BASIS OF SOCIETY

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 198, 17 May 1940, Page 14

BASIS OF SOCIETY

Importance Of Family Life FATHER HIGGINS’S VIEW The view that the nations of the ■ world, including New Zealand, were heading for disaster because they were based on a false conception of society —the idea that individualism counted more than family life, was advanced by the Rev. Father J. A. Higgins in an address to members of the Honorary Justices’ Association in Wellington this week. His subject was: “The Family as the Unit of Society.” Mr. H. IV. Shortt presided. Father Higgins cited the trouble and strife in the world today, and the aggressive imperialism of Germany as examples of the fact that the family had been ignored for <ttie individual. Father Higgins said it was desirable to destroy one of the false conceptions of mankind, that to bo White, free, and .21 constituted the complete citizen or the social unit. He preferred the conception advanced by M. Salazar, head of the Government of Portugal, that “the family is the irreducible unit of the nation’s social life,” for men and women in the family were cemented according to Nature's law — they were bound together in the family unit before civilization came into being and before the State was thought of. Therefore the family came first and the. State second. Once a State forgot that the State was made up of families and not of individuals, it started to legislate for individuals and ignored the family, with the ultimate result that the family suffered, and in turn the nation. There was a definite neglect in many countries of consideration of the family ; the people were being falsely taught that the individual was the complete social unit once he bad reached the age of 21. We in New Zealand were a dying people, ’because of this false conception, and other countries shared this misfortune. . Unless we returned to a respect far the family, married life, home, and children, then we would die, and die shamefully violating the laws of Nature. It was the function, of a Government to legislate for the common good, and the common good of a nation was encompassed within the family. There -lay the endurance of a nation and its power to survive. The’ world was in the throes of a death struggle today because of certain men’s ideas that true greatness lay in imperialism and the supremacy of a certain blood. It was so in Germany; but what of German family life? He felt that had the Nazis given due consideration to the question of family life and given tbeir people the freedom to marry, settle, and make their own homes and live in peace, the present modern Germany would not have been possible. Father Higgins dealt with the trade and commercial aspects of the subject, and said industries should be developed only for the ultimate purpose of building up the strong and healthy family life of the people. Individualism bred selfishness, and selfishness destroyed tije only complete social unit—the family.