SELF- GRATIFICATION

Hokitika Guardian, 7 November 1929, Page 8

SELF- GRATIFICATION

- cardinal bourne on the REFORMERS. LONDON, Sept. 20. A grave indictment of the "reformers’’ who would make divorce easier and control birth was uttered yesterday by Cardinal Bourne, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. Cardinal Bourne was delivering the inaugural address at the Albert Hall at the National Catholic Congress and celebration of the centenary of Catholic Emancipation. Ho said that the Christian tradition of moral conduct was in grave peril from the uncertain hold on principle which was seen on every side. The principle was always the same: That the strong instincts and passions must be controlled, that they were given for one purpose only, and that their use and satisfaction outside that purpose, for self-gratification, was unlawful and constituted grievous sin. He continued: What in reality and in ultimate analysis is the ground of the demand for extended facilities for divorces, for birth-prevention, and the like? Simply that these instincts and passions are entitled to self-gratification, though, in seeking it, they contravene the Christian or even the natural law. For the .self-control which Christianity has always taught, and winch Paganism upholds to a certain extent, the right of self-gratification is substituted. If it cannot be obtained within the limits of the law of Christ that law must he set aside. If natural reason, forbids it then that reason must be hushed and put to sleep.

DIVORCE AND BIRTH-CONTROL. Analyse all the motives that are sot forth hv earnest, well-meaning, and, I would fain believe, conscientious men—the hard cases which they so pathetically quote, with a. view to the extension of facilities for divorce. They all come to the same tiling—-

the cry of instinct for self-gratificat-ion, and tho proclaiming of the impossibility of self-control. So too with the apostles of birthprevention in a still more dangeroic degree. And apparently they do not see that the principles which underlie all their assertions and appeals lead logically and inevitably to the condoning and justification of every form of self-indulgence within or without marriage state. Wlmt appeal to self-restraint can the promoters of divorce honestly make to the millions who of necessity must lire a single life? How can those who deliberately interfere with the natural processes of life preach purity? For, alas! their evil books are read and studied by the young, whom matrimony has never joined. The writers of books, the painters of pictures, the actors on the stage' or for the screen, the women bv the fashion of their dress, who render self-control more difficult for tinaverage man or woman, and who thereby make the natural craving foi sinful self-gratification more imperious than it would otherwise be, air doing moral evil and are committing sin in the sight of God. This craving for self-gratification at all costs is degrading the holy state\of matrimony and bringing into contempt that motherhood which should be the glory of the woman wed to man.