NOTED PREACHER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 118, 21 May 1931, Page 3

NOTED PREACHER.

REV. FATHER RYAN.

ELOQUENT DOMINICAN. IMPRESSED BY NEW ZEALAND. A distinguished Dominican preacher, Father Ryan, who is at present on a visit to New Zealand, has been addressing large congregations during his journey from the south to the north, and to-night at St. Patrick's Cathedral he is ta speak to the Catholic women of Auckland. He is the guest of Bishop Liston at Bishop's House, and to-morrow will leave by the Monowai for Sydney on his way back to the Old Land. He has been much struck by the hospitality he has met, and likes New Zealand so much that he means to pay another visit if possible. Speaking to a "Star" reporter this morning, he said he had been surprised at the extent of the Dominion when he came to travel through. On the map it looked a very email place indeed, so the visitor was all the more struck by the extent and variety of the country. In places down South he found the life very reminiscent of England, and then in other places he was reminded of the life in his own country, Ireland. Our. roads struck him as being remarkably good for such a young country, and very well maintained, and he found ''a transport services excellent. He liked the prosperous appearance of the country and felt it must have a great future. Films and Books. In answer to a question as to whether lie noticed any evidences of Americanisation of the young people through the cinema, Father Byan said lie failed to do so. He did not think there had been much infiltration, and it would take a very long time for such an influence to work down. Other countries were also complaining of the effect of the American talkies on the English language, and even in Panama he found people protesting against so many films from the States, films that were not in accord with the Spanish sentiments of the people.

A picture theatre official interviewed the other day in Auckland said the film censorship in Ireland was so strict that it had become a laughing stock. Father Ryan did not agree with this view. He said that in pome quarters the Irish censorship was not thought to be strict enough. In Ireland they had definitely set themselves to face the demoralisation of people by literature and pictures. What the people read was the most important thing of all, but what they saw fixed it for ever in their minds —it could not be entirely obliterated. That was why it was so essential that what the people read and what t'.iey saw at the picture theatres should inculcate high ideals.

The Way to Peace. Father Ryan by no means takes a gloomy view of the position of the world to-day, with its hankering after pleasure —a legacy of the Great War. He says history had always shown that cataclysms had always had the same effect; they made the serious people more serious and in increasing numbers, and the frivolous people more frivolous. There were serious people in New Zealand, and there were frivolous, and though it would be impossible to say in what proportion those categories existed, the young men and women of the Dominion seemed to him to measure up to a high standard from a moral and civil standpoint. After all, it was not the land or its flocks, or its produce, that made a country great, but the men and women, and then again not so much the men and women of to-day as the children who would be the men and women of to-morrow. He had been much impressed by the children he had come across in the South Inland. He had not bPen so much about the North Tsland, but no doubt they were like those of the southern parts of the Dominion. In looking at the present state of the civilised world it was obvious that one thing that could not be done away with wae the idea of God and religion; if that were put out of the hearts of the people they would never know peace of mind, and get back that tranquility that had been so violentlv disturbed since the war.