MORAL STANDARDS

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 424, 4 May 1937, Page 6

MORAL STANDARDS

CONDITIONS IN DOMINION Bishop Of Wellington’s Views Press Association —Copyright. Masterton, May 3. “A steep decline iUi niioraJ standards of the average life to-day wias one of the most serious aspects thA had to be considered and one | which forced itself more upon us,” ' stated th? Bishop of Wellington, Rt. Rev. H. St. Barbe Holland, in an address at. Masterton to-night. It was possible to estimate the for.ee of reI ligioii in the country by the moral standards prevailing when, h j (arrived in New Zealand, he said. He had been told that there had more or less a cyclonic, disturbance of the whole moral life of the country. A new type of morality seemed to have clawed into the fibre !cf the nation, forcing out the old i Christian view of life and morals ' They would have to fight the new , menace. ' Referring to the recent Government ■ report on abortion in the Dominion His Lordship describ, d abortion as a festering sore in the life of the nation and said that it constituted the biggest challenge to the Church th ’ they could possibly have bad. Th appalling revelations of the conditions l existing in the country had to be I he?ded. ■ "When he questioned what was wrong’ | with the moral standards of the naI tion he realised that there might be I a lot in the stories of the moral evils jof dances, of exd&ssive drinking in gears' during dances and of a general i lack of moral ideals of sex and of the , Christian ideal of parenthood. The 1 position was ringing a chia Henge to i the churches which were the one body ' that could stop the spread of the malj ady in the country. The only cure j was a religious cure and churches | should try to insist on a higher stand- ' ard.”