DEFENDING CAPITALISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1940, Page 6

DEFENDING CAPITALISM

CATHOLIC VIEW OF WAR

The well-known Dominion preacher and writer, Father Vincent McNabb, recently answered the question. ’.How can an English Catholic think the present war is just, when in fact, it is a war in defence of capitalism?” "Those loyal and intelligent Englishmen whose hatred of capitalism would lead 'them to defend Germany can hardly escape the charge of seif-con-tradiction," he says. “For if on England's side this is a war in defence of capitalism because capitalists arc strong in England, on Germany's side this should be equally reckoned a capitalist war because even Germany lias so many capitalists that Nazism has to control them by almost inhuman force.”

And he concludes with these pregnant words: “This thing that is England, the thing that was the creation of Catholic culture, the thing that even now gives the Catholic Church almost unique freedom of action, the thing whose love of liberty is almost wholly Hie fruiting of our Catholic martyrs, is still something which the Catholics of this country think worthy of self-defence. If among those defended there are some or even many who are not worthy of defence, the days that follow victory may surely be expected to stem tlie menace of their selfishness."