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DR. BROWNE RESIGNED
His Mother And Child Scheme is Abandoned Correspondence With The Hierarchy
The Letters Are On Page 4
DR. BROWNE, Minister for Health, submitted his resignation to the Taoiseach, Mr. Costello, at 4.30 p.m. yesterday. He has also resigned from Clann na Poblachta, but he will not relinquish his Dail seat. Mr. Costello told the Dail, yesterday, that Dr. Browne's resignation would be effective from to-day. The Taoiseach will take over the Department of Health for the time being.
The free Mother and Child service has been withdrawn and Dr. Browne's last act as Minister for Health was to announce the withdrawal of the scheme and to publish correspondence explaining the circumstances leading up to his resignation.
The correspondence included a letter from His Lordship Most Rev. Dr. Staunton, Bishop of Ferns, on behalf of the Catholic Hierarchy, dated last October, to the Taoiseach. The letter stated that in the opinion of the Hierarchy the powers taken by the State in the proposed Mother and Child Service were in direct opposition to the rights of the family and liable to very great abuse.
Other letters, dated last month, between Dr. Browne and the Taoiseach and Most Rev. Dr. J. C. McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin, refer to proposed revisions of the scheme to meet the objections of the Hierarchy.
A statement by the Minister says:
"The Minister for Health regrets to announce that he is unable to proceed with the implementation of the free Mother and Child Service and the Scheme is now withdrawn. The decision of the Government taken in June, 1948, to introduce a free Mother and Child Health Service without a means test has now been rescinded for the reasons which appear in the correspondence set out below.
"The Minister hopes that the publication of this correspondence will dispel the malicious rumours concerning him which have been circulated throughout the country. As a Catholic he accepts the rulings of Their Lordships the Hierarchy without question.
"The Minister desires to thank the many hundreds of doctors who offered to participate in the Scheme. As these offers were made in confidence the Minister has had all records relating to these offers destroyed."
The Taoiseach, Mr. Costello, announced in the Dail that he has assigned the Department of Health to himself as a temporary arrangement.
Before the announcement of Dr. Browne's resignation, Mr. Sean MacBride issued for publication a letter in which he asked Dr. Browne to transmit his resignation as soon as possible to the Taoiseach "by reason of the situation which has arisen and for which you are largely responsible."
The Government are trustworthy of the confidence of the Government, the Oireachtas, and the people, and are capable of discharging their duties effectively.
"As I can no longer give you this assurance in regard to Dr. Browne, for the reasons stated in my letter to him, I deemed it to be the proper course to request him to transmit his resignation to you.
"I am sure that you and the other members of the Government will greatly regret the circumstances which have compelled me to adopt this course. Dr. Browne did good work in the Government, for which he deserves full credit, and it is most unfortunate that he should have behaved, in recent times, in a manner which compelled me to take the action I have taken.
"I hope that Dr. Browne may benefit by the experience he has gained, and that, at some time in the future, he may again be in a position to render service to the country."
DR. NOEL BROWNE
Told To Resign
Following is the copy of the letter sent by Mr. MacBride to Dr. Browne:
"Dear Dr. Browne — Following upon your own declarations and the indications given by me, I had
A copy of this letter had been sent to the Taoiseach with a covering letter, stating that he no longer considered Dr. Browne trustworthy of the confidence of the Government, the Oireachtas, or the people or capable of discharging his duties effectively.
Dr. Browne, in reply, stated that he had already informed the Party of his intention to resign from the Government.
The propriety of Mr. MacBride asking another Minister to resign was raised in the Dail by Capt. Cowan. The Leas Ceann Comhairle said he would refer the matter to the Committee of Procedure and Privileges.
MacBride's Letter To Taoiseach
Mr. MacBride had sent the following letter to the Taoiseach on Tuesday:
"Dear Taoiseach—I enclose a copy of a letter which I have sent by hand to-night to Dr. Browne, Minister for Health, requesting him to tender his resignation to you.
"As the formation of the Inter-Party Government is a new concept in our Parliamentary history, it is well that I should set out the considerations that have compelled me to adopt this course.
"I take the view that, as the leader of one of the Parties in the Government, it is part of my responsibility to be in a position to assure the Taoiseach at all times that the members of the Party whom I have the honour to lead in

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TRUTH IS A FIXED STAR
By FATHER SENAN, O.F.M.Cap.
