Originally posted by KatieMorag
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McQuaid regarded all hospitals as 'his' and any interference would be met with the might of the church. Particularly when it meant in McQuaid's twisted view that the proposed Mother and Child Health Service was
in direct opposition to the rights of the family and of the individual and are liable to great abuse. The character of the services is such that no assurance that they would be used in moderation could justify their enactment. If adopted in law they would constitute a ready-made instrument for future totalitarian aggression
The right to provide for the health of children belongs to the parents, not the state. The state has the right ti intervene only in a subsidiary capacity, to supplement, not to supplant. It may help indigent or neglected parents: it may not deprive 90% of their rights for 10% necessitous or neglected parents. It is not sound social policy to impose state medical services on the whole community on the pretext of relieving the necessitous 10% from the so -called indignity of the means test.
The right to provide for the physical education of children belongs to the family and not the state. Experience has shown that physical or health education is closely interwoven with important moral questions on which the Catholic Church has definite teaching.
We regard with the greatest apprehension the proposal to give local medical officers the right to tell Catholic girls and women how they should behave in regard to this sphere of conduct at once so delicate and sacred.
Gynaecological care my be, and in some countries is, interpreted to include provision for birth limitations and abortion. We have no guarantee that state officials will respect Catholic principles in regard to these matters. Doctors trained in instruction in which they have no confidence may be appointed as medical officers under the proposed service, and may give gynaecological care not in accordance with Catholic principles.
McQuaid asked "why is it necessary to go to so much trouble and expense simply to provide a free health service for the 10% necessitous poor"
Dr Brown later said it was in fact 30% of the poor in need at the time, and thought it a strange attitude from a powerful prelate of a Christian Church towards the life and death of the necessitous poor.
McQuaid led the Bishops in a crusade against Dr Brown and his proposals for a state medical welfare service....and in a letter sent to Costello to be read to the cabinet......whereby 'the bishops' condemned the scheme as wrong and defective......The whole cabinet except Dr Browne backed down and the scheme was ditched.....It not only retarded medical welfare for decades afterwards but also had a massive influence on north south relations for over fifty years and beyond.
The reporter Sean O'Faolain, who pissed McQuaid off the most.....said: The Browne case showed that the Republic had two parliaments. "A parliament at the seat of the church in Maynooth .....and one in Leinster House.... The Dail proposes....M
Maynooth disposes".
What a joke.....
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