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LEADING OPTICIANS
Midi & Elliott
Opticians FOR
Your Eyes !
LAUBMAN 41, PANK (w.A.) LTD. 6,0
Barrack Street, Perth
Piccadilly_ Arcade, Perth
Tel. B7988
'PHONE : B3511
PERTH, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18, 1943.
NO. 3,089.
Catholic
SEVENTIETH YEAR.
PRICE THREEPENCE.
athers and Vothers Have riot Been
Kind to the Birth-Controllers *Our Fight for the Family Has been Poorly Planned Better Have Sick Children or Dead Children Than No Children At All WELCOME, LOVELY STRANGER! I have just been playing with the children; and now, as I sit down to It write, my conscience is troubled. has just occurred to me that we fathers and mothers have not been generous. We have not been kind to the birth We have not intended controllers to be selfish, but we have kept our very great happiness to ourselves. We have not tried to diffuse it. We have not gone forth and preached the famWe have ily gospel to every creature. allowed the idea to get around that the rearing of children is all work and no It is time we atoned for our play. neglect. There is no lack of excuses, of course. We have been heckled and harassed almost beyond endurance. We have had to raise our families with one hand, so to speak, while fighting off the planned parenthooders with the other. But that is partly our fault. Our campaign has been poorly planned. Our Our generalship has been terrible. battle has been almost entirely defensive; which probably explains why we We have have merely held the fort. avoided capture ourselves; but we have the converted nor neither captured We have evaded the barren enemy. desert in which he wanders thirsting for truth; but we have not led him into the promised land with us. We have not fed his hunger nor covered We have failed to visit his nakedness. him in his prison. Time to Carry the Ball. We have been too meek and humble. We have turned the other cheek too often. We have allowed the enemy to
choose all the points of
attack.
We
have been manoeuvred into fighting on his ground. We have defended our own babies as best we might, but we have not defended his unborn children. We have held our own homes, but we Our have not given a home to him. warfare has been purely negative. We have never raised the white flag of surrender; but neither have we lifted aloft the flaming banner of our fierce Christian joy, before which not all the legions of hell could stand for a mo
of the family; but we have not dressed ourselves in scarlet and gold to parade, hundreds of thousands strong, through our cities and towns. There can be only one reason for We have not realised our dethis. We have allowed lirious happiness. ourselves to be blinded by words. We have been so busy denying that parenthood was a hell on earth that we have hardly had time to see it as the paradise that it is. We have not seen clearly the glory of God in a baby's smile, nor felt His sure touch in a We have been half child's embrace. enslaved by the tyranny of propaWe have half -believed the ganda. lies we have read about ourselves. We have considered ourselves rather as patient martyrs than as God's most favoured creatures, who ought to be dancing in the streets and filling the universe with our laughter. We ought -
THE FIERCE JOY OF THE CHRISTIAN PARENT .
.
.
We have kept the faith; but ment. we have not filled the world with the wonderful fire of Christian love. We have waited for our opponents to make all the arguments; and then We have dewe have denied them, nied that children are a nuisance; but we have not stood on the housetops and shouted in a voice of joyous thunder that they are things of beauty and a joy forever. We have refused to be pitied; but we have not pitied the awful emptiness of the lives of men and women who have no one to love but themselves. We have said that babies are important; but we have not gone to the homes of millionaires to commiserate with them in their dreadful loneliness. We have defended the idea
THE SHOP FOR BETTER SERVICE. Any goods sent to country not satisfactory we pay freight. Our motto is: "We have it; we will get it, or it cannot be hat"
to be shattering the stars with our shouts of glee; and we have not been doing so. Why? I think it is because we have forgotWe ten how to turn things around. have lost the art of looking at a quesIf we would do tion upside down. that, we would often see it right side our heads, we on By standing up. The birth control would find our feet. people never stand on their heads. If they did, the blood would rush to their brains, and they would begin to think. But only a real Christian can really stand on his head. Only a real Christian can really see things right side up, because only a real Christian really understands that this life is a cosmic joke, the point of which will never be
clearly seen until another and more real life will have begun. Only a real Christian can really answer the croakers by saying that he would rather have sick children or hungry children or dead children than no children at all; because only a real Christian really knows that nothing that happens here can possibly matter very much, so long as everything is all right hereafter. Only a real Christian can know the fierce joy of living. Only a real Christian can put his hand in God's and walk unafraid through the darkness; confident that all will be well; sure that if God so clothed the grass of the field, how much more will He care for us and our children. Only a real Christian can see how ridiculously tragic is the position of the materialists, such as the birth controllers. Only a real Christian can stand on his head and see their propaganda He can see that they right side up. are apologising for their own parents.
They are implying that they would never have been born if their fathers and mothers had been a bit brighter. The Christian, with a thunderous laugh, is tempted to agree with them But he cannot for the joke of it. really agree. In the first place, charity forbids it; in the second, he can see that if he did, he would have to be logical and apply the same reasoning to his own parents. That he cannot and will not do. He is emphatically not ashamed of his parents. He thinks it was nice of them to be his forbears. He is not at He is all sorry for having been born. enormously grateful for the good gift fun. thinks it is no end of life. He of When he looks at a sunset, eats a dish of ice cream, or drinks a glass of beer, he gives thanks to God and his parents. He is proud of his father and mother. He is grateful not only to them, but to his grandparents and great grand(Continued on Page 6.)
DRAPER
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Perth