A LONG time ago now there dwelt in the celestial city of Rome a Capuchin Father whose name was Francis Titelman. He was a man of learning and scholarship yet he spent all his days in Rome caring for the sick in the city's hospitals. One day, there came to him from Louvain, in Belgium, a group of his former disciples strongly to urge him to occupy himself in works of science rather than of service. "Why don't you at least give us," they asked, "in books and articles and lectures the fruits of your long years of study?" And Padre Francesco, indicating the lines of patients in the wards round him, said: "There, my friends, you see the subjects of my deepest study. They are my books. They are my volumes of Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Scotus. Them I must be always studying and I find, my friends, that the care of the sick brings no false pleasure, no real sorrow, no puffing up by pride, but it brings truth ever nearer, truth the unchanging star, and so brings nearer, too, the Vision of God."
Father Francis, a saintly friar and, therefore, humble, had reached the conclusion that his non-essential work as a friar and a priest was more desirably devoted to the care of the sick than to any kind of literary, scientific or university activity. And surely caring for the sick, immediately or remotely, is a most rewarding field of human activity provided always, of course, that zeal for this work as for all other work be guided by the charioteer of the virtues in that clear light which alone comes from an ever-present awareness of the essential Christian values.
Recently, in Ireland, there has been much confused discussion and acrimonious controversy about health and other affairs since the Government, after some seeming dilatoriness, rejected a scheme which was being sponsored, in good faith I have no doubt, by a man whose solicitude for the sick and suffering made his name known and respected throughout the country. I refer, I need scarcely say, to the mother-and-child health scheme and to Dr. Noel C. Browne, Minister for Health, from February, 1948, until his resignation in April, 1951.
The reasons for Dr. Browne's resignation were deliberately darkened at the time by loud-mouthed leftish elements abetted imprudently, and indeed I would go so far as to say with daring impudence, by some journals* (I exclude The Church of Ireland Gazette from this comment) of a vicious minority of what, in its turn, is a respected minority in a preponderatingly Catholic country, and ever since the story of the resignation has been distorted and twisted, not in the service of perennial truth, by these same people so that even still there are many honest men whose minds are puzzled by the whole series of happenings and who seem to be genuinely unable to appreciate why the Hierarchy intervened at any stage of the proceedings. Now, the intervention of the Hierarchy can be explained in a few words: the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland intervened simply and solely because it was their bounden duty so to intervene inasmuch as they are the guardians and defenders of truth and morality in our midst. It was not, at any time, a question of their "interfering in politics", to use a commonly-used term. This whole matter goes back to 1947 and even farther. In 1947, unless the
writer's memory deceives him, His Lordship the Most Reverend Dr. O'Neill, Bishop of Limerick, made a public, clear and authoritative pronouncement against objectionable features in the health legislation then enacted or about to be enacted. Before the question could be satisfactorily resolved, however, Mr. de Valera's Government was defeated in the general election held early in 1948 and so the matter of the particular legislation and the implementing of it went into abeyance for a time. Towards the end of 1949 and all during last year the country was gradually prepared for what later became known as the mother-and-child scheme. The Bishops, ever-vigilant Watchmen of the Lord, objected to some aspects of this scheme and in a tactful and gracious manner conveyed their views to the Head of the Government. When the matter became public it was immediately asserted by irresponsible, if not malicious, people, a few of them, 'tis a pity, holding positions of some importance in the country's life, that here we had a clear case of the Hierarchy exercising tyrannical power, while the undeniable fact, of course, is that the Bishops had struck an effective blow for the only freedom that counts—the freedom that cannot be found in the countries behind the Iron Curtain, where Catholic prelates, whose memory will abide with us forever, live daily in the shadow of torture and persecution for justice's sake in the gaols of Freedom's oppressors.
Next month, le congnamh Dé, I shall give in detail the objections formulated by the Hierarchy to the mother-and-child scheme. But there is one other matter I should like to refer to this month and it is the question of the alleged effect all this I have been treating of has on the solution of the Partition problem. Personally, I don't think it has had the slightest tendency to make the ultimate solution more difficult. Indeed, I am sure there are many of our non-Catholic fellow-Irishmen in the North who envy us and who are sorry that the Bishops of their Church did not take, from conviction and clear vision, a firm stand when the things that really matter were at stake.
"Ever let Thy truth guide and teach us, O God our deliverer, and our everlasting hope." (Ps. 24.)
