CHURCH AND MONEY REFORM

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 76, 2 August 1948, Page 4

CHURCH AND MONEY REFORM

Addressing the annual conference of the 2 N.Z.E.F. Association at Wellington on Thursday, Father J. S. Higgins is reported to have said that the Homan Catholic Church was behind the efforts of the Association for stabilisation and monetary reform. He condemned tendencies of employers to demand more work for less reward and of workers to do less while seeking higher pay. It was pointed out by the president, Mr Kenneth Melvin, that while the Government had been generous in fixing the amounts of rehabilitation aid available to service personnel, it, had not fixed the quality of the money. Both seem to be on the right track, so far as the remarks quoted above are concerned. There seems no doubt that the weakness in the present stabilisation policy lies in the fact that the planners have fixed everything but the relation of money to goods, which means that all along the line we are getting less and less in goods and services for more and more watered down cash. One does not need to be an economist to compare the value of the New Zealand £1 today with its value 10 years ago and get a startling answer. It is encouraging to see at least one of the Churches (Father Higgins is reported to have said he had described the attitude of his Church) taking an active interest in a vital problem, It indicates an interest in the temporal as well as the spiritual welfare of its adherents, which is directly in line with Christ’s own teaching. One of the arguments of the atheistic amongst the Left Wing Socialists has been that the Church has too often stressed the “pie in the sky when we die” angle of its message and paid too little attention to the real problems of helping men to attain conditions under which they can live a better life 'Unfortunately, that argument has had a scrap of truth in it, though it could never justly be given the sweeping application those who produce it usually do try to give it. Throughout the history of all Churches there have been leaders who have sacrificed their