FOLLIES AND FALLACIES OF AN OLD CONTROVERSY

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 15, 14 April 1904, Page 3

FOLLIES AND FALLACIES OF AN OLD CONTROVERSY

«Xt V^ J°l oW } ng senes , of letters b ? the editor ol the *v "4 Ta £ let appeared last week in the columns of the Diunedin Evening Star.' They represent an effort to lefv-el \ip an old and usually angry and recriminatory controversy to the level of common sense and sane discussion. The first letter runs as follows :— Sir,— A brief and by no means sweet-tempered discussion that took place in your columns this week serves as a fresh reminder that statistics are edged tools, and need careful handling. The subject was that of illegitimate births. All the four parties to the controversy were anonymous, and your read&rs were treated once more to the mouldy old fallacy of taking the statistical returns of illegitimate births as final criteria of t<he total morality of nations, and as ' tests of Protestantism versus Romanism/ to determine which has the ' purer ' faith. T|he originator of the controversy describes himself as a ' colonial who doesn't belong to any Church.' Apropos of quite a different matter— to wit, your able articlle on the decline of the general birth-rate in Australasia—he dragged in the totally irrelevant issue of illegitimate births in Ireland and Scotland, and made this the occasion for a pointed and quite uncalled-for challenge to a large religious denomination in Dunedin. He hias himself to blame for having created among the Catholic clergy and laity of Dunedin a strong suspicion that he was merely straining to secure for somebody else a pretext for parading some of the contents of a controversial marine stiore. The controversy evolved, as it usually does, more heat than light. The replies elicited by the unattached colonial were mainly Attacks on the Catholic Church, devoid alike of knowledge of the subject, calmness of reasoning, and deliberation of ■ statement 1 . Having drawn fire, our non-Catholic soi-disant admirer promptly retired from the fray. It was just what Catholics here expected all along. Our suspicions may, perhaps, do him an injustice. Rut we certainly have nto sympathy with the tone of his communication. One of the four anonymous disputants who entered the arena claims to have ' studied the matter.' The evidence- of his investigations consists of a set of figures of which— like the other parties to the controversy— he gives neither the date nor the source. I find, however, so fax as he goes, he has taken them, character for character, from a short, scrappy, and very much behinddate article on ' Illegitimacy ' in the sixth volume of 1 Chambers' Encyclopedia.' His figures date back some eighteen years, and mUst be considered rather ancient for , one who has • studied the matter.' In fact, tihe disputants throughout enhance the suspicion attachingi to their anonymity by their apparently rooted objection to cite even one specific authority in support of their assertions. One member of the ' hidden quartet,' for instance, informs your readers that, in the year of grace 1870, over 75 per cent, of the births in the city of Rome were, illegitimate !*> This statement (so the nameless informant tells .us) appeared in a paper (unnamed), published (at a date not specified) in Italy. The lineal descendant of Ananias who first concocted this ' painful yarn ' might, at least, have tried to lie plausibly. This is the sort of stuff that gives a point to the following saying of a great and venerated Englishman :— ' Anonymous writing is a dangerous trade. Few men can resist the temptation to write under a masik things which they "would not say with o,pen face.' One is, naturally disinclined to descend into an arena that is monopolised by men in masks. Yet I i.hink tjhat one sjiov.ld not, on such personal grounds, shrink from pointing out the fallacies and the serious misrep res en tat ioh s that have clustered around the newspaper side of this controversy. As usually conducted, it leads to nothing better than aimless and illogical recrimination, and this, at least, might be avoided if the discussion were raised to the level of something; like sane reasoning As it is, it is worm-eaten through and through with the following Fallacies :■ — I. The disputants assume as a general principle that statistics of illegitimate births furnish an accurate criterion of the immorality of a people. 111. They assume that the religion professed by a people is wholly responsible for the rate of its illegitimacy. <-*' r< !**fl 111. They assume (a) that the term ' illegitimate birth ' means the same thing in every country— in other words, that the returns under this head are collected on the same basis everywhere ; and (b) that these re-

