ON PASTORALS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 19 February 1914, Page 3

ON PASTORALS.

(To the Editor.) Sir,- Someone has kindly posted me a pamphlet containing His Grace Archbishop Redwood's pastoral. It is a very vigorous but weak attack on what it claims to be socialism (from a property man's and a Theologian's jjoint of view). I read it carefully. In this pastoral, as in all similar productions of the clerical mind, I was not disappointed. I expected to be gently transported to a mystical, nebulous atmosphere, and there to behold a feeble fencing and dodging, of the real question. A something in the nature of tlie facts mother uses to frighten confiding baby to sleep. A quixotic anxiety to swat the socialist humming-bird and would-be nectar-sucker of our daffodils. A cold smothering of logic and of facts and of truth with a nice flood of words (words). So I have found in it what I expected. Nevertheless, this is an improvement on last year's Pastoral, which Alderman Hartley fairly pulverised with dignified and clever satire. . One thing pastorals and church leaders generally cannot or will not face-—and that is the facts of industrial evolution. The present, system of monopoly and privilege is evolving fast (of its own accord, with no hope of arrest) towards either Social Democracy, which is Socialism- a State where men will produce for use and will themselves decide what is good or bad for the Commonweal—or evolve towards the servile State, a state of benevoleut despotism or paternal capitalism, where a few will wallow in untold wealth and the many will be hireling slaves with ideals soaring scarcely higher than bread and butter and a draft cheque to a

• problematical heaven. All the strivings of these pastorals and general clerical propaganda lead . straight towards a capitalist despotism. There only can Theology thrive; and it knows it. But the mass of honest and intelligent humanity will steer for Social Democracy (the substance ol Christianity). That is really where the quarrel stands between Socialism and clerics generally. - Yours, etc., H. LEGER. Weraroa, 10th Feb., 1914, a— rsuraimcnmmwmekuat.