MENTAL DEFECTIVES

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 25 July 1928, Page 11

MENTAL DEFECTIVES

LATE EDITION

TWO IMPORTANT CLAUSES.

VIEWS OF CATHOLIC CHURCH. APPROVAL NOT EXPRESSED. £j» (JBy Telegraph—Press Association.) W itiLLirv GTOin , J uly 25. Archbishop Aweawooia- niuu« u at a cement. to one ' '.re'-sc/' co-uiay in ltgaiu li> two- ui one pi-uV colons 111 tne ivitesiitai Defectives -nimvnuineut mu, now Decone mu naiment. •‘xna vm-tnalic Ohm’uli clops not blame any .leasonauic enoi.ts to improve one luce,” lie saau previaed suicUi en'orts Oe on one r.gnt lines, x'ne spirit w toe V-iiuicii, nowever, mined aatuer -at extending tnan euiruaaiiiig tne iireeaom at tne individual, ana tue cacnoUo oontoience isti enuousiy guaudis aganiyt tne State ueuitg untmi y exalted at tne expense 01 tne laniny. Gonsequentiy ‘‘we c'atliaiios regard with no’ small misgiving tne lidL now beiore piarmamiemt, in so fan as it limits tne. nglit or certain people to" in any and proposes stei'iiiisartion of tliose tvho may be classed as degenerates. It introduces, in our opinion, a yerv dungero'u© pnneipjc .and is likely to interfere aoriously with, individual origins. In dealing With. racial I- Ct. sons and social evils, tlie Church, has her age-long remedies. ‘They are radical and based on moral law, and it must be borne in mind that siie knows human nature through and through. She has experience' weR-nigh two thousand years old, and in every age and country in civilised times and barbarous ones, so these problems are not new to her. The root difference between Catholic teachings and modern eugenics is that the Church makes bodily and mental culture subservient to morality, while modem eugenics makes morality subservient to bodily and mental culture.”

He asks who are to. judge as to degeneracy and the prevention of marriage. ‘ ‘We confess that we have no confidence at all in the competency of fitness of of boards set up by the State to decide in matters so intimately connected with morality and individual 'liberty.” With regardl to sterilisation, he said that the Catholic experience was that operations were not a remedy against inordinate sexual desire, on the contrary, they might easily open thp door to immoral practises, ‘which woui.d constitute a worse evil than the one to be avoided. Operation also might readily encourage the, abuse, of matrinpnial relations. “We hold that operation is not permissible, even withithe patient’s consent, except as a necessary means to bodily health.