TJere is, in addition, a rank and tangled undertJ2 ominoro minor tpl***** e«ora. misrepresentations, Artftil Dodger quotations and comparisons, etc. To some of these reference will be made in due course + i, cKt*^ 7 <- Say , S i? at J here are ' few B reater fallacies' than, the first of the three summarily referred to above (< European Morals,' 12th cd., vol. 1, p. 144). And (not to load tthis letter with further references on this sufficiently self-evident point) Dr. Leffingwell, a member of the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography says in a noted work of his : 'Of course we cannot regard illegitimate births as a standard for anythiog like an absolute measurement of moral delinquency ' (vII( v II1 i e ]*? mac 7' 1?'1 ?' 23) * To estimate this, account should be taken of a vast Darkest Africa of incontinence, which the statistician has never yet explored. All this will appear more clearly as I proceed 11. Dr. Leffingwell (' Illegitimacy,' ,p. 8€) grants that 1 the influence of religion is one of the most powerful agencies against unchastity ' ; that (p. 40) it is ' one of tihe most potent agencies in checking the .passions and proclivities of the human animal ' ; and (p. 80) that one of the measures to be taken to reduce this crying social evil is ' the strengthening of Religious Influence and the inculcation of a greater sense of responsibility.' Dr. Leffingwell— himself holding to no creed— thinks that the dogmatic truth of a religion ' apparently J does not affect the rate of illegitimacy. But the nature of the moral teaching of a creed (which we can consider apart from the question of its dogmatic truth) clearly counts for something in this connection. And this is tacitly taken for granted in the remarks already quoted from Dr. Leffingwell as to the influence of religion on unchastity. An, average educated Protestant Briton or Catholic French-Canadian, for instance, regards himself as morally a better man than the ' average Mahomedan Turk ; and both would ground their comparison on the superiority of the Christian moral code to tha.t of the Koran. Or take the Dqukhobors. ajui the Disciples of Free Love— two nominally Christian sects. Under equal conditions, one could scarcely expect as goiod moral results from their teachings as from those of any and every form of Christianity that sets its face a&ainst unsanctioned, irregular, or semi-promis-cuous intercourse, and stands for cleanness and sanctity in all social and domestic relations. These are, of course, extreme cases. But they emphasise my contention all tihe tetter, because of their very obviousness. Siuch gulfs do not, of course, separate the great body of the Christian creeds ; but there are differences, nevertheless. They will be found — (1), In the various degrees of strictness and clearness of their teachings on the subjects of sexual relations. (2) In their machinery for reaching and affectiSng witlh it tdve daily lives of their people. Anti (3) In. their zeal or negligence in availing themselves of their o'pptortu'nities of doing so. An illustration of the fiist point mentioned above is furnished by the incomparable strength, clearness, and authoritative tone of the Teaching of the Cattholic Church on the unity, sacramental character, in'dissolubility, and sacred obligation's of the marriage bond, and on the subjects of divorce and the inviolability, in all circumstances, 'of born airfd unborn infant life. In these respects she holds a position of singular honor among tihe creeds that have been made the subject of comparison in your columns. Not less emphatic is her teaching of tihe dut7 of the unwedded to preserve even their souls and minds from the tarnisthment of so much as the smallest conscious aird deliberate evil fancy, and the grave obligation which she imposes of skilled and pious direction of consciences in this as in all other important affairs. Human frailty, the strength of passions, tortpor or lack of zeal here and there, and causes wholly or partially beyond her control, have prevented the Catholic Church from exercising the full measure of her beneficent influence. I may — I hope without offence and certainly without offensive intent— here express my strong conviction that the Catholic Church would in this matter score over all others under the conditions of a fair comparison— that is, given equally good human material to work upon, under an exactly similar totality of circumstances. I make this remark in passing, for my present purpose, as already stated, is merely to strip this controversy of the tangled ivy-grtp of nonfact and fallacy with which it has been strangled by newspaper disputants, who are more intent on securing the appearance of a sectarian victory than on getting at the facts of the case. Disputants— at least, Christian disputants— will, I think, agree that (1) religion forms an important check

upon incontinence, and that (2) all creeds have not the same value as restraining agents against this form of human frailty. But it is quite a different thing to assume (as your correspondents did) that specific forms of religious belief should get the whole discredit of such rates of illegitimacy as prevail among their real or nominal or supposititious adherents. At least one ot the writers in your columns went sio far as to hold the Catholic Church accountable for the moral obliquity of vast numbers of people who never came under her jurisdiction, who reject her faith, and many of whom are among her bitterest opponents and persecutors Of this, more anon. c Illegitimacy,' says Leffingwell (p. 85) ' is a, pha^c of social phenomena produced by the constant Action of Several Causes. Its variance in different localities depends upon the force arid number of -the factors there present.' The strength or weakness of religious influences is one ot these, and a very important one. But there are, as 1 we shall see at the proper time, other land powerful factors al9O at. work. Over some of thetee the religious denominations have little or no control. The measure of a ctourch'S responsibility in this connection is the measure of its deficiencies (if any) in teaching, and of its faiilUre to rise to the level of its duties and its opportunities. In specific cases the blajme (if any) must be apportioned, not as writers in your columns have apportioned it, recklessly, but with care and judgment And this can be done only by those who have ' studied ■Hhe matter ' long ankl seriously, and who are in possession of full knowledge of the facts. And tjhis full knowledge, as I shall show, is not to be found reaidy catalogued in statistical publications. Neither is it contained in the sixth volume of ' Chambers's Encyclopedia.' This letter has already run into too great length But it is slow and ' dour work ' to clear this field of controversy of the weeds and undergrowth that infest it. I request your courteous permission to conclude this subject in another issue. — I am, etc., Editor ' N Z. Tablet ' 'April 2.