May 13,1949.
you are members of the Church Militant, not the Church Dormant." said Dr. Downey, Archbishop of Liverpool, addressing 6,000 members of the Union of Catholic Mothers in the Albert Hall on Tuesday last and calling on them to "assert" themselves in forming public opinion.
"Never at any time has woman's influence been greater than at the present time. It is well for her to remember that it is only in recent times that she has won her emancipation and been free to mould her own life and, as it were, set her own pace.
"But in some cases her very liberty has gone to her head like an intoxicant. It is particularly distressing when we find her advocating practices which make for her own moral degradation: free-love, legalised abortion, easier divorce, and, of course, birth control.
"In addition to the birthcontrollers there are also death-controllers and lifecontrollers. In fact, these people are ready to control anything except themselves.
"The death controllers advocate euthanasia, pleasant death for other people, of course. The life-controllers arrogate to themselves the right to decide who shall or shall not have offspring.
"They are all advocates of sterilisation of the unfit, and what they are precisely unfit for is not at all clear. It is certainly true that in trying to breed a muscular Keats you may get an intellectual Bill Sykes."