SUMMARY

Hokitika Guardian, 10 November 1928, Page 3

SUMMARY

OF A PASTORAL LETTER ISSUED BY HIS GRACE ARCHBISHOP REDWOOD, S.M., ARCHBISHOP OF WELLINGTON AND METROPOLITAN.

Wellington, October 19th, 1928

As Metropolitan of this Ecclesiastical Province I deem it my duty to again give the Catholic body of New Zealand right guidance on the matter of Prohibition— National Prohibition —with which it is threatened. I hope such a calamity will never befall it. The position of prohibition advocates is altogether untenable. If they argue that alcoholic drink is an evil in itself, they run counter to Scripture and the emphatic teaching and example of Christ.

If they argue that alcoholic drink is not an evil in itself, then regulation of its traffic is surely the moral course to adopt.

Rut if prohibition is urged on account of the misuse which some make of alcoholic drink, then, to be morally consistent, the same people should demand the suppression of many other things, for instance, printing, theatres, dancing, and numerous other uses; hut this is against reason and common sense.

REFORM IS NEEDED—NOT PROHIBITION—

reform wise and moderate and patient in the light of experience, education, and true morality; in the interests of the great body of the public, and especially of moderate men, who constitute the majority of the people. To brand New Zealanders, who are generally a sober community, as a drink-sodden people, demanding drastic legislation, is a vile and monstrous calumny. The whole scheme of national prohibition is a great step backward ; it would be an odious and inquisitorial tyranny, foreign to the basic principle and spirit of British law.

PROHIBITION IS INDEED FATAL

TO LIBERTY because it involves a serious outrage against- the natural rights and liberties of individuals, and contemptuously disregards the claims of dissenting minorities. It is also fatal to TEMPERANCE, though not a few sophisticall.v confound temperance and prohibition. Temperance is a growth, like all moral laws, in the individual and the community. Prohibition proposes to establish temperance according to the Criminal Code. Temperance is positive, and appeals to man’s sense of self-control, to his reason and conscience. Prohibition is negative, and appeals to the sense of fear, to pains and penalties, and utterly ignores man’s habits and education. Temperance is the development of man’s righteousness and self-

control. Prohibition is the reduction of man to a position of compulsory national total abstinence by the criminal law. Temperance is the heritage and blessing of a free people. Prohibition is the yoke which a country constructs for itself when it- confesses it inability to self-control and from wide’ it will take long years to free itself. Temperance is the badge of self-respeci and orderliness.

There are many other cogent reasons why enlightened New Zealanders shoul reject prohibition. From the pure! temporal standpoint of efficiency, prohibition does not prohibit—as the example of America outstandingly prove —and never will prohibit so long as men exercise their birthright in a matter that God has left them free. Froiii the ethical point of view temperance, or self-control and moderation in the use of things, is a moral virtue, and as such postulates free choice in the exercise of it. prohibition is the symbol u°r HYPOCRISY AND DECEPTION. All the secret encouragement of sly drinking, the utter lack of control, the absence of all authority, the vile decoctions served, are sure to generate a low moral atmosphere of great mischief. And such places of sly drinking appeal greatly to the young. Oiice let a young man become contaminated by the moral tone of the “ sly grogs,” lie will be damaged morally, if not ruined. Prohibition will undoubtedly generate into lawlessness. Its extreme character, its far-reaching measures, its enormous penalties, stamp it as a grinding despotism—the fruitful parent of disorder.

PROHIBITION IS AS DESPOTIC AS ANY LAW OF THE WORST DESPOT.

Tt utterly disregards and tramples under foot the undoubted rights of minorities, whom it grossly insults by the way it flaunts their wishes and destroys their privileges. The minority under it would obey or suffer outrageous penalties. Wherever it prevails it is monstrous in every way and grossly insulting to the intelligence of the large minority. If it is carried in New Zealand we may expect that shortly the land will be filled with dens, all ol which will he schools of hypocrisy, evasion, lawlessness and deception. One

extreme begets another. Prohibition would plunge us into a course of folly, bringing turmoil into the politics of

the country, perjury and evasion into the courts, and deception into the people. Let it not be argued that “ sly grog ” would become an impossibility when throughout the whole of | the Dominion there would be no liaimrj to be procured, for wlmt could prevent the manufacture of sly crog in the country and its introduction bv a

WIDESPREAD SYSTEM OF SMUGGLING ?

