G.K. Chesterton

The Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, the US, in collaboration with Life Network Foundation (Malta), are organising the third Chesterton conference in Malta on the subject of eugenics.

Eugenics, simply put, is the controlled and selective breeding of the human race. It was an idea promoted by Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton.

George Bernard Shaw even said that nothing but a eugenic religion could save civilisation. It received enthusiastic support by the intelligentsia and the wealthy who promoted contraception and later forced sterilisation.

Almost single-handedly, G. K. Chesterton challenged this idea and warned that the ideas that eugenics had unleashed were likely to bear bitter fruit. Eugenics was later totally discredited after the horrors of social engineering in Hitler’s Germany were exposed.

The term ‘eugenics’ is no longer used today but the ideology has resurfaced using the same arguments to promote abortion, euthanasia “and other evils” so as to eliminate the genetically unworthy, the physically and mentally imperfect.

Two distinguished speakers from Seton Hall University – Fr Ian Boyd and Prof. Dermot Quinn – will be giving two short talks followed by a Q&A session at CAK Conference Hall in Birkirkara on Friday at 7pm.