A LEAD FROM THE CHURCH

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 410, 20 December 1932, Page 4

A LEAD FROM THE CHURCH

j ■ - ' ■■ » In the long- history of the Church, there have been many Christian men who set themI selves against the wrath of ! princes and suffered for 1/heir j temerity. To-day, in a modern I age princes are no longer autocrats ancl the church militant must fight its battles with different weapons. The voice of the church is seldom raised in matters political and the day when the leaders of the church were able temporal administrators as j well as prelates, appears to have ! paJssed away. To-day there is ! an increasing tendency to regard i churchmen, merely as churchmen, forgetting that they are | also, or should be, leaders of I their country's thought by precept and example. Within the j past month, however, New Zea- ] land has had two examples of j churchmen who have very eff ectively . raised their voices in protest against political actions. The first was Bishop Sadlier, of Nelson, who very plainly expressed the opinion that the Govi ernment had committed a j breach of faith in compulsorily j reducing interest upon investl ments, and the second the Angli- | can Primate of New Zealand, j Archbishop Averill, who has I been refreshingly outspoken in | his prosests against the propos- ! ed further reductions in relief i pay. There may be a tendency | in some quarters to consider i that a churchman should raise ■ his voice only in matters that directly affect the church, and if 1 this be so, it is encouraging to i find that the leaders of a great j church have the courage to express a protest when they consider it justified. From time to time, leaders of the various dej nominations have expressed I themselves publicly and through the press on matters affecting j the moral well-being of the nation, but it is unusual to find : them so outspoken upon matters ; falling more particularly within the political sphere. Their protest, however, serves to indicate the close connection between political acts and their consequences. Bishop Sadlier considered that Government interference in signed and sealed contracts : indicated a slackening in the ' conception of the moral obligation imposed by a bond. The inviolability of a contract is a f undamental principle of honest business and Bishop Sadlier's pro-

test may well give pause for reflection upon whither a continuance of such a policy of Government interference is likely to lead us. Modification or alteration of a contract by mutual agreement, is one thing — compulsory alteration at the behest of the State, quite another. It is a moot point whether the State, although it may give itself the legal right, has actually the moral right to order a contract to be disregarded and it is this point to which the Bishop drew attention. Archbishop Averill's protest does not hinge upon such wicle issues but it is nevertheless, very timely. His Grace has pointed out that a further reduction in the relief payments to the thousands of the nation's unemployed must inevitably impose widespread hardship and suffering not only upon many of

the men themselves, but upon their wives, children and dependents. The Government, it is true, is faced with the urgent necessity of reducing the burden placed upon the taxpayers through unemployment. But this can be no possible excuse for subjeeting women and cliildren to actual want, and this, it may justifiably be argued, will be the result of further reductions in the scale of relief payments. It has been made plain that these payments are made upon the minimum subsistence scale, and having regard to the depleted finan'cial resources of the country, this is the only possible course to adopt, At the same time, however, there is an obligation upon the Government to ensu're that the scale is not redueed below the bare subsistence level. The only excuse for this

would be the inability of the eountry to find the money. But however bad matters may be, this is not the case in this eountry at present. The united protest which has been made by all sections of the community and which was voiced by the Archbishop, should plainly indicate to the Government, that further reductions in the scale of relief pay, would be an unnecessary and un justified harshness. In Auckland, a public meeting composed of citizens who are carrying their share of the burclen definitely expressed this opinion and their protest has had general support in other parts of the eountry. This is not an expression of opinion which can be lightly disregarded and the Government will be 'failing in its duty if it does not give it all the weight which it merits.