Fr Vincent McNabb writes to "The Tablet"

Just browsing the Tablet archive,  I found this gem:

6th May 1911

THE FEEBLE-MINDED

 

SIR,—In your issue of April 15, mention is made of a Home for Feeble-minded girls over 16 years of age, to be opened at High Wycombe. It will be under the charge of the White Sisters (daughters of the Holy Spirit) and an organising Committee. Nothing but thanks could be offered to the Sisters and the Committee for their timely effort to deal with a social problem. May their zeal receive the better thanks of imitation elsewhere throughout the country.

 

I wish every other contribution of your correspondent merited the like gratitude.

 

Let me set down some statements that seem to me to be pernicious.

It is hoped that girls will remain in the Home for the greater part of their lives for this very grave reason : when a feeble-minded girl arrives at maturity, and is not under organised supervision, she becomes a danger to herself and to the community, ending in the workhouse, an inebriate reformatory, a rescue home or a jail. Liberty to the feeble-minded is only liberty to lead a life of misery and degradation, whereas segregation means a life of happiness and utility. Without this segregation the British public must in time consist of more mentally deficient than normal people as the feeble-minded give the world more children than do the normal in the ratio of 7'3 to 4. This is a mathematical fact from which there is no escape.  

This is such an unveiled "casting of stones" at a self-defenceless class of the community that I, their brother, may be allowed on their behalf to call a spade a spade—with emphasis.

 

I. From internal evidence I conclude that your correspondent is either not a "White Sister—a daughter of the Holy Spirit," or she has forgotten of what spirit, and colour, she is. Her voice may be the voice of a daughter of the Holy Spirit, but her words are the wearisome fallacies of the Eugenists.

 

II. There is a confusion between the " feeble-minded " and the "sexually feeble-willed." To argue that the feeble-minded are a danger to the community lays your correspondent open to an overwhelming tu quoque. It would be such a display of lack-logic that a defender of the poor might be pardoned for calling it "feeble-minded." A witty defender of the poor might even suggest humorously that your correspondent's mental state deserves permanent custodial treatment—as a danger to the community.

 

III. I have underlined the passage beginning "without this segregation." A few days ago Mr. Chesterton, on a memorable occasion expressed our thoughts and relieved our feelings by the monosyllable "Bosh !" On reading the passage underlined, I fly for shelter to leeward of Mr. Chesterton's strong sense—and vocabulary.

 

IV. Your ordinary run of readers will be swayed by the "7'3 to 4," with its delicate air of scholarly precision. All the terrier within me yearns to rise up and worry this appalling assumption. Instead of anger I will be content with authority. Many might be brought to bear ; one will do my work.

 

In his evidence before the Royal Commission on the care and control of the feeble-minded, Sir J. Crichton Browne said :

No definite opinion can be expressed as to whether the number of idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, feeble-minded, and defective persons is increasing out of proportion to the population. . . . A consideration of the causes of mental defects might lead us to infer that they are a diminishing quantity ; for they are undoubtedly of more frequent occurrence where there is a low standard of health dependent on poverty and insanitary conditions. (Report of Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded. Vol. I.)

I confess to the feeling that Sir J. Crichton Browne's wise ignorance is a more scholarly attitude than the precise "7'3 to 4."

 

V. I will end with two grave thoughts. If this custodial treatment and enforced celibacy bad been meted out to all the feeble-minded of the past century, how many of our reigning sovereigns would be in existence ?

 

To be quite consequent your correspondent would have given Francis Thompson permanent custodial treatment at Storrington, years before he went there to find himself a poet. We should thus have been without the "Hound of Heaven" ; though I agree we should have had the proceedings of the Eugenist societies and the long paralogisms on heredity.

 

I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,

VINCENT MCNABB, O.P.

Holy Cross Priory, Leicester.

 

 

The article Fr McNabb's letter refers to is here.

There's a further letter from him here.

