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V 11
No. 2,696
II
(Registered at the G.P.O,. Perth, for transmission by post as a Newspaper)
Perth, Thursday, March 17, 1955.
Press Treatment Why Crooners Cause Hysteria In Of Princess Is Teen -Alters Bereft Of Love Insult To Throne It seems to me that the Press has hit an all-time low in its perseverative impertinence regarding the marriage intentions of Princess Margaret. Making liberty a cloak for malice, it has pushed democratic pretentions to the insufferable limit in a way it would never have dared treat Her Majesty when a Princess nor the Duke of Windsor when he was king. It is idle to pretend that the splurge of sensationalism is carried on out of affection for the charming young lady whose sister is Queen. To be of peering through keyholes and beating the covers the gossip, to be causing acute embarrassment to Princess's friends, to be conducting polls as to popular opinion on the Royal choice-these are peculiar channels through which to demonstrate affection, to say nothing of chivalry, respect and decent reticence.
When Frankie Sinatra was still young enough to
be content with his lawful wife we read with amusement of teen-age girls swooning at the peculiar the sounds he was paid to emit. Since that time bigvolume of idiot music has swelled into a really time racket and scores of people with deformed
gullets are making fortunes directly and putting large-scale business indirectly in the way of the psychiatrists. When it happened in America it seemed amusing in a silly way. When it happened in Sydney it seems to sound a note of alarm. We were prepared to believe that the American youngster was a little the crazy, but we would have taken oaths about Yet good sense and balance of our own youth. they were at Mascot aerodrome in their thousands
like all nature, abhor a vacuum. If they have nothing outside of and higher than themselves with which to fill it, they will heap up their own miserable little personalities to plug the void. Lacking the true, basic love of parents they will love themselves. But why, if this process is inevitable, given the circumstances, does not self -love take the form of loving the highest, the faculties of intellect and will which radically distinguish the human genus from the brute world? The answer to that is that, even more than the love of parents, they lack the love of God.
Who is to tell the adolescent boy or girl of the splendour of which his mind and his power to choose is capable. Do not eight out of ten films drum into the impressionable child that he is a more or less attractive body? Is it possible to buy a newspaper, magazine or book in which sex is not mentioned? In a word, outside of the teaching of religion there is no agency to tell the rising generation that they are spirits as well as bodies, what the soul is, why it has primacy over the flesh, how the mastery
HUMBLEST DESIRES PRIVACY The intentions of Princess Margaret are primarily a personal matter. Since her prospects of attaining the throne are so remote as to be negligible there can be no question of Press solicitude "for the public to interest." All that they have succeeded in doinginto friends . date is to bring the Princess and her respect the public ridicule and to greatly weaken which should be accorded a young woman in her exalted position. It does not appear to have occurred to the Press barons that their treatment of her sister can scarcelya be pleasing to Her Majesty. For an indignity to the member of the Royal Family is an effront toPaul throne itself. Such boorish familiarity, such Pry tactics serve only to weaken popular attachment sentiment . to civil authority. For all its advocacy of and humanitarian devotion, the Press has scarcely' paused to consider whether the Princess might not
can be obtained, why men exist and how they survive beyond death in the arms of God. Not only has the Church no allies but all the popular forms of instruction-State schools, radio, film, comic and newspaper are concerned to ignore all the primary realities of life.
CREATING A SENSUAL YOUTH
have feelings and a desire for privacy like the humblest citizen. If there is any foundation in the rumours regarding Captain Townshend, the Press attitude would the appear all the more despicable. One recalls VIII hypocritical hue and cry when King Edward solemn, the proposed to "marry" a divorcee-all superficial reasons that they put up why the King should not "follow his heart" and remain on the readers throne. Now, it seems, the Press and its are now have changed their minds (if any). They raucously in favour of the Princess marrying whom she pleases.
