page 13

CALLED BEFORE SUPERIORS

(N.Z.P.A.- Reuter —Copyright) LONDON, February 21. A Roman Catholic priest left by air for Rome yesterday after the publication of a newspaper article in which he advocated the use of contraceptives.

The article, written by Father Arnold A. McMahon. aged 25, appeared in the “Birmingham Post” on Friday. Reporters at London Airport asked Father McMahon if he had expected reaction from his superiors on the article. He replied: “1 suppose I did. But I stand by what I wrote.” The article said: “1 have come to believe that not only may Catholics use contraceptives —I believe they have the right.” Father McMahon, a teacher, also wrote: “It is only after weeks and months that I have decided that somebody must speak. I realise that things may happen to me. ... If they do. it will only be fresh, sad evidence of how serious the problem is. There is in our church a totalitarianism that is eating away at its heart.” Father McMahon said that on Friday evening he received a telephone call from his direct superior, advising him to go to Rome. He said today: “Father Hatfield phoned me from Liverpool and advised me to go to Rome to talk things over with my superior general of the Divine Word Missionaries.” Father McMahon, an English priest who spent four years in Ireland, teaches missionary students at St: Richard’s College.

He said he had nothing to add to the article. A reporter asked whether he anticipated being requested to retract the article. He replied: “I do not really know. It is possible. I do not know what will happen.” In the article Father McMahon wrote: “Men and women are not mere machines or animals. They are human beings—born to be free to love and in that freedom and love find their fulfilment. “A woman has a right to intercourse—this is the very heart of her fulfilment. “But if she is to carry on in the same way as before it can only mean destruction, not fulfilment. “God does not want this. He has not made her womb to be a machine that mass-produces babies battery-hen style.” “I have come to believe not only may Catholics use contraceptives—l believe they have the right. Nobody can take this right from them, for nobody can take away another person’s humanity. “ ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ And there are more types of murder than physical murder. To destroy a person’s humanity is a greater form of destruction than physical murder. It prevents a human being from being able to love. “The teaching authority of the church should not be trying to take away such a right, but rather defending it and upholding it against attacks.”