"PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 190, 13 August 1928, Page 5

"PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE."

THE CATHOLIC VIEWPOINT.

SERMON BY NOTED PRIEST.

FATHER CYRIL MARTINDALE

A crowded congregation at St. Pat

rick's Cathedral last evening was deeply impressed by a masterly address from the Rev. Father Cyril Martindale, of London, a prominent English Churchman and author, who had a most distinguished career at Harrow and at Oxford. Despite the fact that Father Martindale showed truces of his recent serious accident, in which he was involved with Bishop Cleary, his magnetic personality made a strong impression upon the congregation, which numbered some 200 U.

Taking as his test, "That was the true light, that gives light to every man," from John i. 9, the preacher claimed for the Roman Catholic faith a foundation based on reason. "You cannot read the Gospels without noticing how much Our Lord insists on light," he said.

Since he had been in New Zealand various non-Catholic organisations and one rationalist body had courteously sent him their publications. The rationalist journal had interested hiin because it seemed to be one of the old-fashioned things ho had met with in this modern country. It reminded him of the crossways to which he had come as a young man after having been educated as a Protestant. At that point he was faced on the one hand with the prospect of becoming a rationalist or agnostic, and on the other with the challenge of accepting the true faith. Making references to the recent utterances of Sir Arthur Keith, the speaker characterised such tactics as "'stuntism" for the purpose of sensationalising public meetings. One writer had quoted him as saying that materialism was increasing in England. "I think 1 know the psychology of my fellow countrymen," said the preacher. "I see forces at work which may indeed produce a materialistic generation, but they are connected with such things as machinery, and have nothing at all to do with rationalist arguments. The Rationalist Press Association and that sort of thing is not what the English Catholics have to worry about."

Father Martindale said the increased courtesy shown to Catholics in England, whether in high quarters or bv institutions like the Salvation Army, was duo to an increase of respect for Catholics, their faith, and the works into which it issued. Monsignor Newsome's Home for Defective Boys at Besford Court had been rightly hailed as an institution doing a work of national and scientific international importance. He referred also to the training college for teachers managed by the Notre Dame nuns at Liverpool. " One Governmental authority after another had praised it as a model in its line, from which the State itself might learn. So richly had Catholic schools in England proved their worth that the Minister of Education, Lord Eustace Percy, recently stated in reference to a speech of the Catholic Bishop of Salford, that the latter could scarcely put a higher value on the denominational schools than he did himself, so well had the sacrifices of these schools proved "the vitality of the voluntary school system." During the last ten years he had spent in Oxford, said the speaker, he had noticed that where once men thought of< Catholics just as possessing a somewhat remote and exotic creed of their own, they now took it for granted that Catholicism implied a universal philosophy of life, based on some principle, of everything that cropped up. from a new sort of art to Rugby football. 'T am quoted as saying that the English are becoming a race of materialists. That is inaccurate in itself," said Father Martindale. "and above all unreasons for expecting an increase in materialism are suppressed." They were that young men who grow up filling their entire day with machinery and their evenings with dancing or the cinema were often absolutely ignorant of history, and were becoming quite unable to follow even the simplest argument that involved reasoning. Catholics, said the preacher, could not build churches fast enough. When reporters asked him, "Why are churches empty ?" he replied: "Ours aren't." They were most inconveniently full. When the enormous Westminster Cathedral was put up. Catholics themselves feared it would never be filled. Now not only was the Cathedral packed two or three times each Sunday, but three new churches had had to be opened in the immediate neighbourhood.

"You must not suspect me of any cheap flattery of ourselves as Catholics," he added. "We have many faults, and I could have preached an entire sermon on them. And be certain that I have not wished to say one uncharitable or contemptuous word about men of other religions or of none. God knows I do not under-rate their virtues, their efforts, their difficulties and disappointments, nor grudge them one ray of the truth that they possess. We grieve that they lack what they do lack, and that we are often, as our conscience tells us, so incompetent to give it to them." "