CANNOT MARRY IN CONSCIENCE
But it is even more serious to bring the institution of Christian marriage into disrepute than it is to ridicule the Princess. For she as a practising memsister of ber of the Anglican establishment and thecould the constitutional head of that Church, and itnot is conscience, marry a divorced man in good that she scarcely complimentary to her to suggest would do so. Whether she remained a Princess or renounced her rank would make no difference to the moral aspect of the question. It is curious that not one of the newspaper readers this interviewed in the public opinion polls thought Yet the problem worthy of even passing mention. recently has Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury
that declared (in a confused, ambiguous fashion) the the Established Church will not re -marry even innocent parties of a divorce. to The Press itself, of course, never bothers if the introduce the moral aspect of anything.her Yet marriage only guide the Princess is to have in been is the heart, surely a grave blow will have struck at the whole idea of marriage, whether itasbea merely considered as a Christian sacrament or instinct of civil contract. Has the common man'simagines the honour become so beclouded that heas scrupulously marriage contract should not be metcase at all for the as any other contract? Is there no plighted word that it can be brushed aside at a change of mood? It is a long time since the public has been treated And to such a maudlin display of sentimentalism. the lying the exhibition goes to show how deeply by propagated as love debasement of romantic into Hollywood and the slush magazines has eaten but when the public life. Feelings are all right and they so interfere with the power of reasoning the commonsense it is time to inquire whether human processes have not got reversed.
letter I regret that a comment on "Crusader's" must be held over to the next issue.
POPULAR AGENCIES ARE BASE After all, where in this weird jungle we call the modern world can any man find out his true nature?
Her Majesty Is Slighted In Her Sister
Denied the knowledge of their own inner natures and the love of God, our youngsters in their thousands are drawn back on all that is left to them-emotion. feeling, sensual experience. These become the pivotal factors in the life of our youth. Secularism has created a new youth-not cognitive, not volitional-but purely sensual. It is a concept of man that is scarcely discernible from the animal. Youth still acts rationally, but with less and less reason for so doing. It will only be a matter of time till the jungle closes in completely. The teenagers at Mascot did more than strip a crooner of his pants. They stripped the rotten veneer off our civilisation and let it stand naked and debased before the whole Australian people. Small wonder that there is irresponsibility at work, lack of interest, time-serving, apathy to the encroaching peril. The youngsters care nothing for political systems or moral conventions or the morrow. They have been told they are bodies and it is going to take a very drastic revolution to awaken their spirits. But when it happens and they see they will tear to pieces the foetid, crippling. lying system of secularism.
tearing the pants off some hoydenish lad whose lacrymal glands have got mixed up with his oesophagus. It was no laughing matter. What had happened to those healthy, sport -loving, humorous, sensible kids of ours? It was very difficult to give it any other name but mass hysteria. But wasn't hysteria some form of nervous disorder that needed treatment? The psychiatrists seemed to think so, even if the prospect of so many hyper -tensed youngsters as a business prospect might make their views
Youth Movements Revived By Bishop
On his first official visit to the Collie parish, the Bishop of Bunbury, the Most Rev. suspect. L. J. Goody, presented badges to 15 memOne expert in the cult set out to explain the Mascot bers of the Young Christian Workers' Movehowlers-call groaners, crooners, These mystery. them what you will-were doing something just a ment and three members of the National shade better than their children's audience could do Catholic Girls' Movement. themselves. They were, as it were, a projection of In his sermon, Bishop sible in the apostolic work the kids' own latent possibilities. It was a form of Goody expressed satisfac- of the movements. self -love. It was narcissism.
RESPONSIBILITY, FIRST QUARRY
I am no psychiatrist, but I believe the professor's explanation is fundamentally correct. We all love curselves in varying degrees and a certain measure of self -love is a virtue. But why does self -love get out of hand to the extent it did at Mascot? I fancy there are two explanations. One is provided by the number of teen-agers who made such an unholy ehibition of themselves. That seems to me to argue an appalling lack of parental control. It seems to suggest a lack of love in the home. For parental love is not exemplified in the happy-golucky homes of today. Children are permitted to do as they please because the parents want to be free to do as they please. The hunt for pleasure has found its first quarry in the tiresome, old-fashioned virtue of responsibility. The children are being sucked into the spiritual vacuum in which their parents live. And youngsters,
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tion at the spiritual and material development of the Collie parish and traced the link between the parish and His Grace Inducts youth movement development. Parish Priests He went on to demonstrate how members of the His Grace the ArchY.C.W. and N.C.G.M. sharbishop inducted the ed in the apostolic work of Rev. T. J. Linnane, the Bishops in a very real parish priest of Coati, way. at the 7.30 Mass on To those receiving badges, Sunday last, March 13. Bishop Goody pointed out On the same day at the need for adhering as the 9 o'clock Mass, he far as possible to the rule inducted the Rev. S. of life of their movements, Sorahan, parish priest and the need for prayer in of Graylands - Swan their daily lives. bourne. He urged members of Both parishes have both movements to be pure been newty erected. in word and action and to participate as fully as pos-