* Extract from one venomous rag:
"To what incredible lengths may not cultivated and organised blindness be led? When Roman Catholics approach the subject of religion their knees begin to buckle and knock, and their spines to bend like a warm candle. They lay down the royal diadem of their own intellectual independence; they grovel at the feet of another in priestly garb, possibly their inferior intellectually; and they humbly ask that he replace their commonsense idea of things by a lot of hoary drivel that was a disgrace even to the men of the Dark Ages. How far will this hysteria and dementia carry the Roman Catholics of Southern Ireland? . . ."

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TO FOLLOW TRUTH . . .
By FATHER SENAN, O.F.M.Cap.
ATTACHED to one of our friaries in Ireland, some years ago, was a faithful layman who is credited with this caustic comment on the preaching of one of the Fathers in the community: "When Father N. is in the pulpit he reminds me of one of the druids of old—he can raise a fog without any bother but he seems to afterwards." Well, quite a lot has been said and written these last few months about the mother and child health scheme, the intervention of the Hierarchy, and the action of the Government at the time; indeed a thick fog was raised question, and I keep hoping in my heart that I shall not raise a private fog of my own in endeavouring to explain what really was the point at issue.
I
The first few lines of Part 3 of An Acht Slainte or Health Act, 1947, read:
"A health authority shall . . . make arrangements for safeguarding the health of women in respect of motherhood and for their education in that respect."
Then follow sections and subsections dealing with the medical inspection of children and the education of them in matters relating to health.
There we have the legal blessing for what came to be known as the mother and child health scheme. Vague enough the clauses are, as far as expression goes in words, but it is to be seen that there is without for the incoming of many things such as advice as how best to bring about by unlawful means artificial family limitation,
the teaching by the State of sex knowledge to young girls, unwarranted interference with the rights of parents, and other evils—all of them in direct opposition to the Moral Law. Naturally the Bishops, who are the guardians of the Moral Law, were
very much perturbed and did on more than one occasion, as I pointed out last month, express their deepest disapproval of such legislation and, later, of the proposed implementation of it.
I do not believe and I do not wish inguished, sincere, hardworking benefactors of our people, Dr. James Ryan, T.D., Minister for Health in 1947 (re-appointed a week or two ago), and his successor in office, Dr. Noël Browne, T.D., did at any time fully advert to all, that it was implicit in that piece of legislation as formally, if vaguely, stated or as lately about to be implemented. The question may be asked by someone where did the Bill come from before it was circulated to the members of Dail Eireann. And in reply I can only say that in all probability it was drafted in the usual way by civil servants who may have or may not have had beside them, I do not know at all, copies of like legislation from some foreign, non-Catholic country or countries. I do, however, know this, though it may not be quite relevant here, that when a certain Government was seeking to introduce a Bill the purpose of which was to ban the wearing of a certain vexed or vexing uniform a hurried search was made in other countries to secure a headline to copy, and sure enough it was found eventu-
ally in a northern European country. Anyway, whatever its immediate or remote provenance or inspiration, the Health Act, 1947, is still enshrined amongst the laws enacted by a Christian legislature for a Christian people. Surely, seeing that the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland have repeatedly pointed out their objections to it, to two successive governments, it is not too much to expect that the offending sections of the Act should be repealed without further delay?
II
When they were asked by Dr. Browne and child health scheme, the Bishops gave careful consideration to the memorandum submitted to them and gave their views on the matter in the following letter to the Head of the Government, Mr. John A. Costello, S.C., T.D., who was published in the daily papers on April 12:
"The Archbishops and Bishops wish first to point out that on 7th October, 1947, they sent to the Head of the Government a letter in which they expressed grave disapproval of certain parts of the recently enacted Health Act, 1947, especially those dealing with mother and child services. In sections 21-28 the public authority was given the right and duty to provide for the health of all children, to treat their ailments, to educate them in regard to health, to educate women in regard to motherhood, and to provide all women with gynecological care.
"They pointed out that to claim such powers for the public authority, without qualification, is entirely and directly contrary to the Catholic teaching on the rights of the family, the rights of the Church in education, the rights of the medical profession and of the voluntary replied, deferring a fuller answer to our comments on the ground that the constitutionality of the Act was being called into question.
"The Archbishops and Bishops desire to express once again approval of a sane and legitimate health service which will properly safeguard the health of mothers and children.
"The Hierarchy cannot approve of any scheme which, in its general tendency, must foster undue control by the State in a sphere so delicate and so intimately concerned with morals as that which deals with gynecology or obstetrics and with the relations between doctor and patient.