If I were a Eugenist - G K Chesterton

Now, even if I could share the Eugenic contempt for human rights, even if I could start gaily on the Eugenic campaign, I should not begin by removing feeble-minded persons. I have known as many families in as many classes as most men ; and I cannot remember meeting any very monstrous human suffering arising out of the presence of such insufficient and negative types. There seem to be comparatively few of them ; and those few by no means the worst burdens upon domestic happiness. I do not hear of them often ; I do not hear of them doing much more harm than good ; and in the few cases I know well they are not only regarded with human affection, but can be put to certain limited forms of human use. Even if I were a Eugenist, then I should not personally elect to waste my time locking up the feeble-minded. The people I should lock up would be the strong-minded. I have known hardly any cases of mere mental weakness making a family a failure ; I have known eight or nine cases of violent and exaggerated force of character making a family a hell. If the strong- minded could be segregated it would quite certainly be better for their friends and families.

Eugenics and Other Evils

Abolishing suffering and disease

It would be wrong to wish someone suffering. (Although, maybe a little suffering might do some people good.) But might it be worse to desire a world (outside of Heaven) without suffering and disease? Such a world would be impossible anyway. It would be a tyranny with special sufferings of its own.

Eugenics desires to eliminate disease and suffering, or rather people who will suffer from disease. Heaven works because everyone in it is perfect. While we are here on earth, we have to contend with disease and suffering.

Imagine a world where suffering has been abolished. Where most people undergo (or have their offspring undergo) genetic treatments that will eliminate disability (or any offspring with disabilities). But, there will be some people who will resist such practices. They will have children naturally and accept any disabled babies.

They will be in a minority. They will suffer persecution in various forms. A society which thinks it has eliminated disease and disability will not welcome these inconvenient families who accept such suffering. These people who refuse to  consent to unethical and sinful procedures will be penalised. There will be a culture of ostracising imperfect people. Responsible parents will have made sure they produced healthy children. Irresponsible parents will show scant regard for the common good, by tolerating unhealthy children. There won't be a culture of compassion, because people will be expected not to need any. But there will always be a few spoiling it for everyone else!.

The word "compassion" means "suffer with". A world without suffering would be a world without compassion.

Are we nearly there yet?

The criminal negligence of Our Lady and St Joseph

A fine example of G K Chesterton writing over 90 years ago something that could have been written today:

... Cruelty to children, one would have thought, was a thing about as unmistakable, unusual and appalling as parricide. In its application it has come to cover almost every negligence that can occur in a needy household. The only distinction is, of course, that these negligences are punished in the poor, who generally can't help them, and not in the rich, who generally can. But that is not the point I am arguing just now. The point here is that a crime we all instinctively connect with Herod on the bloody night of Innocents has come precious near being attributable to Mary and Joseph when they lost their child in the Temple. In the light of a fairly recent case (the confessedly kind mother who was lately jailed because her confessedly healthy children had no water to wash in) no one, I think, will call this an illegitimate literary exaggeration. Now this is exactly as if all the horror and heavy punishment, attached in the simplest tribes to parricide, could now be used against any son who had done any act that could colourably be supposed to have worried his father, and so affected his health. Few of us would be safe.

Eugenics and Other Evils

Mitochondria harvesting

Our MPs have voted 3-1 in favour of "three-parent babies", or "mitochondrial donation". This procedure is apparently supposed to eliminate mitochondrial disorders. So that's all right then...

This is manufacturing bespoke human beings. It is tampering with the creation of human life. So you have 3 parents, some third-siblings, maybe some two-third siblings. If you're lucky, you might have a full sibling. And you probably won't know who your third-siblings are. And the next generation will have five or six grandparents...

And it won't be long before parents will be forced to ensure their children have no genetic illnesses. And then, is it that hard to imagine that, eventually, anyone who hasn't been created by this process will have to pay more for insurance?

This is eugenics.

Oh, and the embryonic donors of the mitochondria? Seems they're destroyed once their mitochondria has been harvested.