Juvenile Delinquency and Divorce

Sir: I read with pleasure and sympathy Mr D.H. Munro’s article in your last number, on juvenile delinquency and divorce. Naturally he is able to make hay with the vague and pontifical Report of the Special Committee. But I feel that he hardly does justice to the bewildered good intentions of the group who framed the report; or to the complexity of the situation which has plainly stumped them. He suggests as the most suitable course of action ‘. . . to investigate these effects with an open mind and with careful attention to such evidence as is available from the Kinsey reports and other sources.’ The ‘other sources’ he has in mind are no doubt, like Dr Kinsey’s study, scientific reports on the sexual behaviour of men, women and children in various social groups, which exclude moral comment. But surely the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents could scarcely, by its very nature, avoid moral comment. To understand its aims and attitudes we must recognise it for what it is – a more official and less effective type of the innumerable local associations which are called upon to deal with similar problems, much as the fire station is called upon to combat a gorse fire. True, this time the pumps were out of order and the water was cut off at the main. But we do not condemn the School Committee, Women’s Guild, Parent- and-Teacher Association, or meeting of tribal elders in a Maori pa, if they do not approach the ‘problem’ of boys and girls playing too late in the long grass with the impartial scientific spirit of a visiting anthropologist among the Trobriand Islanders. At their best they combine moral comment with charity and good sense; at their worst they are hideously inept and blundering. But, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, their prejudices may represent in fact their unconscious wisdom. Whether the Special Committee had even the doubtful wisdom of prejudice, is of course another matter.

Mr Munro has put his own point of view forcibly: ‘But wouldn’t it be better, in the long run, to bring morality down from the moon and try to find a rational basis for it? The Committee, however, does not believe in a rational basis for morality. The basic assumption behind this report is that morality consists in adhering blindly to a code of behaviour with which children must be indoctrinated as early as possible . . .’. His ‘rational morality’ is plausible. God forgive that we should cease to use our brains. I think most peoplepage 240 seek at some time in their lives a rational solution to their pressing sexual problems. Yet a purely rational approach may do violence to the many levels of sexual feeling; and action based on reason may leave lasting spiritual wounds. I have never heard a convincing rational argument against mild promiscuity (accompanied by knowledge of contraception) among adolescents. Yet I have observed (and who has not?) the disfigurement of personality which accompanies sexual activity divorced from tenderness, care and mutual trust. Some vague awareness of this calamity has visited the fuddled minds of the Special Committee. Their report, though the language is indecipherable, may be a signpost pointing in the right direction. As a school-teacher I am aware that the teaching of religion in schools has no effect except to bewilder the children and irritate the staff. Yet within a Catholic Christian community the problems of sexual delinquency among children and adolescents have at least a remote chance of solution which is lacking in our own humanist and, within its limits, rational society. The recognition of human beings as hybrid, spirit and animal, brings into focus the neglected factors in sexual experience; the Catholic tradition looks with less harshness on sexual ‘weakness’ than does the Nonconformist Protestant, and tends to protect rather than ostracise the offender; if the child or adolescent has in fact suffered damage, the Catholic Church can set in motion processes of repair. The rational society, not recognising damage, will not attempt repair. Fortunately our society is only partly rational.

I emphasise the mitigating and healing aspect of Christian belief and action. Its repressive and legalistic aspect has undoubtedly made many more delinquents than it has helped in their difficulties. The ‘girl who goes wrong’ is much more often a child who lacks love and security and status, looking for it in unlikely places, than a cheerful hedonist. I suggest that both in the Report of the Special Committee and in Mr Monro’s lively and incisive review the central factor has been overlooked – the individual suffering of the juvenile delinquent.

1955 (114)