"Neither can the Bishops approve of any scheme which must have for practical result the undue lessening of the proper initiative of individuals and associations and the dependence of the relations between doctor and patient.
"The Bishops do not reliance it their duty to enter into an examination of the detailed considerations put forward by the Minister for Health in his memorandum, save in so far as they wish to point out the Mother and Child Health Scheme on a basis of parity with the provision by the State of minimum primary education, or the prevention of infectious diseases or a scheme of children's allowances.
"It is to be noted that the proposed scheme fails to give clear evidence of the details of implementation. The scheme, as set forth in vague, general terms, has the appearance of conferring a benefit on
the mothers and children of the whole nation.
"The Hierarchy must regard the scheme proposed by the Minister for Health as opposed to Catholic social teaching:
"Firstly: In this particular scheme the State arrogates to itself a function and control, on a nationwide basis, in respect of education, especially in the very intimate matters of chastity, individual and conjugal. The Bishops have noted with satisfaction the statement of the Minister for Health that he is willing to amend the scheme in this particular. It is the principle which must be amended and it is the principle which must be set forth correctly, in a legally binding manner and in an enactment of the Oireachtas. The Bishops believe that this result cannot be achieved except by the amendment of the relevant sections of the Health Act, 1947.
"Secondly: In this particular scheme the State arrogates to itself a function and control, on a nationwide basis, in properly ought to be, and actually can be, efficiently secured, for the vast majority of the citizens, by individual initiative and by lawful associations.
"Thirdly: In this particular scheme the State must enter unduly and very intimately into the life of patients, both parents and children, and of doctors.
"Fourthly: To implement this
particular scheme, the State must levy a heavy tax on the whole community, independently or indirectly or desire of the citizens to use the facilities provided.
"Fifthly: In implementing this particular scheme by taxation, direct or indirect, the State will in practice morally compel the citizens to avail themselves of the services provided.
"Sixthly: This particular scheme, when enacted on a nationwide basis, must succeed in damaging gravely the self-reliance of parents, whose family wage or income would allo

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DUBLIN SOUTH-EAST
Dr. Noel Browne
needs your help!
All who are willing to lend support to Dr. Noel Browne in the General Election are invited to attend a
MEETING
to be held at
Mansion House, Tuesday Next, May 8, 8 p.m.
which will be addressed by
MR. NOEL HARTNETT & DR. FRENCH O'CARROLL
(candidate for Dublin South-West)
Clerical workers wanted, offers of transport and subscriptions (however small) will be gratefully received.
please address letters and subscriptions to:
NOEL HARTNETT, 55 FITZWILLIAM SQUARE, DUBLIN
FUNDS URGENTLY REQUIRED

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THE DAIL AND THE BISHOPS
A Reply to Sean O'Faolain
By DR. ALFRED O'RAHILLY, M.A., D.Sc.
President, University College, Cork
WRITING as a layman—and, I might say, from a lay standpoint—I thought I had dissipated the confusion and the irrelevancies which, ignorantly or deliberately, had been affixed to the timely intervention of our Bishops. I find I was mistaken.
An eminent literary man has now decided on an incursion into social philosophy; and the whole business is again reduced to a hotch-potch. With the Irish Times and its brood of correspondents I knew where I stood; I was dealing with those who seize every opportunity to vilify our Faith and our Church. But I am puzzled concerning the real position of Sean O'Faolain in his articles on "The Dail and the Bishops" in the current issue of The Bell. I presume that, like myself, he is writing as a lay Catholic. It is, therefore, exceedingly curious that we should arrive at such utterly different conclusions. At the request of several readers of my previous articles, I propose to explain why I disagree
He seems to me to ignore the absolutely vital distinction which I drew between the natural rights of the Bishops and their supernatural authority, their constitution status and their religious standing. Except in passing I did not deal with the theological question of episcopal authority in matters of faith and morality. That is an internal or domestic affair of Catholics; it does not concern the Irish Times, or indeed the Dail as such. I took it for granted that my fellow-Catholics had received their catechism and had studied at least elementary religious instruction.
Perhaps I was excessively optimistic; some people, like Captain Cowan, have surprised me. But what really astonishes me is to find educated Catholics suddenly discovering that they belong to a Church which not only upholds Revelation but defends the natural rights and liberties of individual and family. Have such people ever read the social encyclicals? Are there really among us Rip van Winkles who have been asleep since Rerum Novarum?
