THE PRESS AND STAGE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 10, 8 January 1913, Page 6

THE PRESS AND STAGE.

Preaching in (N.S.W.) Cathedral recently, the Dean of Newcastle (Dr. .Golding Bird) made reference to the influence of the press and stage. He said: “Two of the chiefest agencies for good or evil are without doubt the press and the stage. The press enters where the Church is not allowed to enter. The stage appeals to thousands who look with no love and little respect upon the Church. The responsibility of these two most potent agencies is beyond the power of exaggeration. It cannot be truthfully said that the influence of the press and stage is universally good. The great daily papers certainly keep their pages clean, and use their influence for morality, but this cannot be said of all weekly publications. There are papers published in Australia which are a disgrace to a Christian country. The fact that in them clergy are held up to ridicule is a detail. Perhaps we often deserve it, but when the most sacred facts of Christianity are caricatured, when even the crucifixion, of the Son of God is parodied, it is time that a protest was made and those who still believe in the faith of their fathers raised their voices against the scandal. The stage is often a tremendous power for good and often is a real help to the Church in teaching moral truths. But the stage has its shame no less than the press. There are plays, the very name of which, are an offence against decency. Hideously suggestive, their very titles are meant to attract audiences, who like the unclean. Yet on occasion such an audience is made the arbiter of decency. It is no healthy sign of the times when such things are tolerated. It is a grave mark of moral decadence, when papers print hideous blasphemies and sie stage gives the public erotic and non-moral melodrama.”