But in any case this plea is 110 excuse for its inherent and rampant tyranny. In a publication regarded as authoritative by the No-License Party these words occur:—“l recollect on one occasion, in conversation, one of the brewers said to a prohibitionist, 1 I hate the drunkard as much as you.’ Hie prohibitionist replied: ‘ That remark defines the difference between us. You hate the drunkard; I hate the drunkard-maker.’ ” Jt is this very extenuation in teaching which is sure to add to the list of the drunkmi Nay, it destroys all morality. This teaching would render morality impossible. Anarchy and lawlessness would be rampant. “1 hate the drunkardmaker.” 111 terms of logic, lie hates the hotelkeeper who, sells wine, the barman who serves it, the commercial traveller who represents wholesale houses which stock wine. A STEP FUim-IER.

He would hate the vine-grower, the labourer in the vineyard, and tlie carter who carries the wine, and so on. In large drapery establishments certain persons practise shoplifting. Prohibitionist teaching would exonerate them and blame the drapers. “ I bate not the thief, hut the thief-maker.” Such a doctrine would abolish the Ten ("'•’•• mandments. To shift the responsibility from the man who drinks to excess to other persons is to encourage sympathy with the drunken, and still more is llr« wrought by absolutely slopping the supply, not only to the few lawless, but to the whole, community. This remedy is fatal to morals. It is fatal to set up a compulsory and ascetic total abstinence society for the peop'o and to enforce its rules by a drastic criminal code. A true educational development undoubtedly means that the whole of man’s al tributes are to be brought into true harmony. Here lies the worth of the individual and Til F, TRUE GREATNESS OF THE STATE.

A mere negation such as prohibit inti would never accomplish this: in fact, a greater violation of its principles can hardly he conceived. This National Prohibition eraeco is mainly ihe work of a handful of fanatics. LIQUOR FOR MEDICINAL, SACRAMENTAL AND INDUSTRIAL PURPOSES.

I shall he told that we run no danger in Now Zealand of our being deprived of alcoholic liquor tfor medicinal, sacramental and industrial purposes. | AVe have had the assurance o( th" [ leaders of the No-License League, loI getlier with the-Government, that satisfactory regulations will he made to allow wine to bo procured for those

purposes, but let all good Christians he timely warned. I am not at all convinced that these regulations will be satisfactory. First of all, what are they? Nobody has seen them, and they are to be made, I understand, only in the event of National Prohibition being carried.*

IS IT REASONABLE to ask Catholics to vote for National Prohibition on the strength of regulations not yet made, and about which

we know nothing—whether they will be satisfactory or otherwise ? But even though the present Government may he perfectly sincere in its avowed purpose to make regulations ; that will he entirely satisfactory, what guarantee have we that in a few years. ! once national prohibition is the law of the land, another Government—on the ground, say, that the exemptions are being abused—may not insert an amendment in the Act doing away with all exemptions, even for sacramental . purposes? We have had too much experience of “rush” legislation 011 the part of our Parliament not to fear similar “ rush ” legislation in regard to .sacramental wine.

I considei;, therefore, that 1 would he failing in my duty did I not warn our people of

THE DANGEROUS POSSIBILITIES that are before them. Are we in this pretended free land, to depend for the exercise of a natural and divine right on any fallible and fallacious Government or set of politicians? Such a thing is an insult, an outrage and an indignity. It implies a prying and in* quisitorial interference with every altar in the Dominion. 1 call, therefore, on all Catholics in the Dominion to vote dead against national prohibition, as (liev value common sense and liberty. Lot them hand with the best men in the Dominion, the majority of good ant moderate men, to stamp out this noxious thing, national prohibition, for ever. Let such inquisitorial and grinding tyranny never curse this free land. The Catholic who votes for national prohibition in the present condition of this Dominion is true neither to his common sense nor his love of treedom. nor his loyalty to his holy religion. Let him cast his vote patriotically and religiously against it, in this and every other election. Let him not become the slave of a false system inspired by narrow-mindedness and fanaticism.*