Catholics Oppose Sterilisation Bill

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 415, 25 July 1928, Page 1

Catholics Oppose Sterilisation Bill

“OPEN TO ABUSE” ARCHBISHOP’S STATEMENT Press Association. WELLINGTON, To-day. “The Catholic Church holds the operation is not permissible even with the patient's consent, except as a necessary means to bodily health," said Archbishop Redwood in a statement to-day, with regard to two of the provisions in the Mental Defectives’ Amendment Bill now before Parliament. “The Catholic Church does not blame any reasonable efforts to improve the race,’’ he said, “provided such efforts be on the right lines. The spirit of the church, however, aimed at extending rather than curtailing the freedom of individual and Catholic conscience and strenuously guards against the State being unduly exalted at the expense of family. “We Catholics, consequently, regard with no small misgiving- the Bill now before Parliament, in so far as it limits the right of certain people to marry and proposes the sterilisation of those who may be classed as degenerates. “The church has her age-long remedies. They are radical and are based on moral law, and it must be borne in mind that she knows human nature through and through. She has the experience of wellnigh 2,000 years, 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 teaching and modern eugenics is that the church makes bodily and mental culture subservient to morality, while modern eugenics makes morality subservient to bodily and mental culture." He asks who are to judge as to degeneracy and prevention of marriage. “We confess we have no confidence at all in the competency or fitness of boards set up by the State to decide in matters so intimately connected with morality and individual libertv.” With regard to sterilisation, he said the Catholic experience was that the operation was no remedy against inordinate desire.