THE TWIN EVILS

Evening Star, Issue 18332, 20 July 1923, Page 1

THE TWIN EVILS

DIVORCE AMD RAGE SUICIDE. A STRONG DENUNCIATION, In tho course of an address at Melbourne, Dr Phelan, Roman Catholic Bishop of iiale, denounced tho twin evils of society—divorce and race suicide. After quoting French statistics. Dr Phelan said that it would appear that the enemy was firmly established in England. ,He quoted a cable message, in which Dr Drysdale, president of the Birth Control Society, was reported as saying that the whole world was ready for Die doctrine of birth control. Here and there and, thank God, in our midst were found Protestant clergymen who raised their voice against tho iniquity of race suicide andl child murder, but their voice was as the voice ' of one crying in the wilderness.

Divorce and race suicide he (Bishop Phelan) had linked as twin evils, for one was not found to any large extent without the other. People who viewed marriage as a terminable contract would not hamper their future action with Children, and in America and Australia, where wealth existed, where the standard of living was of the highest order, and where there existed no economic reason for family limitation, the war on’ the cradle had obtained a startling pre-eminence. Last year in America 1,000,000 marriages were contracted and 135,000 divorces were granted, and tho breaking up of homes was responsible for an annual crop of 80,000 divorce orphans.. Hero in Australia the divorce figures were fairly appalling. Of all the evils of which the late war waa responsible probablv the greatest was ite lowering effect in female modesty and chastity. Ini the pre-war days no mother would allow her daughter at tho impressionable age of life to bo seen speaking to a man she did not know, say at a railway station. During the war and after that conduct was not only permitted, but encouraged, if the stranger were in uniform. During those years ho travelled a great deal through Gippsknd, and could not help observing the loose conduct of many, girls at the dangerous time of life, lire result could not bo other than a blunted conscience with regard to modesty, which was tire guardian angel of chastity. The evil effects on the community of this fall in the female virtue was made painfully evident in one table of the statistics from the last census—the astounding large percentage of marriages where the bride had ceased to be virgin before she became a wife, Xho maiden who was not faithful to God before marriage was not likely to be faithful to her husband after marriage. This accounted for tho large number of cases in the divorce courts in which the man was the party injured and sought to be freed from an adultress. On June 15 nine marriages were dissolved by the Chief Justice. Two of these were wives whose husbands deserted them, and six husbands applied for divorce and got it because their wives were convicted of adultery. In 1904 there were 140 dissolutions granted in Victoria. In 1920 the number ran to 540. Female depravity was largely responsible for this unhealthy national condition. In 1919, when 481’ decrees wore granted, tho petitioning husbands were 284 and the petitioning wives 197. All unhappy marriages were traceable to tho fact that they were begun in sin, continued in sin, and dissolved on account of sin. To save her children from such disasters the Catholic Church never ceased to warn them to make' due preparation beforie entering the married life, to be in God’s grace and freindship, and thus merit His blessing on the wedding day. Birth control was murder, declared the lecturer. This form of preventing life or inflicting death was murder just as punishable as the act of the unnatural mother who flung her new-born babe from tlie battlements of Prince’s bridge to the muddy waters of the Yarra. This form of murder was rampant in our midst; it was the cancer eating aw'ay the heart of the nation. A home of disreputable practitioners who were a disgrace to the medical profession were engaged in this human slaughter house, denying the unborn child the right to live. There were some anti-Catholic organisations meeting periodically in Melbourne who were never weary of denouncing the supposed iniquities of gambling, drinking, and the Ne Temera Decree, but these blind leaders were afraid to tackle race suicide, which, was the evil in root and branch.