My primary interest is in what the Bishops said, not in who said it. They expressed what is unanimously held by Catholic sociologists, and indeed by many others outside the Church; they dealt with vital issues which concern us layfolk as citizens and as parents. If, through doubts about the divinity of Christ or the infallibility of the Church, I became an agnostic, I should still, in the interests of liberty especially of the less well-off, strongly uphold the Bishop's defence of conjuval and parental rights against invasion by the State. In fact I was already involved; for
some years past I have been struggling against the plot of the Department of Health to establish in Cork a State monopoly of mother-and-child service and to reduce our principal medical professors to civil servants.
The Bishops Defend Parental Rights
BUT with the validity or the content of the Bishops' objections Mr. O'Faolain appears to have no concern whatever. He has just one obiter dictum: "It is not likely that State Socialism—of which Dr. Browne's scheme was felt to be the thin end of the wedge—would be the main popular with the North." But he gives no indication as to whether he himself feels this; and he disdains to argue the point.
He is exclusively preoccupied with the—to him devastating—fact that this defence of our liberties emanated from "Maynooth." He makes it clear that he would not be at all perturbed if analogous pronouncements were made by the Protestant Synod, the Irish Academy of Letters or the Trade Union Congress. Now it is, indeed, a pleasant pastime to indulge one's prejudices concerning what I may call the genetics of the business, not to bother about what has been said, but to keep carping on who said it. As for myself—apart altogether from my duty as a Catholic, which I fully admit—I am so overjoyed at finding powerful allies in resistance to Statism that I have no time, even
had I the inclination, to indulge in the game of Maynooth-baiting. It is silly and dangerous game, anyway. After our wives and children, the next object of collectivist solicitude might even be the intelligentist. Suppose the Minister for Health sorry, I mean Education—decided to take charge of our mental uplift by running The Bell? The Bishops might be useful then, as when they once saved us from conscription. It is a pity that Mr. O'Faolain's treatment is not more realistic and relevant to the world of to-day.
"Clerical Opposition"
HE several times uses the word "democracy" without defining it. I think it fair to say that his concept is that of the unitary State, over against which no autonomous associations can be permitted to exist. Never can does he mention the family; and never reads the article would our suspect that the Bishops were aiming not at the aggrandisement of the Church, but at the defence of marital and parental rights. Doubtless he would be up in arms against any aggression of the State against the literary profession, but he fails even to mention that the medical profession was being coerced, much less does he express any sympathy with the doctors. The Church itself he treats most unrealistically, as if it were an always institution run by Stateless representatives or at any rate to association outside or hostile to our "democracy." Here is his picture of the crisis:
"Mr. Costello, faced by the clerical opposition to a piece of legislation, which he and his Cabinet, on behalf of the Government, were proposing, should have strongly and stubbornly resisted the Bishops to the limit."
On the one side there is a handful of clerics; on the other the Cabinet, the Government, the Legislature and the People. If this purports to be an accurate account of a contemporary event, how what we ought to be in accepting what professes to be history! It seems never to occur to the writer that nearly all these persons might heartily agree with the Bishops—if he prefers in spite of the fact that they are Bishops! If the devil himself (by accident!) said what he said, I would agree with him! But Mr. O'Faolain never discusses whether the Bishops were right or wrong; he should not, however, attribute this inhuman detachment to other people such as the late Cabinet. And, if there is any doubt as to what the majority of the voters think, let us have a referendum. Or, better still, let the Supreme Court pronounce on the constitutional validity of the State monopolising "health" education.
"Theology And Humanity"
MR. O'FAOLAIN makes strenuous efforts to frighten us with the bogey of clericalism.
"The people must fell that there is a wide gap between Theology and Humanity. They must feel themselves distrusted by their own clergy; for, if this scheme had gone through, who would have worked it almost wholly but a Catholic Government, Catholic doctors, Catholic civil servants, the ordinary Catholic laymen?"
This misleading piece of rhetoric suggests that "theology" is an abstruct inhuman abstraction concepted by the clergy against "humanity"—i.e., humanitarianism or social services imposed in defiance of rights and liberties. And why bother about principles and safeguards when those entrusted with drastic powers happen to be Catholics? This implicit denial of natural rights, when the oppressors are Catholics, is extremely dangerous for us all, and grossly unfair on our Protestant fellow-citizens. (Incidentally, it is untrue; for there would be no religious test or ethical investigation of the doctors to be appointed as civil servants). Now let us look at the reality as described by Rev. E. Coyne, S.J., in the current number of Studies:
"The County Council could, presumably be free to tell any woman u