SOCIAL EVILS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23011, 12 April 1938, Page 14

SOCIAL EVILS

BIETH CONTKOL MENACE DANGEROUS LITERATURE ADDRESS BY FATHER DUDLEY The attitude of New Zealand toward the practice of birth control and the importation of pornographic and obscene literature were subjects discussed by the Very Rev. Owen Dudley, of London, in an address at St. Patrick's Cathedral last night. "The world will not admit sin today," Father Dudley said. "Take, for instance, the amazing statement issued recently by a Wellington committee on birth control. The committee did not regard the practice ot birth prevention as a moral question, but as a matter of human expediency and judgment. "Birth prevention or the like of some artificial mertns of preventing conception is most emphatically a moral question. It is intimately bound up with the morality of sex relations, and with marriage. Marriage was given by thw Creator for the purpose of procreation, that is, for the purpose of bringing children into the world. To use an artificial means of preventing conception is to frustrate the very purpose and end for which marriage was given. It is the perversion of a natural end and the frustration of tho end of a natural law. Practice Condemned "The natural laws are God's laws," Father Dudley continued, "and, therefore, the use of contraceptives is a defiance of God's law and of God Himself. That isvwhy this practice is gravely sinful.

"i am very glad to see that there is now a reliable body of medical opinion advancing grounds which prove that the practice of birth prevention is accompanied by grave physical danger. 1 am equally aware that there is another body of medical opinion actively advocating the practice. Any medical man's experience and knowledge tell him that nature revenges herself when her ends are perverted or frustrated. Why, then, in this case of birth prevention, do they not apply that same knowledge anil experiencer' An honest medical man must realise that tho practice he condones is a practice which nature herself will revenge. "I am also very sorry to find in New Zealand," Father Dudley added, "such an immense number of shops selling pornographic literature, a great deal of it from America and a great deal of it camouflaged under art and science. No honest man, however, will be gulled by that. It is scarcely possible to walk down any street in any New Zealand city without being confronted by obscene literature and pictures.

Undermining Moral Life "This particular kind of filth must inevitably undermine the morality of New Zealand's youth and, therefore, tho moral life of the nation. It will mean ultimately an immense increase in lasciviounncKS and licence, followed by crime, as is invariably the case. J sincerely hoi>o the civil authority in! New Zealand will take steps to close down this traffic in obscene literature,; otherwise it will bo contributing to the; degeneracy of the people whoso best interests tho civil authority is supposed to guard. "The soul of man cannot rise to the spiritual and supernatural while it is drugged with lusts o£ the . flesh." Father Dudley concluded. "The pig in its sty keeps its eye* on the swill. The lascivious eye, likewise, looks down and cannot look up to God."