SERMON ATTACKING COMMUNISM

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 33, 2 November 1937, Page 9

SERMON ATTACKING COMMUNISM

Protest jEvoked from Trade Union 2YA CHURCH BROADCAST 'A protest made by Communist organisations and at least one trade union in New Zealand against an alleged attack on Communism contained in a broadcast of a sermon from a Catholic, church in Wellington has drawn from the broadcasting authorities a promise that such a sermon will not again be given. The Director of Bspa^pasting, Professor J. Shelley, said that he had roplied to the organisations whieh had protested, stating that such an attack would not again be heard over the air. "It was a pure mistake that sermon ever going over the air," he told a reP°The reply that controversial matters must in future be avoided in sermons did not mean that the script of sermons would have to be submitted to the authorities before permission was given to broadcast them, Professor Shelley said. It was' the understood practice laid down for the church committees that controversial matters should be avoided in sermons. The sermon, which was broadcast by Station 2YA from St. Gerard 's Church, Wellington, was given by a Eedemptorist priest the Eev. Father K. D. Crowe. "Threatens All Aliko" The- sermon pt which offence was taken by the Communist organisations was repTinted by a Eoman Catholic newspaper, which stated that every statement in the sermon could be verified by Eussian newspapers and authoritative booka on the subject. stated the New* Zealand Tablet. "It (the sermon) was 'enthusiastically received by all aave a few misguided champions of atheiatic Commumsm." Father Crowe at the beginning of hia addresa said. that if there were any listening who imagined that they were to be treated to an irresponsible and fanatical tirade, they were doomed to disappo'intment. They would certai^y hear Communism condemned, but only _after irrefutable facts and arguments had been adduced. .To non_Catholic listeners, he said that he extended to them the invitation of Pope Pius XI, invoking their hearty collaboration m order to ward off from mankmd a great danger that threatened all alike. He addressed himself in particular jto the working man whose lot at the present time was so difficult. "pailacious Arguments" ■ he looks round him in the

.world " Father Crowe said, "he eees iinmense wealth concentrated in the ;hands of a fewr whUe mosses ofmen live in poverty and want. The Communist agitator will tiy to 4ecoive hxm with fallacious arguments and aliuring promisos; but let the working man in view of what he will hear to-night think, and think deeply, before heallows himself to be sold over to the ( worst slavery the world has known."' • Quoting the Kussian newspaper Pravda as his authority, Father Crowe said that Lenin's aim after the firm establishment of Communism in Eussia, had been to work unceasingly for .the overthrow of all modern Governments. Lenin died in 1924, but world-revolution .remained the avowed object of the Boviet leaders. Communism demanded, continued the speaker, three things— the abolition of private property, the establishment of the dietatorship of the proletariat, and the denial of God and the suppression of religion. Father Crowe quoted extracts from a book "I Was'a Communist„u written in 1936 by Andrew Smith, formerly a leader of the American Communist PaTty who had gohe tp live in Eussia. Smith had said that every Eussian factory was filled with spies, and those who ceased work, following the tactics sponsored by the Communists here>' of going. on strike, were struck with a sentence of hard labour., but more often they had a habit of just disappearing. Dogs in America were better fed than the Soviet work«r, Smith had declared. "No Respect for Morality" Father Crowe also quoted from Sir Walter Citrine's book, "I Search for Truth in Eussia," and An^re Gide's "Eeturn from Moscow," which the speaker described as devastating. Women in Soviet Eussia were forced to do the hardest manual labour for the lowest wage, he continued, and there was no respect for morality, as ..could be seen from a glance at Article 144 of the family code, which out of respect for his hearers he would not quote. The newspaper Izvestia had said that the percentage of divorces to mar-

riages had risen to 44. Misery, too, wias driving women to the most dangorous remedies, and thus in 1935 there were registered in Moscow alone 150,000 cases of abortion. Immense numbers of abandoned children roamed the streets of Eussian cities, and the widow of Lenin, writing in Izvestua, had given the number not in thousands but in mil. lions. Immorality had been rife among them, and even in the schools atheistic teaching was having the results that inight be expected. Stalin had found it necessary to order capital punishment for jnvenile delinquents of even 12 years of age, as could be seen in the pages of Pravda. "The Communists, following their usual unscrupulous tactics, have called the Catholic Church the friend of Fascism," the speaker said. "Why? Because she has the courage to stand up and condemn their fiendish betmyal of the working classes, exposing their treachery and hypocrisy to the wosld. We must counteract the cunning Communist propaganda by spreading the truth about Eussia and her hellish doctrines and thus save many souls from being lost eternally. Let ,us march forward to battle against this red monBter, the enomy of God and of man."