DIVORCEES’ CHILDREN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17231, 10 April 1930, Page 13

DIVORCEES’ CHILDREN

THE REAL SUFFERER PRIESTS AND NEW “PROPHETS” LONDON. Feb. 15. Father Francis Woodlock, preaching at the Roman Catholic Church, Farm street. Mayfair, W.. made a vigorous attack mi the. modernist champions of easy divorce and an eloquent defence oli the sanctity of marriage. He said : “I want to speak of the various pleas advanced by Lord Buekinaster, and by frequent contributors .to .the daily press, for easier and chea.pey divorce, and for divorce granted because of other reasons than that of adultery. That plea proposes to repeal Clod s law by an Act of a human Parliament, which still opens its deliberations with prayer to that. God. If the advice of the new prophets is accepted, then men and women in their most intimate social relationships will fall below the level of the monogamous apes, who are supposed to he our close relatives, but who. at least, are faithful to their partners. 650. OCO ILOMEbKS.C ,So\iet Russia, which has openly setaside Christ, has now experimented .lot more than a decade in the easiest possible divorce, which costs a,bout a dollar. Mr. Bertrand Russell, praises Russia for t,he adoption of the principles lie preaches, but Russia to-day is anything hut an earthly paradise. Lord Buekinaster seems to forget the children. They are the real hard cases and sufferers when God’s laws are set aside. An official report admits that in Russia in 1926, 350,000 homeless children had been rounded up and collected into camps, and that 300.0C0 more were, still wandering about. Another report states that the .majority of tlie.se children are drug-takers and victims of venereal disease. Even if .we neglect the object lesson of Russia, things are bad enough in America. In that country, which a generation or two ago was Puritan and Victorian in its sexual propriety, nearly one marriage in every six to-day ends in divorce, and since, the war more than 1.000,000 homes have been wrecked because. of easy divorce. When Lord Buekinaster pleads that many adulterers wish to regularise—once he actually said sanctity—their adulterous unions, he forgets that Parliament has 1,0 more power to regularise dr to sanctify adultery than it has to make abortion a- virtuous act. THREAT TO FAMILY LIFE. Dean Ingo has told us—and it is apleasure to l e able to agree with linn for once—that many people regret that the marriage of an adulterer and his paramour is not forbidden in the State. Such a law might prevent many happy homes from being broken up. One need not be a Mrs Grundy to condemn these now ideas. Take away the recognition of God’s law over men and women, and morality becomes merely a matter of taste, and taste qlianges with fashion where no absolute standards are accepted. Measures for easier divorce which look' harmless may well he a breach in the dyke protecting Christian morality.; through which a flood of bestial and sub- bestial immorality will pour in .to destroy and submerge tin, fair fields ot English family life.