Course For Couples

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31711, 21 June 1968, Page 3

Course For Couples

Circumcision o f baby boys was, in modern medical opinion, unnecessary, a Christchurch doctor said on Wednesday evening, addressing young people at an engaged couples’ course organised by the Catholic Pre - Cana Committee.

“Christ was circumcised because it was a Jewish rite and, somehow, it has crept in and remained as a Christian custom,” the doctor said. Some of the soldiers fighting in the desert during the war had to be circumcised for health reasons, but this did not apply to most New Zealanders now, he said. The Catholic doctor and a priest (Rev. Father J. Curnow) dealt with moral and medical aspects of marriage on the third session of the course.

On the subject of family planning the doctor said that, discounting the moral question, the majority of doctors were loath to see young

couples going straight on to the Pill when they were just married. It was different in the case of a woman who already had three or four children, he said. “Before the Pill became widely used as a contraceptive, doctors knew that about 10 per cent of couples would’ be infertile. The Pill is now covering up cases of infertility and we have no way of knowing who constitute this percentage,” he said. “You should aim for a perfect marriage,” Father Curnow told the young couples. There was a tremendous call for loyalty between husband and wife—the kind of loyalty that would help them through crises, he said. “In the Catholic viewpoint, divorce is out. I think that is a great help, because you know that when the first crisis comes you cannot just walk out. It gives marriage a sense of permanence.”

It was fatal and false to separate sex from love. There were two extremes—the lingering idea that sex was unbecoming, and today's highlighting of sex, which gave the

impression that sex was a union between two bodies, not between people. Marriage had much deeper involvements than just the satisfying of bodily needs, Father Curnow said. “There is no doubt that this is a very sexy age,” the doctor agreed, “but there is still a profound amount of ignorance among young people anticipating marriage.”